Research Unit Theological Ethics

 


 

scheme

The focus of the research conducted in the Department of Theological Ethics is the mediating role of ethics in the complex relationship between Christian (and Jewish) worldviews and the concrete social context. Three elements are constantly interrelated, namely: Christian and Jewish worldviews, the pluralistic society and ethics.
The methodological approach is based on the interplay between fundamental ethics and applied ethics. The study of ethics in a particular field of application is never isolated, but rather approached from and redirected to Christian theology and its social functioning. In this way the acquired applied ethical expertise adds to the refinement and deepening of the fundamental anthropological and ethical points of departure, and vice versa. Thus, the methodology also seeks an ethics "anchored" in and supported by the human sciences.

 

 

I. Theological Ethics


Research in theological ethics can include a variety of perspectives: biblical thought, history, anthropology, the human sciences and hermeneutics. Central areas and questions in fundamental moral theological research at present are:

1. Sources of Ethical Reflection

The sources of ethical reflection from a Christian perspective are: bible, tradition, authority and human experience.

  • A philosophical hermeneutics of the Scriptures as an impetus for a reflective and dialogical Christian ethics.
  • Systematic historical research of the history of moral theology.
  • The function and significance of the tradition and the Magisterium in Christian ethics.
  • Relevant ethical experiences and their meaning.

2. Ethical Models and Concepts

  • The presence of different ethical models within the Christian tradition: deontology, teleology, dialogical and social personalism.
  • The ‘Louvain’ personalist tradition: the importance of the thought of L. Janssens for contemporary ethical problems.
  • The development of fundamental ethical concepts and models of thought such as ontic and moral evil, moral good/bad and moral right/wrong, (pre-)moral values and norms.

3. Anthropological Basis of Christian Ethics

  • The content of the Christian concept of love: ‘eros’ and/or ‘agape’.
  • Self-transcending or the appeal of the other (l’autre) as a necessary condition for the Christian idea of unselfishness (Augustine, Levinas).
  • The relevance of the Levinasian category of Desire (le Désire) for the Christian idea of unselfishness.
  • The possibility of ethics starting from the self after the critique on the modern subject.
  • The relation between the ‘care for the self’ and the ‘care for the other’, starting from the philosophical confrontation between Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas.
  • The description of a human being as ‘person’ and imago Dei in the Christian tradition.

Doctoral Projects

Post-doctoral Project

4. Christian Ethics between Universality and Particularity

  • The discussion about the specificity of Christian inspired ethics: autonomous ethics in a Christian context or faith ethics?
  • Narrative and hermeneutical ethics, i.e. narrative ethics as a touchstone for the relationship between universal rationality and a particular religious conviction.
  • The existential rootedness of ethics, basic trust, moral indignation, participation in community, imagination and moral emotions.
  • The relationship between ethics and Christian religion: supererogation and the transethical.
  • Pluralism of values in a postmodern context: confusion and shift of values, ethical relativism.

Doctoral Projects

5. Evil and Responsibility

The numerous faces of moral evil and human tragedy as an expansion and a challenge for axiological ethics:

  • The relation between the object and the subject of evil.
  • The equivocation of the notion of responsibility in confrontation with Ricoeur, Jonas, Levinas.
  • Responsibility, exoneration and accountability (moral competence).
  • Attitudes towards evil: retribution or revenge, conditions for forgiveness and reconciliation.
  • Human tragedy, finitude and evil in the relationship between ideological conviction and ethics.

6. The Specific Contribution of Jewish Thought to Christian Ethics.

  • Jewish thinkers like Rosenzweig, Buber, etc. as a challenge to rethink the historical and current relationship between moral theology and philosophy.
  • The ethical metaphysics of Emmanuel Levinas as a radicalisation of dialogical and social personalism in Christian ethics.
  • Jewish and Christian ethics after Auschwitz.

7. Ethics of Dialogue

  • Ethics of social work and pastoral care
  • Ecumenical ethics: ethics of dialogue between different Christian confessions, the conciliatory process (Peace, Justice and Integrity of Creation: Basel; Reconciliation: Gift of God, Source of New Life: Graz).
  • Ethics of the world religions and intercultural ethics (Weltethos)

Doctoral Project

 

II. Applied Theological Ethics


Since theological ethics is connected to all aspects of human action, its applications are numerous and diverse. Moreover, in our ever more complex modern society, new developments imply new tasks for moral theology. Characteristic of research in theological ethics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is the fact that research in applied ethics is not merely informed by fundamental moral theology, but that it also questions and renews fundamental thinking in turn. By reason of the globalisation of social problems, moral theology at the K. U. Leuven is increasingly challenged to communicate the results of its research on an international level.

1. Relational and Sexual Ethics

  • Meaningful sexual life: an integral relational approach from a Christian point of view; an ethical-educational counseling model; sex and gender problematic; the foundational significance of the sexual body and the sexual difference; relational and sexual education and ethics.
  • Feminist ethics.
  • Responsible parenthood, childless or childfree marriage.
  • The divergent meaning of different relationship forms: marriage, premarital living together, living together contract; the question of same sex marriage.

Doctoral Projects

2. Biomedical Ethics

  • The doctor-patient relationship.
  • Sanctity versus quality of life, man as steward or co-creator.
  • Medical decisions at the beginning and end of life: pre-implantation diagnostics, reproductive technology, the ethical and philosophical status of the human embryo, the treatment of a patient in a persistent vegetative condition, the problem of euthanasia (with special attention for the juridical developments in Belgium and the Netherlands).
  • The explosive development of new medical technologies: xenotransplantation, reproductive and therapeutic cloning, stem cell research.
  • The input of care ethics developed in nursing and feminist thinking: counselling of pregnancies, post-abortion counselling, care of the elderly, counselling of mentally disabled persons, palliative care.
  • The institutionalisation of medical ethics in the so-called commission-ethics (Raadgevend Comité voor de Bio-Ethiek, commissions for medical ethics, commissions for evaluating medical experiments).

Doctoral Projects

3. Environmental and Agricultural Ethics

  • Ethics and population growth, development and environmental damage, food and ethics.
  • The relation between humans, nature and animals: anthropocentric, zoocentric, ecocentric and biocentric views.
  • The Greek and the Christian tradition and environmental inattentiveness.
  • Animals & Ethics: animal welfare and animal rights, the use of laboratory animals, intrinsic and inherent value.
  • Biotechnology and bio-ethics: genetic modification of plants/animals and world hunger.

Doctoral Project

4. Peace Ethics

  • The relationship between peace, justice and ideology.
  • Human rights and Christian faith.
  • Causes and consequences of coarsening in society.
  • (In)tolerance, nationalism, totalitarianism (nazism, Stalinism), xenophobia, migrants and political refugees, multiculturalism, the fight against racism, the relation between particularism and otherness
  • Anti-Semitism, genocide, crimes against humanity
  • Collective trauma's, revenge, justice, retribution and reconciliation; ethical thinking after the Holocaust.
  • Peace movements; women and peace.
  • Pacifism and ‘holy war’ in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
  • Criteria for a just war and for humanitarian interventions.
  • The fight against terror: limitation or protection of liberal fundamental rights, semantic change of the notions ‘conflict’ and ‘war’.

Doctoral Projects

5. Social Ethics

  • The relation between social-ethical efforts and confessional inspiration, new and traditional social movements, civic sense and the good society (bonum commune).
  • Development of Catholic Social Teaching.
  • The Christian identity of both trade unions and employer’s organisations, the Christian identity of welfare and health institutions.
  • A new social Europe.
  • Labour, society and the family.

Doctoral Projects

6. Business Ethics

  • Business and management ethics as the foundation of a human enterprise: human resource management; corporate governance.
  • Ethical banking; business codes in theory and practice.
  • Moral imagination and narrativity as a motive for an ethically qualified economic behaviour, spirituality and leadership.
  • The social teaching of the Church and economics

Doctoral Projects

7. Technology and Ethics

  • The new ethical questions invoked by new technological developments
  • The relation between ethics and technology

Doctoral Project

 

III. Co-operation with Several Centres of Ethics at the KU Leuven


Applied ethical research is realised in a specific way by means of the European Centre for Ethics and is situated within the European Ethics Network. The European Centre for Ethics was founded in 1989 with the purpose of stimulating co-operation between several centres for ethics at the K. U. Leuven and has developed into an interuniversity organ of thought and consultation. The Department of Theological Ethics supports different autonomous centres of ethics that are part of the European Centre for Ethics: the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law, the Centre for Science, Technology and Ethics, the Centre for Peace Ethics and the Centre for the Study of Catholic Social Thought.