Blackwell Reference Online

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Religious ethics in the comparative mode represents cross-traditional and cross-cultural ethical inquiry with simultaneous hermeneutical, critical, constructive, and theoretical dimensions (see Twiss and Grelle 2000 and chapter “On Religious Ethics”). The hermeneutical dimension entails interpreting moral and religious cultural systems, thinkers, practices, and patterns of reasoning in social and historical context. The critical dimension involves analyzing the social, political, economic, and institutional influences on these systems, thinkers, practices, and patterns. The constructive dimension requires identifying and developing intercultural moral resources for articulating new self and social understandings as well as practical strategies for advancing human well-being. And the theoretical dimension involves reflecting on systemic issues raised by the preceding dimensions; for example, ethnocentrism, methodological distortion, universalism versus relativism, justification and truth, the role of imagination, and relations among understanding, interpretation, and explanation. As presently understood and practiced, comparative religious ethics embraces methodological pluralism (and complementarity) and accepts the role of the comparative ethicist as a transformative public intellectual. Although some would argue that this field of inquiry is a discipline, others prefer to regard ... log in or subscribe to read full text