Reframing Catholic Ethics: Is the Person an Integral and Adequate Starting Point?

Abstract

Joseph Selling rightly defines human intentions and motivations as part of human nature and an important determinant of the morality of personal actions. The thesis of this paper is that Selling’s view of agency, as focused on the individual, must be expanded to include social relationships and the social constitution of selves and communities. This requires cross-cultural dialogue about human nature, the goods for persons and societies, and social ethics.

Keywords

• Aquinas’s ethics
• Catholic theological ethics
• Catholic moral theology
• cross-cultural ethics
• global ethics
• HIV/AIDS
• Humanae vitae
• moral agency
• personalism
• practical reason