Reading Karl Barth, Interrupting Moral Technique, Transforming Biomedical Ethics

the long version

"The age of modern biomedical science has raised many difficult ethical questions. Accordingly, leaders in bioethics have articulated methods to direct the on-going discourse while providing the systems necessary for making morally efficient decisions. In this thought-provoking study, Ashley John Moyse suggests a theory of ethics that interrupts and transforms the contemporary and abstract modes of moral discourse. Moyse moves the moral discussion of bioethics beyond abstract ends, obligations, and common moral categories. At the same time, he challenges readers to take seriously the concrete moral tasks of existence. Moyse engages with Karl Barth's philosophical and theological thinking in order to investigate the moral discussions surrounding biomedical ethics. The book engagingly illuminates a path toward moral discernment that recognizes the significance of human flourishing. According to Moyse, Barth's moral theology not only grounds humans as ontologically relational but also fuels responsibility to, with, and for one's neighbors. "-- "This book explores biomedical ethics after engaging Karl Barth's theological ethics, which illumines the way for the us to exercise moral discernment that not only identifies the significance of human flourishing, but also a way for inclusive moral discourse and decisive action with and for the other. The book will describe an ethics that is not necessarily in opposition to those modes of moral discourse considered primary in bioethics; i.e., the common morality. However, as a particular theological ethics, it is deeply critical of much modern moral discourse, and constructive in its response"--