Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility (AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion)

In Moral Creativity , John Wall argues that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation of their world. This thesis challenges ancient Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in abstract principles or preconstituted traditions. Taking as his point of departure the poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and ranging widely into critical conversations with Continental, narrative, feminist, and liberationist ethics, Wall uncovers the profound senses in which moral practice and thought involve tension, catharsis, excess, and renewal. In the process, he draws new connections between sin and tragedy, practice and poetics, and morality and myth. Rather than proposing a complete ethics, Moral Creativity is a meta-ethical work investigating the creative capability as part of what it means, morally, to be human. This capability is explored around four dimensions of ontology, teleology, deontology, and social practice. In each case, Wall examines a traditional perspective on the relation of ethics to poetics, critiques it using resources from contemporary phenomenology, and develops a conception of a more original poetics of moral life. In the end, moral creativity is a human capability for inhabiting tensions among others and in social systems and, in the image of a Creator, creating together an ever more radically inclusive moral world. This book combines ancient, modern, and postmodern resources to argue that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation together of their world. This creative capability can be understood in its fullest dimensions only as a religious or mythological affirmation of humanity as an image of its Creator. This thesis challenges Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in fixed principles or preconstituted traditions. It instead recasts a range of mythic, prophetic, and tragic resources to uncover moral life’s poetics, tension, dynamism, catharsis, disruptiveness, excess, and impossible possibility for renewal. The book takes as its starting point a critical reading of the hermeneutical poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and from there enters into a range of conversations with Aristotle and contemporary Aristotelianism, Immanuel Kant and modernism, and current Continental, narrative, liberationist, and feminist ethics such as in Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Kearney, Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Luce Irigaray, and Sallie McFague. In the process, it develops a meta-ethical phenomenology of moral creativity along the lines of four increasingly complex dimensions: ontology (creativity of the self), teleology (positive creativity of narrative goods), deontology (negative creativity in response to otherness), and social practice (mixed creativity between plural others in society). Moral creativity is in the end an original and necessary religious capability for responding anew to the tensions within and between selves in the world by forming over time, in love and hope, an ever more radically inclusive humanity "In Moral Creativity, John Wall argues that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation of their world. This thesis challenges ancient Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in abstract principles or preconstituted traditions. Taking as his point of departure Paul Ricoeur's poetics of the will, and ranging widely into critical conversations with Continental, narrative, feminist, and liberationist ethics, Wall uncovers the profound senses in which moral practice and thought involve tension, catharsis, excess, and renewal. In the process, he draws new connections between sin and tragedy, practice and poetics, and morality and myth." "Rather than proposing a complete ethics, Moral Creativity is a meta-ethical work investigating the creative capability as part of what it means, morally, to be human. This capability is explored around the four dimensions of ontology, teleology, deontology, and social practice. In each case, Wall examines a traditional perspective on the relation of ethics to poetics, critiques it using resources from contemporary phenomenology, and develops a conception of a more original poetics of moral life. In the end, moral creativity is a human capability for inhabiting tensions among others and in social systems and, in the image of a Creator, creating together an ever more radically inclusive moral world."--Jacket Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Preface......Page 8 Contents......Page 10 Introduction: The Possibility for Moral Creativity......Page 14 1. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Moral Self......Page 36 2. Radical Evil and the Narration of Goods......Page 72 3. Otherness and the Poetics of Love......Page 114 4. Ideology and the Art of Reconciliation......Page 148 Conclusion: The Poetics of Moral Life......Page 182 Chapter 1......Page 208 Chapter 2......Page 215 Chapter 3......Page 220 Chapter 4......Page 224 Conclusion......Page 229 Selected Bibliography......Page 232 B......Page 236 C......Page 237 F......Page 238 H......Page 239 K......Page 240 M......Page 241 P......Page 242 R......Page 243 T......Page 244 W......Page 245 Wall argues that moral life is inherently creative. In arguing his case, he places the work of Paul Ricoeur in the larger context of historical & contemporary conversations about moral transformation, drawing connections between sin & tragedy, ethics & poetics, & between the moral life & religious mythology Hamlet comes to the crisis point in Shakespeare's great tragedy when he must decide whether or not to confront his uncle with the crime of regicide, thereby setting himself on a path that risks his own life too.