Stanley Hauerwas and the Law: Is There Anything to Say?
2012; Duke University School of Law; Volume: 75; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1945-2322
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoIt might seem odd to devote a symposium in a law journal to a theologian who has argued for withdrawal from any form of government that resorts to violence in order to maintain internal order and external security (1) and who wonders whether lawyers in fact be going straight to hell. (2) If this is the starting point, then what conversation is to be had? But Stanley Hauerwas is closer to the law than most people realize. He has published in law reviews (3) and taught in law schools. (4) He has also signed amicus briefs, (5) testified as an expert witness, and served as a jury foreman in a rape trial. (6) Of course, the academy is a bit more particular with its recognition--expert testimony and amicus briefs alone would not have led to a journal symposium. But beyond his moonlighting as a legal advocate, Hauerwas has emerged as one of the foremost scholars and public intellectuals of the last four decades. He has written scores of books and hundreds of articles, (7) has been named America's Best Theologian by Time magazine, (8) and has delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures. (9) He has arguably articulated the most coherent and influential political in and for the North American context (10) and has been at the forefront of major transformations in theology including virtue ethics, the role of narrative and community, and understandings of medicine and illness. (11) Hauerwas's arguments have shaped theological education and reached a broader public through books and sermons--both his own and those of the pastors and educators whom he has influenced. (12) His views have been scrutinized by some of the leading thinkers in religious studies, (13) sociology, (14) history, (15) political theory, (16) moral philosophy, (17) and literary theory. (18) And they have been largely ignored in legal scholarship. (19) The inattention to Hauerwas in legal scholarship is particularly odd given that he has written for decades about issues central to the law: violence, liberalism, bioethics, disability, interpretation, capital punishment, just war theory, reconciliation, public reason, patriotism, euthanasia, abortion, and religious freedom, to name only a few of the more obvious connections. And the general lack of familiarity with Hauerwas by legal scholars (even among many of those who write in the area of law and religion) has contributed to a growing divide. As Jeffrey Stout has observed, [t]he more thoroughly Rawlsian our law schools and ethics centers become, the more radically Hauerwasian the theological schools become. (20) Hauerwas has been a persistent critic of contemporary liberal political thought. (21) His arguments resemble those advanced by scholars ranging from Alasdair MacIntyre to Stanley Fish who, in different ways,, challenge liberalism's purported neutrality and its suppression of theological discourse. (22) But Hauerwas differs from other well-known critics because he writes as a theologian. In other words, he is both echoing second-order arguments against the claims of liberalism and displaying first-order arguments from within a particular theological tradition. Some of Hauerwas's critics may be right to argue that he reacts against a type of liberalism that exists mostly on the pages of books by Rawls, Rorty, and their followers, and not in actual practice. (23) But that description is least true of the academy. (24) Much teaching and scholarship relies upon unacknowledged constraints on argumentative practices from professors who embrace the ideals of Rawlsian public reason or, more strikingly, whose epistemic commitments welcome a spectacular diversity of viewpoints and worldviews--except for theological ones. (25) As a result, a great deal of scholarship ignores or too easily dismisses theological argument. (26) If public reason and epistemic bias have succeeded anywhere in squelching theological argument, it is in the academy. Contrary to the academy's dominant orthodoxies, Hauerwas insists that Christian properly belongs in contemporary discourse: [A]t the very least Christianity names an ongoing argument across centuries of a tradition which has established why some texts must be read and read in relation to other texts. …
Referência(s)