Reply to Flood

I WANT TO THANK Professor Gavin Flood for his insightful response to my essay on the future of religious ethics. Not only did he get my argument right, but at several points Flood makes a better case than I do! Happily, I need only expand on a few points. Flood notes, first, that I recognize the ethical praxis of traditions “alongside” the work of religious ethics in an academic context. That is right. Yet, I also tried to suggest that a multidimensional hermeneutic might enable us to bridge the gap between types of ethical reflection that plague the field: (say) Buddhist or Christian or Islamic ethics versus theological ethics versus religious ethics. We need a more dynamic idea of religious ethical thinking than the forms of ethics defined by, or in rejection of, the modern conception of a “discipline.” Second, Flood is right, the account of rationality that I and others advance can hardly be seen as Western paternalism: reflexive interaction is always at play, and, more importantly, the aim of “religious humanism” promotes the human good “through an engagement with traditions on their own terms.” Yet, my point was also that insofar as inquiry creates “a space of rational inquiry,” then what counts as “rational” is not defined merely by a “tradition” or the “academy.” The essay construes “reason” as a multidimensional and reflexive activity of orienting human life. Different “traditions” and different “disciplines” will orient life differently and thus form different human competencies, but that fact does not disallow ascribing reflexivity and multidimensionality to them. On this point, rituals themselves are “rational” activities wherein human beings orient life in a moral space. (Reason itself might be more ritualistic than we often think, but I defer on that discussion.) I am not sure that the contrast “reason” versus “ritual” is so helpful much like I am wary of seeing “traditions” or “disciplines” as internally defined and monological.

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