Ethics, Culture, & Policy

PAUL ADAMS - Ideas, arguments, and musings about ethics in relation to culture, religion, and public policy

Monday, January 30, 2012

Posted by Paul Adams at 6:47 PM

Paul Adams: Ave Maria, FL; Welcome to my blog! A social policy professor in schools of social work most of my life, now retired, I am rethinking the profession’s received wisdom. I’m skeptical about the sexual and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and their reflections in social work down to the present. In light of C. Wolfe’s work, I may be a natural law liberal--or like Michael Novak, a Catholic Whig. Following the site, MercatorNet, I accept the inelegant label “dignitarian.” I’m thus a natural law liberal dignitarian communitarian. I affirm the Judeo-Christian ethic of the equal and intrinsic worth of all human lives whatever their status, condition, or stage of development. My concern with ethics is not with resolving quandaries--ethics as an episodic rational decision-making process—but ethics as about happiness, the flourishing of individuals and communities. As part of the 60s generation I want to do something toward repairing the damage we did in the academy, profession, and society. In the words of the poet Andrew Marvell, “But at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near”--and getting ever closer as my normal retirement age recedes into the past.

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio

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