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Social Practices and Ethical Formation

REL 654
Fall Term 2015
W 1:30-3:20 PM
Classroom:
Office Hours: Please contact
Lynne.Lavalette@yale.edu for appt.

Professor Jennifer A. Herdt


Office: N122
jennifer.herdt@yale.edu

One of the striking features of the contemporary intellectual landscape is a pervasive concern
with the normative features of social practices. This seminar is a critical investigation of some of
the influential forms this has taken (neo-Aristotelian, Hegelian, Wittgensteinian, Poststructuralist) and of their theological refractions. Broad agreement on the significance of social
practices masks significant disagreement on questions of moral agency, authority, and truth.
Some, influenced by Hegel, regard social practices as the matrix within which authoritative
norms arise, while others argue that recognition of the historically- and culturally-bound
character of social formation calls the very notion of authoritatively binding norms into question.
Does moral enquiry, as Aristotle thought, necessarily involve a process of spiritual
transformation, in which we become disciples, accepting the authority of our teachers and
submitting to a process of formation into the virtues of a particular tradition? Is it only through
such a process that the reasons justifying its practices first become fully available to us? Or does
grasping the realities of social formation undermine any notion of reasons, intentions, and
agency? Followers of Wittgenstein struggle with the question of whether any practice must be
regarded as justified if it has a home in some stable, ongoing form of life. Foucaults thought
leaves us with questions not only about how meaningful resistance to oppression is possible but
about how we are to identify oppression, if there is no genuine self above or beneath social
formation. Does the recognition of the ways in which institutions are incorporated in bodies and
their durable dispositions erode any conception of selfhood and moral agency? Or is it social
formation that alone can provide a context within which moral agency is possible? If so,
according to what criteria?
Course Objectives
1. To gain a critical understanding of diverse ways of construing the normative features of
social practices, and the relationships among them.
2. To identify the implications that each of these has for questions of moral agency, truth,
and authority.
3. To reflect on how Christian theological ethics might most productively engage with
various understandings of ethical formation in and through social practices.

Course Requirements
1. Keep up with assigned readings, attend all class sessions, participate actively in
discussions. Repeated absences or lack of participation will result in a lowered grade if you are
the margin between two grades. Consistent and thoughtful participation will improve your final
grade if you are on the margin between two grades.
2. Once during the semester, prepare a two-page, single-spaced paper (12 point font)
analyzing a brief passage (of no more than 3 pages) from one of the assigned texts for that day.
What is being asserted/argued here? What assumptions are being made? What is the
significance of this passage within the text as a whole? What is its significance for the issues at
stake in this course? You will present this paper orally in class. You are encouraged to meet with
me to discuss your presentation, no later than one day prior to the class session. At least two
hours prior to class, you will distribute your paper to the faculty members and class by posting it
to our online forum (also include as an attachment). 30 % of final grade.
3. At least six times during the course of the semester, submit a paragraph-length post to the
online forum in classesv2. You may choose to focus on how to relate the weeks readings to one
another or to previous weeks readings, surface a puzzlement concerning some claim or
argument in the reading, seek to formulate assumptions or implications of an approach
represented in the readings, or comment on someone elses response. A good approach is to take
a specific short quotation as a starting point. All submissions should be respectful of others. At
least three of the six should respond or engage with others contributions. Responses will be
graded as follows: All (6) questions submitted on time and responsive to assignment = H; One
reflection late or not fully responsive to assignment = H-; One reflection missing or two
reflections late = HP; Two reflections missing or three reflections late = P; four or more missing
or more than seven late = F. In order not to count as late, your first post must be submitted in
Week 7 or prior, second post in Week 8 or prior, third post in Week 9 or prior, etc. 15 % of final
grade.
4. 15-20 pp. final paper (1 inch margins; 12 point font; doctoral students may submit longer
papers with permission of instructor). Papers may take a variety of forms including (though not
limited to) a critical exposition of a theme in one or more authors, a critical comparison of
authors, or a constructive development of a theme. They will be evaluated on how well ideas
and authors are understood and on how well the critical or constructive task is carried out.
Please submit electronically as e-mail attachment (preferably as a Word attachment), by 11:59
pm on December 15. 55% of final grade.
Course Readings
Texts available for purchase in the bookstore (N.B.: We will not read all of these in their
entirety):
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 1984.
Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life.
Kevin Hector, Theology Without Metaphysics.
William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist.

Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice.


Judith Butler, Giving An Account of Oneself
The remaining readings are available on electronic reserves, with access via classesv2, except as
otherwise indicated.
Schedule
Week 1, September2: Introduction
Week 2, September 9: NeoAristotelian Critiques of Modern Moral Theory
Bernard Williams, Persons, Character, and Morality, ch. 1 in Moral Luck (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Bernard Williams, Morality, the Peculiar Institution, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
John McDowell, Virtue and Reason, in Virtue Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote
(Oxford University Press, 1997), 141-162.
Suggested Reading:
Bernard Williams, Morality and the Emotions, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1973).
Elizabeth Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy, in Virtue Ethics, ed. Crisp and Slote, 26-44
Week 3, September 16: Wittgensteinian Variations Note: Session to be Rescheduled
possibly shifting schedule forward by one week and holding our final session Dec. 9
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 143-242.
G. Scott Davis, Wittgenstein and the Recovery of Virtue, in Grammar and Grace:
Reformulations of Aquinas and Wittgenstein, ed. Jeffrey Stout and Robert MacSwain
(London: SCM Press, 2004), 175-196.
John Bowlin, Natures Grace: Aquinas and Wittgenstein on Natural Law and Moral
Knowledge, in Grammar and Grace, 154-174.
Suggested Reading:
Sabina Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1983).
Stanley Cavell, The Claims of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), parts 3 and
4.
Week 4, September 23: Pragmatic Expressivism and Ethics as a Social Practice:
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition, ch. 8, 9, 12see 183-184 for helpful overview and
bibliographypriority of social practices
Stout, Blessed are the Organized, chapter 12, pp. 148-164 (fn. 85)
Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit, ch. 3
Week 5, September 30: Hegel: Bildung and Autonomy
Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991;
1999), 60-77.

Allan Wood, Hegel on Education, in A.O. Rorty, ed., Philosophers on Education: New
Historical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1998), 300-17.
G.W.F. Hegel, Civil Society, from The Philosophy of Right, sections 182-208
Further Suggested Reading:
Thomas A. Lewis, Speaking of Habits: The Role of Language in Moving from Habit to
Freedom, The Owl of Minerva 39:1-2 (2007-2008): 25-53.
Week 6, October 7: From Practices to Tradition--and Back Again
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, ch. 14-16
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice, Which Rationality, ch 17, 20
Suggested Reading:
Stout, Democracy and Tradition, ch. 5
Week 7, October 14: Liturgy and Christian Formation
Stanley Hauerwas, The Narrative Turn: Thirty Years Later, Suffering Beauty: The
Liturgical Formation of Christs Body, in Performing the Faith (ch. 5, 6)
Hauerwas, In Good Company, ch. 10
Hauerwas, A Better Hope, ch. 10
Jim Fodor, Reading the Scriptures, in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, edited by
Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells (2004, 2006)
Philip Kenneson, Gathering, in Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics
Reading Period and Convocation: No Class October 21
Week 8, October 28: Foucault: From Discipline to Care of the Self
Selections from Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (1984), pp. 169-256
Michel Foucault, The Cultivation of the Self, in Care of the Self
Arnold Davidson, Ethics as Ascetics in Foucault and the Writing of History, ed. Jan Goldstein
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
Suggested Further Reading:
Paul Rabinow, Introduction to The Foucault Reader
Jason Springs, Dismantling the Masters House: Freedom as Ethical Practice in
Brandom and Foucault, Journal of Religious Ethics 37.3 (2009): 419-448.
Rux Martin, Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault, October 25, 1982
(in Technologies of the Self)
Pierre Hadot, Reflections on the Idea of the Cultivation of the Self and Philosophy
as a Way of Life, in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to
Foucault.
Week 9, November 4: Bourdieu and Habitus
Pierre Bourdieu, Structures and the habitus in Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Introduction, ch. II and III.
Week 10, November 11: Performative Subversion

Judith Butler, Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions (1990) and What is Critique?
(2000) from The Judith Butler Reader, pages 90-117, 302-322.
Butler, Giving An Account of Oneself
Suggested Further Reading:
Judith Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,
http://www.mariabuszek.com/kcai/PoMoSeminar/Readings/BtlrPerfActs.pdf
Week 11, November 18: Christian Practices and Civic Liturgies
Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, 1-11, 53-57, 113-116, 165-174.
William Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, Introduction, ch. 1, 5 (only 234-252), 6.
Suggested Further Reading:
Luke Bretherton, Coming to Judgment: Methodological Reflections on the Relationship
Between Ecclesiology, Ethnography and Political Theory, Modern Theology, 2011.
Bretherton, A Postsecular Politics? Inter-faith Relations as a Civic Practice, Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 79.2 (June 2011): 346-377.
Bretherton, Sharing Peace: Class, Hierarchy, and Christian Social Order, in The Blackwell
Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2011), ch. 25, 329-343.
James K. A. Smith, How Religious Practices Matter, Modern Theology 24 (2008): 469-78.
Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, ch. 4
Smith, Philosophy of Religion Takes Practice: Liturgy as Source and Method in Philosophy of
Religion, in Contemporary Practice and Method in the Philosophy of Religion, ed.
David Cheetham and Rolfe King
Reading Period/Thanksgiving: No class November 25
Week 12, December 2
Kevin Hector, Theology Without Metaphysics, pp. 31-41 and ch. 2, 6
Suggested Further reading:
Ted Smith, Redeeming Critique: Resignations to the Cultural Turn in Christian Theology and
Ethics, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24.2(2004): 89-113.
Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Places of Redemption

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