Stanley Hauerwas | The Good Life: If liberalism failed to deliver, what can? | Plough
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- At the Plough Writers Weekend, August 2021 at the Fox Hill Bruderhof, Stanley Hauerwas discussed what it means to live a good life. Does it mean ending up on the right side of history, identifying oneself with a particular cause, or having the freedom to choose any option? Hauerwas drew on works by James Rebanks, Alistair MacIntyre, and John Milbank. On the panel of respondents, Zena Hitz and Edmund Waldstein discussed Hauerwas’s critique of liberalism and agreed that consumerism and individualism have not brought us the good life.
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There comes a stage in every person’s story when we feel called to surrender to the life we may not have fully chosen. This is the point of conversion and openness to grace.
It is heartening to hear Stanley Hauerwas speaking in this time of fear, confusion and alarmism.
I love this session. Enlightening and inspiring.
Part of my journey to discover Jesus was a moderately lengthy detour through buddhism. Learning a new way of thinking, compared to my previous thinking as an atheist, has helped make Christian thinking accessible to me.
However, I would not recommend buddhism to anyone or even support it. Especially within a Christian context. The problem I have with the lady's argument is that she seems to be clinging to the lies of liberalism purely because these lies have been a road she walked on in her way to the truth, but it's still a road in the land of lies. When you've been freed from the lies, speaking to other Christians, you don't need to picture the merits of a wretched road in a cursed land that we shouldn't care to return to.
If you start with God and say that God has not purpose or meaning; rather he is the Absolute Being and how we see Him is as an expression of His character. The Christian, through the development of the virtues seeks to impart in himself character with the aim of imitating God; action as an expression of character and Faith, rather than purpose. The community that promotes this is working towards "the good life"; it should be the Church. To say "this is my life I want no other" is an expression of the aim while living on the path to be "poor in spirit". But it might be that just by being on the path you could say "this is my life I want no other".
Glad to see Hauerwas reading a new paper!
For mine, still a good paper.
I think Hauerwas' paper was superb, but Zena misses the point on liberalism in my humble opinion.
I am amazed that supposedly Christ centered people would be debating the merits of finding the “good life” through liberalism. As Christ centered people you should know that the answer is Jesus the Christ. Living completely for Him….obeying all Jesus’ teachings, not just a select few verses. You are losing the Way, or maybe you haven’t repented and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ? Please turn aside from vain pursuits and put your trust in Jesus.
You obviously are not very familiar with the members of this panel and their lives work especially Mr. Hauerwas. You have a definition of liberalism perhaps inherited from people who think like you. Perhaps you are better of watching a video of pastors spewing empty dogmatic quotes lacking insight. Also you tend to forget that we Christians are the only religion whose followers worship a crucified Savior. The calling is to be humble to others. Do not rush to the resurrected Savior remember that before Sunday there was a Friday.
Nothing about Hauerwas' argument entails that the "good life" is to be found in/through liberalism. He's literally arguing that our answers can't be found in liberalism.
That the church must take seriously the task of presenting an alternative to the liberal notions about the what constitutes the "Good Life".
I'll start by saying that I do think all things called liberalism are misguided, but you need to know that there are dozens of different interpretations of what liberalism actually is, and these people are not talking about the type in which you take a select few verses.
The liberalism they are talking about is a political idealism in which the ultimate goal is that every person should have the highest possible amount of power over the way they live their lives. (In most forms of liberalism, freedom and power are effectively synonymous.) It is a concept that only makes sense if you are perfectly capable to make all the right decisions when using this power, which only God can do. And God already has the maximum amount of power, so this concept is useless to real a follower of Jesus Christ.
Did you watch the video? Stanley Hauerwas and Edmund Walstein were very critical of liberalism throughout. At one point Hauerwas joked: "Well, liberalism is better than murder."