Faith and the Professions

Front Cover
SUNY Press, 1987 M01 1 - 337 pages
Thomas L. Shaffer argues that the morals of modern American lawyers and doctors have been corrupted by misguided professionalism and weak philosophy. He shows that professional codes exalt vocational principle over the traditional morals of character; but that, in practice, America's professionals and business people cultivate the ethics of character. The ethics of virtue have been neglected.

The ethical argument in Faith and the Professions is in part an application to professional life of the position taken by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue and in Revisions, and by Robert Bellah and his collaborators in Habits of the Heart. It is also, in part, an argument for the relevance of religious ethics.

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Contents

Stories
3
Character
9
Stories
14
The Study of American Doctor and Lawyer Heroes
22
Character in Community
30
One Lawyers Moral Theology
34
The Theology of Virtue in the Professions
37
The Bible
41
Character before Code
155
Dissent
175
Retail Justice
177
Dissent as Friendship
180
Dissent without Friendship
185
Dissent as Coming Home
189
Friendship
195
The Issue of Preference
196

The Gentlemans Ethic
42
David Hoffman
49
The Bible as a Source of Medical Ethics
55
The Servant of the Lord
60
Theology
73
The Theology of the Two Kingdoms
80
The Two Kingdoms in American Professional Ethics
87
The Possibility of Influences between the Kingdoms
89
The Morals of the Task
95
The Doctrine of One Kingdom
101
The Profession
113
Medicine in Middlemarch
116
Code before Character
129
The Law Firm as Moral Teacher
133
Failure to Teach
142
Williams and Arrowsmith
146
Work
152
Three Traditional and Positive Arguments for Preferring Friends
203
Gentle Cynicism
209
Beginning with Persons
210
Finding Professional Work Worthwhile as a Social Ethic
213
Friendship as a Social Ethic
216
The Dissenters Theory of Social and Political Power
224
Schools
231
Brother Justinians Visit
232
Friendship and Truth
256
Pookas
271
Acknowledgments
285
Permissions
287
Chapter Notes
289
Bibliography
313
Index of Names
329
Index of Stories
335
Copyright

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About the author (1987)

Thomas L. Shaffer is Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University Law School.

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