Renewing Christian intellectual life in the world's research universities
Disciplinary scholars provide initial reactions and questions to help shape the final Theology Brief.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
This is a thoughtful preview. In my own scholarship based on science and engineering, much seems very certain such as the fact that the earth is a prolate spheroid whose gravitational potential is measured and modeled. This allows us to very accurately calculate orbits for satellites. Here the truth…
University of Guadalajara
The understanding of virtue ethics in terms of agents acting according to their moral character, reminded me a lot what was proposed by theologian Stanley Hauerwas as an important component of his confessional postmodernism. Moreover, as a Christian scientist, constantly seeking to give meaning to m…
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Excessive concern of professors for promptly moving forward in their academic careers and for obtaining funds for research are currently damaging the very essence of the university. Indeed, nowadays professors have less time to interact in fruitful discussions, show little willingness to collaborate…
University of Hong Kong
Today’s researchers in the sciences face pressures in a “publish or perish” research environment. In pursuit of rankings or other key performance indicators set out by meta-institutions, the university administration passes these pressures to professors and research supervisors to generate data and …
University of Melbourne
I related most directly to her discussion in the context of my work as a public policy economist. Here I regularly bump up against the limits of purely technical analysis and reach for (primarily) the cardinal virtues in making a decision, for example, about the setting of interest rates or minimum …
University of Bonn
The virtues approach of colleague Herdt reminds us of important elements in the reflection on moral behavior and ethical decision-making. One of them is “human flourishing”. This should be the ultimate horizon for every kind of social and political action, regardless of the worldview or religious ba…
Yale University
In his essay “Religion and Literature” (1935), T.S. Eliot famously (some would say infamously ) asserts, “Though we may read literature for pleasure, … this reading never affects a sort of special sense; it affects us as entire human beings; it affects our moral and religious existence.” He later ad…
University of Melbourne
The short article on virtues resonates with me as I head up a Residential University College where our mission is to provide pastorally sensitive academic support for our students. Personally, the paper challenges me to think how I model Christian virtues to my staff and students and how I can call …
Brunel University
I found Professor Herdt’s brief very stimulating, especially as it attempts to connect the issues of virtue and institutions. I will reflect upon this relation adding some postcolonial concerns to it, and developing my comments from the interconnections between key issues such as: technique; social …
Auckland University of Technology
This is a wonderfully compressed piece of writing, encapsulating so much about the virtues in its brief compass, and making me eager to see the full exposition that will follow. Full thanks to the author.
University of Navarra
First, human beings are capable of ethical habits, i.e., stable dispositions allowing for excellent actions. In that regard, human beings share with other natural systems an autonomy through which they act over their environment but do this in a human-specific way, namely, developing human habits by…
Yale University
From some of the responses to my own Theology Brief on justice, it became clear to me that a significant gap in what I have written about justice is that I have paid no attention to the virtue of being just ; I have focused all my attention on acting justly. But in the absence of the virtue of being…
The University of Queensland
In her essay on The Virtues , Professor Herdt offers a warm and engaging account of the nature and importance of moral character in Christian ethics. In this short comment, I offer a brief exploration of one of the important observations with which she begins her essay.
American Bar Foundation
I am very grateful for Jennifer Herdt’s Preview on the virtues. It brings theological insights to my work in ways I hadn’t previously considered. I have two questions that reach to my research.
La Trobe University
Courage and justice, two of the cardinal virtues that Prof Herdt identified, can be used to describe those ordinary citizens and community leaders who risked their individual liberty in defending political liberalism in many authoritarian or transitional societies. These two virtues are perhaps mutu…
University of Hong Kong
Legal issues often involve resolving moral dilemmas. Law has its limitations, discretionary or grey areas. The extent to which just and fair decisions can be made depends not only on how good and comprehensive the law is, but also on how the legal personnel interpret and practice the law and how the…
Washington University
Virtues as I understand them must be cultivated and practiced through particularized communities and institutions. Professor Herdt rightly claims that “virtues reach to ways the academy itself is structured.” But what are those virtues, and how do we know? The intellectual virtues are indeed relevan…
University College London
The whole issue of the role and maintenance of virtue in the collective life of universities, both amongst staff and students, is currently a very live topic of conversation amongst institutional leaders. But the virtues that perhaps require most attention are those forming part of practical wisdom …
University of Otago
The framing of virtue ethics as a holistic view of persons flourishing in community resonated with me. I have recently established a mindfulness society, aimed at supporting lawyers, including legal academics, in cultivating mindfulness – clear and present awareness of current experience. Mindfulnes…
Columbia University
Dr. Herdt has provided an excellent rudimentary overview of the virtues. In my particular field of memory and cognitive psychology, the intellectual virtues indeed deserve greater attention. I would like to suggest that the cultivation of some virtues (e.g., prudence ) may operate through the intell…
Harvard Medical School
As an academic psychiatrist, I am interested in exploring the relevance of the virtues to both the character of the good psychiatrist and to the cultivation of needed virtues in our patients. To this end, I recently edited The Virtues in Psychiatric Practice (Oxford University Press, 2022) , which c…
University of Oxford
I agree virtues are very important for a flourishing research culture in which both science and people flourish. I would welcome greater emphasis on the role of the Spirit transforming us and our own inability to live the virtuous life in our own strength.
Harvard University School of Public Health
Professor Herdt describes some of why the virtues are so important in thinking about what constitutes a flourishing life. A challenging question concerns how to foster the virtues. Christian theologies of course offer accounts of transformation by the Spirit, by God’s love, by following Christ’s exa…
University of Oxford
The humanist in me cannot but welcome a focus on virtue, although the word “virtue” occurs only four times in the New Testament (Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament , London 1929). The most likely reason is that the NT de-emphasizes human merit and emphasizes divine grace…
Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Herdt provides a wonderfully lucid overview of the virtues and virtue ethics and I look forward to the fuller account in due course. The topic seems more relevant than ever in our so-called “post-truth age”.
Brandeis University
I have two responses to Jennifer Herdt’s stimulating Preview on the virtues. One speaks to the academic life, the other to my discipline of economics.
University of Oxford
This is a very informative and stimulating outline of the argument, and I look forward to the full version to follow, which may address some of the following comments and queries.
Harvard University
I enjoyed reading Prof. Herdt’s preview of her forthcoming Theological Brief on the Virtues, and particularly appreciated the way she connects the virtues to human flourishing. In the full Brief, I would be interested in seeing some engagement by Prof. Herdt with the empirical evidence for the relat…
Garrett-Evangelical Seminary
I appreciate Prof. Herdt’s theoretical and practical considerations on the life of virtues. Her inspiring work regarding the pagan-Christian sources in western classical traditions on virtue ethics encourages me to explore the interplay of philosophical and religious virtue traditions in other parts…
University of Edinburgh
Jennifer Herdt’s statement is an excellently focused statement of the traditional presentation of the virtues in theological discussion. In putting one or two questions to her, one is putting them to the tradition she has carefully sustained and developed.
Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia
As a New Testament scholar who works in the area of Christian wealth ethics, I agree heartily with Prof. Herdt’s construal of Christian virtues as both infused and cultivated . The component of infusion does, to my mind, reflect Pauline theology as well as, e.g., Jeremiah 31. So also, the emphasis o…
No preview responses in that discipline.
