Faith and the Professions

Shaffer, Thomas L.

Published by Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1987

About this Item

Fine condition marbled boards with black spine and black spine lettering, contained in a fine condition similarly marble illustrated dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by Thomas L. Shaffer; Author Dedication; Quote from The Ethics of the Fathers; Epilogue; Pookas; Acknowledgments; Permissions; Chapter Notes; Bibliography; Index of Names; and Index of Stories. "Thomas L. Shaffer argues here that the morals of lawyers, physicians, journalists, and the clergy in America have been shaped more by family, neighborhood, and religious congregation than by professional codes of ethics, more by hero stories in the professions than by the "role morality" that has dominated official discussion of morals in the professions since the middle of the nineteenth century. In critical terms, his argument is that the morals of modern American professional people have been corrupted by misguided professionalism and weak philosophy - by what Emile Durkheim called the "market morality" of the era of the robber barons, and by enlightenment philosophy's insistence on separating facts from values and individuals from their communities. Professional codes and professional regulation, notably in the legal profession in America, exalt vocational principle over the traditional morals of character. But in practice, Shaffer argues, America's reporters, business people, physicians, clergy, and lawyers value and cutivate the classical ethics of virtue. The virtues, as they are described by Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and in the English gentleman's ethic have been neglected in American professional theory but they survive in American homes, towns, and religious congregations in such broadly cultural statements of morals as the Scout Law and in popular stories about doctors and lawyers. The distortions that come to official professional ethics are worth exploring, though, because they highlight and evidence the neglect of such potent sources of morals as religion, American immigrant culture, and the influence women have had in the professions and on young people who enter and shape professional life. The wrong course that official professional ethics has taken in America demonstrates the connection between professional ethics and culture, a connection that is demonstrated in old stories about doctors and lawyers - stories such as Eliot's Middlemarch, the Southern-lawyer stories of William Faulkner and Harper Lee, Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, and modern stories from the pens of Louis Auchincloss, George V. Higgins, and others. Shaffer also considers folk poetry, biblical and theological views of professional service, educational practice in law schools and teaching hospitals, and biographies. Faith and the Professions is, finally, an argument for the relevance of religious ethics in the professions and in business - an argument Shaffer began to make in his On Being a Christian (1981) and a Lawyer and continued in his American Legal Ethics (1985)." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.

Seller Inventory # 002858

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Faith and the Professions
• Publisher: Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine