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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
This article places Robert Johann's ethics of responsibility within the context of his evolved philosophical position which is decisively influenced by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and John Dewey. Building on a perspective that he called “ontological pragmatism,” Johann began to explore the ethic of responsibility developed by H. Richard Niebuhr in The Responsible Self. However, Johann's version is significantly different from that of Niebuhr. After describing Johann's ethics of responsibility, I conclude by criticizing his moral methodology as insufficiently developed and by charging that his anthropology fails to account for certain crucial dimensions of human experience.
1 Johann, Robert, The Meaning of Love (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1954)Google Scholar.
2 Johann, Robert, “Subjectivity,” The Review of Metaphysics 12 (1958), pp. 200–234Google Scholar.
3 Ibid., p. 232.
4 “My indebtedness in what follows to Dewey's concept of “experience” will be manifest to anyone familiar with his work. (See, for example, his opening chapter in Experience and Nature). The fundamental personalism, however, of my interpretation (as opposed to his biologism) sets us finally apart.” Johann, Robert, “The Return to Experience,” The Review of Metaphysics 17 (March, 1964), pp. 324–325Google Scholar, footnote 5.
5 Johann, Robert, “Experience and Philosophy,” in Experience, Existence and the Good: Essays in Honor of Paul Weiss, ed. Lieb, Irwin (Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961), pp. 25–38Google Scholar.
6 Johann, Robert, The Pragmatic Meaning of God (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1966Google Scholar.
7 Ibid., pp. 4-5.
8 Cf. Johann, Robert, “Law, Order and the Self-Renewing Community,” Continuum 6 (Fall, 1968), pp. 374–388, esp. pp. 384ff.Google Scholar; “Two Misconceptions Underlying Contemporary Unrest,” Metaphilosophy 1, No. 1 (January, 1970), pp. 80–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Johann, Robert, “The Way to Freedom,” America 109 (November 9, 1963), p. 568Google Scholar.
10 Cf. Johann, Robert, “Authority and Responsibility,” Catholic Mind 63 (April, 1965), pp. 9–15Google Scholar. The fullest development of Richard Niebuhr's own position is found in The Responsible Self (New York: Harper and Row, 1963)Google Scholar. For a helpful treatment of both men see: Jonsen, Albert, Responsibility in Modern Religious Ethics (Washington: Corpus Books, 1968)Google Scholar.
11 Ibid., p. 11. For other references to Niebuhr's typology see Building the Human (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp. 65, 130–131Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., p. 12.
13 Ibid., p. 13.
14 Ibid., p. 43.
15 Ibid., p. 67.
16 Johann, Robert, “Responsible Parenthood: A Philosophical View,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, 20 (1965), pp. 115–128Google Scholar.
17 Ibid., p. 124.
18 Johann, Robert, “Modern Atheism,” in McInery, Ralph (ed.), New Themes in Christian Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), p. 354Google Scholar.
19 Johann, , “Responsible Parenthood,” p. 122Google Scholar.
20 Johann, , “Subjectivity, p. 227Google Scholar.
21 Cf. Johann, , The Meaning of Love, esp. pp. 50–79Google Scholar.
22 Johann, Robert, “Person, Community, and Moral Commitment,” in Roth, Richard (ed.), Person and Community (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975), pp. 155–175Google Scholar.
23 Ibid., p. 158.
24 Johann, , The Pragmatic Meaning of God, p. 24Google Scholar.
25 Ibid., pp. 21ff.
26 Johann, , Building the Human, p. 142Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., pp. 68ff. and 96ff.
28 Ibid., p. 131.