Ethics without Principles

Ethics in the West too often equates morality with universal moral principles, thus imposing lifestyles and moral criteria that do not respect differences and local histories. Even Christianity proposes ethics that is based on eternal, absolute and universal truths or principles, independent of sociocultural and historical contexts. The problem is that these universal moral laws become a means of social control to exclude those who are different: non-Christian religions, nonwhite races, non-Western cultures, and poor and marginalized social classes everywhere. To these can be added minorities marginalized because of sexual orientation, physical handicaps, and women of all sectors and cultures. Another kind of ethics is urgent. For these reasons, Christians in Latin America and other parts are seeking innovative ways of envisioning ethics from their marginalized and discriminated social locations in order to find another possible ethics, an ethics that is not universal and not based on eternal truths or principles, but rather is contextual and historical and that takes into account real-life realities. Only an ethics that does this will be liberative. Important steps toward this other possible ethics have been taken by the theology of liberation by developing a contextual and intercultural morality.

""May provides us with cutting-edge scholarship of Latin American liberative ethics that moves away from the Eurocentric trend of universalism designed to mask cultural dominance. By exploring the implementation of contextual ethics, a matrix of marginalized voices is lifted for the benefit of all. Few in the field of ethics are doing this type of analysis, and readers of this text will be grateful that May is one of those who is.""
--Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre, Professor of Social Ethics and Latino/a Studies, Iliff School of Theology, University of Denver


Roy H. May Jr. is a retired minister and missionary of the United Methodist Church. For many years he was professor of theology and ethics at the Latin American Biblical University in San Jose, Costa Rica, where he resides. He previously lived in Bolivia. He is the author of several books, including The Poor of the Land (1991), Joshua and the Promised Land (1997), and Ethics and Spirituality: An Activity Book (2012).