Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2014 The Ethics of Vision and Black Theology and Experience Angelo Sylvester Riley Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Ethics in Religion Commons Recommended Citation Riley, Angelo Sylvester, "The Ethics of Vision and Black Theology and Experience" (2014). Dissertations. 1299. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1299 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2014 Angelo Sylvester Riley LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THE ETHICS OF VISION AND BLACK THEOLOGY AND EXPERIENCE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN THEOLOGY BY REVEREND ANGELO S. RILEY CHICAGO, IL DECEMBER 2014 Copyright by Angelo S. Riley, 2014 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all of the people who made this dissertation possible starting with my professors in the Department of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee - Dr. William French, Dr. Jon Nilson, and Dr. Susan Ross. Next, I would like to thank my family for their support and understanding when I was not able to attend family gatherings during the writing of my dissertation. In particular, I would like to thank my wonderful daughter Lauren for her patience and for providing me with a much needed cheering section and with necessary distractions allowing me to regroup and come back to the dissertation process refreshed. I thank Denise Jackson-Riley who proved to be an invaluable friend and sounding-board throughout my dissertation. I thank my mother, Lettie Mae Riley, and my sister, Debra, for their unfailing love and unparalleled compassion which provided much hope for me throughout the dissertation process. I also thank my dear friend Rev. Dr. Bernyce H. Clausell, who, at the age of 97, continues to be an inspiration, friend, and mentor. Her unwavering support through my ministry and the writing of my dissertation continues to be priceless. I would also like to thank my church family for their support and prayers, along with the support of my wife Valerie and stepsons, Blake and Douglas, who put up with me toward the end of the dissertation process. I also thank Michael and Lois Lops for their firm support and friendship. And last, but not least, I thank God; for without God, none of this would have been possible. iii To Lauren PREFACE This dissertation was born out of my desire to help make the world a better place and to conduct a study that speaks to the many felt needs that exist in the world around us. It is my effort to help people see (in the moral sense of see) beyond race, sex and class, and to recognize and appreciate diversity. I am interested in how we might account for what we see, especially when it comes to social, political, and economic responsibility. One of the greatest challenges I had as a pastor was trying to get my congregation to know the “felt” needs of those around them as Jesus did for the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus was able to see beyond her race, sex and class and recognized her needs in such a way that she had to share her experience with the entire community of Samaria. I contend that much human suffering experienced today exists because of the lack of attention directed toward the needs of those who are in pain by those who have the power to alleviate (their) pain but because of neglect, perpetuate a type of violence against those who suffer. This happens, especially, among middle and upper middle class congregations, both Black and White, to the point that some become almost immune to the plight of lower socio-economic individuals in their own communities. I hold that the ethics of vision helps us to see and act responsively, and, in doing so, our “seeing” can help alleviate much of the suffering that exists in the world today. The ethics of vision allows us to see (in the moral sense of see) what is otherwise v invisible. It directs one’s attention away from one’s self toward the needs of others through a “loving and just gaze,” with the support of moral effort and a moral imagination. It is then this “loving and just gaze,” with moral effort and a moral imagination, which enables one to see that which would otherwise be missed. I employ this understanding of vision as I examine the works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Christian womanist theologian Emilie Townes in order to provide greater insight into King’s and Townes’s works as I develop select themes to help us see and improve morally in ways that would bring about a better world. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii PREFACE v ABSTRACT ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: THE ETHICS OF VISION AND RESPONSIBILITY 12 Introduction 12 An Introduction to the “Ethics of Vision” 14 Iris Murdoch’s Life: A Brief Sketch 22 Murdoch’s Major Dialogue and Debate Partners 25 Murdoch’s Identification and Critique of the “Current View” 28 Murdoch’s Secular Account of Sin and Ethic of Love 34 Mysticism in Murdoch: The Myth of the Cave 38 Experience and Consciousness in Murdoch 47 Ethics of Unselfing 52 Murdoch’s Contribution: An Assessment 56 H. Richard Niebuhr and the Ethics of Responsibility 61 Vision and Responsibility and the Problem of Racial Injustice 66 CHAPTER TWO: ETHICS OF VISION AND MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 76 Major Interpreters of King 82 Major Influences on King 89 King’s Encounters with Racism 94 Personalism and Its Influence on King’s Thinking 102 The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Ethics of Jesus and Gandhi 105 Gandhi, Truth-Force, and Campaigns for Right Seeing 111 The Psychology of Aggression and the Ethics of Vision 115 King’s Ethic of Vision: Parallels with Murdoch 122 Responsibility in King’s Thinking 129 “I Have a Dream” 140 Conclusion 142 CHAPTER THREE: ETHICS OF VISION AND EMILIE M. TOWNES 150 Brief Sketch of Townes 161 Womanism and Its Influence on Townes’s Thinking 167 The Black Women’s Club Movement 176 Townes’s Conversation and Debate Partners and Their Influence 180 Vision and an Ethic of Care 187 Vision and Responsibility in Townes’s Work 200 Townes and Murdoch 207 vii Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil 209 Conclusion: Townes’s Ethics of Vision and Murdoch 216 61 CONCLUSION: AN ETHICS OF WINDOWS 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 VITA 254 viii ABSTRACT To this day, philosophical ethics and dominant discussions in Christian ethics have paid insufficient attention to how vision shapes the moral life. Too much focus is given to moral decision-making and action, while too little focus is given to the way vision and patterns of attentiveness ground our capacities for genuine morally responsible action. Therefore, in this study, I draw on important works in philosophical and Christian ethics to examine both the ethics of responsibility and the central role that an ethics of vision plays in our attempts to live responsibly. I use the “ethics of vision” as method and correlate it with certain themes of Black theology and experience. In so doing, I focus chiefly on Iris Murdoch to engage Black thought and experience, as it is presented by Martin Luther King Jr. and Emilie Townes. An engagement with these two sets of materials enriches our understanding of vision and expands our concept of moral agency. ix INTRODUCTION This project explores the importance of the “ethics of vision” for Christian ethical reflection. I examine the importance of the training of attention and vision in the moral life. A concentration on the ethical centrality of attention and vision has been given its classic expression in the work of Iris Murdoch, especially in her book, The Sovereignty of Good, published in 1970.1 Parallel to Murdoch’s stress on vision in ethics, H. Richard Niebuhr, in 1963, published an important book, The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy.2 Together, these two books put forward powerful arguments for a paradigm change in ethics, especially in their critique of the then dominant understandings of moral agency. Both Murdoch’s and Niebuhr’s books engage densely philosophical issues in both normative ethics and in the philosophical and theological anthropology that lies behind and grounds the common understandings about right action and goodness. Both diagnosed what they took to be serious inadequacies in the two influential schools of normative ethics—deontology and utilitarianism. Both Murdoch and Niebuhr were prolific and complex writers. Murdoch was both a marvelously creative philosopher, who taught philosophy and ethics for fifteen years, from 1948-1963, at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, even as she proceeded regularly to publish a wide array of novels, totaling, eventually, twenty-six. In fact, she gave up her 1 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London and New York: Ark Paperbacks, 1970). 2 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). 1 2 teaching post to concentrate more time on her literary work. Similarly, she published a number of philosophical books dealing with a broad range of topics, always including ethical issues. Her interests in philosophy were quite