“Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching or practice, then whether it comes to men by nature or in what other way?” These questions were once put to Socrates by Meno. How did Socrates, the patron saint of moral philosophy, reply? Leaving aside his ironic profession of ignorance, he proposed that the answer would only come once the nature of virtue was understood and defined.

James Cone is without question the leading proponent of Black theology in America. His books, articles, and lectures have exercised great influence inside and outside the black community. Thus far, however, Cone has not explicitly stated his theological ethic, although much of significance for ethics is embedded in his works. It will be our purpose in this short essay to stimulate him and others to articulate the ethical aspects of his theology. Our aim, then, is to set forth what we believe to be the ethic implicit in his first two books, Black Theology and Black Power and Liberation: A Black Theology of Liberation. Our essay will be critical in nature and will attempt to deal with theoretical questions.

Every decision, from trivial considerations of where to have lunch to the momentous conclusion that it is right to risk life for the realization of some ideal, is made by a man who has personal interests, group loyalties, and his own preferences and aversions. In many practical decisions, such as choosing an investment portfolio or inviting guests to a party, we expect these particular interests to play a role in guiding the choices. By contrast, we are suspicious of a moral decision if personal preferences or limited loyalties may have played a role in the choice. We tend to discount a man's analysis of the demands of justice if it corresponds too closely to his own interests, and someone who urges us to value precisely those things which will bring him personal profit is apt to receive a short hearing.

Several philosophers have observed an affinity between a role that an understanding of God has in Christian ethics and a role of an ideal observer in their own ethical theory. R. M. Hare has even gone so far as to assert that, “Since for many Christians God occupies the role of ‘ideal observer,’ the moral judgments which they make may be expected to coincide with those arrived at by the method of reasoning which I am advocating.” Now, Hare is correct in observing that God and an ideal observer have certain characteristics in common. But God is not simply an ideal observer. And some of the differences between God and an ideal observer may be as important as the similarities for the way in which Christians make moral judgments. It is therefore somewhat hasty of Hare to assume that his method of reasoning is identical to the method of reasoning appropriate in Christian ethics.

From the first, professional ethics has been a hybrid. The Hippocratic Oath exudes that ambiguity. The scientific enterprise, which basically has universalistic tendencies, created a group with special knowledge and interests; eventually it took on a separate identity as a profession. Concern for the ethical point of view, which has the universalizability of normative statements as its foundation, is particularized by focusing on a specialized body of knowledge of a restricted professional group.

The life and thought of Reinhold Niebuhr are characterized by a running debate with rationalism. As a Christian, Niebuhr saw it as his task to defend the Biblical view of man against corruption by an opposing view found in the rationalist tradition of Hellenic philosophy. As a modern Christian, Niebuhr felt even more compelled to resist the incursion of rationalism into Christianity represented in theology by liberal Protestantism and in ethics by the Social Gospel movement.

Whatever else it may be, the study of political revolution is the study, in a given case, of competing and incompatible assertions regarding the legitimation or justification of violence. This is true because: Since, as Weber put it, the state by definition possesses the legitimate monopoly of violence, and to propose radical changes in the character of a state, as happens in political revolutions, is to propose a radical alternative to the existing pattern of legitimating violence. In short, a revolution is, among other things, a contest over who may properly employ violence under what circumstances.