Philip Chmielewski

This essay offers a constructive proposal for an ethics of production using key elements from the thinking of Giambattista Vico. It seeks to move toward a social ethic that is both congruent with theological concerns and pertinent to the economic issues in a complex, rapidly changing society. The approach sets out the ethics of production in three operations: the analogy between production and the formation of the person; the cultural prerequisites for the realization of this analogy; and the exercise of imagination through social dynamics in understanding how persons make cultures. Paul Ricoeur’s work is used to offer a contemporary interpretation of Vico’s sensus communis concept in the service of an ethic which maintains both individual practice and social imagination.

L'article lit la pensée de Mausbach et Nell-Breuning de façon constructive de façon à explorer la base théologique d'une éthique sociale productive. La transcendance divine est continuellement engagée dans l'histoire des hommes; par ailleurs, le développement et l'engagement des hommes dans l'histoire glorifient Dieu. Le discernement des valeurs et la doctrine de la loi naturelle rendent possible l'oeuvre de la justice. Une perspective trinitaire sur le discernement favorise l'initiative, l'engagement dans le monde, et la découverte. Les réalisations du commonweal introduisent la ressemblance divine dans la société. Au milieu des conflits, la volonté manifeste un engagement souple, dirigé eschatologiquement. L'amour spécifie la justice sociale et libère; il établit ainsi un cadre civique. La révérence vis-à-vis de l'altérité divine fonde la tolérance active qui est l'expression obligée de l'amour en vue de la collaboration qui est nécessaire aujourd'hui. Cette éthique sociale fondée sur des catégories théologiques contribue à la mission chrétienne dans des sociétés complexes et turbulentes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:708 BOOK REVIEWS it can he noted that God must ultimately be understood within Aquinas's entire thought as the source of Trinitarian missions becoming present to people and not just as a being with a sublime simplicity and immutability who in the past set forth an array of beings. Revelation and salvation in Hegel are mentioned: but they do not quite escape the evolving depth of an incomplete God, nor do they adorn and expand a human being whose particularity and limits are more than tragedy and opposition. From this dialogue admirably advanced by Brito's book, we understand why Aquinas must always be preserved from the mechanics (never more exciting than when applied to God) which neo-scholasticisms compulsively construct, and why Hegel must be studied for the dynamic of his thought-forms but not for his conclusions without resolution. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana THOMA§ F. O'MEARA, O.P. Work in the Spirit. By MmosLAv VoLF. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xviii+ 252. $32.50 (cloth). Miroslav Volf initiates his theological inquiry by exammmg the contemporary situation of work, its transformation from a world of agricultural and industrial production into a system of information technologies. He attentively notes that this contemporary technology brings with it both advantages and disadvantages for workers. He also examines crises such as unemployment and discrimination which ac· company employment today. Despite both the ambiguity which accompanies the change in production and the threatening uncertainties caused by the current crises, he nevertheless emphasizes the duality of work: people consistently find their work to be both curse and delight. VoH wishes to emphasize this twin feature so that the theology he fashions wm he realistic and active. Volf pursues a theology of work which can account for varied developments in quite different economies and for the needs of succeeding generations. Thus Volf describes the activity of work in terms which are invariant with respect to time and place. By a theology which is adequate to this global concept of work, he means one " developed on the basis of a specifically Christian soteriology and eschatology. o. " (79). While Volf maintains an attention to the Christian traditions in recalling soteriology, he downplays a creation-based understanding of work in favor of one which is eschatological. Work is a cooperation with God in the transforming of the world on the way toward the new BOOK REVIEWS 709 creation of the end-time. Volf's laying-out the transformative character of work is insightful. It avoids the recurrent consequences of a theology of work based solely on creation: effort without limit and sullen acceptance of the toil. How does he accomplish this? First, he explores the lodes of dominant theoretical understandings of work by examining the.thought of A. Smith and K. Marx. Second, he presses for a pneumatological understanding of work. That is, he holds that rthe presence of the Spirit is key to human activity (133). Volf makes use of the theological tradition of the charisms in order to present more completely how human effort and divine activity can cooperate in work. Charisms are personal capacities which achieve development through interaction with the Spirit (112 and 130). He.