Wall, John. “The Creative Imperative: Religious Ethics and the Formation of Life in Common. ” Journal of Religious Ethics 33, no. 1 (2005): 45-64.

Abstract

Challenging a long-standing assumption of the separation of ethical from poetic activity, this essay develops the basis for a theory of moral life as inherently and radically creative. A range of contemporary post-Kantian ethicists—including Ricoeur, Nassbaum, Kearney, and Gutierrez—are employed to make the argument that moral practice requires a fundamental capability for creative transformation, imagination, and social renewal. In addition, this poetic moral capability can finally be understood only from the primordial religious point of view of the mystery of Creation as such. Humanity as an image of its Creator is called to the endless impossible possibility of the re-creation of its own complex plural, and fallen social world. Such a perspective is opposed to views of moral life as the application of law-like principles or the recovery of past moral histories. Without a better understanding of moral life's radically creative imperative, we miss a vital element of social relations' distinctive humanity.