Brian Hamilton

What I’m writing

I write on a range of topics in social ethics and the history of Christian moral thought. Right now, most of my energy is going towards a book I’m tentatively calling Moral Failure: An Impractical Theology. I’m also writing occasionally about ethics pedagogy and about the medieval Franciscans.

Moral Failure

One of the main implications of the Christian notion of original sin is that moral failure is inevitable. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but I think it’s both true and practically significant. I’m writing a book that argues the point. I’ve written several papers related to this project:

I’ve got the bulk of the book manuscript drafted (though much of it is still very messy), and I am working back through it right now and revising everything.

Teaching Ethics

I am increasingly interested in questions about ethics pedagogy. What is the place of ethics courses in the university? What, if anything, do such courses accomplish? What does it look like to teach ethics well? I have recently written a couple of papers on this topic. They both have some conceptual relationship with my moral failure project, since I am especially interested in the place of ignorance in the classroom.

Franciscan Poverty

I wrote my dissertation on the medieval Franciscans, and I still write about them occasionally. I hope one day to write a book arguing that their rendition of voluntary poverty carried serious political weight. If you’re interested, you can read the working preface to that book. But in the meantime, I’ve written a few pieces that develop some of my thinking.

Public Writing

Book Reviews