Paul Ramsey (ethicist)

Robert Paul Ramsey (December 10, 1913 – February 29, 1988^[1]) was an American Christian ethicist of the 20th century. He was a Methodist and a native of Mississippi. He graduated from Millsaps College in Mississippi and Yale University.

Life

Paul Ramsey undertook his doctoral studies at Yale where he was mentored by H. Richard Niebuhr.^[2] He subsequently taught Christian Ethics at Princeton. He has been credited with re-introducing just war theory into Protestant ethical reflection.^[3] His popular text book Basic Christian Ethics was reviewed by a young John Rawls.^[4]

Bibliography

• Basic Christian Ethics (1950) ^[5]
• War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Conducted Justly? Durham, North Carolina 1961
• Nine Modern Moralists, Prentice-Hall,Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1962
• Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics, University of America Press 1967.
• The Case of the Curious Exception in Gene Outka and Paul Ramsey eds. Norm and context in Christian Ethics, New York 1968.
• The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility, New York 1968
• Fabricated Man
• The Ethics of Fetal Research, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.
• Ethics at the Edges of Life
• The Patient as Person. Explorations in medical ethics, (3)1973 New Haven, Connecticut ^[6]
• The Essential Paul Ramsey ^[7]
• Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism. A Critique of the United Methodist Bishops' Pastoral Letter "In Defense of Creation" Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988

Bibliography of Secondary Literature

• Paul Ramsey's Ethics: The Power of 'Agape' in a Postmodern World (2000) ^[8]
• Carnahan, Kevin. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey: Idealist and Pragmatic Christians on Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and War (2010)

References

External links

• The Birth of Bioethics: Who is Paul Ramsey? (Albert R. Jonsen, 2001 from the preface to the second edition of Paul Ramsey's ground breaking book The Patient as Person) [1]
• NYTimes Obituary of Paul Ramsey