New global ethics resource by the ACU
Where would you go to find what the Catholic Church teaches about life issues? Or love? Or politics, ethics, philosophy, or culture? Where would you start as a teacher, student, scholar, commentator, journalist, just trying to think through the debates around these matters? Perhaps, by working through a library, or scouring the Web. Now there is a better answer, one that combines the range of the former with the accessibility of the latter, it is EthicsFinder.
Created by the Australian Catholic University, EthicsFinder is a continually updated, expertly curated search function providing a one-stop shop for ethics inquiry.
EthicsFinder is a research and study resource combining the highly practical concept of a Web search with the wealth of ideas presented in ethics, and especially Catholic ethics. EthicsFinder will make the great trove of the Catholic intellectual tradition accessible to everybody, Catholic or otherwise.
EthicsFinder introduces topics with a short description providing historical background and conceptual analysis, and gathers and displays thousands of links to existing high-quality articles, books and videos, providing a comprehensive and continually updated resource.
It also arranges and collates Church teaching by topic and authority, offering users a unique and accessible way to navigate the vast teaching of the Catholic Church.
EthicsFinder has been expertly curated to ensure users are navigating foundation topics and rigorous perspectives.
It is neither a catechism nor an echo chamber for Catholic thought. Users can filter search results to display reputable, reason-based critiques of Catholic approaches where these have received widespread, sustained or recent criticism.
For some people, EthicsFinder will be a starting point to discover important Catholic thinkers such as Augustine, Aquinas, Edith Stein and Alasdair MacIntyre. For others, it will open up Catholic ethics ideas such as double-effect, just war, subsidiarity. Others will go to EthicsFinder as a source of Church teaching or for a sense of the debate around Catholic and similar ethics ideas.
EthicsFinder will enable a fuller understanding of Catholic intellectual perspectives and the ways in which they have both engaged and prompted social and moral debates. It will also help users distinguish myths and misunderstandings from reality, and ensure both scholars and casual users have access to important sources of Catholic ethics.
The project has been enormous and incredibly worthwhile. All curated resources have gone through a rigorous peer-review process involving a global network of over 80 leading philosophers, theologians and specialists from more than 50 universities and institutions. This makes EthicsFinder one of the most diverse, collaborative and innovative digital educational projects in the Catholic landscape.
ethicsfinder.acu.edu.au