The parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 : a virtue perspective

Abstract

The main research interest of Professor Emmanuel Agius, at the beginning of his academic career, has been in the rights of future generations, and his many and varied publications in the field show his sustained commitment to the subject over the years. Indeed, when the Department of Moral and Spiritual Theology embarked on a fairly wide programme of professional ethics at the University of Malta, Agius and the other members of the Department, including myself, approached professional ethics from a human rights’ perspective, stressing, on one side, the autonomy of every profession and every member of the profession and, on the other, the right of society to expect that every profession and every professional should respect the rights of their respective clients and serve the common good. We reviewed this approach as we became more familiar with the recovery, in recent years, of the virtue tradition in ethics and moral theology. [excerpt]