Ethos und Predigt

In her work at the interface between ethics and practical theology, Regina Fritz deals with a hermeneutics of ethical judgment. Reconstructing the ethics of Ernst Troeltsch and Johannes Fischer, she reflects in particular on the contextual relativity of ethical acts and the inner subjective processes which accompany these. In order to study the power of interpretation of ethical reflections, the author relates these to sermons which are exemplary ways of communicating the Christian ethos. The analyses of the sermons which were held in the German Democratic Republic in the fall of 1989 verify the fact that a concurrence of religious and social factors does constitute a Christian ethos and that the rhetorical form of the language plays a pivotal role in its communication.