Author: J. E. Hare
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802849970
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 133
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Book Description
There has been a debate between modern ethicists who see moral judgments as objectively corresponding to a moral reality independent of human opinion and those who insist that moral judgments are essentially expressions of our will. In this excellent philosophical work John Hare outlines a theory that combines the merits of both views, arguing that what makes something right is that God calls us to it. In the first chapter Hare gives a selective history of the sustained debate within Anglo-American philosophy over the last century between moral realists and moral expressivists. Best understood as a disagreement about how objectivity and subjectivity are related in value judgment, this debate is of particular interest to Christians, who necessarily feel pulled in both directions. Christians want to say that value is created by God and exists whether we recognize it or not, but they also want to say that when we value something, our hearts' fundamental commitments are also involved. Hare suggests "prescriptive realism" as a way to bring both perspectives together. The second chapter examines the divine command theory of John Duns Scotus, looking particularly at the relationship that Scotus established between God's commands, human nature, and human will. Hare shows that a Calvinist version of the divine command theory of obligation can be defended via Scotus against natural law theory as well as against contemporary challenges. A significant theme treated here is the view that the Fall disordered our natural inclinations, rendering them useless as an authoritative source of guidance for right living. In the last chapter Hare moves to the key philosophical juncture between the medieval period and our own time -- the moral theory of Immanuel Kant in the late eighteenth century. Modern moral philosophy has largely taken Kant's work as a refutation of divine command theory and a refocusing of the discussion on human autonomy. Hare shows that Kant was in fact not arguing against the kind of divine command theory that Hare supports. He discusses what Kant meant by saying that we should recognize our duties as God's commands, and he defends a notion of human autonomy as appropriation. Featuring original moral theory and fresh interpretations of the thought of Duns Scotus and Kant, God's Call is valuable both for its overview of the history of moral debate and for its construction of a sound Christian ethic for today.
Author: Stefano Bacin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107182859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
A thorough study of why Kant developed the concept of autonomy, one of his central legacies for contemporary moral thought.
Author: Robert Stern
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139505017
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves 'author' or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this 'argument from autonomy', and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. Rather, it is not value realism but the apparent obligatoriness of morality that really poses a challenge to our autonomy: how can this be accounted for without taking away our freedom? The debate the book focuses on therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves (Kant), in others (Hegel) or in God (Kierkegaard). Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages; he concludes by arguing that the choice between them remains open.
Author: C. Stephen Evans
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199696683
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
C. Stephen Evans defends the claim that moral obligations are best understood as divine commands or requirements; hence an important part of morality depends on God. God's requirements are communicated in a variety of ways, including conscience, and that natural law ethics and virtue ethics provide complementary perspectives to this view.
Author: Philip L. Quinn
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 019156950X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
This volume presents a selection of essays by the late Philip Quinn, one of the world's leading philosophers of religion. Quinn left behind an influential body of work on a wide variety of topics. He was the author of Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (1978) and of more than two hundred papers in philosophy. Fourteen of his best and most influential contributions to the philosophy of religion are gathered here. The papers have been organized around the following topics: religious epistemology, religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religion and political liberalism, topics in Christian philosophy, and religious diversity.
Author: Oliver Sensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107004861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
This book explores the central importance Kant's concept of autonomy for contemporary moral thought and modern philosophy.
Author: Emmanuel Lévinas
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804730945
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
The thirteen essays collected in this volume investigate the possibility that the word "God" can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. Nine of the essays appear in English translation for the first time. Among Levinas's writings, this volume distinguishes itself, both for students of his thought and for a wider audience, by the range of issues it addresses. Levinas not only rehearses the ethical themes that have led him to be regarded as one of the most original thinkers working out of the phenomenological tradition, but he also takes up philosophical questions concerning politics, language, and religion. The volume situates his thought in a broader intellectual context than have his previous works. In these essays, alongside the detailed investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, and Buber that characterize all his writings, Levinas also addresses the thought of Kierkegaard, Marx, Bloch, and Derrida. Some essays provide lucid expositions not available elsewhere to key areas of Levinas's thought. "God and Philosophy" is perhaps the single most important text for understanding Levinas and is in many respects the best introduction to his works. "From Consciousness to Wakefulness" illuminates Levinas's relation to Husserl and thus to phenomenology, which is always his starting point, even if he never abides by the limits it imposes. In "The Thinking of Being and the Question of the Other," Levinas not only addresses Derrida's Speech and Phenomenon but also develops an answer to the later Heidegger's account of the history of Being by suggesting another way of reading that history. Among the other topics examined in the essays are the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding.
Author: John E. Hare
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191063495
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 495
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Book Description
This work focuses on divine command, and in particular the theory that what makes something obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes something wrong is that God commands us not to do it. Focusing on the Abrahamic faiths, eminent scholar John E. Hare explains that two experiences have had to be integrated. The first is that God tells us to do something, or not to do something. The second is that we have to work out ourselves what to do and what not to do. The difficulty has come in establishing the proper relation between them. In Christian reflection on this, two main traditions have emerged, divine command theory and natural law theory. Hare successfully defends a version of divine command theory, but also shows that there is considerable overlap with some versions of natural law theory. He engages with a number of Christian theologians, particularly Karl Barth, and extends into a discussion of divine command within Judaism and Islam. The work concludes by examining recent work in evolutionary psychology, and argues that thinking of our moral obligations as produced by divine command offers us some help in seeing how a moral conscience could develop in a way that is evolutionarily stable.
Author: Matthew J. Kisner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500090
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Spinoza was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, but his often obscure metaphysics makes it difficult to understand the ultimate message of his philosophy. Although he regarded freedom as the fundamental goal of his ethics and politics, his theory of freedom has not received sustained, comprehensive treatment. Spinoza holds that we attain freedom by governing ourselves according to practical principles, which express many of our deepest moral commitments. Matthew J. Kisner focuses on this theory and presents an alternative picture of the ethical project driving Spinoza's philosophical system. His study of the neglected practical philosophy provides an accessible and concrete picture of what it means to live as Spinoza's ethics envisioned.
Author: Jerome B. Schneewind
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479387
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 652
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Book Description
This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics.
