Nature as Reason

Nature as Reason PDF Author: Jean Porter
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802849069
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This noteworthy book develops a new theory of the natural law that takes its orientation from the account of the natural law developed by Thomas Aquinas, as interpreted and supplemented in the context of scholastic theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Though this history might seem irrelevant to twenty-first-century life, Jean Porter shows that the scholastic approach to the natural law still has much to contribute to the contemporary discussion of Christian ethics. Aquinas and his interlocutors provide a way of thinking about the natural law that is distinctively theological while at the same time remaining open to other intellectual perspectives, including those of science. In the course of her work, Porter examines the scholastics' assumptions and beliefs about nature, Aquinas's account of happiness, and the overarching claim that reason can generate moral norms. Ultimately, Porter argues that a Thomistic theory of the natural law is well suited to provide a starting point for developing a more nuanced account of the relationship between specific beliefs and practices. While Aquinas's approach to the natural law may not provide a system of ethical norms that is both universally compelling and detailed enough to be practical, it does offer something that is arguably more valuable -- namely, a way of reflecting theologically on the phenomenon of human morality.

Nature as Reason

Nature as Reason PDF Author: Jean Porter
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802849069
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
This noteworthy book develops a new theory of the natural law that takes its orientation from the account of the natural law developed by Thomas Aquinas, as interpreted and supplemented in the context of scholastic theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Though this history might seem irrelevant to twenty-first-century life, Jean Porter shows that the scholastic approach to the natural law still has much to contribute to the contemporary discussion of Christian ethics. Aquinas and his interlocutors provide a way of thinking about the natural law that is distinctively theological while at the same time remaining open to other intellectual perspectives, including those of science. In the course of her work, Porter examines the scholastics' assumptions and beliefs about nature, Aquinas's account of happiness, and the overarching claim that reason can generate moral norms. Ultimately, Porter argues that a Thomistic theory of the natural law is well suited to provide a starting point for developing a more nuanced account of the relationship between specific beliefs and practices. While Aquinas's approach to the natural law may not provide a system of ethical norms that is both universally compelling and detailed enough to be practical, it does offer something that is arguably more valuable -- namely, a way of reflecting theologically on the phenomenon of human morality.

Reason in Nature

Reason in Nature PDF Author: Matthew Boyle
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241045
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Against the dominant view of reductive naturalism, John McDowell argues that human life should be seen as transformed by reason so that human minds, while not supernatural, are sui generis. This collection assembles eleven critical essays that highlight the enduring significance and wide ramifications of McDowell’s unorthodox position.

Reason and Nature

Reason and Nature PDF Author: Morris R. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780841419964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description


Theology Needs Philosophy

Theology Needs Philosophy PDF Author: Matthew L. Lamb
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813228395
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
15. Moderating the Magnanimous Man: Aquinas on Greatness of Soul - Marc D. Guerra -- 16. Charles De Koninck and Aquinas's Doctrine of the Common Good - Sebastian Walshe, O Praem -- 17. Reading Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: A Reply to Mark D. Jordan - Christopher Kaczor -- Afterword: Remembering a Genuine Lover of Wisdom: The Impressive Legacy of Ralph McInerny - Michael Novak -- Selected Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index

Reason and Nature

Reason and Nature PDF Author: José Luis Bermúdez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199256839
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
In a series of essays nine philosophers and two psychologists address three main themes: the status of norms of rationality; the precise form taken by them; and the role of norms in belief and actions.

Environmental Philosophy

Environmental Philosophy PDF Author: Christopher Belshaw
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317490037
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
This introduction to the philosophy of the environment examines current debates on how we should think about the natural world and our place within it. The subject is examined from a determinedly analytic philosophical perspective, focusing on questions of value, but taking in attendant issues in epistemology and metaphysics as well. The book begins by considering the nature, extent and origin of the environmental problems with which we need to be concerned. Chapters go on to consider familiar strategies for dealing with environmental problems, and then consider what sort of things are of direct moral concern, examining in turn at animals, non-sentient life-forms, natural but non-living things and deep ecology. The final part of the book investigates notions of value, natural beauty and the place of human beings in the scheme of things.

The Human Relationship to Nature

The Human Relationship to Nature PDF Author: Matthew R. Foster
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 073916497X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
Growing alarm over the harm done by humans to the natural world, and even to the viability of our own industrial civilization, compels us to ask the deeper moral question: What should be the human relationship to nature? Matthew R. Foster starts by assessing three contrasting patterns of moral reasoning: the Progress Ethic that created the world we live in; the biblically-inspired Stewardship Ethic; and the Connection Ethic based on scientific understanding of the interdependence of all natural entities. Critical analysis reveals that none of these ethics is able to sustain the values it advocates due to two unsupportable presumptions—that the norms of human morality are commensurate with the natural world, and that the value of an entity is an intrinsic property. Foster argues that in order for a future environmental ethic to be both logically coherent and environmentally constructive, it must start from unconventional notions. First, because nature will never be commensurate with human moral reasoning, non-rational resources must be employed despite the risks involved. Second, value resides in the relationship of one entity to another, and does not belong intrinsically to either—in short, value is foremost a verb, rather than a noun. Foster proposes a new paradigm attentive to the realm of value relations among all natural entities, one which offers mediating opportunities between nature and morality. In this new ethic there are no “shoulds.” Rather, moral responsibilities to the natural entities around us are elective, placing us in an unfamiliar yet potentially liberating network of relationships. This book will be of interest to scholars—both instructors and students—of environmental ethics, philosophy, religion, and intellectual history, and all who are concerned about the environmental challenges of our time.

Hume's Science of Human Nature

Hume's Science of Human Nature PDF Author: David Landy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367891718
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Hume's Science of Human Nature is an investigation of the philosophical commitments underlying Hume's methodology in pursuing what he calls 'the science of human nature'. It argues that Hume understands scientific explanation as aiming at explaining the inductively-established universal regularities discovered in experience via an appeal to the nature of the substance underlying manifest phenomena. For years, scholars have taken Hume to employ a deliberately shallow and demonstrably untenable notion of scientific explanation. By contrast, Hume's Science of Human Nature sets out to update our understanding of Hume's methodology by using a more sophisticated picture of science as a model.

Crimes of Reason

Crimes of Reason PDF Author: Stephen E. Braude
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442235764
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Crimes of Reason brings together expanded and updated versions of some of Braude’s best previously published essays, along with new essays written specifically for this book. Although the essays deal with a variety of topics, they all hover around a set of interrelated general themes. These are: the poverty of mechanistic theories in the behavioral and life sciences, the nature of psychological explanation and (at least within the halls of the Academy) the unappreciated strategies required to understand behavior, the nature of dissociation, and the nature and limits of human abilities. Braude’s targets include memory trace theory, inner-cause theories of human behavior generally, Sheldrake’s theory of morphogenetic fields, widespread but simplistic views on the nature of human abilities, multiple personality and moral responsibility, the efficacy of prayer, and the shoddy tactics often used to discredit research on dissociation and parapsychology. Although the topics are often abstract and the issues deep, their treatment in this book is accessible, and the tone of the book is both light and occasionally combative.

Contested Natures

Contested Natures PDF Author: Phil Macnaghten
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761953135
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Demonstrating that all notions of nature are inextricably entangled in different forms of social life, the text elaborates the many ways in which the apparently natural world has been produced from within particular social practices. These are analyzed in terms of different senses, different times and the production of distinct spaces, including the local, the national and the global. The authors emphasize the importance of cultural understandings of the physical world, highlighting the ways in which these have been routinely misunderstood by academic and policy discourses. They show that popular conceptions of, and attitudes to, nature are often contradictory and that there are no simple ways of prevailing upon people to `