In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of (...) transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

This article is a critical examination of MacIntyre’s notion of morality in reference to Kant’s deontological moral theory. The examination shows that MacIntyre (a) criticizes Kant’s moral theory to defend virtue ethics or neo-Aristotelian ethics with a weak notion of morality; (b) favors the idea of local morality, which does not leave any room for moral assessment and reciprocity in an intercultural domain; and (c) fails to provide good arguments for his moral historicism and against Kant’s moral universalism.

This thesis inquires into our ‘human nature’ through an interdisciplinary approach that considers some of the radical changes in intellectual thought at those key points in Western culture in which this concept has been centrally deployed. The broad historical sweep that this study covers finds the preoccupation with defining who we are and what we are capable of inextricably linked with the focus, at most of the pivotal moments examined, on a dominant impulse to conceive human beings as moral creatures.

I examine why Carnap ended his "The Overcoming of Metaphysics" with admiration for Nietzsche, and contextualize his admiration for Nietzsche within their shared commitment to 'modernism.' I show that Carnap's modernism helps explain his enthusiasm for symbolic logic and his attitude towards metaphysics. However, I also argue that Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics may also apply to Carnap's own distinction between what is essential to language and how language appears.

It may be suggested that much of what goes by the name of contemporary cosmopolitanism is liberalism envisioned at the global level. It has become a common claim that the liberalism which provides the ethical content for cosmopolitanism is not tolerant enough of diverse ways of living; that liberalism’s claim to be a just referee between competing conceptions of the good life in fact hides a failure to treat diverse forms of life with an egalitarian hand. This essay argues this (...) is a correct observation that is in principle a good thing, not something to be derided. At least from the liberal point of view, part of the misunderstanding lies in the tendency to translate liberalism’s claim to be egalitarian towards all individuals into the claim that this means liberalism must be egalitarian towards all the conceptions of the good life that are held by these individuals. Such an extension of liberalism’s tolerance and egalitarianism would in fact undermine liberalism’s core values and render the cosmopolitan project a series of contradictions in terms. (shrink)

In doing philosophy we need to be aware of the awkwardness of thinking in terms of having a method, still more any kind of 'methodology'. Instead we might consider the different ways in which philosophy has been conceived in terms of contrasts: for example between the written and the spoken word, between exposition and dialogue, and between—in Richard Rorty's terms—systematic and edifying philosophy. This article offers no easy answer to how to proceed, suggesting rather that those who attempt philosophy need (...) to be alert to the possibilities and dangers that lie on either side. This is not just any kind of alertness, but a matter of close reading rather than skimming, of carefully attending—listening—to those with whom we engage, whether they are people or texts. (shrink)

The article considers how Richard Rorty's writings on religion dovetail with his views on the philosophical significance of hope. It begins with a reconstruction of the central features of Rorty's philosophy of religion, including its critique of theism and its attempt to rehabilitate religion within a pragmatist philosophical framework. It then presents some criticisms of Rorty's proposal. It is argued first that Rorty's "redescription" of the fulfilment of the religious impulse is so radical that it is hard to see what (...) remains of its specifically religious content. This casts doubt on Rorty's claim to have made pragmatism and religion compatible. The article then offers an analysis of Rorty's key notion of "unjustifiable hope". Different senses of unjustifiable hope are distinguished, in the course of which a tension between the "romantic" and "utilitarian" aspects of Rorty's pragmatist philosophy of religion comes into view. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between truth and liberal politics via the work of Bernard Williams and Richard Rorty. I argue that Williams is right to think that there are positive relations between truth, specifically a realist understanding of truth, and liberal politics that Rorty's abandonment of the realist vocabulary of truth undermines. At the heart of this concern is the worry that abandoning the realist vocabulary opens up the possibility that the standards of justification for our true beliefs can (...) be manipulated by those with the power to do so in order to further their own political ends. The political benefit of realism is that it fixes the standards of justification and makes them immune to manipulation by the use of power. However, I suggest that there is a form of realism available that Rorty can accept which would deliver the political benefits of the realist vocabulary without requiring him to accept the thick realist metaphysics that he wants to avoid. My conclusion is that there is a positive and important relationship between truth and liberal politics, a relationship that can be sustained without any necessary commitment to realist metaphysics. (shrink)

Richard Rorty was an analytic philosopher, in the sense that his work is an important moment in the historical development that began with Russell, Wittgenstein, and the Vienna circle; continued through Quine, Sellars, and Davidson. In his "Intellectual Autobiography" Rorty notes that his work depended particularly that of Wittgenstein, Sellars, Davidson, and Brandom, who in turn required an understanding of the analytic philosophers they reacted against: Russell, Carnap, and Ayer. According to Rorty, twentieth‐century philosophy that emphasized rigor and scientificity accepted (...) this modern view of philosophy. This included phenomenology as practiced by Husserl and, especially, analytic philosophy. Rorty's clearest and most detailed presentation of his metaphilosophy, the introduction to Consequences of Pragmatism. Rorty's response to both lines of realist criticism is that pragmatism does not hold any theory of truth and instead maintains that there is no useful purpose served by constructing such theories – as two millennia of philosophy amply illustrate. (shrink)