In this article, I look at recent developments in the field of the Philosophy of the relationship between morality, understood in a realist manner, and the primary object of religious belief in the monotheistic religions, God. Some contemporary solutions to the Euthyphro dilemma and versions of moral arguments for the existence of God are discussed.

In this paper, I argue that, despite Locke’s explicitly subjectivist definition of miracle, he in fact employs an objectivist understanding of the concept. This contrast between his official definition and his employment of an objectivist understanding of what it is for an event to be a miracle is a result of his confusing the epistemological issue of how to recognize a miracle with the ontological issue of what a miracle is.

There is a tendency in contemporary (analytic) aesthetics to consider- ably restrict the scope of things that can be beautiful or ugly. This peculiarly modern tendency is holding back progress in aesthetics and robbing it of its potential contribution to other domains of inquiry. One view that has suffered neglect as a result of this tendency is the moral beauty view, whereby the moral virtues are beautiful and the moral vices are ugly. This neglect stems from an assumption to the (...) effect that virtues and vices simply cannot be beautiful or ugly. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it develops an account of form, under which, it argues, possession of form suffices for an object’s candidature for beauty and ugliness. Second, it argues that, under the foregoing proposal, the moral beauty view turns out to be a coherent position, and so should be taken seriously in both aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

The focus of my dissertation is a general and comprehensive examination of Locke’s view of divine power. My basic argument is that John Locke is a theological voluntarist in his understanding of God’s creative and providential relationship with the world, including both the natural and moral order. As a voluntarist, Locke holds that God freely imposes both the physical and moral laws of nature onto creation by means of his will: this contrasts with the intellectualist perspective in which the laws (...) of nature emerge from the essences of things. For Locke, there are no intrinsically necessary laws in the created order: both physical and moral laws are arbitrary determinations of the divine will. While these laws are not intrinsically necessary, they are hypothetically necessary. Hypothetical necessity involves things that could have been otherwise, but which are necessary based on the supposition of a free action and other relevant conditions pertaining to the actor. Concerning God, we can understand hypothetical necessity in the following way: □ [ → Y]. X is a variable that ranges over a subset of contingent propositions about actions. ‘P’ is the proposition ‘God is perfect’. And Y is any proposition that is a necessary consequent of both X and P. In any possible world in which God performs X, it is the case that Y will obtain. Supposing that God decides to create beings like us, God must of necessity craft the moral laws of nature in a way that harmonizes with our nature. What grounds this necessity is that God must act consistently with the perfection of the divine nature: to give us a different law would be less than perfect. Furthermore, I argue that certain physical laws of nature – those that help to realize our nature – are also hypothetically necessary. (shrink)

As the product of liberalism's first encounter with the theoretical problems posed by legal discrimination and unequal treatment of minority groups, Locke's argument for religious toleration foreshadowed contemporary democratic theory's emphasis on non-coercive discussion of diverse rights claims and broadly inclusive public deliberations. This study tries to illuminate the democratic dimension of Locke's toleration theory by focusing on his crucial account of the church as a voluntary association. Here Locke presented discursive possibilities for the articulation of diverse beliefs and interests (...) that he believed would not only benefit both society as a whole and the minority religious groups contained in it, but also weave principles of contestation and deliberation into the very fabric of the liberal polity. (shrink)

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke maintains that ?Reason must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing,? including matters of religious faith, and this commitment to the primacy of reason is not abandoned in his later religious writings. This essay argues that with regard to the relation between reason and religious faith, Locke is primarily concerned not with evidence, but with consistency, meaning, and how human beings ought to respond to their inclinations, including their inclinations to believe. (...) Leibniz, on the other hand, stakes out an alternative conception of the relationship between faith and reason that assigns to faith the role of a primary truth. For Leibniz, some religious propositions can be believed immediately and without an additional examination and evaluation by reason. The essay maintains that the differences between the two regarding faith and reason are tied to a broader disagreement about how much of the human understanding is due, in Locke's words, to ?Labour, Attention and Industry? (shrink)

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this (...) engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how Mary Astell's version of Cartesian dualism supports her disavowal of female subordination and traditional gender roles, her rejection of Locke's notion of “thinking matter” as a major premise for rejecting his political philosophy of “social contracts” between men and women, and, finally, her claim that there is no intrinsic difference between genders in terms of ratiocination, the primary assertion that grants her the title of the first female English feminist.

C.B. Macpherson's “Possessive Individualist” reading of Locke is one of the most radical and influential interpretations in the history of exegesis. Despite a substantial critical response over the past five decades, Macpherson's reading remains orthodox in various circles in the humanities generally, particularly in legal studies, and his interpretation of several crucial passages has unwittingly been followed even by his sharpest critics within Lockean scholarship. In order to present the definitive rebuttal to this interpretation, and so finally to lay it (...) to rest, I argue that every one of Macpherson's key pieces of textual evidence can be rejected entirely on its own terms; that is, by reference to no more than its immediate context. In this way I contend that fault of the Possessive Individualist reading lies far deeper than mere cherry-picking of the Lockean corpus, but centrally involves misreading, misplacing and misrepresenting the very parts of Locke's work Macpherson cites as evidence for his reading. (shrink)

In our postmodern times, the question 'where is truth' and surely 'truth with regard to religion' appears to be answered especially with the reply 'in particular traditions'. The combination 'truth, particular tradition and salvation', however, still leaves a number of avenues open. In the first part, we go over the ideas of Herman De Dijn, Richard Rorty, Peter Koslowski and Jürgen Habermas respectively with regard to truth and particularity. The first two desire to respect fully the particular and contingent character (...) of traditions that accord meaning. The other two authors also take this starting point but nonetheless deem it necessary to ensure the truth content of traditions in that which rises above that particularity and contingency. Koslowski chooses the metaphysical anchoring of the truth - an anchoring which only becomes public with the philosophical re-reading of the Christian tradition. Habermas appeals to the criterion of intersubjectivity and immediately links this to a universal validity; the procedures make it precisely possible - surely in the ideal case of 'unimpaired intersubjectivity' - to relativize the particular as such. For Rorty, on the contrary, the intersubjective recognition of insights and attitudes does not neutralize its contingent particularity; he does not dub generally diveded insights and attitudes as universal, even if they would indeed fit into a world that is becoming all the more small within a cosmopolitan evolution - they cannot lay claim to anything more than being cosmopolitan. De Dijn, on his part, distinguishes the truth of the cognitive-scientific domain of knowledge, characterized by demonstrable universality, and the 'truth to live by' that cannot be explicitated and is always incarnated in concrete praxis. This 'truth to live by' is proper to the domain of meaning-giving, and is necessarily particular and contingent. A different demarcation line distinguishes Rorty and Habermas from De Dijn and Koslowski: in contrast to the modern Habermas and to Rorty who seems to take a leap forward, De Dijn and Koslowski choose to return, in a 'post'-modern way, to the wisdom content of the Christian tradition as a normative foundation for life and society. It seems that only De Dijn has somewhat done justice to the combination 'religious truth, particular tradition and salvation', but he has done so at such a high price, especially for the theologian. This is the reason why we opt to approach the combination 'religious truth, particular tradition and salvation' from the standpoint of the question raised by our current situation of plurality with regard to the question of truth, more specifically from the standpoint of the confrontation with the truth of the other. The narrative of the other does not so much as make me give up the truth claim of my own narrative, but point to the deficiency in my truth, a deficiency that cannot be supplemented considering the inevitably particular and contingent character of my narrative. It is owing to this that the truth is finally no longer a matter of authentic content, but rather of coming to relate to the deficiency so much so that it precisely opens up the order of truth. Such a concept of truth offers perspectives to the theologian in order to qualify the truth content of the Christian tradition. The truth deficiency of the Christian tradition and the awareness of its particular and contingent character, are not - theologically speaking - counter indications of its truth, but rather constitutive of it insofar as the Christian truth concerns itself with that which ultimately withdraws itself from every truth expression, which, in theological discourse, is called God. Any talk about truth in a condition marked with ineradicable plurality immediately requires, however, a talk about justice. Plurality necessarily brings along conflict. A Christian narrative that develops sensibility for the deficiency in one's own and in the others' truth narratives will criticize, out of this sensitivity, hegemonic narratives that fail to see their own deficiencies and thereby oppress other narratives. Postmodern talk about truth likewise enables the theologian to articulate in a contextually meaningful way the evangelical option for the poor, the outcast, and the 'sinner', and to point out and indict the injustice committed against those who do not fit into the ruling discourse. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism and in particular with the claim of the latter to offer a theory of the good society which is independent of, and different from, that offered by classical liberalism. My argument is naturalistic in the following sense. A good society is one which delivers whatever is good for people, so that a theory of the good society (to ~ a theory of the good society) must say something about (...) what people are like and what is good for them. That is to say, it must be capable of making such judgments coherently and on its own terms. I shall argue that libertarianism is incapable of making such judgments because it rests on a Hobbesian radical individualism in which, by analogy with classical physics, people exist only as particulars, as individuals. If there are no general classes we cannot say what people have in common; if we cannot say what they have in common, the only "general" good is the negative liberty which enables them to pursue their own goals in their own way. Radical individualism leads by the shortest of routes to moral subjectivism. Thus libertarianism derives such plausibility as it has by drawing illicitly on aspects of classical liberalism which do not depend on radical individualism. In doing so it undermines not only its claim to be a distinct theory with its own foundations, but most of its own claims about what is good for people. (shrink)