2. Thesis 2 I accept insofar as it asserts the relation of possibility to actuality to be a fundamental aspect of things. This relation is sui generis.

My assigned task is to lay out the shape of my father's life and faith. This is daunting, but it is also a privilege because I loved him and admired him, and his life has been central in shaping my own. I am speaking also on behalf of my mother, my three sisters, Bridget, Louise and Ellie, and our children, Catherine and Andrew, Sam and Anisa, Hannah and Matty.

Kant both says that we should recognize our duties as God’s commands, and objects to the theological version of heteronomy, ‘which derives morality from a divine and supremely perfect will’. In this paper I discuss how these two views fit together, and in the process I develop a notion of autonomous submission to divine moral authority. I oppose the ‘constitutive’ view of autonomy proposed by J. B. Schneewind and Christine Korsgaard. I locate Kant’s objection to theological heteronomy against the background (...) of Crusius’s divine command theory, and I compare Kant’s views about divine authority and human political authority. (shrink)

The title of Hare’s book refers to the gap between the demand that morality places on us and our natural capacity to live by it. Such a gap is paradoxical if we accept the “‘ought’ implies ‘can”’ principle. The solution, Hare argues, is that the gap is filled by the Christian God. So we ought to be moral and can do so—with divine assistance. Hare’s statement and defense of the existence of the gap combines a rigorously Kantian (...) notion of the moral demand with a rigorously Calvinist notion of human depravity. As such, many readers will find the gap exaggerated, but most people will admit that there is some sort of gap here to be faced, and any gap at all is a problem. (shrink)

Caspar Hare presents a bold and original approach to questions of what we ought to do, and why we ought to do it. He breaks with tradition to argue that we can tackle difficult problems in normative ethics by starting with a principle that is humble and uncontroversial. Being moral involves wanting particular other people to be better off.

Is morality too difficult for human beings? Kant said that it was, except with God's assistance. Contemporary moral philosophers have usually discussed the question without reference to Christian doctrine, and have either diminished the moral demand, exaggerated human moral capacity, or tried to find a substitute in nature for God's assistance. This book looks at these philosophers--from Kant and Kierkegaard to Swinburne, Russell, and R.M. Hare--and the alternative in Christianity.

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

This work is an exploration of divine command theory, which is the theory that what makes something morally obligatory is that God commands it.

_God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.

_God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.

"Philosophy of Education" is designed to engage readers with a broad range of contemporary perspectives on significant educational issues, including, pluralism and democracy in education, the problem of indoctrination, the nature and value of critical teaching, controversy in the classroom, and educational standards. In this third edition, it remains the intention of the editors to offer a collection of essays in the philosophy of education which will provide students in teacher education programs with a lively and accessible introduction to some (...) of the central debates and issues in the field. In addition, teachers, administrators and graduate students should find this collection a valuable resource. As with the first and second editions, and given the intended readership, the editors have selected discussions which establish a connection between philosophical reflection and pedagogical practice, in the belief that philosophical understanding is a vital aspect of professional development. (shrink)

Kant both says that we should recognize our duties as God’s commands, and objects to the theological version of heteronomy, ‘which derives morality from a divine and supremely perfect will’. In this paper I discuss how these two views fit together, and in the process I develop a notion of autonomous submission to divine moral authority. I oppose the ‘constitutive’ view of autonomy proposed by J. B. Schneewind and Christine Korsgaard. I locate Kant’s objection to theological heteronomy against the background (...) of Crusius’s divine command theory, and I compare Kant’s views about divine authority and human political authority. (shrink)

This paper is an account of Kant’s view of the passions, and their place in the structure of moral motivation. The paper lays out the relations Kant sees be­tween feelings, inclinations, affects and passions, by looking at texts in Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Anthropology, and Lectures on Education. Then it discusses a famous passage in Groundwork about sympathetic inclination, and ends by proposing two ways in which Kant thinks feelings and inclinations enter into moral (...) judgment, and two ways in which this can go wrong. This analysis involves responding to Karl Ameriks on the question of whether Kant is an internalist about moral motivation. (shrink)

_God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.

This article is part of a larger project defending a version of divine command theory in ethics. What I am interested in from Scotus is that he combines such a theory with a view that grounds ethics in nature, especially human nature. In order to understand this combination, we need to start with his view of the two affections. Scotus takes from Anselm the idea that humans have in their will two basic affections (or intellectual appetites), what he calls the (...) affection for advantage (affectio commodi) and the affection for justice (affectio justitiae). All acts of the will, on this view, stem from one affection or the other. Behind Anselm is Augustine's insistence, which Scotus alre refers to frequently, that God is to be enjoyed and not used (even though entering into God's love is our greatest happiness), and everything else is to be used and not enjoyed. (shrink)

This paper starts with Immanuel Kant’s definition of “eudaimonism” (a term he created) as a single‐source account of motivation, and explains why he thinks the eudaimonist is unacceptably self‐regarding. In order to modify and improve Kant’s account, the paper then revisits the Christian scholastics. Scotus is distinguished from Aquinas on the grounds that Scotus has a more robust conception of the will that encompasses the ranking of the affection for advantage (for the agent’s happiness and perfection) and the affection for (...) justice (for what is good in itself, independent of this relation to the agent). This is a double‐source account of motivation. With these conceptual resources in hand, the paper goes on to examine Jean Porter’s defense of eudaimonism, urging that she begs the question against the Scotist view. Finally, the paper makes a conciliating suggestion that preserves most, but not all, of what the eudaimonist wants. (shrink)

Jean Porter’s natural law theory and my divine command theory differ less than one might expect. Two differences that remain are that, with respect to deductivism, the view that we can deduce our moral obligations from human nature, we agree that human nature is insufficiently specific, but she does not acknowledge the place of revealed divine law in later scholasticism or the role for what Scotus calls ‘dispensations’. With respect to eudaimonism, the view that our choices are for the sake (...) of happiness, I do not agree that life presents itself to us integrated under the conception of a single way of life. Even in Aquinas there is a tension between his eudaimonism and his view that the love of God for God’s own sake is the distinctive mark of charity, and that charity toward the neighbor requires us to promote the neighbor’s good for the neighbor’s sake and not our own. (shrink)

This paper is about the problematic interface between evolutionary scientists’ talk about ethics and current work in philosophy and theology. The paper proceeds by taking four main figures from four different disciplines. The four disciplines are neurophysiology, cognitive psychology, primatology and game theory, and the four figures are Joshua Greene, Mark Hauser, Frans de Waal and Ken Binmore. The paper relates the views of each of these figures to recent work in philosophical and theological ethics.

This paper describes and defends two arguments connecting ethics and religion that Kant makes in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. The first argument is that the moral demand is too high for us in our natural capacities, and God's assistance is required to bridge the resulting moral gap. The second argument is that because humans desire to be happy as well as to be morally good, morality will be rationally unstable without belief in a God who can bring (...) happiness and virtue together. The paper states and replies to three objections to each argument. (shrink)

Divine Command defends the thesis that what makes something morally obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes something morally forbidden is that God forbids it. John E. Hare successfully defends a version of divine command theory, but also shows that there is considerable overlap with some versions of natural law theory. Hare engages with a number of Christian theologians, most especially 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. (shrink)

Divine Command defends the thesis that what makes something morally obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes something morally forbidden is that God forbids it. John E. Hare successfully defends a version of divine command theory, but also shows that there is considerable overlap with some versions of natural law theory. Hare engages with a number of Christian theologians, most especially 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. (shrink)

In my book God’s Call1 I gave an historical account of the debate within twentieth century analytic philosophy between moral realism and expressivism. Moral realism is the view that moral properties like goodness or cruelty exist independently of our making judgements that things have such properties. Such judgements are, on this theory, objectively true when the things referred to have the specified properties and objectively false when they do not. Expressivism is the view that when a person makes a moral (...) judgment, she is expressing emotion or desire or will. I used the term ‘orectic’ to refer to these mental states, because we do not have in English a sufficiently general term. In God’s Call, I started with a moral realist whom I called a ‘platonist’, G. E. Moore, and then I traced the argument through the emotivists, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson, and the prescriptivist, R. M. Hare, and Iris Murdoch, whom I called a ‘humble platonist’, and J. L. Mackie’s ‘error theory’, and John McDowell, whose theory I call ‘disposition theory’, and David Brink, the ‘new-wave realist’, and Allan Gibbard, who calls his own theory ‘ norm expressivism ’. My project was to collect together the concessions that the two sides of the debate have made to each other over the course of this history, and then to construct a position which molds these concessions into a single coherent theory. I called this theory ‘prescriptive realism’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem of the Moral Gap Kant Kierkegaard Alternative Solutions to the Problem of the Gap The Traditional Doctrines Works cited.

The topic of the present article is a conceptualization of the notion of contemplation and will develop its reflection around three principal questions: What is the role of desire in contemplation? Is it we who contemplate, or the god who contemplates in us? What is the relation between contemplation and the rest of human life?

The debate over international trade has long pitted “free trade” advocates against those who argue that particular reasons support trade restraints. The newest argument is that open trade leads to a “race to the bottom” in the regulation of health, safety, welfare, and especially labor and environmental concerns, harming the nation’s citizens and undermining national sovereignty. One predicate for this argument – that trade increases competitive pressure on domestic industry – is accurate. That, in turn, will raise the cost of (...) some national policies that otherwise would win political approval. But the remainder of the race to the bottom argument rests on assumptions about regulation, the political process, and trade that do not stand up to examination. While responses to increased international competition will vary, the effects of such competition will generally be consistent with any meaningful notion of sovereignty and also will improve national welfare judged by common economic norms.Le débat sur le commerce international a longtemps opposé les défenseurs du libre échange à ceux qui soutiennent qu’il existe des raisons particulières en faveur de barrières à l’échange. L’argument le plus récent est que le libre échange conduit à une course au “nivellement par le bas” au niveau de la réglementation de la santé, de la sécurité, du bienêtre, et plus particulièrement dans les domaines du travail et de l’environnement. Selon ses tenants, elle aurait pour conséquence de léser les citoyens de la nation et d’affaiblir la souveraineté nationale.Un présupposé de cet argument – selon lequel le commerce accroît la pression concurrentielle subie par l’industrie nationale – est fondé. A son tour cela entraînera une augmentation du coût de certaines politiques nationales qui auraient par ailleurs obtenu un assentiment politique.Mais le reste de l’argumentation du nivellement par le bas repose sur des hypothèses à propos de la réglementation, du processus politique, et du commerce qui ne résistent pas à un examen critique.Bien que les réactions à une concurrence internationale accrue varient, les effets d’une telle concurrence seront généralement cohérents avec toute notion pertinente de souveraineté et amélioreront le bien-être national tel que jugé par les normes économiques standard. (shrink)