Traditional utilitarianism, when applied, implies a surprising prediction about the future, viz., that all experience of pleasure and pain must end once and for all, or infinitely dwindle. Not only is this implication surprising, it should render utilitarianism unacceptable to persons who hold any of the following theses: that evaluative propositions may not imply descriptive, factual propositions; that evaluative propositions may not imply contingent factual propositions about the future; that there will always exist beings who experience pleasure or pain.

Argues the eschatological longing of bodily obsession. Impact of culture and religiosity on use of the body; Views of feminist Judith Butler on gender performativity; Theory of gender transformation; Relation among gender, transformation and God.

Part and parcel of the eschatology of the three Abrahamic faiths is the belief that sin and evil will be eliminated upon the consummation of God’s kingdom on earth. Not only do these beliefs affirm that God will ultimately “deal” with the problem of sin and evil, but that sin and evil will be no more. I refer to this eschatological belief as “the elimination of evil” (EOE). The EOE has important implications for how one understands the ontology of (...) time. In this paper, I contribute to this discussion by arguing that ontologies of time that affirm the concrete existence of past moments are incompatible with the EOE. I also argue that solutions based on theories of hypertime, such as those posited by Tyron Goldschmidt and Samuel Lebens, also fail to solve the problems posed to those ontologies of time affirming the concrete existence of the past. I conclude that the ontology of time that best facilitates the EOE is presentism. (shrink)

Consideration of the objection from the personal point of view reveals the resources of utilitarianism. The utilitarian can offer a partial rebuttal by distinguishing between criteria of rightness and decision procedures and claiming that, because his theory is a criterion of rightness and not a decision procedure, he can justify agents' differential concern for their own welfare and the welfare of those close to them. The flexibility in utilitarianism's theory of value allows further rebuttal of this objection; objective versions (...) of utilitarianism can treat self-determination or autonomy as a dominant good which trumps even large magnitudes of lesser goods such as pleasure. After the resources of utilitarianism are exhausted, though, there remains a worry, generated by the personal point of view, about utilitarianism's impartiality. But this worry is correctly viewed, not as a moral worry about the merits of utilitarianism as a moral theory, but as a worry about morality concerning the rationality or supremacy of impartial moral demands. Whether or not this worry can be answered, the fact that it arises supports rather than undermines a utilitarian account of morality. (shrink)

This essay examines the relevance of eschatological themes to the political theory of Michael Walzer. A distinctive eschatological hope is identified, which functions as a guide to thought throughout Walzer's writings, even though he seldom expresses it (and sometimes denies it). This analysis of Walzer's work demonstrates that eschatology is relevant to the contemporary discussion of justice, and conversely, that contemporary political theory can be a guide for the construction and evaluation of theological doctrines of eschatology. Any (...) class='Hi'>eschatology that enters into political debate in a modern, pluralistic society like the United States, however, must have at least one important characteristic: it must be informed by a profound sense of limitation. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique set of challenges for national governments regarding how to deal with a major international pandemic of almost unprecedented scope. As the pandemic consti...

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value (...) theory: first, the problem of why knowledge is better than mere true belief, and second, the relation between epistemic justification and responsibility. (shrink)

This chapter sets out an intertemporal addition theorem, the exact analog, across the dimension of time, of the interpersonal addition theorem. A premise of the new theorem is the 'principle of temporal good', the exact analog of the principle of personal good. It turns out that the principle of temporal good would, if true, give crucial support to the utilitarian principle. The chapter explains that the principle of temporal good is dubious, and describes how this principle might nevertheless be (...) defended. The defence is metaphysical. It is founded on a disuniting metaphysics of personhood. A complete argument was made out by deducing the principle of temporal good from a disuniting metaphysics. The chapter shows that the principle of temporal good, if true, lends very strong support to the utilitarian principle of distribution. So a chain of argument would have been completed, linking the disuniting metaphysics to the utilitarian principle. (shrink)

This paper argues that the eschatological dimension of religion is distinct from other fundamental dimensions, including moral grounding, the ontological basis of reality, and the constitution of persons. It responds in particular to Tibor Horvath's conception of the category of ultimate reality. It also argues that eschatological hereafters imply something akin to an higher-time A-series, in that the hereafter can be conceived as a temporal order beyond currently existing time.

An abiding puzzle in the Phaedo is the transition in the text from initial pessimism about the possibility of wisdom during human life to a more optimistic view. Prominent interpretations posit different kinds or degrees of wisdom at issue in the two sets of passages. By contrast, I argue that the pessimistic view rests on the implicit premise that the soul cannot be completely purified during human life—a premise which arises from an initial conception of impurity and its cause. In (...) developing his eschatology, Socrates refines this conception and rejects the implicit premise. Because the embodied soul can be completely purified, it can achieve philosophical wisdom as well. (shrink)

The contrast typically made between utilitarianism and virtue theory is overdrawn. Utilitarianism is a universal emulator: it implies that we should lie, cheat, steal, even appropriate Aristotle, when that is what brings about the best outcomes. In some cases and in some worlds it is best for us to focus as precisely as possible on individual acts. In other cases and worlds it is best for us to be concerned with character traits. Global environmental change leads to concerns about character (...) because the best results will be produced by generally uncoupling my behavior from that of others. Thus, in this case and in this world, utilitarians should be virtue theorists. (shrink)

Traditional eschatology clashes with the theory of entropy. Trying to bridge the gap, Robert John Russell assumes that theology and science are based on contradictory, yet equally valid, metaphysical assumptions, each one capable of questioning and impacting the other. The author doubts that Russell's proposal will convince empirically oriented scientists and attempts to provide a viable alternative. Historical‐critical analysis suggests that biblical future expectations were redemptive responses to changing human needs. Apocalyptic visions were occasioned by heavy suffering in postexilic (...) times. Interpreted in realistic terms, they have since proved to be untenable. The expectation of a new creation without evil, suffering, and death is not constitutive for the substantive content of the biblical message as such. Biblical future expectations must be reconceptualized in terms of best contemporary insight and in line with a dynamic reading of the biblical witness as God's vision of comprehensive optimal well‐being that operates like a shifting horizon and opens up ever new vistas, challenges, and opportunities. (shrink)

IN MANY CHURCH-BODY DISPUTES OVER THE MORAL STATUS OF SAME-gender unions, the last line of defense against the affirmation of such unions is often an appeal to homosexual orientation as inherently "disordered," rendering same-gender unions unacceptable regardless of the loving and just qualities they may embody. On the basis of a biblical anthropology shaped by the eschatological orientation of the scriptures and further enhanced by contemporary Trinitarian discourse, this essay engages and challenges this traditional view as it has been developed (...) in the theological ethics of Helmut Thielicke. In so doing, the essay raises a key metaethical question of the theological foundations that inform Christian sexual ethics in general. (shrink)

Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the temporal universe of contemporary capitalism? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness. This entails a departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial speculation, in favour of an existential account that begins instead with the (...) cosmology of money and debt. We argue that finance capital’s fixation on the future has produced a very specific form of apocalyptic imagination, characteristic of financial society and built on a libidinal economy of leverage. Rather than offering an ecstatic end to the global process of financialization, financial eschatologies bind the contemporary subject to debt and indebtedness to the very end: an endless apocalypse, premised on the ends of finance itself. (shrink)

The article explains a rule-Utilitarian normative thesis about when actions are morally excused; that an act otherwise morally objectionable in some way is excused if a moral system, The acceptance of which in the agent's society would be utility-Maximizing, Would not condemn it. What is meant by a "moral system condemning" an action is explained. The parallel between this moral thesis and the benthamite theory of criminal justice is developed. It is argued that this rule-Utilitarian thesis implies that (...) an action is morally excused (not blameworthy) if it does not manifest a defective trait of character. (shrink)

_Occidental Eschatology_, originally Jacob Taubes's doctoral thesis and the one book he published in his lifetime, seeks to renegotiate the historical synthesis and spiritual legacy of the West through the study of apocalypticism. Covering the origins of apocalypticism from Hebrew prophecy through antiquity and early Christianity to its medieval revival in Joachim of Fiore, Taubes reveals its later secularized forms in Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard. His aim is to show the lasting influence of revolutionary, messianic teleology on Western philosophy, (...) history, and politics. Combining painstaking scholarship with an unmatched scope of reference, Taubes takes a comprehensive approach to the twin focuses of political theology and philosophy of history. He argues that acceptance of the idea that time will one day come to an end has profound implications for political thought. If natural time is experienced as an eternal cycle of events, "history" is the realm of time in which human actions can make decisions to alter the progression of events. This philosophy asks that individuals take responsibility for their own actions and resist authority that claims to act on their behalf. Whereas universal history is written by the victors, the messianic or apocalyptic event enters history and gives a voice to the oppressed. (shrink)

Following the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, much support for torture interrogation of terrorists has emerged in the public forum, largely based on the “ticking bomb” scenario. Although deontological and virtue ethics provide incisive arguments against torture, they do not speak directly to scientists and government officials responsible for national security in a utilitarian framework. Drawing from criminology, organizational theory, social psychology, the historical record, and my interviews with military professionals, I assess the potential of an (...) official U.S. program of torture interrogation from a practical perspective. The central element of program design is a sound causal model relating input to output. I explore three principal models of how torture interrogation leads to truth: the animal instinct model, the cognitive failure model, and the data processing model. These models show why torture interrogation fails overall as a counterterrorist tactic. They also expose the processes that lead from a precision torture interrogation program to breakdowns in key institutions—health care, biomedical research, police, judiciary, and military. The breakdowns evolve from institutional dynamics that are independent of the original moral rationale. The counterargument, of course, is that in a society destroyed by terrorism there will be nothing to repair. That is why the actual causal mechanism of torture interrogation in curtailing terrorism must be elucidated by utilitarians rather than presumed. (shrink)

In folk psychology and some academic psychology, utilitarian thinking is associated with coldness and deontological thinking is associated with emotion. I suggest, mostly through personal examples, that these associations are far from perfect. Utilitarians experience emotions, which sometimes derive from, and sometimes cause or reinforce, their moral judgments.

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies. Here we propose a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate. Implementing the utilitarian benchmark, which we see as ethically minimal and conceptually parsimonious, in two leading climate–economy models allows for (...) calculation of the optimal allocation of future emissions. We compare this optimum with historical emissions and initial nationally determined contributions. Compared with cost minimization, utilitarian optimization features better outcomes for human development, equity and the climate. Peak temperature is lower under utilitarianism because it reduces the human development cost of global mitigation. Utilitarianism therefore is a promising inclusion to a set of benchmarks for future explorations of climate equity. (shrink)

The present work sets out to examine the intersection between Igbo eschatology and environmentalism. It seeks to determine how the tenets of Igbo eschatology impact on environmental conservation. The approach is conversational. Given that the work centers on a particular cultural area, an ethnic nationality in West Africa with unique cultural symbols, the paper also employs the tool of hermeneutics. It is discovered that the Igbo eschatology is characteristically this-worldly, cyclic and perceives human existence as continuous given (...) the possibility of reincarnation. Accordingly, it impacts a sense of permanence or semi-immortality on the evanescent earthly existence thus rendering the optimism or motivation which environmentalism, a futuristic endeavor, demands. This is unlike an otherworldly, linear and terminal eschatology which forecloses the possibility of continuous existence and demotivates for the care of the environment. Secondly, given the animistic and this-worldly orientation, the symbolic presence of the eschata such as the ancestors and spirits in the mundane world elevates the status and compels respect and care for nature or the environment. The paper therefore submits that the Igbo eschatology is pro-environmentalism. (shrink)

In much environmentally concerned literature, there is a burgeoning concern for the status and sustainability of human hope. Within Christian circles, this attention has often taken the form of eschatological reflection. While there is important warrant for attention to eschatology in Christian examinations of hope, I claim that to move so quickly from hope to eschatology is to confuse a species of Christian hope for a definition of hope itself; as such, it is important for theological ethicists to (...) examine hope also from the experiential perspective of the human hoper. In particular, this is important today given the shortcomings of an eschatological focus in addressing anxieties arising due to the environmental crisis. Through examining hope as a fallible human activity, one can come to better understand hope's importance to human life, its profound ambiguity, and the potential threat that the environmental crisis poses to it. (shrink)

Self-interest voting is irrational when it has even a small cost, but it can be rational for those who care about others; its expected utility (EU) may exceed its cost. For cosmopolitan voters (those who care about outsiders), the EU of voting increases with the number of affected others. The EU of voting for the good of the world now and in the future can thus be large. In some cases, the EU of parochial voting (e.g., considering only one's nation) (...) may not cross the cost threshold, but cosmopolitan voting can cross it. I apply these principles to various kinds of voting. And I compare voting to charity. Voting has the advantage of enlisting the coercive power of the state, but charity can be more focused on effective policies. I discuss campaign contributions, and I conclude with a discussion of the existence of utilitarian voters. (shrink)

Eschatology is the study of end things—death and what lies beyond. Nearly all religions tackle the topic in one way or another. Theologians debate the different concepts of death, interment rituals, funeral rituals, final judgment, and the afterlife. Traditional African religions are no exception. -/- However, among scholars, the subject of African eschatology has lacked consistency and a coherent view. African Eschatology presents the concepts of end things as they are viewed in Africa as a whole but (...) focuses especially on the perspective of the Igbo culture of southern Nigeria, using it as a lens through which to examine African religious beliefs more generally. -/- Author Aloysius N. Ezeoba explains that Igbo culture perceives death not as an ultimate end but as a transition to another stage of existence. Judgment is passed by the living, by deceased ancestors, and by deities, for only through successful judgment may the Igbo rejoin their family members in a peaceful afterlife. The profound impact of death on the behavior of the living is unmistakable. -/- African Eschatology fills the gap that presently exists in the scholarly exploration of African traditional religions. It thus serves as a guide for both enculturation and inter-religious studies and communication. (shrink)

In this paper, I review evidence which strongly supports the claim that life will eventually be extinguished from the universe. I then examine the ethical implications of this evidence, focusing, in particular, on the question whether it is a bad thing that life will eventually die out.

Paul Tillich's eternal now is the ground from which all things emerge and perish in each and every moment. A Tillichean eschatology involves the gathering of all things finite into the eternity of the present moment, into God. Salvation is present moment. But is the “eternal now” enough? This essay offers biblical and theological critiques of Tillich's present eschatology and posits an eschatology that combines Tillich's “eternal now” with Wolfhart Pannenberg's “end‐oriented eschatology.” The result is an (...) eschatology that recognizes the eternal now in which all things (including all time) belong to God yet with an eye toward the God‐given possibilities of the next moment, the future. The end of being is not cessation; rather, it is the fulfillment of time, the consummation of all things. (shrink)

In this essay, I show how Thomas Aquinas circumscribes epistemological questions concerning both the possibility and character of our knowledge of God within a larger eschatological framework that acknowledges the beatific vision as the ultimate good that we desire as well as the ultimate end for which we were created. Thus, knowledge of God is possible and actual on Aquinas's view because it is eternally rather than merely temporally indexed—that is, properly attributable to the blessed in heaven and only derivatively (...) attributable to persons of faith. I further argue that interpreting Aquinas's account of faith in the light of his account of the beatific vision allows us to carve out polemical space for the theologically realist claim that there can be and in fact is objectivity in our knowledge of God, whether that knowledge comes through faith (in this life) or the beatific vision (in the next life). (shrink)

The powerful impact which Christianity has had on the distinct culture of the Occident can hardly be overstated. Indeed, its tremendous influence in virtually every single aspect of the European existence is ultimately recognisable in many secular quarters. In order to understand the link between the project of modernity and European Christendom and its state in the present, it is necessary to trace the development of several key features. Thus, the paper consists of two major parts dealing with: 1) the (...) Joachimist tertius status 2) aspects of the Löwith-Blumenberg debate and 3) depicting the connections – at times, the concordance – between eschatology, utopianism and totalism, and their role in the triumph, decline and transformation of European Christianity. (shrink)

Purpose: This paper contends that even though the doctrine of eschatology is one of the core teachings of the Christian doctrine, the reality is that it has not always received due attention in the postmodern church. The relegation of this important doctrine to the background of church activity has therefore meant that eschatology has almost been forgotten in church circles. This research sought to establish the interaction of the church with eschatological teachings, beliefs and practices as understood by (...) the pastors, elders/deacons, leaders, and members of Christ Is The Answer Ministries (CITAM). Methodology: The study used mixed methods research design. The target population was the pastors, elders/deacons, leaders, and members of CITAM in two selected assemblies in Nairobi. The assemblies were: CITAM Parklands and CITAM Valley Road. Data was collected from a sample of 68 respondents using stratified sampling technique by use of a questionnaire. The data was then analysed by use of descriptive statistical analysis. Data collected from open-ended sections of the questionnaire were discussed and presented in narrative form. Findings: It was found that the church has done some work as regards to teaching and discussing eschatology. However, the paper also finds that what the church has done to popularize eschatology amongst its members is insufficient and inefficient. More needs to be done in popularizing eschatological themes in church circles. Recommendations: It was recommended that the church should be intentional and committed to doing more in promoting interactions with the doctrine of eschatology. It was also recommended that further studies on the methodologies and ways of systematically inducting eschatology into the everyday church activities and teachings be undertaken. (shrink)

Despite the prevalence of the terms utilitarianism and utilitarian in the health care and health policy literature, anecdotal evidence suggests that authors are often not fully aware of the diversity of utilitarian theories, their principles, and implications. Further, it seems that authors often categorically reject utilitarianism under the assumption that it violates individual rights. The tendency of act utilitarianism to neglect individual rights is attenuated, however, by the diminishing marginal utility of wealth and the disutility of a protest (...) by those who are disadvantaged. In practice, act utilitarians tend to introduce moral rules and preserve traditional rules. At the same time, the tenability of rule utilitarianism is limited because it ultimately collapses into act utilitarianism or a deontological theory. Negative utilitarianism is a viable utilitarian variant only if we accept complete aversion to suffering, ie, if we disregard any forgone opportunities to increase pleasure. Finally, the adoption of preference utilitarianism requires us to accept the subjectivity of individual claims which may be perceived as unfair. (shrink)

This paper introduces the model of Utilitarian Principlism as a framework for crisis healthcare ethics. In modern Western medicine, during non-crisis times, principlism provides the four guiding principles in biomedical ethics—autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice; autonomy typically emerges as the decisive principle. The physician–patient relationship is a deontological construct in which the physician’s primary duty is to the individual patient and the individual patient is paramount. For this reason, we term the non-crisis ethical framework that guides modern medicine Deontological (...) Principlism. During times of crisis, resources become scarce, standards of care become dynamic, and public health ethics move to the forefront. Healthcare providers are forced to work in non-ideal conditions, and interactions with individual patients must be considered in the context of the crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced healthcare to shift to a more utilitarian framework with a greater focus on promoting the health of communities and populations. This paper puts forth the notion of Utilitarian Principlism as a framework for crisis healthcare ethics. We discuss each of the four principles from a utilitarian perspective and use clinical vignettes, based on real cases from the COVID-19 pandemic, for illustrative purposes. We explore how Deontological Principlism and Utilitarian Principlism are two ends of a spectrum, and the implications to healthcare as we emerge from the pandemic. (shrink)

Eschatological beliefs have matured alongside both biblical composition and Christian history. This evolution can be traced using cultural evolutionary studies. The process reflects attempts to adapt to new conditions and challenges—sometimes giving place to more focused views, but also sometimes to failures and dysfunctional forms or fruitless variations. It becomes a theological duty to assess this evolution better. The key element is the reception of these eschatological beliefs, to discern what expressions of them are more helpful in encouraging Christian fidelity, (...) coping with distress, and engaging with individual and societal challenges. In this article, we outline a research programme that links eschatology to anthropology, and that tries to analyse beliefs according to state‐of‐the‐art methods, such as evolutionary cultural studies and research on the believing process. We also contribute a case study based on the concept of hell to test the proposed approach. (shrink)

Utilitarian ideas in nineteenth-centuryAmerica have been given short shrift inmodern historical and philosophicalscholarship. Collecting the relevant publishedwork together in one place is an essentialstarting point for any serious investigation of American utilitarians andtheir critics. James Crimmins and Mark Spencer have made an expertselection from scattered sources of around 60 important articles andessays. These include treatments of Bentham by his friend John Neal,editor of The Yankee, and commentaries on John Stuart Mill gatheredfrom rare American journals. There are also discussions of (...) utilitarianjurisprudence by the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, andpieces by many other writers. This collection, with its substantialeditorial introduction, will be vital reading for historians of ideas,scholars of philosophy and political thought, and any one elseinterested in the fate of utilitarianism in America. (shrink)

For every 2-person bargaining problem, the Nash bargaining solution selects a point that is “between” the relative utilitarian point and the relative egalitarian point. Also, it is “between” the utilitarian and egalitarian points. I improve these bounds. I also derive a new characterization of the Nash solution which combines a bounds property together with strong individual rationality and an axiom which is new to Nash’s bargaining model, the sandwich axiom. The sandwich axiom is a weakening of Nash’s IIA.

Two distinct and perhaps mutually exclusive understandings of utilitarianism have emerged in the ethics literature. Utilitarianism is typically regarded as an approach to determine ethicality by focusing on whether or not actions produce the greater good, but has also been conceptualized as a set of traits to which individuals might be predisposed. This paper is designed to clarify the meaning and implications of such utilitarian traits as “results-oriented,” “innovative,” and “a winner.” Although the Janus-headed model of ethical theory from (...) which these traits emerged had been acknowledged by its developer as possibly misrepresenting typical views of utilitarianism, much research using these traits appears to have been conducted without clear recognition of this. If the conceptual foundation underpinning hypothesis development is disconnected from the measure used to test them, then little support for relevant predictions should emerge. A review of the literature which featured utilitarian traits generally confirmed this. This paper also explored the origins and emergence of these traits and suggested that existing evidence that these measure utilitarian ethical predispositions is not especially persuasive. Understanding what utilitarian traits do not assess is critical in order for knowledge about this potentially useful measure to advance. (shrink)

Along 19th and 20th centuries, art became a sort of new religion, sometimes coexisting peacefully with the institutional one, sometimes trying to provide what the institutional religion was not able to provide any more. Nowadays, art has adopted many of the solutions, topics and theories that theology has handled since it was born. Arthur C. Danto treats art as a reality whose history is over (and so, a escathological reality) and also as a metaxological (metaxy=between) reality dwelling between two realms. (...) Thus, we cannot decide by pure perceptive means whether something is art or not. This consideration has important consequences for art theory. (shrink)

While heightening the nihilistic tension underlying the discourse of Richard Kearney, I highlight the positive contribution his book The God Who May Be makes to the debate concerning the need for a postmodern revitalization of religious symbolism. I argue for three qualifications of Kearney's argument, suggesting, in response to Kearney's exclusionary approach to the God who “neither is nor is not but may be,” a God whose possibility for meaningfulness arises as an “eschatological theogony” from out of the chaos (confusion (...) and openness) of contemporary religious symbolism. Arguing that such a radical reenvisioning of God must be tempered and given meaning through reentering and reaffirming onto‐theology in a qualified (hermeneutical) sense, I sketch a possible renewal of meaning for the traditional Christian parousia‐concept as a hermeneutical circle between Hegel's systematic closure of Western metaphysics and Heidegger's deconstructive appropriation of the hidden possibilities of presence within the onto‐theological tradition. (shrink)

One of the core issues in contemporary political philosophy is concerned with `political obligation.' Stated in an overly simplified way, the question being asked when one investigates political obligation is, "What, if anything, do citizens owe to their government and how are these obligations generated if they do exist?" The majority of political philosophers investigating this issue agree that a political obligation is a moral requirement to act in certain ways concerning political matters. Despite this agreement about the general nature (...) of what is being searched for, a broad division has arisen between political obligation theorists - there are some who take political obligations to actually exist and there are some who take there to be no general political obligation. While there is debate within the camp defending political obligation about what it is that generates the obligations, the common core of all "defender theories" is the fundamental idea that one has a moral requirement to support and obey the political institutions of one's country. Despite utilitarianism's status as one of the major ethical theories, historically, it has largely been dismissed by theorists concerned with political obligation. Within the contemporary debate it is generally accepted that utilitarianism cannot adequately accommodate a robust theory of political obligation. The overarching objective of this dissertation is to challenge this general dismissal of a utilitarian account and to build upon the two accounts which have been developed in offering a robust utilitarian theory of political obligation which can be considered a competitor to the other contemporary theories. However, as this utilitarian account of political obligation develops, the possibility will also emerge for a non-antagonistic relationship between the utilitarian theory on offer and the contemporary political obligation debate. The moral reasons posited by the traditional theories of political obligation can be included in and accommodated by my utilitarian account. The utilitarian account of political obligation can accept that there are many types of reasons explaining why broad expectations concerning individual and group behavior are created, and each type of reason can be understood as supporting the utilitarian claim that there are moral reasons for following the laws and supporting legitimate political authorities. Taken all together, my arguments will take the form of a three tiered response to the prevailing opinion that any utilitarian attempt to account for political obligations is doomed. The first tier contends that the utilitarian can consistently claim that there are moral reasons to follow the law. This is not a particularly strong claim, but it is one which has been denied by the vast majority of political theorists. The second tier of my argument addresses this apparent issue by contending that even the traditional deontological accounts of political obligation are not offering more than this. Lastly, it is contended that, given the contingent features of humans, the strength of the utilitarian political obligations is comparable to other accounts' analyses of the obligations. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These "technological futurisms" have arisen from significant advances in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology and are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophical and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long (...) historical tradition of technological dreaming. Michael Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett's argument arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based around the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann. Throughout, the author highlights points of correspondence and divergence between technological futurisms and the Judeo-Christian understanding of the future. (shrink)

Every tenable ethical theory must have an account of moral virtue and vice. Julia Driver has performed a great service for utilitarians by developing a utilitarian account of moral virtue that complements a broader act-based utilitarian ethical theory. In her view, a moral virtue is a psychological disposition that systematically produces good states of affairs in a particular possible world. My goal is to construct a more plausible version of Driver’s account that nevertheless maintains its basic integrity. I (...) aim to accomplish this goal by developing four problems concerning admiration and luck for Driver’s account. Subsequently, I modify the account in a way that partially or entirely mitigates each difficulty. Finally, I attempt to undermine Driver’s rationale for rejecting the modification and explore how well the modified account of moral virtue fits with utilitarian accounts of right action. (shrink)

In this study, Brian Carrier provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that seismic language plays within the Matthean Gospel narrative. After reconstructing what connotations seismic language likely carried in Matthew's cultural context, the author utilizes an historically informed author-oriented narrative criticism that is complemented with redaction criticism to analyze the relationships that Matthew's seismic references display with regards to each other and to the overall narrative. This analysis leads to the conclusion that Matthew's seismic references collectively indicate that the (...) life, death, and resurrection of Jesus together represent the partial fulfillment of the Old Testament eschatological Day of the Lord. (shrink)