The New Testament can and should exercise authority over our moral thought at both general and specific levels. Yet there remains a work of moral judgment that is properly relative to agents and situations, and this is what shapes the priorities that prevail in given periods. That is why it is more difficult for us [...]
Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category
Oliver O’Donovan: In Praise of Relativism?
Posted in Ethics, History, Oliver O'Donovan, Relativism, Scripture on December 14, 2009 | 4 Comments »
What I Don’t Love About Rorty
Posted in Ethics, G.W.F. Hegel, Relativism, Richard Rorty, Robert Brandom on December 1, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Brandom’s favorite philosopher is Hegel, and in this area the most salient difference between Kant and Hegel is that Hegel does not think philosophy can rise above the social practices of its time and judge their desirability by reference to something that is not itself an alternative social practice. For Hegel as for Brandom, there are [...]
Ethics: Description or Judgment?
Posted in Ethics, Oliver O'Donovan on October 24, 2009 | 2 Comments »
“Ethics” is not the name of a descriptive science, like “chemistry” or “sociology”. There is no slice of reality in which it specializes. Ethics is the explication of the logic of practical reason that directs our conduct, individual and collective. It terminates not in a descriptive judgment about how the world lies, or a slice [...]
Aquinas the Pragmatist?
Posted in Ethics, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Oliver O'Donovan, Pragmatism, St. Thomas Aquinas on October 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It is worth pausing to make comparison with a similar moral antinomy, much discussed in the Scholastic period: Is it right to obey a mistaken conscience? On the one hand, obeying one’s conscious is, apparently by definition, something it is always right to do. On the other hand, a mistaken conscience is, again by definition, [...]
Red Skies and Gnawing Questions
Posted in Atheism, Climate Change, Environment, Ethics, Judgment, Sydney, William Butler Yeats on October 2, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Was it just me, or did anyone else notice that the tongue-in-cheek references to ‘Armageddon’ and ‘The End of the World’ in Sydney on 23rd of September didn’t quite have their tongues completely in their cheeks?
As the dust storm swept through our city, a bunch of my friends, and a bunch of stuff I read [...]
On Money and Privacy
Posted in 1960s, Ethics, Freedom, Howard Hughes, Joan Didion, Judgment, Money, New Testament, Paul, Privacy on September 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We are fascinated with privacy. Gossip magazines, stories about dual identities and secret affairs, and TV shows like Lie to Me and Big Brother disclose this fascination of ours pretty obviously. There is something alluring about the possibility of a secret identity, a secret relationship, secret passions, a secret past. At the same time there [...]
Radiohead on Hiding From Your Choices
Posted in Ethics, Judgment, Music, Radiohead on September 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
When I’m at the pearly gates
This’ll be on my videotape
My videotape
My videotape
Mephistopheles is just beneath
And he’s reaching up to grab me
This is one for the good days
And I have it all here in
Red, blue, green
Red, blue, green
You are my centre when I spin away
Out of control on videotape
On videotape
On videotape
On videotape
This is my way of [...]
Charles Taylor on What Makes Christianity Unique
Posted in Catholicism, Charles Taylor, Ethics, Grace, Teleology on September 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The paradox of Christianity, in relation to early religion, is that on one hand, it seems to assert the unconditional benevolence of God towards humans; there is none of the ambivalence of early Divinity in this respect; and yet it redefines our ends so as to take us beyond flourishing.
– Charles Taylor, A Secular Age [...]
Cornel West on Relativism and Scepticism
Posted in Apologetics, Cornel West, Epistemology, Ethics, Relativism, Scepticism on September 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Yet to give in to sophomoric relativism (“Anything goes” or “All views are equally valid”) is a failure of nerve, and to succumb to wholesale scepticism (“There is no truth”) is a weakness of the will and imagination.
– Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader (1999), p. xvii
Moral relativism (‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not a fixed, [...]
Ethics With a Telescope
Posted in Colin Gunton, Ethics, Oliver O'Donovan, Paul, Spirit on September 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The distinction between flesh and spirit in not dualistic but eschatological. Paul’s contrast between flesh and spirit is not between matter and mind but between the old, fallen humanity of Adam and the new humanity of Christ. ‘Flesh’ refers to the fallen humanity; ’spirit’ to the redeemed, eschatological humanity which has already taken shape in [...]
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