Divine Motivation theory is a major contribution both to the philosophy of religion, particularly the philosophy of religious ethics, and to general ethical theory. It is demanding reading, because it is long and complex and about difficult issues. It is also rewarding, because it is suggestive and highly original, written and argued with philosophical intelligence and disciplined care, and rich in systematic connections and explanations of them.

Renowned scholar Robert Adams explores the relation between religion and ethics through a comprehensive philosophical account of a theistically-based framework for ethics. Adams' framework begins with the good rather than the right, and with excellence rather than usefulness. He argues that loving the excellent, of which adoring God is a clear example, is the most fundamental aspect of a life well lived. Developing his original and detailed theory, Adams contends that devotion, the sacred, grace, martyrdom, worship, (...) vocation, faith, and other concepts drawn from religious ethics have been sorely overlooked in moral philosophy and can enrich the texture of ethical thought. (shrink)

The distinguished philosopher Robert M. Adams presents a major work on virtue, which is once again a central topic in ethical thought. A Theory of Virtue is a systematic, comprehensive framework for thinking about the moral evaluation of character, proposing that virtue is chiefly a matter of being for what is good, and that virtues must be intrinsically excellent and not just beneficial or useful.

I have argued elsewhere that there are facts, and possibilities, that are not purely qualitative. In a second paper, however, I have argued that all possibilities are purely qualitative except insofar as they involve individuals that actually exist. In particular, I have argued that there are no thisnesses of nonactual individuals (where the thisness of x is the property of being x, or of being identical with x), and that there are no singular propositions about nonactual individuals (where a singular (...) proposition about an individual x is a proposition that involves or refers to x directly, perhaps by having x or the thisness of x as a constituent, and not merely by way of x's qualitative properties or relations to other individuals). I am also inclined to believe that there are not yet any thisnesses of individuals that will exist but do not yet, nor any singular propositions about future individuals--and, hence, that all possibilities are purely qualitative except insofar as they involve individuals that already do exist or have existed (counting timeless individuals, if any, as already existing). This thesis about the relation of time to thisness is the subject of the present paper, in which the conclusions of my previous papers will be presupposed. (shrink)

Adams presents an in-depth interpretation of three important parts of Leibniz's metaphysics, thoroughly grounded in the texts as well as in philosophical analysis and critique. The three areas discussed are the metaphysical part of Leibniz's philosophy of logic, his essentially theological treatment of the central issues of ontology, and his theory of substance. Adams' work helps make sense of one of the great classic systems of modern philosophy.

Robert Merrihew Adams has been a leader in renewing philosophical respect for the idea that moral obligation may be founded on the commands of God. This collection of Adams' essays, two of which are previously unpublished, draws from his extensive writings on philosophical theology that discuss metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical issues surrounding the concept of God--whether God exists or not, what God is or would be like, and how we ought to relate ourselves to such a (...) being. Adams studies the relation between religion and ethics, delving into an analysis of moral arguments for theistic belief. In several essays, he applies contemporary studies in the metaphysics of individuality, possibility and necessity, and counterfactual conditionals to issues surrounding the existence of God and problems of evil. (shrink)

The paper is an interpretation and defense of Kant's conception of things in themselves as noumena, along the following lines. Noumena are transempirical realities. As such they have several important roles in Kant's critical philosophy (Section 1). Our theoretical faculties cannot obtain enough content for a conception of noumena that would assure their real possibility as objects, but can establish their merely formal logical possibility (Sections 2-3). Our practical reason, however, grounds belief in the real possibility of some noumena, and (...) even knowledge of the noumenal reality of a free will (Section 4). Section 5 defends Kant's conception of noumena as a good piece of philosophy, particularly with respect to its distinction between logical and real possibility. Are noumena numerically identical with experienced (phenomenal) objects? Kantian principles yield the answers that human selves are, God isn't, and it's harder to say about bodies (Section 6). (shrink)

This essay presents a version of divine command metaethics inspired by recent work of Donnellan, Kripke, and Putnam on the relation between necessity and conceptual analysis. What we can discover a priori, by conceptual analysis, about the nature of ethical wrongness is that wrongness is the property of actions that best fills a certain role. What property that is cannot be discovered by conceptual analysis. But I suggest that theists should claim it is the property of being contrary to the (...) commands of a loving God. This claim, if true, is a necessary but not an a priori truth. It also is a claim, not about the way in which some believers use the word 'wrong,' but about the wrongness that virtually everyone talks about. This position is distinguished from the author's previous views, and from a holistic development of the latter proposed by Jeffrey Stout. (shrink)

Moral arguments were the type of theistic argument most characteristic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recently they have become one of philosophy’s abandoned farms. The fields are still fertile, but they have not been cultivated systematically since the latest methods came in. The rambling Victorian farmhouse has not been kept up as well as similar structures, and people have not been stripping the sentimental gingerbread off the porches to reveal the clean lines of argument. This paper is (...) intended to contribute to the remedy of this neglect. It will deal with quite a number of arguments, because I think we can understand them better if we place them in relation to each other. This will not leave time to be as subtle, historically or philosophically, as I would like to be, but I hope I will be able to prove something more than my own taste for Victoriana. (shrink)

In one of his precritical works, Kant defends, as “the only possible” way of demonstrating the existence of God, an argument from the nature of possibility. Whereas Leibniz had argued that possibilities must be thought by God in order to obtain the ontological standing that they need, Kant argued that at least the most fundamental possibilities must be exemplified in God. Here Kant’s argument is critically examined in comparison with its Leibnizian predecessor, and it is suggested that an argument combining (...) the strengths of both of them has much to be said for it. (shrink)

The paper is an interpretation and defense of Kant’s conception of things in themselves as noumena, along the following lines. Noumena are transempirical realities. As such they have several important roles in Kant’s critical philosophy (Section 1). Our theoretical faculties cannot obtain enough content for a conception of noumena that would assure their real possibility as objects, but can establish their merely formal logical possibility (Sections 2-3). Our practical reason, however, grounds belief in the real possibility of some noumena, and (...) even knowledge of the noumenal reality of a free will (Section 4). Section 5 defends Kant’s conception of noumena as a good piece of philosophy, particularly with respect to its distinction between logical and real possibility. Are noumena numerically identical with experienced (phenomenal) objects? Kantian principles yield the answers that human selves are, God isn’t, and it’s harder to say about bodies (Section 6). (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the virtual certainty that much of what we must prize in loving any human person would not have existed in a world that did not contain much of the evil that has occurred in the history of the actual world. It is argued that the appropriate response to this fact must be some form of ambivalence, but that lovers have reason to prefer an ambivalence that contextualizes regretted evils in the framework of what we (...) welcome in human life. (shrink)

Versions of this paper have been read to philosophical colloquia at Occidental College and California State University, Fullerton. I am indebted to participants in those discussions, to students in many of my classes, and particularly to Marilyn McCord Adams, Van Harvey, Thomas Kselman, William Laserow, and James Muyskens, for helpful comment on the ideas which are contained in this paper (or which would have been, had it not been for their criticisms).

The place of self-concern in Christian love is studied, beginning with Fénelon's extreme claim that in perfect love for God one would desire nothing for its own sake except that God's will be done. This view is criticized. A distinction is made between self-interest (desire for one's own good for its own sake) and other sorts of self-concern; and it is argued that self-concern has an important role in the Christian virtues, but that self-interest has a less important role than (...) other sorts of self-concern. Finally, it is argued that Eros and Agape are not opposites, but Agape includes a certain sort of Eros. (shrink)

Leibniz often speaks of “corporeal substances.” According to many texts a monad and its organic body are both constituents of a single corporeal substance. This chapter explores the relations among them, and argues for an interpretation of Leibniz's corporeal substances as exhaustively constituted by relations of harmony among simple substances, and thus as consistent with his idealism. It argues also that after 1706, when it came to seem doubtful to both Leibniz and his contemporaries that such an interpretation could provide (...) adequately for the strong unity that all agreed a corporeal substance must have, he tended to back away from the notion of corporeal substance rather than abandon his view of the world as composed ultimately of monads. (shrink)

Argues that later developments in Leibniz's thinking about the relation between perfection and existence provide a more promising basis for a version of his ontological argument for theism – a version that is substantively metaphysical rather than purely logical in nature. These developments involve viewing existence not as one of the qualities into which an essence may be analyzed, but as entailing a higher‐order property or status that an essence may have. The revised argument rests on a strong form of (...) the principle of sufficient reason and on the thesis that a bias in favor of existence is built into the foundations of ontology. (shrink)

Influential interpreters have held that Leibniz's extensive use of ostensibly Aristotelian concepts of substantial form and primary matter during his “middle years” present a philosophy that is less purely a monadology or form of idealism than it later became. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that Leibniz's substantial forms are assimilated not only to forces but also to souls and that interesting arguments of the middle years, in which Leibniz criticizes Descartes's conception of corporeal substance, leave no room for “primary (...) matter” to be anything more than an aspect of perceiving substances. (shrink)

The fundamental principle of Leibniz's idealism is that “there is nothing in things except simple substances, and in them perception and appetite.” He held that bodies are not simple, and therefore must be constructed out of the simple, perceiving substances. He held indeed that bodies are aggregates of substances, and also that they are merely phenomena. Leibniz's consistency and constancy in holding these two theses are defended in this chapter against highly influential objections. It considers in what sense he regarded (...) bodies as phenomena, and why he thought their being aggregates of substances a reason for rather than against counting them as phenomena. (shrink)

Many interpreters have supposed that the root of contingency in Leibniz's thought is that it is contingent rather than necessary that God chooses to create the best possible world. It is far from clear, however, that Leibniz believed this. This chapter argues that Leibniz did believe two theories of contingency: one based on the notion of a thing's being possible in itself whether or not a perfectly wise and good God could choose it, and one based on an identification of (...) necessity with provability, where an infinite analysis does not count as a proof. It emerges that Leibniz's conception of possible worlds is not exactly the same as that now used in possible worlds semantics. (shrink)

The relation between primitive and derivative forces may be the hardest problem about the relation between Leibniz's physics and his metaphysics. He holds that derivative forces are modifications of primitive forces, but also that physical forces, which he classifies as derivative forces, belong to bodies, which are aggregates, whereas primitive forces belong to unextended perceiving substances and constitute their essence. This chapter addresses this problem, arguing that a major part of it can be solved on the supposition that physical events (...) are only phenomena, and hence ultimately determined by modifications of the primitive forces of perceiving substances. (shrink)