Abstract

Robert Adams has written a most impressive book. To say that it is the major philosophical contribution to theocentric ethics in recent years, given moral philosophers’ general avoidance of religious topics, would be grossly inadequate praise. Nor would that judgment adequately convey the book’s fresh and subtle contributions to many more familiar topics in philosophical ethics, from the nature of ethical language to the virtues to the role of civil liberties in a pluralistic society. Most impressive, as well, are the fairness and precision, as well as the erudition, displayed in Adams’s discussions of other philosophers and religious thinkers, past and present.