How should a liberal state treat its citizens who subscribe to religion and enjoy its component goods? This thesis explores the possibility of reconciling religion and justice. It argues for (1) a proper understanding of religion and the kind of good it constitutes; (2) the possibility of a liberal theory of justice which takes fully into account the claims of believers; and (3) an arrangement of social institutions which protects the engagement of citizens with faith (...) with the goods of religion. There have been several recent liberal approaches to the question which promise to accommodate the claims of believers in societies characterized by pluralism. They aim at the coexistence of citizens with faith with other citizens who are either non-adherents or even opposed to religion. However, so this thesis argues, these approaches are not successful. In particular, they fail to establish more than a mere doctrine of non-discrimination against believers. As a result, these liberal frameworks fail to address the central question of how liberal justice ought to treat religious goods. In reaction, some theorists of religion have claimed that there is a deep incompatibility between liberalism and a proper understanding of what a life devoted to religion is. In contrast, this thesis proposes a novel approach which starts from a unified view of religion, and proceeds to develop a liberal framework to accommodate the claims of believers. It argues that whilst non-discrimination is obviously necessary and fundamental, a more ambitious, proper understanding of religious goods and religious needs can contribute to a more coherent liberal strategy towards citizens with faith. It could also help motivate social policies and institutions to treat believers and non-believers in a just and fair manner. (shrink)

How should a liberal state treat its citizens who subscribe to religion and enjoy its component goods? This thesis explores the possibility of reconciling religion and justice. It argues for (1) a proper understanding of religion and the kind of good it constitutes; (2) the possibility of a liberal theory of justice which takes fully into account the claims of believers; and (3) an arrangement of social institutions which protects the engagement of citizens with faith (...) with the goods of religion. There have been several recent liberal approaches to the question which promise to accommodate the claims of believers in societies characterized by pluralism. They aim at the coexistence of citizens with faith with other citizens who are either non-adherents or even opposed to religion. However, so this thesis argues, these approaches are not successful. In particular, they fail to establish more than a mere doctrine of non-discrimination against believers. As a result, these liberal frameworks fail to address the central question of how liberal justice ought to treat religious goods. In reaction, some theorists of religion have claimed that there is a deep incompatibility between liberalism and a proper understanding of what a life devoted to religion is. In contrast, this thesis proposes a novel approach which starts from a unified view of religion, and proceeds to develop a liberal framework to accommodate the claims of believers. It argues that whilst non-discrimination is obviously necessary and fundamental, a more ambitious, proper understanding of religious goods and religious needs can contribute to a more coherent liberal strategy towards citizens with faith. It could also help motivate social policies and institutions to treat believers and non-believers in a just and fair manner. (shrink)

In this article, the authors explore how technology has helped erode society’s conceptions of justice. Law, via juridification, has replaced the concept of justice with one of efficiency. The authors argue that this has been largely a result of the destruction of society’s common story or vision and the introduction of the computer and the Internet as tools enabling technique to replace that story. They offer a perspective on how justice operated in traditional societies, using the Judeo-Christian (...) religious tradition. Finally, the authors ask what might be done to recover the best features of what has been lost and create a new common story to help guide society’s conception of justice. (shrink)

The recent posthumous publication of John Rawls's undergraduate thesis 'A Brief Inquiry Into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community' constitutes a welcome opportunity to examine the relationships between Rawls's religious commitments and his political philosophy. In this essay, informed by a complete examination of Rawls's archived papers at Harvard, I set out some of these commitments, trace their development over time, and indicate some of the ways they find expression in Rawls's political (...) thought. In the 1990s Rawls characterized his life's work as addressed to a question 'essentially religious in nature': Can human nature be redeemed? It is perhaps, then, no surprise that reading his work against the background of his, eventually non-theistic, religious commitments and concerns helpfully casts it in a new light. (shrink)

Equity and efficiency -- A society within a society -- Thomas Aquinas : the interplay of natural and positive law -- William of Ockham : repudiation of power and wealth -- Martin Luther's redistributive theology of the Lord's supper -- John Calvin and the challenge of inequality -- Triumph of the economy.

This article embarked on a critical evaluation of religious leadership and ecological consciousness in Africa, using the case of the Nigerian Christian religious community. The article argued that the concept of ecological justice lacks strong theological conceptualisation in the Nigerian ecclesiastical community. Therefore, Ime Okopido’s argument in favour of stewardship for the involvement of religious leadership in the pursuit of ecological and socioeconomic justice served as the starting point for this engagement. However, such engagement of the religious leadership (...) and of the faithful should include developing ecological theological concepts, such as value for community, which are relevant to the context and resonate with indigenous cultures. Embarking on ecological activism, a change of lifestyles and finding other concrete ways of protecting the environment and biodiversity could ameliorate the crisis of ecological and socio-economic injustice in Africa by promoting, in particular, the praxis of value for community. (shrink)

The ideas of love and justice have received a lot of attention within theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience in recent years. In theology, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love have become a widely discussed topic again. In philosophy, psychology and neuroscience research into the emotions has led to a renewed interest in the many kinds and forms of love. And in moral philosophy, sociology, and political science questions of justice have been a central issue of (...) debate for decades. But many views are controversial, and important questions remain unanswered. In this volume the authors focus on issues that take the relations between the two topics into account. The contributions move from basic questions about the relationships between love and justice through specific, but central problems of a just practice of love to social and political issues of the practice of justice in today's society. Contributors:Richard Amesbury, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Trisha M. Famisaran, Thomas Jared Farmer, Everett Fullmer, Duncan Gale, Kirsten Gerdes, Deidre Green, Eric E. Hall, W. David Hall, Trevor W. Kimball, Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Richard Livingston, Thaddeus Metz, Anselm K. Min, Rob Overy-Brown, Raymond E. Perrier, Panu-Matti Pöykkö, Stephen J. Pope, T. Raja Rosenhagen, Jonathan Russell, Regina M. Schwarz, Roberto Sirvent, Justina M. Torrance, Nicholas Wolterstorff. (shrink)

There is a famous saying, whose origin is uncertain, that no good deed goes unpunished. Although not cited by him, this was no doubt the thought that inspired George Mavrodes’s (1986) well-known article “Religion and the Queerness of Morality.” In it he argued that although not logically incoherent, a certain sort of world in which moral obligations existed would be “absurd . . . a crazy world” (Mavrodes 1986, 581). The world he had in mind was what he called (...) “Russellian,” after a notorious passage in Bertrand Russell’s essay “The Free Man’s Worship” (Russell 1903). There, Russell portrayed us as living in a wholly materialistic universe governed by impersonal forces and “accidental collocations of atoms,” with no objective purpose or meaning to existence. The greatest of human achievements would ultimately be buried “beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.” We could only, concluded Russell, safely build the “soul’s habitation” [sic] on a “firm foundation of unyielding despair” (Russell 1903, 32). In such a world, according to Mavrodes, the performance of moral obligations does, at least sometimes, lead to no net Russellian benefit, that is, any benefit to the agent that is possible within a Russellian world. Indeed, such actions sometimes confer a net Russellian loss. “We have,” he says, “moral obligations whose fulfillment will result in a net loss of good to the one who fulfils them” (Mavrodes 1986, 581). That such a world would be “queer,” “crazy” and “absurd,” according to Mavrodes, should only strike those who believe that moral obligations are wholly objective and run deep in the fabric of reality. He does not purport to address the sceptic, the subjectivist, the expressivist, the nihilist or the existentialist. His aim is at those who believe in a rational moral.. (shrink)

Parents are generally viewed as having broad discretion when it comes to the decisions they make for their children. With the exceptions of outright abuse and neglect, society does not interfere with many of those decisions. Nowhere is parental decision making considered more sacrosanct than in the area of the religious upbringing of children. Parents are assumed to have the right to instill their particular religious beliefs and practices—beliefs and practices that may include intolerant, sexist, misogynistic, or racist ideas—provided that (...) this inculcation does not harm the child. (shrink)

Jocelyn Maclure | : Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition is a major contribution to the normative literature on minority rights. I nonetheless suggest that liberal culturalism as a normative theory, even in Patten’s sophisticated version, is ill suited to deal with the challenges related to the status of religion in the public sphere that are so prevalent in contemporary democracies. In addition, I submit that Patten did not supply a fully convincing answer to the argument that liberal egalitarianism, well understood, (...) is capacious enough to secure fair terms of social cooperation for members of cultural minorities, making the language of “cultural rights” and “cultural recognition” superfluous. | : Le livre Equal Recognition d’Alan Patten contribue de façon majeure aux travaux de philosophie politique sur les droits des minorités culturelles. Je suggère néanmoins que la théorie normative qu’est le « culturalisme libéral », y compris dans la version sophistiquée défendue par Patten, n’est pas outillée pour penser les omniprésents défis concernant le statut de la religion dans l’espace public. De plus, j’avance que Patten n’a pas été en mesure d’offrir une réponse pleinement satisfaisante à ceux qui soutiennent que l’égalitarisme libéral bien compris est en mesure d’offrir des termes de coopération sociale justes aux membres des minorités culturelles, sans devoir être complété par des « droits culturels » ou par le langage de la « reconnaissance » des cultures. (shrink)

ResumenEn la ética del discurso, Habermas afirma que la solidaridad es el reverso de la moralidad. Sin embargo, en 2013 rechaza esta tesis y ahora es vista como un concepto ético-político. Según Andrew Pierce, el giro post-secular de Habermas explica este cambio, pues él se habría vuelto escéptico hacia la razón secular. Habermas ha tratado de encontrar un recurso en la religión en lugar de la moralidad para sustentar la solidaridad. Pierce afirma que este movimiento es innecesario. En cierta medida, (...) Pierce tiene razón: Habermas no debería haber rechazado la tesis del reverso, en el sentido de que todavía la moral tiene una relación con la solidaridad. Sin embargo, el argumento de Pierce no es totalmente satisfactorio, en la medida en que existen buenas razones para proporcionar una revisión de la tesis. Basándose en estudios recientes sobre post-secularismo, el artículo desarrolla una noción de moralidad que puede tener la solidaridad como su reverso.Palabras clave: Habermas; solidaridad; post-secular; moralidad. (shrink)

The discourse over secularization has undergone a pronounced change. In this context the debate over the social role of religions in post-modern societies started again about ten years ago and is still going on. This debate is also underway in political theory and political philosophy. Authors like Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer and Gianni Vattimo are key players in this debate. On the one hand, liberals such as Rorty tend to reduce religions to the private sphere. On the other (...) hand, a post-secular model has developed over the last decade. Habermas is probably the most well-known of these academics. In his view, deliberative democracy needs sources for motivation as an antidote, and religions could provide such a moral resource. The paper wants to explore this discourse about the social role of religion. This analysis will focus on the contribution of religions to the debate on justice. It will be argued, that religions could be interpreted as comprehensive social practices. More precisely, religions can be regarded as cultural practices through which people live and interpret their lives. The common characteristic of all religions is that they establish a comprehensive practice that enables discussion and reflection on a transcendent dimension of reality. In plural societies, in which different forms of reasons play an important role, religions as social practices could be one important social factor, especially when we are reflecting about the sources of global justice. (shrink)

Continuing Keith Ward's series on comparative religion, this book deals with religious views of human nature and destiny. The beliefs of six major traditions are presented: the view of Advaita Vedanta that there is one Supreme Self, unfolding into the illusion of individual existence; the Vaishnava belief that there is an infinite number of souls, whose destiny is to be released from material embodiment; the Buddhist view that there is no eternal Self; the Abrahamic belief that persons are essentially (...) embodied souls; and the materialistic position that persons are complex material organisms. Indian ideas of rebirth, karma, and liberation from samsara are critically analysed and compared with semitic belief in the intermediate state of Sheol, Purgatory or Paradise, the Final Judgement and the resurrection of the body. The impact of scientific theories of cosmic and biological evolution on religious beliefs is assessed, and a form of 'soft emergent materialism' is defended, with regard to the soul. In this context, a Christian doctrine of original sin and atonement is presented, stressing the idea of soterial, as opposed to forensic, justice. Finally, a Christian view of personal immortality and the 'end of all things' is developed in conversation with Jewish and Muslim beliefs about judgement and resurrection. (shrink)

The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.

Review of Michael Palmer & Stanley M. Burgess (eds.), The Willey-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice , (Oxford: Willey-Blackwell, 2012).

Leading philosopher of religion D. Z. Phillips argues that intellectuals need not see their task as being for or against religion, but as one of understanding it. What stands in the way of this task are certain methodological assumptions about what enquiry into religion must be. Beginning with Bernard Williams on Greek gods, Phillips goes on to examine these assumptions in the work of Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Frazer, Tylor, Marett, Freud, Durkheim, Le;vy-Bruhl, Berger and Winch. The result (...) exposes confusion, but also gives logical space to religious belief without advocating personal acceptance of that belief, and shows how the academic study of religion may return to the contemplative task of doing conceptual justice to the world. Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation extends in important ways D. Z. Phillips' seminal 1976 book Religion Without Explanation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, anthropology, sociology and theology. (shrink)

A radical suspicion regarding the value of productivity figures centrally in the work of Herbert Marcuse. In his view, socially necessary productivity historically constituted the primary hindrance to achieving human potential. In Eros and Civilization he argues, “The work that created and enlarged the material basis of civilization was chiefly labor, alienated labor, painful and miserable—and still is.”1 He makes a similar point in One-Dimensional Man, but in more hopeful terms, when he suggests that “truth and a true human existence” (...) stand just beyond “the realm of necessity.”2 Thus, on the one hand, the technological advancement of industry opens the…. (shrink)

Previous research on religion and helping has left some questions unanswered. In the present study, participants expressed willingness to help groups of people in need, and this after having been religiously versus non-religiously stimulated. The activation of religious context increased the willingness to help, but only the homeless. Orthodox religious people tended to consider the targets responsible for their problem, an association partially mediated by the belief in a just world for other. Symbolic thinking was associated with willingness for (...) helping, an association partially mediated by the belief in ultimate justice. Results suggest a limited and conditional prosociality as a consequence of religion. (shrink)

This book gathers a variety of illuminating essays by an internationally known scholar of religion and ecology. New writings on technology, facing death, and an intellectual autobiography continue Gottlieb’s unique ability to connect collective struggles for a just and caring society with personal strivings for wisdom and compassion.

Although aesthetics began with an interest in a teleological order, the classical question was largely disparaged and rejected in mainstream academic circles by the twentieth century. The two dogmas of musical modernism were the presumption of formalism and the assertion of aestheticism. Historically, philosophers defending the objectivity of aesthetic value focused on the question of Beauty per se. But what if beauty is descriptive of something else? Our conviction of justice runs deeper than convictions of beauty. This essay explores (...) the significance of human anticipation concerning justice and how moral conviction relates to music as an encounter with teleological convictions. Music is fundamentally an individualized philosophical experience engaging the question of order, based upon a universal teleological presupposition. We do not find the arts to be meaningful because we believe them to be beautiful; we ascribe beauty to that which we find to be deeply meaningful--a way-it-should-be. (shrink)

It remains the case that economic ethics is still an underdeveloped specialization within the discipline of religious ethics. Contemporary commentators have lamented the still emergent status of economic ethics and recently some have begun to point out new directions for this area of moral reflection. Part of the problem has been the historical fact that not many religious ethicists have taken the time to acquire the required specialization competence in economics, economic theory, and history. Religion and Economic Ethics presents (...) nineteen readings that illuminate the economic side of religious ethics. Contributions include: Economic Justice and the Common-wealth of Peoples, by Douglas Sturm; Economic Systems and the Sacramental Imagination, by Joseph La Barge; Common Moral and Religious Grounds for Uncommon Economic Times, by James F. Smurl; Liberation Theology and the Vatican, by Arthur F. McGovern. Co-published with the College Theology Society. (shrink)

Pursuing Justice, Second Edition, examines the issue of justice by considering the origins of the idea, formal systems of justice, current global issues of justice, and ways in which justice might be achieved by individuals, organizations, and the global community. Part 1 demonstrates how the idea of justice has emerged over time, starting with religion and philosophy, then moving to the justice as a concern of the state, and finally to the concept (...) of social justice. Part 2 outlines the very different mechanisms used by various nations for achieving state justice, including systems based on common law, civil law, and Islamic law, with a separate discussion of the US justice system. Part 3 focuses on four contemporary issues of justice: war, genocide, slavery, and the environment. Finally, Part 4 shows how individuals and organizations can go about pursuing justice, and describes the rise of global justice. This updated timely book helps students understand the complexities and nuances of a society's pursuit of justice. It provides students with the foundations of global justice systems, integrating Greek philosophies and major religious perspectives into a justice perspective, and contributes to undergraduate understanding of international justice bodies, NGOs, and institutions. New edition is completely updated and revised to achieve relevance for today's students Covers concepts of justice as well as ideas for pursuing and achieving justice Examines how our modern laws began, and traces their evolution to today's laws Presents concepts and issues in justice studies as well as a comparison of several systems of law Teaching resources include discussion questions and real-world examples. (shrink)

An important issue raised and resolved in St. Anselm’s Proslogion is the compatibility between justice and mercy as divine attributes. In this paper I argue (1) that Anselm’s discussion of divine justice and mercy is an exploration of God’s nature as quo maius cogitari non potest, and (2) that his discussion contributes to a better understanding of the complicated relationship between God and creatures—including the creatures attempting to know or argue about God. It seems at first that God’s (...) mercy must be in contradiction with God’s justice. On the basis of a more adequate way of framing the issue, however—one that requires reference to other parts of the Proslogion and is supported by the Monologion—we can grasp, though not fully comprehend, the harmony between divine justice and divine mercy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Historians of nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland have often overlooked the role of ideas, preferring instead to focus on socio-economic, political and demographic factors. This is never more pronounced then when religion is addressed, and where the influence of religious thought and theology is often folded neatly away into issues of sectarian division and institutional power. This article introduces a collection of essays that attempt to rectify this issue, by drawing out some of their corresponding features and locating (...) them in shared thematic debates. It sets out the historiographical background and examines Ireland’s tangential position within the wider field of intellectual history. Looking specifically at the ideologically symbiotic relationship between Catholic and republican political thought, it argues that developing forms of neo-Thomism which sought to establish a rights-based defence of individual personality against the perceived incursions of both the market and the state, aligned closely with popular radical and republican notions of economic value and justice in Ireland. (shrink)

Piety is not a theme that normally attracts the modern mind. In our own age rebellion has a more prominent position and the theme of impiety strikes a more sympathetic note. We are led to examine Plato's Euthyphro as much for the hints we find on the subject of impiety as for whatever it might contain on the seemingly drab subject of the holy. The Euthyphro is also a dialogue concerned with justice, a recurrent theme in the Platonic corpus, (...) and it questions the accepted relationship of justice to piety and orthodoxy. The secular implications of the argument, which seem to be the more important to Socrates, himself, are as relevant to modern politics and religion as they were to the life of ancient Athens. (shrink)

Piety is not a theme that normally attracts the modern mind. In our own age rebellion has a more prominent position and the theme of impiety strikes a more sympathetic note. We are led to examine Plato's Euthyphro as much for the hints we find on the subject of impiety as for whatever it might contain on the seemingly drab subject of the holy. The Euthyphro is also a dialogue concerned with justice, a recurrent theme in the Platonic corpus, (...) and it questions the accepted relationship of justice to piety and orthodoxy. The secular implications of the argument, which seem to be the more important to Socrates, himself, are as relevant to modern politics and religion as they were to the life of ancient Athens. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Faith for Earth initiative calls for religiously inspired social action on local and global levels, focused on the seventeen interdependent sustainable development goals toward a just and peaceful world. Environmental justice must include an intersectional human rights approach to these issues by addressing the multiple and intersecting nature of lived experience, including gender, race, and socioeconomic status. My paper takes as its point of departure the UNEP Faith for Earth's recognition that environmental conditions (...) have different impacts on the lives of men and women due to existing gender inequality. As both UN and UN Women have confirmed in their reports, women disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, especially in the global South. Environmental justice must address the critical link between environmental problems, and the rights of women and girls. Sustainable Development Goal five on gender equality includes addressing violence against women, sexual health and reproductive rights, and peace and security. I discuss how faith-based initiatives, specifically Buddhist and African Indigenous Christian, have a positive role in grassroots environmental justice in the global South. My discussion includes the work of African Indigenous Christian, Nobel Laureate, and founder of the Greenbelt Movement, Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai, and the Theravada Thai lay Buddhist teacher and founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, Sulak Sivaraksa. Their faith-based grassroots initiatives for environmental justice anticipate and are exemplary models for the UNEP Faith for Earth call to action. They emphasize a 'think global, act local' approach to environmental justice, by drawing on the wisdom and teachings of the people. I focus specifically on how religion has a critical role in these faith-based initiatives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RELIGION AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE Paul Ricoeur Université de Nanterre Paris X These are issues that I take very much to heart, so I will risk my own thoughts on the relation between religion and violence, not excluding the violence in and ofreligion. This is to say that I am not evading the objection made by Jean-Pierre Changeux in a recent discussion, namely, that religion as such (...) produces violence. I do not wish to evade the objection nor to hide behind the collateral explanation that it is when religion is detoured by politics that it produces violence. It is the presupposition that religion produces violence that brings me into discussion with René Girard. I encountered his work several decades ago and I have met him intermittently, with moments of distancing and rediscovery. This is the case for me again today regarding one of his later books, The Scapegoat. I cannot forget the dazzling excitement of 1972 when Violence and the Sacred first appeared. And then for me came a moment of hesitation, of doubt: isn't this explanation too psychologizing? Aren't the Gospels too easily exonerated ofthe accusation ofviolence? But I thereafter experienced disappointment with alternative accounts, principally sociological ones, and in particular with the one given by Maurice Bloch in La Violence du religieux. I am going to take the risk of a personal interpretation ofthe intimate relation between religion and violence. My own conviction, at bottom, is that I have been able, by broadening and deepening the issue, to discern the point where this very movement of going deeper bifurcates and branches out toward external violence. I have clarified my position in La Critique et la conviction and in my more recent debate with J.R Changeux, Ce quifait que nouspensons on this complicity between religion and violence. And it was in pursuing the direction opened up in La Critique et la conviction that I rediscovered an 2 Paul Ricoeur interest in The Scapegoat. I found his interpretation not only to be complementary to my own, but its necessary complement. I will now proceed to show how René Girard's thesis is necessary to my own thinking. So now I will go directly to my interpretive proposal, then I will turn to the position of Bloch in La Violence du religieux, a sociological interpretation, in order to come back in the end to Girard. It is by way of reflection on tolerance considered as a progressive initiation that I arrived at the interpretation I am going to present. At its minimal state, we find only the tolerance ofthe intolerant person, who states, "I don't agree with what you believe, I disapprove of it, but I cannot prevent it. I tolerate it in the sense of not being able to prevent it; I would like to prevent it, but I do not have the power to do so." At a second level, tolerance is more positive, saying, "I maintain the conviction that I am the one who has the truth, but I recognize, by way of being accommodating, that you have the right to profess what I hold as false, and I do this in the name ofjustice. That is to say, you certainly have the right, and it is one equal to mine, to profess what you believe, although I take it as false." I would say that the force of the principle ofjustice as thus expressed is this: any other life is worth as much as mine. Let us say that what I recognize here is the right to error. But at this stage I am torn within by the truth that I believe to be unilaterally mine and the justice that entails recognition ofthe other, which I place on another level from that oftruth. I make a further step in pursuing the issue, at a level farther advanced, when I say, "My adversary has perhaps a part ofthe truth but I don't know what it is." I would say that this is the perspectival version oftolerance: the other person sees a side of things, which I cannot see. But our positions cannot be substituted for each other. At this stage there is a... (shrink)

Confucian Marxism: A Reflection on Religion and Global Justice by Chen Weigang is part of the series “Ideas, History, and Modern China.” As the title suggests, Chen establishes a constructive encounter between Confucianism and Marxism, two schools of thought that are too rarely seated at the same table. By way of laying out a sociologically and philosophically informed framework, Chen develops a challenging and densely argued interpretation of what he aptly refers to as “peripheral liberal deformation”. Western capitalism (...) has expanded globally without bringing about the normative ethos that has accompanied it in the advanced capitalist center in the West. If Weber, the author’s overarching... (shrink)

Ted Sider’s paper “Hell and Vagueness” challenges a certain conception of Hell by arguing that it is inconsistent with God’s justice. Sider’s inconsistencyargument works only when supplemented by additional premises. Key to Sider’s case is a premise that the properties upon which eternal destinies superveneare “a smear,” i.e., they are distributed continuously among individuals in the world. We question this premise and provide reasons to doubt it. The doubts come from two sources. The first is based on evidential considerations (...) borrowed from skeptical theism. A related but separate consideration is that supposing it would be an insurmountable problem for God to make just (and therefore non-arbitrary) distinctions in morally smeared world, God thereby has sufficient motivation not to actualize such worlds. Yet God also clearly has motivation only to actualize some member of the subset of non-smeared worlds which don’t appear non-smeared. For if it was obvious who was morally fit for Heaven and who wasn’t, a new arena of great injustice is opened up. The result is that if there is a God, then he has the motivation and the ability to actualize from just that set of worlds which are not smeared but which are indiscernible from smeared worlds. (shrink)