Grace and Freedom in a Secular Age offers a concise exposition of key ideas - contingency, otherness, freedom, vulnerability and mutuality - that inform the work of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, especially concerning the dynamics of religious belief and religious denial in what he calls a "a secular age." The book integrates discussion of Immanuel Kant and Susan Neiman in particular and seeks to show how Taylor's work can be fruitfully engaged by theologians.

"The essays, both philosophical and historical, demonstrate the continuing significance of a neglected aspect of Kant’s thought."—Religious Studies Review Challenging the traditional view that Kant's account of religion was peripheral to his thinking, these essays demonstrate the centrality of religion to Kant's critical philosophy. Contributors are Sharon Anderson-Gold, Leslie A. Mulholland, Anthony N. Perovich, Jr., Philip J. Rossi, Joseph Runzo, Denis Savage, Walter Sparn, Burkhard Tuschling, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, and Allen W. Wood.

In response to the five essays commenting on The Ethical Commonwealth in History, I provide an exploration of three themes—the character of the highest good, the possibility of attainment of the highest good, and the agency for its attainment—as a basis for dealing with the concerns these essays raise about my interpretation of Kant’s critical project. On my interpretation, Kant’s project of “critique” is primarily an anthropological one, with its central focus on the moral vocation to which finite reason calls (...) humanity as a species: To bring about a world of enduring peace as an essential element in the enactment of the highest good. These concerns bear upon: my characterization of the social and religious dimensions both of the highest good and of the finite human reason for which it serves as the final end; the historical dimensions that I claim for the community that is the locus for the attainment of the highest good; and the roles for human and for divine agency in such attainment. (shrink)

Explores the social ramifications of Kant's concept of radical evil.

Discussions about theological realism within analytic philosophy of religion, and the larger conversation between analytic and continental styles in philosophy of religion have generated relatively little interest among Catholic philosophers and theologians; conversely, the work of major figures in recent Catholic theology seems to evoke little interest from analytic philosophers of religion. Using the 1998 papal encyclical on faith and reason, Fides et ratio, as a major point of reference, this essay offers a preliminary account of the bases for such (...) seeming mutual indifference and offers some suggestions for future dialogue. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy pays little explicit attention to the concept of ‘wisdom’ in its taxonomy of the functions of human reason in its work of rendering intelligible the world and the human place in the world. On the basis of some crucial texts in Kant’s writings, this essay argues that wisdom has a role to play in the task Kant assigns to practical reason; this task is to make the world in which humans dwell intelligible morally, i.e., to make (...) sense of the world as locus in which good and evil take form in function of the exercise of human freedom. In such a world, the function of wisdom is ‘cosmopolitan’ in that it provides a horizon of a social hope that recognizes human solidarity, vulnerability, and otherness, as signal instances of the inclusive moral relationality necessary for sustaining both an ‘outer’ world order for peace and the ‘inner’ dynamic of full moral relationality that Kant terms ‘the ethical commonwealth’. (shrink)

The 'ethical commonwealth', the central social element in Kant's account of religion, provides the church, as 'the moral people of God', with a role in establishing a cosmopolitan order of peace. This role functions within an interpretive realignment of Kant's critical project that articulates its central concern as anthropological: critically disciplined reason enables humanity to enact peacemaking as its moral vocation in history. Within this context, politics and religion are not peripheral elements in the critical project. They are, instead, complementary (...) social modalities in which humanity enacts its moral vocation to bring lasting peace among all peoples. (shrink)

Sixteen peer-reviewed essays that explore the work of God's grace in today's world. Major contributors include David Burrell (Notre Dame and Uganda Martyrs University) and Denis Edwards (Flinders University in Australia) on the role of God's grace in creation, and Ilia Delio on the Trinity (Georgetown University).

Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman's account of the intellectual trajectory of modernity, employs the trope “homeless” to articulate deep difficulties that affirmations of divine transcendence and of human capacities to acknowledge transcendence face in a contemporary context thoroughly marked by fragmentation, fragility, and contingency. The “hospitality” of the Incarnation, which makes a fractured world a place for divine welcoming of the human in all its contingency and brokenness, is proposed as locus for theological engagement with Neiman's appropriation of a (...) Kantian sense of hope as the readiness to resist evil in a world seemingly bereft of welcome. (shrink)

In the texts in which Immanuel Kant discusses the principles governing international relations—including texts explicitly dealing with the sources leading states to armed conflict and the circumstances enabling its cessation—he does not directly engage the question “What constitutes victory in war?” This should not be surprising, given that Kant’s treatment of war may be read as consonant with just war thinking for which victory seems an unproblematic concept Yet there are elements in the tone and the substance of his discussion (...) that destabilize a placement of his views as unproblematically part of that tradition. The mordant tone of his dismissal of the Realpolitik guiding “political moralists” suggests a trenchant skepticism about almost any justification offered for leading a state into war. More substantively, an antinomy is at work in the contrast Kant makes, in the two sets of articles for perpetual peace, between a “state of nature” that, construed from the standpoint of the theoretical use of reason, defines the order of international relations as necessarily one of constant war, and the radical transformation of that order, enacted by moral reason in the definitive articles of perpetual peace, into a cosmopolitan order that heeds the categorical imperative “there shall be no war.” In consequence, one may construct a Kantian answer to the question “What constitutes victory in war?” by framing it in reference to this cosmopolitan hope for an international order securing enduring peace. Within the moral horizon of cosmopolitan hope, victory in war—like war itself—is unmasked as morally unintelligible. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage: The Essential of Writings of Im Yungjidang and Gang Jeongildang introduces the lives and thought of two Korean women Confucian philosophers from the late Joseon Dynasty (18th -19th century), Im Yunjidang (1721-93) and Gang Jeongildang(1772-1832), and sketches some of the ways their work can contribute to contemporary philosophical inquiry. Both women are known for arguing, on the basis of distinctively Confucian philosophical claims about the original, pure moral nature shared by (...) all human beings, that women are as capable as men of attaining the highest forms of intellectual and moral achievement and thereby can become female sages (yeoseong). The fact that they lived in a highly patriarchal culture presented special challenges, but the conditions of their individual lives offered unique opportunities and exerted different kinds of pressure upon them, which subsequently was manifested in their distinctive versions of a generally shared vision. This book explores how they were able to overcome both the general and particular challenges of their place and time and go on to live impressive and exemplary lives. We also shows how their resistance and response to the patriarchal context of late Joseon society and the different challenges they faced in the course of their individual lives informed the content and style of their philosophy and produced original philosophy that remains of great value to us today. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl has been understood along a spectrum running from outright repudiation to deep appreciation. The aim of this paper is to clarify a significant and heretofore largely neglected unifying thread connecting Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, while also demonstrating its general philosophical import for phenomenological philosophy. On this account, the details of a programmatic philosophical continuity between these two phenomenologists can be structured around the concept of motivation. Merleau-Ponty sees in Husserl’s concept of motivation a necessary and innovative concept (...) that we must formulate in order to properly theorize the anonymous and passive functioning of “operative intentionality.” Motivation is the principle that bridges this domain with the egoic life of consciousness. Merleau-Ponty’s focus on anonymity, bodily habit, and other facets of operative intentionality are thus not a repudiation of Husserl’s analyses of intentionality, but rather a deepening of the notion of consciousness. I conclude by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s early work on motivation lays the conceptual groundwork for his later rethinking of intentionality in terms of institution, and thus mature ontology of the flesh. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

A concise and accessible introduction to the evolution of the concept of moral self-cultivation in the Chinese Confucian tradition, this volume begins with an explanation of the pre-philosophical development of ideas central to this concept, followed by an examination of the specific treatment of self cultivation in the philosophy of Kongzi ("Confucius"), Mengzi ("Mencius"), Xunzi, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, Yan Yuan and Dai Zhen. In addition to providing a survey of the views of some of the most influential Confucian thinkers (...) on an issue of fundamental importance to the tradition, Ivanhoe also relates their concern with moral self-cultivation to a number of topics in the Western ethical tradition. Bibliography and index are included. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker, moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the harm account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the qualified harm account, there is no (...) harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can be responsive (...) to reasons, and it is compatible with a subjective awareness of the available options. (shrink)