Resumo: O presente artigo tem por objetivo refletir sobre a concepção de democracia, apresentada por Bergson, em As duas fontes da moral e da religião, enquanto movimento humano e social de resistência e de aspiração, no contexto de uma teoria da vida concebida, ela própria, como um movimento que se dá em dois sentidos, o da determinação e o da criação.: This article reflects on the conception of democracy presented by Bergson in The Two Sources of Morality and (...) Religion. Democracy is there conceived as a human and social movement of resistance and aspiration in the context of a theory of life; and life is itself conceived as a movement that takes place in two senses, that of determination and that of creation. (shrink)

베르그손의 도덕과 종교의 두 원천은 우리에게 주체화에 관한매우 독특한 이론을 제시한다. 이에 따르면, 인간이 자신의 실존을장악하는 주체가 되는 것은 종교를 통해서이다. 지성적 동물인 인간은 인간의 존재가 무의미한 세계 표상을 통해 인간을 허무주의의 고뇌에 빠뜨린다. 주체화는 이러한 지성의 자기 해체적 위험에대한 방어적 반작용에서 시작된다. 그런데 베르그손은 두 종류의주체화, 즉 정태적 종교의 작화 본능에 따른 사회적 주체화와 역동적 종교의 신비주의적 직관에 따른 우주론적 주체화를 제시한다. 이 두 주체화 방식에 대한 검토로부터 우리는 주체와 종교의 관계에 관한 다음의 결론들에 이르게 된다. 1) 종교는 주체화의 (...) 필수적인 요소이다. 2) 하지만 두 가지 주체화 양태에 따라서 두 가지 종류의 종교가 있다. (shrink)

There are two primary traditions in philosophical theorizing about moral standing—one emphasizing Experience (the capacity to feel pain and pleasure) and one emphasizing Agency (complexity of cognition and lifestyle). In this article we offer an explanation for this divide: Lay judgments about moral standing depend importantly on two independent cues (Experience and Agency), and the two philosophical traditions reflect this aspect of folk moral cognition. In support of this two-source hypothesis, we present the results of a series of new experiments (...) providing evidence for our account of lay judgments about moral standing, and argue that these results lend plausibility to the proposed causal link between folk moral cognition and the philosophical traditions. (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to show, in general terms, the Husserlian sources of the way in which von Hildebrand understands emotive consciousness, while still recognizing important differences beween the two authors. To carry out this task I will develop four points of contact between the two thinkers: (1) the idea of the existence of a priori laws in the emotional sphere, (2) the defense of spiritual (geistige) forms of affectivity, (3) the idea that affective responses to value (...) can be correct or incorrect, that is, adequate or not according to the value to which they respond, and (4) the existence of a kind of emotive evidence (Gemütsevidenz) that parallels evidence in the realm of judgment. (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to show, in general terms, the Husserlian sources of the way in which von Hildebrand understands emotive consciousness, while still recognizing important differences beween the two authors. To carry out this task I will develop four points of contact between the two thinkers: the idea of the existence of a priori laws in the emotional sphere, the defense of spiritual forms of affectivity, the idea that affective responses to value can be correct or (...) incorrect, that is, adequate or not according to the value to which they respond, and the existence of a kind of emotive evidence that parallels evidence in the realm of judgment. (shrink)

Interest in the work of Bergson has seen a revival in political theory over the past two decades. Initially, this interest focused primarily on Bergson’s earlier writings. However, recently there h...

Beyond borrowing the terms ‘open’ and ‘closed’ societies, political theorists have not had much time for Henri Bergson's book The Two Sources of Morality and Religion . However, the recent flowering of interest in liberal nationalism provides a context for understanding what the book has to contribute. For it takes up the relationship between the nation-state and ‘special ties’ on the one hand and ‘cosmopolitan’ obligations on the other. From a political point of view, it should be (...) read as a critique of the too-easy assimilation of cosmopolitan claims by republican ideology, and as a warning that the state cannot be seen as only contingently exclusive. Although both nationalists and cosmopolitans will find things to welcome in Bergson's book, its most original contribution may be its claim that nationalists cannot consistently resist the demands of cosmopolitan morality, for the nation-state already draws upon its for its legitimation. (shrink)

This essay attempts to lay out the three principal theses of Jacques Derrida’s 1994-1995 “Faith and Knowledge,‘ Derrida’s most sustained but also most challenging work on the nature of religion and the relationship between religion and science. After demonstrating through these three theses that religion and science not only share a common source-or have a common genesis-but are in what Derrida calls an autoimmune relationship to one another, the essay puts these theses to the test by reading (...) a brief passage near the middle of the essay where Derrida recounts the genesis of “Faith and Knowledge‘ itself Derrida’s seemingly anecdotal recounting of this genesis is thus shown to reflect the three theses of “Faith and Knowledge,‘ the way in which, in a word, the breath of creation, or the miracle of religion, is always doubled, supplemented, and thus contaminated by the machine of science and tele-technology. (shrink)

David Nivison has argued that Mèngzǐ 孟子 postulates only one source of moral motivation, whereas Mèngzǐ’s rival thinkers such as Gàozǐ 告子 or the Mohist Yí Zhī 夷之 additionally postulate “maxims” or “doctrines” that are produced by some sort of moral reasoning. In this essay I critically examine this interpretation of Nivison’s, and alternatively argue that moral emotions in Mèngzǐ, basically understood as concern-based construals, are often an insufficient source of moral action, and an additional source of moral motivation, specifically (...) a conviction or judgment of what is the right thing to do in a certain situation in question, is often necessary for one to complete a moral action. This implies that Mèngzǐ should be interpreted to postulate two sources of moral motivation just as his rival thinkers do, namely moral emotion on one hand and judgment and practical reasoning on the other. (shrink)

Miracle and Machine is a sort of "reader's guide" to Jacques Derrida's 1994 essay "faith and knowledge," his most important work on the nature of religion in general and on the unprecedented forms it is taking today through science and the ...

Donald Broom argues that morality and the central components of religion are of great value, and presents two central ideas. He asserts that morality has a biological foundation and has evolved as a consequence of natural selection, and that religions are essentially the structures supporting morality. Many philosophers and theologians write about morality and its origins without reference to biological processes such as evolution. Likewise, biologists discuss phenomena of importance to human morality and (...) class='Hi'>religion without taking account of the thoughts of others on these subjects. (shrink)

This essay emerges from consideration of a question in the epistemology of ethics or morality. This is not the common claim-centered question as to how moral claims are confirmed and whether their mode of confirmation gives us grounds to be confident about the prospects for ethical discourse. Instead, I am concerned with the less frequently posed concept-centered question of where in human experience moral terms or concepts are grounded — that is, where in experience the moral becomes salient to (...) us. This question was central to moral epistemology in the form it took among thinkers such as Locke, Hume, and Kant, and it remains of the first importance today. (shrink)

In this chapter, we discuss a selection of current views of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). We focus on the different predictions they make, in particular with respect to the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) during visual experiences, which is an area of critical interest and some source of contention. Our discussion of these views focuses on the level of functional anatomy, rather than at the neuronal circuitry level. We take this approach because we currently understand more about experimental (...) evidence at this coarse level and because these results are appropriate for arbitrating between current theoretical frameworks. We discuss the Two-Visual-Systems Hypothesis (Milner & Goodale 1995; 2006), Local Recurrency (Lamme 2010; Lamme 2006), Higher Order (Lau 2008; Lau & Rosenthal 2011) and Global Workspace theories (Baars 1997; Baars 2005; Dehaene & Naccache 2001; Dehaene 2014). Despite the apparent stark differences between conscious and unconscious perceptual processing, available evidence suggests that their neural substrates must be largely shared. This indicates that the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious perceptual processing is likely to be subtle and highly specialized. We argue that current experimental evidence about the involvement of specific activity in prefrontal cortex supports the higher order neural theory of consciousness. In consequence, imaging techniques that focus only on marked differences between conscious and unconscious level of activity are likely to be insensitive to the relevant neural activity patterns that underlie conscious experiences. Finally, it follows from the evidence we discuss that the functional advantages of conscious over unconscious perceptual processing may be more limited than commonly thought. (shrink)

In one of his most important books, Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine, Richard B. Miller argues that medical ethicists have too frequently focused on abstract moral and legal principles in wrestling with the issues raised by contemporary medical practice. Drawing on the anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, Miller suggests that ethicists must attend to both the “experience-near” realities that patients and their families confront and the “experience-distant” work of connecting those realities to the theoretical principles that might help illuminate the existential and (...) ethical problems faced by patients and families. In a useful analogy, Miller argues that the best strategy is to tack back and forth between the near and the distant such that one artfully occupies the intermediate space between personal and impersonal perspectives. In this chapter, I follow Miller’s advice to seek out the intermediate space between the lived reality of the bedside and the reflective domain of the scholar’s office. For most bioethicists that space is found in one of three ways. One encounters patients and their families as a clinician or as an observer of the clinical encounter. One attends carefully to illness narratives as a source of experience-near material. Or one reflects on one’s own experience as a patient or family member encountering medical practice. This chapter suggests that it is possible to combine these approaches. Specifically, I draw on the experience of accompanying my wife through her illness and death from ovarian cancer, as well as on grief memoirs to illuminate a neglected area of health humanities scholarship. Drawing on Arthur Frank’s classic study of illness narratives in The Wounded Storyteller, this chapter delineates similarities and between grief narratives and illness narratives. A comparison of these two genres suggests why the grief of patients and families is so often overlooked in accounts of the clinical encounter. (shrink)

W. Matthews Grant's "Dual Sources Account" aims at explaining how God causes all creaturely actions while leaving them free in a robust libertarian sense. It includes an account of predestination that is supposed to allow for the possibility that some created persons ultimately spend eternity in hell. I argue here that the resources Grant provides for understanding why God might permit created persons to end up in hell are, for two different reasons, insufficient. I then provide possible solutions to (...) these two problems, compatible with Grant's account overall, that help show why God might allow hell. (shrink)

This paper retraces some of the contrast between Aquinas and Scotus with respect to the metaphysical foundations of morality in order to highlight how subtle differences pertaining to the relationship between the divine will and the divine intellect can tip a thinker toward either an unalloyed natural law theory (NLT) or something that at least starts to move in the direction of divine command theory (DCT). The paper opens with a brief consideration of three distinct elements in Aquinas’s work (...) that might tempt one to view him in a DCT light, namely: his discussion of the divine law in addition to the natural law; his position on the so-called immoralities of the patriarchs; and some of his assertions about the divine will in relation to justice. We then respond to each of those considerations. In the second and third of these cases, following Craig Boyd, we illustrate how Aquinas’s conviction that the divine will follows the ordering of the divine intellect can help inform the interpretive disputes in question. We then turn our attention to Scotus’s concern about the freedom of the divine will, before turning to his discussion of the natural law in relation to the Decalogue as a way of stressing how his two-source theory of the metaphysical foundations of morality represents a clear departure from Aquinas in the direction of DCT. (shrink)

Why in theCritique of Practical Reasonis moral religion presented as a doctrine of the postulates of pure practical reason, of which Christian morality, considered as a philosophical doctrine, is an illustration, whereas in theReligion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reasonmoral religion is ultimately identified with a particular moral interpretation of the religious dogmas of Christianity? In this essay, I propose to answer this question by examining a thesis of Kant’s that has scarcely been considered. This is the (...) thesis that, as with other philosophical disciplines, moral religion consists of a pure part and an applied part. The reasons for the bipartite division of moral religion—confirmed also by the findings of Kant’s third Critique—not only provide a direct, explicit, and maybe sufficient answer to the question posed, but also shed light on the role of Christianity in Kant’s conception of religion. (shrink)

Henri Bergson is primarily known for his work on time, memory, and creativity. His equally innovative interventions into politics and religion have, however, been neglected or dismissed until now. In the first book in English dedicated to Bergson as a political thinker, leading Bergson scholars illuminate his positions on core concerns within political philosophy: the significance of emotion in moral judgment, the relationship between biology and society, and the entanglement of politics and religion. Ranging across Bergson's writings but (...) drawing mainly on his last book, _The Two Sources of Morality and Religion_, the contributors consider Bergson's relevance to contemporary discussions of human rights, democratic pluralism, and environmental ethics. _Contributors._ Keith Ansell-Pearson, G. William Barnard, Claire Colebrook, Hisashi Fujita, Suzanne Guerlac, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Frédéric Keck, Leonard Lawlor, Alexandre Lefebvre, Paola Marrati, John Mullarkey, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Carl Power, Philippe Soulez, Jim Urpeth, Melanie White, Frédéric Worms. (shrink)

Moral theology explores the sources of the moral teaching in several religions. It is the branch of theology that analyzes the scriptural, rational, and ministerial bases of moral teaching on various issues in Christian living. Moral theology in the Catholic Church has been undergoing rapid development since the Second Vatican Council. This essay presents the encyclical Veritatis Splendor as providing an important perspective on fundamental issues in moral theology. In Veritatis Splendor , Pope John Paul II gave the response (...) of the church magisterium to the issues raised for decades in moral theology. This essay also evaluates the Catholic moral theologians’ responses to the encyclical. The theologians are categorized into two groups: the theologians who support the encyclical and the ones who view the encyclical in a critical way as misrepresenting their ideas. The essay recommends the encyclical Veritatis Splendor for renewing interest in fundamental issues in moral theology. (shrink)

Religion emerged among early humans because both purposive and non-purposive explanations were being employed but understanding was lacking of their precise scope and limits. Given also a context of very limited human power, the resultant foregrounding of agency and purposive explanation expressed itself in religion’s marked tendency towards anthropomorphism and its key role in legitimizing behaviour. The inevitability of death also structures the religious outlook; with ancestors sometimes assigned a role in relation to the living. Subjective elements such (...) as the experience of dreams and the internalization of moral precepts also play their part. Two important sources of variation among religions concern the adoption of a dualist or non-dualist perspective, and whether or not the religion’s early political experience is such as to generate a systematic doctrine subordinating politics to religion. The near ubiquity and endurance of religion are further illuminated by analysis of its functions and ideological role. Religion tends to be socially conservative but has the potential to be revolutionary. (shrink)

I attend to the temporal schema of open/closed by examining its elaboration in Bergson's philosophy and critically parsing the possibilities for its destabilization. Though Bergson wrote in a colonial context, this context barely receives acknowledgement in his work. This obscures the uncomfortable resonances between Bergson's late work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and the temporal narratives that justify French colonialism. Given Bergson's uptake by philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze, and by contemporary feminist and political theorists (...) (especially “new materialists”), a critical re-examination is called for. The Two Sources not only introduces a new dichotomy into Bergsonian philosophy—that of open/closed—it puts an end to the movement of duration by defining its possibilities as goals already given in advance. By turning the tools of Bergsonian critique onto The Two Sources, I propose an alternative to the open/closed—that of the “half-open”—creating in this way the conditions for decolonizing duration. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga argues by counterexample that no naturalistic account of functions is possible--God is then the only source for natural functions. This paper replies to Plantinga's examples and arguments. Plantinga misunderstands naturalistic accounts. Plantinga's mistakes flow from his assimilation of functional notions in general to functions from intentional design in particular.

The concept of culture is best understood from a genetic and functional point of view. To cultivate an object is to develop the potentialities of its nature with a view to a definite end or result. For example, agriculture is the process whereby the potentialities of the earth and of seeds are cultivated with a view to growing edible plants. Similarly, one may speak of pearl culture or bee culture to indicate the process of cultivation or production of pearls or (...) bees through the agency of man. By transference, the term has historically been applied to man himself and refers to the process of self-cultivation of man by man. Human culture, or anthropo-culture as it may be called, originally comprised the various ways in which man has tended his nature so as to make it grow or develop in a specific way. In classical Western civilization, as man differentiated between his body and his soul, he came to attach greater importance to the cultivation of his soul and culture became identified with the culture of the soul. Genetically, human culture refers to the education, or cultivation, of the whole man considered as an organism and not only to the mental or spiritual aspects of his nature. Plato’s concept of paideia, which comprised the education of the body through gymnastics and that of the soul through the liberal arts, reflects this holistic approach to the human cultural process. In time, culture came to mean the state of being educated as distinct from the process of education and then, still later, came to refer to the whole intelligible world revealed by education, to wisdom as a product of a liberal education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur by Michael SohnLevi CheckettsThe Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur Michael Sohn WACO, TX: BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014. 172 PP. $69.95Michael Sohn's book The Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur explores the philosophical and (...) religious writings of two of twentieth-century France's most significant thinkers, Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Lévinas, "to gain, by thinking with and through them, an insight into the phenomenon of recognition" (128). Recognition, to these authors, is not merely an act of re-cognition (identifying something one already knows), nor is it simple cognition (consciousness of something). For Lévinas, to whom Ricœur is indebted for his own work, recognition precedes ontological identification and is a "sensation of the infinite" in the Other (29). Recognition entails "a primordial ethical claim by the other" (57), up to and including self-sacrifice. For Ricœur, on the other hand, recognition of the other is situated in the "loving struggle for existence" between people seeking mutual recognition (72) and presents itself as "one among many sources of value and motivation" [End Page 207] for moral decision (81). In other words, while recognition of the other is a central concept in both authors' ethical writings, Sohn notes that "Lévinas' phenomenological description of recognition emerges out of a fundamental project to uncover the principle of all principles," while "Ricœur's attention to the locus of will integrates passivity and activity as it is taken up within the dialectic of the voluntary and the involuntary," making recognition one value among others (127).In highlighting the different positions of each of these authors, Sohn structures his writing in a highly systematized and clear way. He first divides the book broadly by author, then for each author devotes a chapter each to philosophical and religious approaches to recognition. Within each chapter, he outlines the intellectual influences for the given author, then articulates in turn the phenomenon, the ethics, and the politics of recognition. This tactic serves as a helpful reference for readers interested in Sohn's comparative project, though it sometimes leads to repetition insofar as there are overlaps in how different thinkers, philosophical schools, or principles function for each area. The overall project is framed by an introductory chapter that briefly outlines the main points of discussion throughout the book and a conclusion that summarizes, compares, and contextualizes the significance of the project. Sohn offers this text as a clarifying study of the phenomenon of recognition, a term the application of which "touches upon a broad spectrum of issues ranging from battles over multiculturalism to questions of national sovereignty and from matters of international human rights to social movements within feminism and human rights" (135). With such a broad range of applications, this relatively short examination of two pivotal thinkers' works on recognition is highly valuable.This work will be of interest to ethicists hoping to use the works of Ricœur or Lévinas, or to philosophers and historians interested in the development of recognitionbased ethics. Sohn provides thorough citations from the broad corpuses of both authors, giving students of either philosopher a helpful resource both for summarizing ideas and for carrying out research. Sohn also provides deep intellectual genealogies for each author, noting how thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Karl Barth, G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and their interpreters influenced Lévinas and Ricœur; he downplays the influence of thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, and Gabriel Marcel. This book does offer useful and clear summaries of the main ideas discussed, but it may be difficult for newer students unfamiliar with French language or philosophical concepts. Overall, this book is a valuable reference tool for Lévinas and Ricœur studies, especially those that focus on the phenomenology, religious thought, ethics, or politics of these two men. [End Page 208]Levi CheckettsGraduate Theological UnionCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This two-volume work provides a new understanding of Western subjectivity as theorized in the Augustinian Rule. A theopolitical synthesis of Antiquity, the Rule is a humble, yet extremely influential example of subjectivity production. In these volumes, Jodra argues that the Classical and Late-Ancient communitarian practices along the Mediterranean provide historical proof of a worldview in which the self and the other are not disjunctive components, but mutually inclusive forces. The Augustinian Rule is a culmination of this process and also the (...) beginning of something new: The paradigm of the monastic self as protagonist of the new, medieval worldview. Three main theoretical challenges leading to, and present in the Rule are tackled: What are the sources of our modern understanding of subjectivity? Can Ancient sources provide an alternative genealogy that resists the individualistic turn of Modernity? And can the commons be saved without suppressing individuality? Jodra seeks to prove that the synthesis-which is also an appropriation-of Greek and Judaic sources carried out by the first Christians allowed for two contrasting models of subjectivity, the self-less and the other-less, to 'take turns' to dominate our understanding of human nature. The Greek world provided the political dimension and the Jewish world established the key theological principles of a Mediterranean synthesis which took place in Rome. Coherently and progressively, Jodra emphasizes the theopolitical nature of our worldview even today, and claim that the subject of the primitive Church is its most visible incarnation. These volumes therefore restore the unity of the Hellenistic and Judaic world as found by the first Christians, proving that the self and the other are two essential pieces in the construction of our world. (shrink)

Was Sabellius really a Libyan? Examining contemporary sources and ancient historiography on one of the most enigmatic heretics in the history of dogmas, the article shows that the Libyan origin of Sabellius is unlikely, and that it is an exaggeration to claim that Libya was a Sabellian home in the third century. Eusebius of Caesarea is probably guilty of having identified the adversaries of Dionysius of Alexandria located in Ptolemais as disciples of Sabellius, and the testimony of Origen on (...) the theology of the identification between the Father and Christ is too abstract to deduce that this theology was as widely diffused in the East as it has previously been held. (shrink)

I come not to praise God but to bury him along with the dead gods of now forgotten religions. Not to praise him as the source of all that's good in the world, and hence the ultimate guide to human morals, but to indict him as the self-confessed source of all that's wrong with it. When the Christian God says in his Holy Scriptures, that he is the creator of evil, I am prepared to take him at his word.

Daniele Hervieu-Léger and Marcel Gauchet explain that today the hold that the religious dimension has always exerted over human societies is, of very recent date but definitely, slackening; that it is becoming ‘hollow’ and ceases to inspire collective action, leaving henceforth wide open the question of knowing in which name we should attempt to take our destiny in our hands and base the norms of collective being. This question at once summons up another, implicitly contained in the latter: is every (...) ethical norm (or moral norm, for we are not making a distinction between the two concepts here) ultimately religious in origin, as is most often supposed, or can one in fact conceive of sketching the outlines of a moral code that is immanent within the social relationship, a moral code that is sufficiently coherent and self-consistent to do without, at least in theory, a religious-type transcendence? Here, I should like to make a case for the second response by emphasizing that religion - whatever meaning one bestows on this notion, still undefined today - does not constitute the primary, irreducible social and historical fact that is most often supposed, but that it should itself be interpreted as the formulation of a more original and more universal formulation: the threefold obligation of giving, receiving, and repaying distinguished by Marcel Mauss in his famous Essay on the Gift. Of course, I shall not claim here to do more than sketch a few possible lines of argument. But even before formulating them, I must call to mind two prejudicial objections that my argument has encountered. (shrink)

In Roman Catholic moral theology there is an ongoing debate between the proportionalist or revisionist school and the traditionalist school that has developed what is referred to as the ‘New Natural Law Theory’ or ‘Basic Goods Theory’ . The stakes in this debate have been raised with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor on fundamental moral theology that condemned ‘proportionalism’ or ‘teleologism’ as an ethical theory while utilizing many of the ideas, concepts, and terminology of the BGT, thereby implicitly (...) endorsing that ethical theory. While absolute norms and intrinsically evil acts have frequently been the focus of debate between these two schools, what is it that divides them fundamentally, on the level of ethical method? It is the role and function of reason and experience as two sources of moral knowledge, in part, that distinguish these two versions of natural law on the most basic level. While the BGT has a strict hierarchy of the sources of moral knowledge that posits the hierarchical magisterium as the definitive interpreter of reason and experience, revisionists posit a more dialogical relationship between reason, experience, and the magisterium. On certain ethical issues , the experience of the faithful as well as the rational arguments developed by revisionist Catholic moral theologians challenge some of the normative claims of the magisterium. This paper investigates the methodological use of reason and experience in each theory's interpretation of natural law and how and why these two sources of moral knowledge lead to fundamentally divergent normative claims on particular ethical issues. (shrink)

Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely (...) recognized, let alone appreciated and understood, is the relationship between his concern with belief formation and his concern with virtue. In fact, few seem to realize that Descartes regards doxastic errors as moral errors and as sins both because such errors are intrinsically vicious and because they entail notably deleterious social consequences. Reforming the Art of Living seeks to rectify this rather common oversight in two ways. First, it aims to elucidate the nature of Descartes’s account of virtuous belief formation. Second, it aims both (i) to illuminate the social significance of Descartes’s philosophical program as it relates to the understanding and practice not of science, but of religion and (ii) to develop a kind of Leibnizian critique of this aspect of his program. More specifically, it aims to show that Descartes’s project is “dangerous,” insofar as it is subversive not only of traditional Christianity but also of other traditional forms of religion, both in theory and in practice. (shrink)