bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Eternity
Authors: Stump Eleonore , Kretzmann Norman
Published: September 2018

The distinctive, philosophically interesting concept of eternity arose very early in the history of philosophy as the concept of a mode of existence that was not only beginningless and endless but also essentially different from time. It was introduced into early Greek philosophy as the mode of existence required for fundamental reality (being) contrasted with ordinary appearance (becoming). But the concept was given its classic formulation by Boethius, who thought of eternity as God’s mode of existence and defined God’s eternality as ‘the complete possession all at once of illimitable life’. As defined by Boethius the concept was important in medieval philosophy. The elements of the Boethian definition are life, illimitability (and hence duration), and absence of succession (or timelessness). Defined in this way, eternality is proper to an entity identifiable as a mind or a person (and in just that sense living) but existing beginninglessly, endlessly and timelessly.

Such a concept raises obvious difficulties. Some philosophers think the difficulties can be resolved, but others think that in the light of such difficulties the concept must be modified or simply rejected as incoherent. The most obvious difficulty has to do with the combination of atemporality and duration.

Special objections have arisen in connection with ascribing eternality to God. Some people have thought that an eternal being could not do anything at all, especially not in the temporal world. But the notion of an atemporal person’s acting is not incoherent. Such acts as knowing necessary truths or willing that a world exist for a certain length of time are acts that themselves take no time and require no temporal location. An eternal God could engage in acts of cognition and of volition and could even do things that might seem to require a temporal location, such as answering a prayer.

The concept of God’s eternality is relevant to several issues in philosophy of religion, including the apparent irreconcilability of divine omniscience with divine immutability and with human freedom.
Feminist theology
Authors: Suchocki Marjorie
Published: September 2018

Feminist theology began as a reaction to the exclusion of women and women’s concerns from traditional Christian theology, but it soon incorporated constructive as well as critical elements. Originating ‘from the margins’ of women’s exclusion, it now is a major force within Christian theological thought. The issue it raised initially was the cultural and social suppositions that inform all theological thinking and that enter into theologies as ‘universals’. In response to such universals, a feminist ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ seeks out the hidden norms and biases within religious texts.

Feminist theology is diverse, but it is characterized by pervasive themes. Immanence is valued over transcendence, relation over substance, change over immutability, liberation over salvation, and ecological concerns over traditional Christian eschatological concerns. As could be expected from its hermeneutic of suspicion, feminist theology is also characterized by its insistence on the social location of all thinking. Feminist theologians uniformly use gender-inclusive language not only in reference to humanity, but also in reference to God. Finally, all feminist theologians manifest a concern for liberation from every type of oppression, environmental as well as social, and not just liberation from the oppression women have experienced.
Forgiveness and mercy
Authors: Murphy Jeffrie G.
Published: September 2018

Forgiveness and mercy are regarded as virtues in many moral and religious traditions, although different traditions will emphasize different aspects. The Christian tradition, for example, tends to emphasize purity of heart as the core of the virtue of forgiveness, whereas the Judaic tradition gives priority to the social dimension of reintegration into the covenanted community. Forgiveness involves the overcoming of anger and resentment, and mercy involves the withholding of harsh treatment that one has a right to inflict. Both allow for healing, but some critics would say that this healing may come at too high a price. Forgiveness, if carried to extremes, can lapse into servility, entailing a loss of self-respect. There are similar paradoxes associated with mercy, particularly in the context of punishment; too strong an emphasis on mercy can lead to a departure from justice. Clearly, though both forgiveness and mercy are obvious virtues, there are difficulties in putting them into practice in the complex situations that make up everyday reality.
Illumination
Authors: MacDonald Scott
Published: September 2018

The most influential theories of illumination explain certain features of our knowledge by developing an analogy with ordinary sensory vision and the role played in it by light. According to theories of this sort, our knowledge of necessary and immutable objects and truths requires the activity of a kind of intelligible light illumining objects that are purely intelligible, thereby making them ‘visible’ to our mind. Plato held that this light comes from the Form of the Good, Augustine that it comes from God, and others that it is intrinsic to reason itself.

The peculiar nature and behaviour of light has provided a model not just for theories of knowledge but also for philosophical accounts of fundamental features of reality. Neoplatonist cosmologies, for example, liken the genesis of the universe to the emanation of rays of light from a light source. Theories of illumination therefore can be metaphysical as well as epistemological. Both kinds of theory have their historical roots in Platonism broadly construed.
Justification, religious
Authors: Allen Diogenes
Published: September 2018

Justification is about the restoration of human beings after Adam’s Fall, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the beginning of a new life that anticipates the glory of heaven. According to the Roman Catholic Church, justification has two aspects: forgiveness of sin and the infusion of grace that makes Christians just (innocent). It is the beginning of a new life of grace, in which the gifts of faith, hope and charity enable one to perform meritorious works. However, the restoration is never complete in this life and concupiscence remains; a fall from the state of grace is thus possible, but this is reversible through penance.

A central feature of the Protestant Reformation was a dispute with the Roman Catholic Church over how justification should be understood. According to Luther, one does not become renewed (innocent) in justification. Rather, one is forgiven because the righteousness or justice of Christ is imputed to those who have faith in God’s promise of redemption; however, one remains a sinner. More recent thought, however, has pointed to the fact that in both Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of justification, there is a sense of incompleteness, that it is just part of the process of redemption. There has also been interest in the idea of justification involving an indwelling of God rather than a gift from God to the individual; this has interesting affinities with Eastern Orthodox beliefs.
Limbo
Authors: Zagzebski Linda
Published: September 2018

According to traditional Roman Catholic teaching, limbo is the postmortem destination of those who have not been baptized, but are not guilty of sin. Lack of baptism bars such people from salvation, but their innocence means that they do not deserve the punishment of hell. They were thought to fall into two groups: the righteous of the Old Covenant, prior to the redemption of Christ, and unbaptized children. The former were supposed to have gone to heaven after Christ’s death, but the latter had to stay in limbo forever. The existence of limbo was never dogmatically defined, and it was never given as much attention as heaven, hell or even purgatory, each of which represented a fate which human beings earned in part through personal choice. Nowadays, the possibility that unbaptized babies might be consigned to hell is not widely entertained, and some thinkers hold that the requirement of baptism for salvation is open to interpretation. Consequently, the idea of limbo is not as widely discussed as it once was.
Mysticism, history of
Authors: Payne Steven
Published: September 2018

Contemporary authors generally associate mysticism with a form of consciousness involving an apparent encounter or union with an ultimate order of reality, however this is understood. Mysticism in this sense, it is argued, can be found in virtually all cultures and religious traditions, and is perhaps as old as humanity itself. None the less, there is no agreement on the identifying characteristics of mystical states; the term ‘mysticism’ and its cognates have undergone long evolution and been used in a bewildering variety of ways.

Such ongoing disputes about the nature and significance of mysticism only underscore both the challenge and the importance of studying its history. On the one hand, without consensus on a definition, scholars disagree on which texts and figures merit inclusion in a historical survey of mysticism. On the other hand, arguments about whether mystical experiences are ‘everywhere the same’ can hardly be settled apart from attention to the historical evidence.
Mysticism, nature of
Authors: Payne Steven
Published: September 2018

Mysticism continues to elude easy definition, and its nature and significance remain the subject of intense debate. The terms ‘mystic’, ‘mystical’ and ‘mysticism’ have been used in an astonishing variety of ways by different authors in different eras.

Nevertheless, modern philosophical discussions have tended to focus on so-called ‘mystical experiences’, understood as certain states or modes of awareness, allegedly found within (and even outside) virtually all faith-traditions, and variously characterized as ‘consciousness without content’, ‘the experience of absolute oneness’, ‘union with the transcendent’, ‘immediate consciousness of the presence of God’, and so on. Philosophers are particularly interested in whether such experiences constitute a ‘way of knowing’, and whether they provide any support for either traditional religious beliefs or unusual metaphysical claims made by certain mystics (for example, that time is illusory). Some authors argue affirmatively, on the basis of an alleged ‘universal consensus among mystics’, for example, or the parallels between mystical consciousness and other modes of experience accepted as cognitive. Others, however, challenge these views, noting that mystics often appear to disagree precisely along the lines of their prior religious convictions, that mystical awareness seems capable of explanation in terms of natural causes, that mystical claims (like claims about one’s private feelings) do not admit of ordinary testing, or that the alleged ‘ineffability’ of mystical states frustrates any attempt at rational analysis.

These concerns, then, tend to shape the kinds of questions typically addressed in contemporary philosophical discussions of mysticism, such as: What is mysticism? What are the identifying characteristics of mystical experience? Is mysticism ‘everywhere the same’, and if so, in what sense? Are there different types of mystical experience? What is the relationship between mystical awareness and its interpretation? Are mystical experiences a ‘way of knowing’? Do they involve some form of union or contact with God? Are mystical experiences ‘ineffable’ or ‘nonlogical’, and in what sense? Can drugs or other natural stimuli induce mystical experiences, and would that affect their cognitive value?

Finally, in light of the increasingly technical nature of much of the philosophical debate, in which the primary mystical sources themselves often play a relatively minor role (except as mined for brief ‘proof texts’), there have been calls for renewed attention to the larger historical, cultural and religious contexts from which mysticism and mystical literature emerge, and within which they must be interpreted.
Omnipotence
Authors: Hoffman Joshua , Rosenkrantz Gary
Published: September 2018

Traditional theism understands God to be the greatest being possible. According to the traditional conception, God possesses certain great-making properties or perfections, including necessary existence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and omnipotence. Philosophical reflection upon the notion of omnipotence raises many puzzles and apparent paradoxes. Could an omnipotent agent create a stone so massive that that agent could not move it? It might seem that however this question is answered, it turns out that, paradoxically, an omnipotent agent is not truly all-powerful. Could such an agent have the power to create or overturn necessary truths of logic and mathematics? Could an agent of this kind bring about or alter the past? Is the notion of an omnipotent agent other than God an intelligible one? Could two omnipotent agents exist at the same time? If there are states of affairs which an omnipotent agent is powerless to bring about, then how is the notion of omnipotence to be intelligibly defined? Yet if the notion of omnipotence is unintelligible, then traditional theism must be false. Another obstacle to traditional theism arises if it is impossible for God to be both perfectly good, and omnipotent. If an omnipotent God is powerless to do evil, then how can God be omnipotent?
Pelagianism
Authors: Kirwan Christopher
Published: September 2018

Pelagius, a Christian layman, was active around ad 400. The thesis chiefly associated with his name is that (i) human beings have it in their own power to avoid sin and achieve righteousness. Critics objected that this derogates from human dependence on the grace of God. Pelagius did not deny that the power to avoid sin is itself a gift of God, an enabling grace; but he was understood to deny the need for cooperative grace, divine aid in using the power rightly, or at least to assert that (ii) such aid is a reward for human effort, and so not an act of grace. Later thinkers who held that God’s aid, though not a reward, goes only to those who do make an effort, were accused of believing that (iii) there is no need of prevenient grace in causing the effort in the first place. So Pelagianism is a tendency to magnify human powers: its defenders saw it as a (frightening) challenge to humans, its detractors as an insult to God. It was hard without Pelagianism to find a place for free will, or with it for original sin.
Religion, history of philosophy of
Authors: Alston William P.
Published: September 2018

The philosophy of religion comprises any philosophical discussion of questions arising from religion. This has primarily consisted in the clarification and critical evaluation of fundamental beliefs and concepts from one or another religious tradition. Major issues of concern in the philosophy of religion include arguments for and against the existence of God, problems about the attributes of God, the problem of evil, and the epistemology of religious belief.

Of arguments for the existence of God, the most prominent ones can be assigned to four types. First, cosmological arguments, which go back to Plato and Aristotle, explain the existence of the universe by reference to a being on whom all else depends for its existence. Second, teleological arguments seek to explain adaptation in the world, for example, the way organisms have structures adapted to their needs, by positing an intelligent designer of the world. Third, ontological arguments, first introduced by Anselm, focus on the concept of a perfect being and argue that it is incoherent to deny that such a being exists. Finally, moral arguments maintain that objective moral statuses, distinctions or principles presuppose a divine being as the locus of their objectivity.

Discussions of the attributes of God have focused on omniscience and omnipotence. These raise various problems, for example, whether complete divine foreknowledge of human actions is compatible with human free will. Moreover, these attributes, together with God’s perfect goodness give rise to the problem of evil. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good, how can there be wickedness, suffering and other undesirable states of affairs in the world? This problem has been repeatedly discussed from ancient times to the present.

The epistemology of religious belief has to do with the questions of what is the proper approach to the assessment of religious belief (for rationality, justification, or whatever) and with the carrying out of such assessments. Much of the discussion has turned on the contrast between the roles of human reason and God’s revelation to us. A variety of views have been held on this. Many, such as Aquinas, have tried to forge a synthesis of the two; Kant and his followers have sought to ground religion solely on reason; others, most notably Kierkegaard, have held that the subjecting of religious belief to rational scrutiny is subversive of true religious faith. Recently, a group of ‘Reformed epistemologists’ (so-called because of the heavy influence of the Reformed theology of Calvin and his followers on their thinking) has attacked ‘evidentialism’ and has argued that religious beliefs can be rationally justified even if one has no reasons or evidence for them.
Prophecy
Authors: Shatz David
Published: September 2018

Most people associate prophecy with prognostication. However, an understanding of philosophical theories of prophecy requires that we recognize the full range of functions that a prophet may serve: oracle, cognizer of the divine, moral and social critic, teacher, political leader, legislator, miracle-worker.

A recurring and fundamental issue, dating to ancient times, is whether prophecy is to be explained naturally or supernaturally. The Muslim philosopher al-Farabi and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides exemplify the naturalist orientation. They understood prophecy as an imaginative ‘imitation’ or translation of scientific and philosophical truths. Their accounts emphasize not only the intellectual but also the political, legislative and educational functions of prophecy. The Muslim al-Ghazali and the Christian Thomas Aquinas illustrate the supernatural approach, albeit in greatly different ways.

The proposition that biblical prophetic experiences convey scientific and metaphysical knowledge was attacked in varied ways in the modern period. In religious traditions, prophets have been replaced as sources of religious knowledge by either mystics, or books and authoritative interpreters. However, theories of prophecy are linked to important issues about religious language, miracles, the nature of God, the ends of life, and the character of religion.
Rashdall, Hastings (1858–1924)
Authors: Yandell Keith E.
Published: September 2018

Hastings Rashdall was a utilitarian in ethics, an idealist in metaphysics and a Christian monotheist in religion. His history of medieval universities became a classic. His revisions of utilitarianism are an important part of the development of that ethical theory beyond its original version in Bentham and Mill. His religious metaphysic strongly opposed the influential nonmonotheistic idealism of F.H. Bradley.
Religious language
Authors: Alston William P.
Published: September 2018

The main philosophical interest in religious language is in the understanding of what purport to be statements about God. Can they really be what they seem to be – claims to say something true about a divine reality? There are several reasons for denying this. The most prominent of these stems from the verifiability criterion of meaning, according to which an utterance can be a statement that is objectively true or false only if it is possible to verify or falsify it empirically. It is claimed that this is not possible for talk about God. However, the verifiability criterion itself has been severely criticized. Moreover, many religious beliefs do have implications that are, in principle, empirically testable, though not conclusively.

If one is moved to reject the idea that statements about God are what they seem to be, they can be taken as expressions of feelings and attitudes, and/or as guides to a life orientation. To be sure, religious utterances can have these functions even if they are also genuine statements of fact.

If one believes there to be genuine true-or-false statements about God, there are still problems as to how to understand them. We can focus on the construal of the predicates of such statements – for example, ‘made the heavens and the earth’ and ‘commissioned Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt’. There is a serious problem here because of two basic features of the situation. First, the terms we apply to God got their meaning from their application to creatures, particularly human beings. Second, God is so radically different from us that it seems that these terms cannot have the same meaning in the two uses. One possibility here is that all these terms are used metaphorically when applied to God, which obviously often happens (‘The Lord is my shepherd’). But are there some terms that can be literally true of God? This may be the case if some abstract aspect of the creaturely meaning of a term can be literally applied to God. For example, if one aspect of the meaning of ‘makes’ when applied to one of us is ‘brings about some state of affairs by an act of will’, the term ‘makes’ with that particular meaning might be truly applied to God.
Religious pluralism
Authors: Quinn Philip L.
Published: September 2018

Religion displays a luxuriant diversity of beliefs and practices. Crusades and colonialism, preaching and proselytizing, argument and apologetics have failed to produce worldwide agreement. In order to understand this situation, four possibilities are worth considering. The first is reductive naturalism. On this view, religious beliefs about a supernatural or transcendent dimension of existence are all false. They are to be explained as products of a merely human projection mechanism. The writings of such naturalistic philosophers and scientists as Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, and Durkheim suggest ways in which such projections might occur. A second possibility is exclusivism. Doctrinal exclusivism is the view that the doctrines of one religion are completely true; the doctrines of all others are false whenever there is conflict. Soteriological exclusivism is the view that only one religion offers an effective path to salvation or liberation. Though the two kinds of exclusivism are logically independent, they are usually held together. A third option, which has found increasing favour in the second half of the twentieth century, is inclusivism: one religion contains the final truth and others contain only approaches to or approximations of it; the privileged religion offers the most effective path to salvation, but those outside it can somehow be saved or liberated. The final option, pluralism, is a relative newcomer. According to pluralism, a single ultimate religious reality is being differently experienced and understood in all the major religious traditions; they all, as far as we can tell, offer equally effective paths to salvation or liberation.

These options raise interesting questions. What accounts for the growing popularity of inclusivism and pluralism? How are we to articulate pluralism? Does exclusivism remain a rational option in spite of what is known about the whole range of religious traditions? Is pluralism, once clearly stated, a rational option?
Reprobation
Authors: Feenstra Ronald J.
Published: September 2018

Reprobation is an eternal decision by God that results in everlasting death and punishment for some persons. The doctrine of reprobation typically takes one of three forms: (1) that God from eternity decreed to elect some without regard to faith or works and to reprobate others without regard to sin or unbelief, both to display his glory and for reasons we do not know (sometimes called double predestination); (2) that God from eternity decreed to elect some, despite their sin, and to abandon the rest, with the cause of their reprobation being sin and unbelief; or (3) that God from eternity elected those he foreknew would believe in Christ and reprobated those he foreknew would persist in sin and unbelief.

Reprobation doctrine was developed by Augustine and appears in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin, who were deeply indebted to Augustine’s thought. Although some Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians have defended reprobation doctrine since the sixteenth century, Reformed theologians have stressed it and made it the occasion of controversy.
Revelation
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: September 2018

All major theistic religions have claimed that God has revealed himself in some way, both by showing something of himself in events and also by providing some true, important and otherwise unknowable propositions. Event-revelation may include both general revelation (God revealing himself in very general events, observable by all, such as the existence of the universe and its conformity to natural laws), and special revelation (God revealing himself in certain particular historical events). The events are a revelation in the sense that God has brought them about and they show something of his character. Thus Judaism teaches that God manifested his nature and his love for Israel when he brought his people out of Egypt and led them to the promised land through the agency of Moses. Christianity traditionally affirms that God has revealed himself in a much fuller sense in Jesus Christ – because Jesus did not merely show us something of the character of God but was God himself. God reveals propositions by some chosen prophet or society telling us truths orally or in writing which we would not have adequate grounds for believing unless they had been announced to us by persons who showed some mark of God-given authority. Thus Islam teaches that God inspired Muhammad to write the Qur’an in the seventh century ad, and that its success (its proclamation throughout a large part of the civilized world), content and style (deep thoughts expressed in a beautiful way, not to be expected of an uneducated person) show its divine origin.
Simplicity, divine
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: September 2018

To be complex is to have many parts. To be simple is to have few. Theists of all religious traditions have asserted that God is completely simple – that is, has no parts of any sort. A contemporary statement of this doctrine of divine simplicity would add that God is identical with each of his intrinsic attributes. Thus if God is omnipotent and omniscient, for example, then he is identical with omnipotence and omniscience (and so these attributes are also identical). The doctrine’s popularity across traditions may rest on theists’ shared convictions that God is the ultimate reality, perfect, and creator of all that is not himself, and on the fact that many theists have thought that each of these claims entails the doctrine of divine simplicity. It may also rest on strands of mystical experience common to many traditions.

The doctrine has played an important part in ontological arguments for the existence of God because of its assertion of the identity of God with God’s nature (if the latter in some sense exists, so must the former). Indeed, divine simplicity is near the conceptual core of classical theism; it is one chief reason classical theists think God immutable, impassible, timeless and wholly distinct from the universe. Many who oppose divine simplicity do so because of these other doctrines it entails. Other recent critics have charged that divine simplicity makes God a mere abstract entity or requires him to have all his attributes necessarily or all contingently.
Theological virtues
Authors: Mann William E.
Published: September 2018

The three theological virtues of faith, hope and love, referred to frequently by the apostle Paul in his letters, play an indispensable role in Christian theorizing about a person’s duties with respect to God. Thomas Aquinas is responsible for the most thorough and influential philosophical theory of the theological virtues. According to him, faith, hope and love are virtues because they are dispositions whose possession enables a person to act well to achieve a good thing – in this case, the ultimate good of salvation and beatitude. Without them, people would have neither the awareness of nor the will to strive for salvation. Despite the fact that they are infused in persons by God’s grace, one can wilfully and culpably fail to let them develop.

Faith for Aquinas is the voluntary assent to propositions about God that cannot be known by the evidence available to the natural capacities of humans. Other theologians, such as Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard, deny the assumption that faith is primarily cognitive or propositional in nature, insisting instead that it is trust in God. Kierkegaard even challenges the presupposition that faith is logically continuous with natural knowledge. There has been much debate in the second half of the twentieth century as to whether it is ever rationally permissible to believe something on the basis of insufficient evidence.

According to Aquinas, hope for one’s salvation requires that one already have faith. Hope requires that one remain steadfast in the face of despair on the one hand and presumption on the other. Aquinas models the virtue of love on one strand of Aristotle’s notion of friendship. Love of God entails desiring the good that God has to offer, seeking to advance God’s goals, and communicating one’s love to God. Love for others follows from the realization that they are also created with good natures by God.
Religion, critique of
Authors: Lutz-Bachmann Matthias
Published: September 2018

During the Enlightenment a new philosophy of religion arose, one which was not connected with metaphysics or philosophical theology. It asked to what extent religion could be legitimated philosophically, to what extent it could be shown to be reasonable.

The reasonableness of religion was taken to be significant for the political as well as the confessional clash between Christian denominations in Europe, all of which tried to justify their conflicting religious doctrines by reference to a supernatural revelation. The philosophical debate that began in the Enlightenment with regard to the criteria and arguments for a religion connected either to human nature or to public reason can be called a ‘critique of religion’ (Religionskritik), although the expression is not common before the critical philosophy of Kant and his school. Hegel followed the programme of Kant’s philosophy, maintaining a philosophical concept of religion as falling ‘within the limits of reason alone’. The radical left-wing school of Hegelianism transformed Hegel’s approach, which was a critical legitimation of religion, into its destruction. Presupposing materialism in ontology and atheism, Feuerbach held that religion should be interpreted as a kind of anthropology. Marx claimed that religion is an expression of a certain sort of ideology and a necessary illusion within a class-structured society.

In twentieth-century philosophy, the critique of religion can be found in two positions. The first is a rational reconstruction of the practical intentions or semantic content of religious belief; the second is a continuation of the interpretation of religion as ideological or illusory. In addition, we can identify certain other varieties of the critique of religion, including the theological critique of religion (found, for example, in the work of Barth and Bonhoeffer) and the philosophical critique of particular religious traditions (found, for example, in the romantic and postmodern rejections of Christian monotheism by Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Klages and Heidegger).
Hiddenness of God
Authors: Dougherty Trent , Parker Ross
Published: September 2018

The problem of divine hiddenness is that the hiddenness of God seems to supply a strong reason to think that there is no loving God, since a loving God would reveal himself to all. More specifically, the problem of divine hiddenness is a problem for traditional theists who believe God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly loving and, furthermore, that having a personal relationship with God is the best possible good for human beings. For, if there is such a God, it seems as though he would make sure that everyone who wanted that relationship would be in a position to have it. However, one thing which seems required for a personal relationship with God is that the individual in question believe that God exists in the first place. So it is natural to expect God to make evidence of his existence sufficiently clear to all. Yet there are some who claim not to have sufficient evidence. This divine hiddenness therefore seems to give positive support for nonbelief in the God of traditional theism.

If these people who claim to lack sufficient evidence were suppressing the evidence, then there would be no problem for the theist, but it is hard to argue that every such case of unbelief is a case of suppressed evidence. Yet this is what some theists argue is true, even though it may not seem plausible at first: after all, self-deception is not uncommon. More often, however, theists point out reasons why God has to allow people to persist in unbelief for a time. This may involve reference to various ways in which humans can more effectively develop virtue when they are not sure that there is a God. For example, if people are certain that God is ‘looking over their shoulder’, then their actions might not be properly motivated to count as the best kind of moral actions. Thus, conclude some theists, it is better, all things considered, for God to allow some people to pass through periods of doubt.
Analytic ethics
Authors: Railton Peter
Published: September 2018

Moral philosophy has traditionally been divided into normative ethics and meta-ethics. Normative ethics concerns judgments about what is good and how we should act. Meta-ethics, with which ’analytic ethics’ is typically identified, seeks to understand such judgments. Are they factual statements capable of being literally true or false (cognitivism)? Or are they commands or expressions of attitude, capable only of greater or lesser appropriateness or efficacy (noncognitivism)? Cognitivists focus on whether the facts to which they claim moral judgments correspond are discovered from experience, or whether they occupy a different realm, as do mathematical facts. Noncognitivists, in contrast, arguing that moral judgments are not fact-stating, ask if they signal our feelings or commitments, or are imperatives of conduct.

Other questions concerning moral judgments include whether they are subjective or objective, and how they are connected to motivation. Analytic ethics therefore not only concerns the meaning of moral terms, but ranges over such areas as epistemology, metaphysics and the theory of action. As a field it remains full of controversy. It has developed approaches that afford specific insights into morality, and contributed to our understanding of the functions of thought and language.
Animals and ethics
Authors: Rachels James
Published: September 2018

Does morality require that we respect the lives and interests of nonhuman animals? The traditional doctrine was that animals were made for human use, and so we may dispose of them as we please. It has been argued, however, that this is a mere ‘speciesist’ prejudice and that animals should be given more or less the same moral consideration as humans. If this is right, we may be morally required to be vegetarians; and it may turn out that laboratory research using animals, and many other such practices, are more problematic than has been realized.
Asceticism
Authors: Quinn Philip L.
Published: September 2018

The term ‘asceticism’ is derived from the Greek word, askēsis, which referred originally to the sort of exercise, practice or training in which athletes engage. Asceticism may be characterized as a voluntary, sustained and systematic programme of self-discipline and self-denial in which immediate sensual gratifications are renounced in order to attain some valued spiritual or mental state. Ascetic practices are to be found in all the major religious traditions of the world, yet they have often been criticized by philosophers. Some argue that the religious doctrines that they presuppose are false or unreasonable. Others contend that they express a preference for pain that humans cannot consistently act upon.
Autonomy, ethical
Authors: Reath Andrews
Published: September 2018

The core idea of autonomy is that of sovereignty over oneself, self-governance or self-determination: an agent or political entity is autonomous if it is self-governing or self-determining. The ancient Greeks applied the term to city-states. In the modern period, the concept was extended to persons, in particular by Kant, who gave autonomy a central place in philosophical discourse. Kant argued for the autonomy of rational agents by arguing that moral principles, which authoritatively limit how we may act, originate in the exercise of reason. They are thus laws that we give to ourselves, and Kant thought that rational agents are bound only to self-given laws. Much contemporary discussion has focused on the somewhat different topic of personal autonomy, and autonomy continues to be an important value in contemporary liberalism and in ethical theory.

It is important to distinguish different senses of autonomy because of variation in how the concept is used. Self-governance or self-determination appears to require some control over the desires and values that move one to action, and some such control is provided by the capacity to subject them to rational scrutiny. Thus, autonomy is often understood as the capacity to critically assess one’s basic desires and values, and to act on those that one endorses on reflection. In other contexts, autonomy is understood as a right, for example as the right to act on one’s own judgment about matters affecting one’s life, without interference by others. The term is also sometimes used in connection with ethics itself, to refer to the thesis that ethical claims cannot be reduced to nonethical claims.
Charity
Authors: Hoose Bernard
Published: September 2018

Within at least some branches of Christianity, the term ‘charity’ has been used to mean the love mandated by Jesus. In recent theological writings, however, there has been a tendency to replace it with the Greek word agapē. There has been some disagreement in the twentieth century concerning the precise nature and functioning of Christian love, a major catalyst for debate having been Anders Nygren’s book Agapē and Eros (1930–6). Numerous scholars have complained that charity does not have a high profile nowadays and have noted that, in common parlance, the word usually has the meaning of benevolence or beneficence. Some attempts have been made to place greater emphasis on Christian love and relationships within Christian ethics. Of some interest in this regard is the notion of an ethic of care, which is not confined to Christian circles but has been the subject of some debate in recent times.
Conscience
Authors: Dent Nicholas
Published: September 2018

To have a conscience involves being conscious of the moral quality of what one has done, or intends to do. There are several elements under the idea of conscience. First, conscience can signify those very moral convictions persons cleave to most firmly and judge themselves by. Second, the notion may cover the faculty by which we come to know moral truths (assuming there to be such) and apply them to ourselves. Third, conscience can be said to concern the examination by a person of the morality of their desires, actions and so on. Finally, conscience can involve guilt: one can suffer from a ‘bad conscience’. In the Christian tradition, conscience can be viewed as ‘the voice of God within’ each of us. Several of these aspects of conscience are expressed in Milton’s lines from Paradise Lost, when God says: ‘And I will place within them as a guide/My umpire Conscience’ (III: 194–5).
Consequentialism
Authors: McNaughton David
Published: September 2018

Consequentialism assesses the rightness or wrongness of actions in terms of the value of their consequences. The most popular version is act-consequentialism, which states that, of all the actions open to the agent, the right one is that which produces the most good.

Act-consequentialism is at odds with ordinary moral thinking in three respects. First, it seems excessively onerous, because the requirement to make the world a better place would demand all our time and effort; second, it leaves no room for the special duties which we take ourselves to have to those close to us: family, friends and fellow citizens; and third, it might require us, on occasion, to do dreadful things in order to bring about a good result.

Consequentialists standardly try to bring their theory more into line with common thinking by amending the theory in one of two ways. Indirect act-consequentialism holds that we should not necessarily aim to do what is right. We may get closer to making the world the best possible place by behaviour which accords more with ordinary moral thought. Rule-consequentialism holds that an action is right if it is in accordance with a set of rules whose general acceptance would best promote the good. Such rules will bear a fairly close resemblance to the moral rules with which we now operate.
Consequentialism
Authors: McNaughton David , Rawling Piers
Published: September 2018

Consequentialism is sometimes taken to be a moral view according to which acts are to be assessed solely by the value of their consequences, in contrast to deontological ethical theories, which hold that certain kinds of action are wrong, and others right, independently of the goodness or badness of their outcomes

This account, however, oversimplifies matters. Contemporary consequentialism is a family of moral theories united by their fundamental concern with value. They need not assess acts in these terms; and those that do need not be concerned only with consequences. Act-consequentialism, for instance, although it does assess acts – the right act maximizes the good – need not measure the value of an act only by the value of its consequences: acts themselves may have their own intrinsic worth, for example. Rule-consequentialism assesses rules rather than acts: right acts are those that accord with a set of rules whose general acceptance would best promote the good.

Act-consequentialism builds on what seems to be the merest truism, namely that morality is concerned with making the world a better place for all. Certainly, consequentialist considerations figure importantly in issues of public policy – penal, economic or educational programmes are standardly judged by the goodness or badness of their results. Nevertheless, act-consequentialism is at odds with ordinary moral thinking in (at least) three respects.

First, it seems excessively onerous, because the requirement to make the world as good as possible would demand all our time and effort. Second, it leaves no room for the special duties that we take ourselves to have to those close to us: family, friends and fellow citizens. Third, it might require us, on occasion, to do dreadful things in order to bring about a good result.

Consequentialists standardly try to bring their theory closer to common thinking by amending it in one of two ways: either by tinkering with how we should decide on what to do (the decision procedure), or by assessing something other than our actions. Rule-consequentialism exemplifies the latter strategy: its rules may bear a fairly close resemblance to the moral rules with which we now operate. Indirect act-consequentialism (note that nomenclature varies among authors, so these doctrines may appear in other places under different names) adopts the former approach. Since it is a form of act-consequentialism, it claims that the right act maximizes the good. But, unlike direct act-consequentialism, indirect act-consequentialism denies that we should focus on the maximization of value in deciding what to do. Rather, we should follow ordinary moral thought – we may get closer to making the world as good as possible by caring for our friends and relatives, pursuing our personal projects, and steering clear of radical acts, even when they hold the promise of a better world.
Constructivism in ethics
Authors: O'Neill Onora
Published: September 2018

There have been many forms of the idea that there are no distinctively ethical properties, and that ethical claims are composed or constructed out of other considerations. In some sociological writing the term is used for the view that ethics is artificial or socially constructed, for example out of social norms or attitudes. However, constructivism in ethics is now identified mainly with certain views not of the source but of the justification of ethics, which have their origin in Kant’s work and have been revived and developed by John Rawls. Constructivism in ethics seeks to show how substantive principles, and in particular principles of justice, can be built out of minimal, uncontroversial elements, such as a slender account of action and reason.
Double effect, principle of
Authors: Uniacke Suzanne
Published: September 2018

‘Double effect’ refers to the good and bad effects which may foreseeably follow from one and the same act. The principle of double effect originates in Aquinas’ ethics, and is supposed to guide decision about acts with double effect where the bad effect is something that must not be intended, such as the death of an innocent person. The principle permits such acts only if the bad effect is unintended, not disproportionate to the intended good effect, and unavoidable if the good effect is to be achieved. The principle has wide relevance in the moral evaluation of acts which have foreseen double effects. Controversy arises over the identification of the agent’s intention in difficult cases, and over the use of the principle to resolve issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the use of pain-relieving drugs which hasten death, self-defence, and the killing of certain sorts of non-combatants in war.
Duty
Authors: Frazier Robert L.
Published: September 2018

To have a duty is, above all, to be subject to a binding, normative requirement. This means that unless there are exculpating reasons someone who has a duty is required to satisfy it, and can be justifiably criticized for not doing so. Having a duty to do something is like having been given a command by someone who has a right to be obeyed: it must be done.

Sometimes we speak as if we have duties to individuals (such as persons and institutions). So, for example, if Jones makes a promise to Smith, then Jones has a duty to Smith to keep the promise. We also talk as if we have duties to perform, or to refrain from performing, types of actions, for instance, a duty to help those in need. Even if the performance of such a duty involves treating an individual in a certain way, the duty may not be to that individual. For example, a duty to be charitable might not be a duty to anyone, not even the recipient of the charity.

An important feature of duties is that they provide some justifying reason for action. If we explain why we did something by saying that it was our duty, we are offering a justification for the action. Such a justifying reason does not depend on the entire nature of the action. For example, if we make a promise, we have some justifying reason for keeping it, regardless of what was promised, or to whom the promise was made. Again it is like a command. If we are given a command by someone with a right to be obeyed, we have some justification for obeying it, no matter what we are commanded to do. On some views, however, the justifying reason we have for doing something because it is required by duty may not be decisive: we may have an even better reason for doing something else. None the less, that something is required by duty provides some justifying reason for doing it.

Talk about duties is found in many areas; we speak, for example, of legal duties, moral duties, professional duties, the duties of a scholar and, even, matrimonial duties. This discussion will focus on moral duty, but may have wider application.