In Search of Moral Knowledge
Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy
Published on 2. May 2014
381 pages
978-0-8308-8021-8 (ISBN)
Description
For most of the church's history, people have seen Christian ethics as normative and universally applicable. Recently, however, this view has been lost, thanks to naturalism and relativism. R. Scott Smith argues that Christians need to overcome Kant's fact-value dichotomy and recover the possibility of genuine moral and theological knowledge.
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05/2014
Inter-Varsity Press,US
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Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: A Short History of Western Ethics
- 1 Christian, Biblical Ethics
- Old Testament Ethics
- New Testament Ethics
- A Few Preliminary Issues with and Objections to Biblical Ethics
- Conclusion
- 2 Ancient Ethics
- Plato
- Aristotle
- 3 Moral Knowledge from Augustine Through Aquinas
- Augustine
- Islamic Ethics
- The Jewish Ethics of Maimonides
- Aquinas
- 4 Moral Knowledge in the Reformation and the Enlightenment Shift
- The Reformation Shift: Luther and Calvin
- The Shift into the Enlightenment: Hobbes Through Mill
- The Enlightenment's Legacy
- Part Two: Naturalism, Relativism and Postmodernism
- 5 Options for Naturalistic Ethics
- Introduction
- Naturalism as a Worldview
- Naturalism and Metaethics
- Human Dignity, Meaning and Purpose
- The Next Step
- 6 Naturalism, Knowledge and the Fact-Value Split
- Introduction and Implications for the Fact-Value Dichotomy
- Dennett's Proposal
- Assessing Dennett's Proposal
- Implications
- 7 More Modern Options
- Ethical Relativism
- John Rawls's Political Liberalism12
- Korsgaard's Kantian Constructivism
- Conclusion
- 8 Introduction to the Postmodern Period
- Introduction
- The First Thread: Attitudes and the Current Mindset
- The Second Thread: Philosophical Turns
- Bev Harrison's Feminist Moral Theology
- Gustavo Gutiérrez's Liberation Theology
- Jürgen Habermas
- Jeffrey Stout
- 9 MacIntyre's Recovered Thomistic Ethics
- MacIntyre's Virtue Ethics
- Modifying Aristotle and Aquinas
- MacIntyre's Use of Wittgenstein and His Views of Language
- Our Access to Reality
- MacIntyre's Account of Rationality as Tradition-Dependent
- 10 Hauerwas's Narrative Christian Ethics
- The Contemporary Problem: Liberalism and Enlightenment Ethics
- Hauerwas's Prescription: From Theory to Praxis
- Language and Community
- The Moral Self Formed by Language
- Narrative and Stories
- Hauerwas's Context: The Christian Community
- The Importance of the Practice of Witness
- Truth and Truthful Living
- Testing the Truthfulness of Christian Lives
- Translating the Christian Story or Training in It?
- Salvation and Conversion
- The Church Is a Social Ethic
- Relativism?
- Conclusions
- 11 Assessing MacIntyre's and Hauerwas's Projects
- Exploring Possible Relationship(s) Between My "Old" and "New" Interpretations
- The First Issue: What Are We Experiencing If There Is No Direct Acquaintance?
- A Second Issue: How Does a Language Get Started?
- Third Issue: The Narrative Unity of the Self
- Fourth Issue: Language Learning and Seeing the Rational Superiority of Another Tradition
- Conclusion
- Part Three: Toward a Theory of Moral Knowledge
- 12 Moral Realism and Addressing the Crisis of (Moral) Knowledge
- A Few Preliminary Cases of Knowledge
- How We Know Reality-Some Further Case Studies
- The Theoretical Explanation
- The Necessary Ontology for Knowledge
- The Nature of Morals
- Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge
- Implications
- 13 Religiously Based Moral Knowledge-and Final Issues
- A Cumulative Case for Knowledge of Religious Truth
- Moral Knowledge from Religious Sources
- Two Objections from Evil
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Christian, Biblical Ethics
- Chapter 2: Ancient Ethics
- Chapter 3: Moral Knowledge from Augustine through Aquinas
- Chapter 4: Moral Knowledge in the Reformation and the Enlightenment Shift
- Chapter 5: Options for Naturalistic Ethics
- Chapter 6: Naturalism, Knowlege and the Fact-Value Split
- Chapter 7: More Modern Options
- Chapter 8: Introduction to the Postmodern Period
- Chapter 9: MacInyre's Recovered Thomistic Ethics
- Chapter 10: Hauerwas's Narrative Christian Ethics
- Chapter 11: Assessing MacInyre's and Hauerwas's Projects
- Chapter 12: Moral Realism and Addressing the Crisis of (Moral) Knowledge
- Chapter 13: Religiously Based Moral Knowledge-and Final Issues
- Index
- Praise for In Search of Moral Knowledge
- About the Author
- More Titles from InterVarsity Press
