Books Reviewed in this Article: Transforming Bible Study. By Walter Wink. Pp.175, London, SCM Press, 1981, £3.50. Isaiah 1–39. By R.E. Clements. Pp.xvi. 301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1980, £3.95. Isaiah 40–66. By R.N. Whybray. Pp.301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1975, Reprinted 1981, £3.95. Die Gestalt Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien. By Heinrich Kahlefeld. Pp.264, Frankfurt, Verlag Josef Knecht, 1981, no price given. Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. By Ernest Best. Pp.283, Sheffield, JSOT Press, (...) 1981, £15.00, £5.95. The Origin of Paul's Gospel. By Seyoon Kim. Pp.xii, 391, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1981, 78 DM. An die Römer. By Ernst Käsemann. Pp.xvi, 411, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1980, 48 DM. Les Récits de Resurrection des Morts dans le Nouveau Testament. By Gerard Rochais. Pp.xv, 252, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £15.00. Prêtres Anciens, Prétre Nouveau selon le Nouveau Testament. By Albert Vanhoye. Pp.366, Paris Editions du Seuil, 1980, no price given. Woman in the World of Jesus. By Evelyn and Frank Stagg. Pp.292, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1981, no price given. Jesus, Man and the Church. By Karl Rahner. Pp.260, London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, £14.50. Jesus Lord and Savior: A Theopathic Christology and Soteriology. By William M. Thompson. Pp.ix, 287, Leominster, Fowler Wright, 1981, £7.45. God and World in Schleiermacher's ‘Dialektik’ and ‘Glaubenslehre’. Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics. By John E. Thiel. Pp.xiv, 239, Bern, Frankfurt and Las Vegas, Peter Lang, 1981, SF 49.50. Ministry: A Case for Change. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Pp.ix, 165, London, SCM Press, 1981, £4.95. The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology. Edited by Michael J. Taylor. Pp.274, New York, Alba House, 1981, $7.95. Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith. A Report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England. Pp.ix, 310, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.50. Confessing the Faith in the Church of England Today. By R.T. Beckwith. Pp.36, Oxford, La timer House, 1981, £1.00. A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. By J.I. Packer. Pp.39, Oxford, Latimer House, 1981, £1.00. Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the Christian Faith. By Anthony Hanson and Richard Hanson. Pp.xii, 283, Oxford University Press, 1981, £8.50. Doctrine in the Church of England. The 1938 Report with a new introduction by G.W.H. Lampe. Pp.lx, 242, London, SPCK, 1982, £8.50. The Divine Right of the Papacy in Recent Ecumenical Theology. By J. Michael Miller. Pp.xvi, 322, Rome, Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1980, 18,000 Lire. Der heilige Geist in der Theologie von Heribert Mühlen: Versucheiner Darstellung und Würdigung. By John B. Banawiratma. Pp.ix, 310, Frankfurt and Bern: Peter D. Lang, 1981, SFr. 60.00. Standing Before God: Studies on Prayer in Scriptures and Tradition with Essays in Honor of John M. Oesterreicher. Edited by Asher Frinkel and Lawrence Frizzell. Pp.410, New York, Ktav Publishing House, 1981, $29.50. Judaism and Healing. By J. David Bleich. Pp.xiii, 199, New York, Ktav, 1981, $15.00. The Diversity of Moral Thinking. By Neil Cooper. Pp.x, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1981, £15.00. L'Homme: Sujet ou Objet? By Jacques Croteau. Pp.260, Montreal, Bellarmin: Tournai, Desclée et Cie, 1981, $15.00. The Texture of Knowledge: An Essay on Religion and Science. By James W. Jones. Pp.97, Washington, University Press of America, 1981, no price given. Cosmos and Creator. By Stanley L. Jaki. Pp.xii, 168, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1980, £6.75. Dante, Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. By Patrick Boyde. Pp.vii, 408, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £30.00. Dissidence et Philosophie au Mayen Âge. By E.L. Fortin. Pp.201, Montreal, Bellarmin, 1981, $12.00. The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton. By Richard Acworth. Pp.x, 388, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1979, 74 DM. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought. By David Miller. Pp.xii, 218, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £15.00. Hegelianism. By John Edward Toews. Pp.x, 450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £25.00. One Hundred Years of Thomism. Edited by V.B. Brezik. Pp.210, Houston, Centre for Thomistic Studies, 1981, no price given. Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. By J.V. Femia. Pp.xiii, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £17.50. Greek and Roman Slavery. By Thomas Wiedemann. Pp.xvi, 284, London, Croom Helm, 1981, £10.95, £5.95. Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves. Edited by Ann Williams. Pp.x, 355, London, Longman, 1980, £25.00. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate. By Felicity Heal. Pp.xv, 353, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £17.50. Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe. By Michael Mullett. Pp.xxiv, 193, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1980, £10.50. The Jesuits. By J.C.H. Aveling. Pp.390, London, Blond and Briggs, 1981, £16.95. The Beginnings of Ideology. By Donald R. Kelley. Pp.xv, 351, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £24.00. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. By J.C. Davis. Pp.x, 427, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £25.00. Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979. By Hansjakob Stehle. Pp.466, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981, £16.20, £8.10. Structuralism or Criticism? By Geoffrey Strickland. Pp.viii, 209, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £17.50. The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert. By Robert B. Shaw. Pp.xiii, 123, Cambridge, Mass., Cowley Publications, 1981, $5.00. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Edited by Frank Whaling. Pp.xx, 412, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.95. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. By Robert D. Pelton. Pp.312, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, £15.00. (shrink)

Signs and Wonders: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. By R.A. Anderson. Pp.xvii, 158, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1983, £4.25. Inheriting the Land: A Commentary on the Book of Joshua. By E. John Hamlin, Pp.xxiii, 207, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1984, £4.75. Servant Theology: A Commentary on the Book of Isaiah 40–55. By G.A.F. Knight. Pp.ix, 204, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1984, £4.75. God's Chosen (...) People: A Commentary on the Books of Amos and Lamentations. By R. Martin‐Achard and S. Paul Re'emi. Pp.viii, 133, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1984, £4.50. The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. By Klyne Snodgrass. Pp.x, 140, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1983, 72 DM. The Johannine Paraclete in the Church Fathers. By Anthony Casurella. Pp.xiv, 258, J.C.B. Mohr Tübingen, 1983, 78DM. Sacraments and Liturgy: The Outward Signs. By Louis Weil. Pp.vii, 115, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983, £9.50, £3.95. Le Sacrement de l'Ordination. By Joseph Lécuyer. Pp.281, Paris, Beauchesne, 1983, 150 Fr. Christ's Lordship and Religious Pluralism. Edited by G.H. Anderson and T.F. Stransky. Pp.viii, 209, New York, Orbis Books, 1981, £5.50. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions. By Alan Race. Pp.xi, 176, London, SCM Press, 1983, £5.95. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. By Wayne A. Meeks. Pp.xii, 299, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1983, £15.00, £6.50. Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity. By Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier, Pp.xii, 242, London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1983, £5.95; Ramsey, Paulist Press, 1983, $9.95. The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians. By Rosamund McKitterick. Pp.xiv, 414, London, Longman, 1983, £9.95. The Medieval Reformation. By Brenda Bolton. Pp. 126, London, Edward Arnold, 1983, £4.50. Robert Grosseteste Hexaëmeron. Edited by Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben. Pp.xxix, 374, London, for The British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1983, £40.00. William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste. By Steven P. Marrone. Pp.xi, 318, Princeton University Press, 1983, £28.00. Protestant Reformers in Elizabethan Oxford. CM. Dent. Pp.viii, 262, Oxford University Press, 1983, £17.30. Paolo Sarpi between Renaissance and Enlightenment. By David Wootton. Pp.viii,192, Cambridge University Press, 1983, £20.00. The Jesuits in England from 1580 to the Present Day. By Francis Edwards. Pp.333, Tunbridge Wells, Burns and Oates, 1985, £20.00. Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Freedom. By Alan White. Pp.xii, 201, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983, £16.50. Sophists, Socratics and Cynics. By H.D. Rankin. Pp.263, London, Croom Helm, Totowa, Barnes and Noble, 1983, £17.95. Early Medieval Philosophy : An Introduction By John Marenbon. Pp.ix, 190, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, £9.95. Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Thinkers. By Edward Booth. Pp.xxvi, 314, Cambridge University Press, 1983, £35.00. About Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation. By Armand A. Maurer. Pp.135, Houston, Center for Thomistic Studies, 1983, $6.00. A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art. By James Hall. Pp.xi, 415, London, John Murray, 1983, £17.50. Inconsistencies: Studies in the New Testament, the Inferno, Othello and Beowulf. By William Whallon. Pp.107, Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 1983, £15.00. The Language of Grace: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy and Iris Murdoch. By Peter S. Hawkins. Pp.xiv, 137, Cambridge, Cowley Publications, 1983, $6.95. Iulia de Beausobre. By Constance Babington Smith. Pp.xi, 195, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983, £9.95. A History of Psychoanalysis. By Reuben Fine. Pp.xii, 686, New York, Colombia University Press, 1979, $31.20. Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan. Edited and translated by Stuart Schneiderman. Pp.viii, 265, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980, £12.60. Work: The Shadow and the Substance. By David Bleakley. Pp. 121, London, SCM Press, 1983, £4.95. M.R. James: An Informal Portrait. By Michael Cox. Pp.xviii, 268, Oxford University Press, 1983, £14.50. (shrink)

Mark C. Murphy addresses the question of how God's ethics differs from human ethics. Murphy suggests that God is not subject to the moral norms to which we humans are subject. This has immediate implications for the argument from evil: we cannot assume that an absolutely perfect being is in any way bound to prevent the evils of this world.

The 1920s and 30s were key decades for the history of American social science. The success of such quantitative disciplines as economics and psychology during World War I forced social scientists to reexamine their methods and practices and to consider recasting their field as a more objective science separated from its historical foundation in social reform. The debate that ensued, fiercely conducted in books, articles, correspondence, and even presidential addresses, made its way into every aspect of social science thought of (...) the period and is the subject of this book. Mark C. Smith first provides a historical overview of the controversy over the nature and future of the social sciences in early twentieth-century America and, then through a series of intellectual biographies, offers an intensive study of the work and lives of major figures who participated in this debate. Using an extensive range of materials, from published sources to manuscript collections, Smith examines "objectivists"--economist Wesley Mitchell and political scientist Charles Merriam--and the more "purposive thinkers"--historian Charles Beard, sociologist Robert Lynd, and political scientist and neo-Freudian Harold Lasswell. He shows how the debate over objectivity and social purpose was central to their professional and personal lives as well as to an understanding of American social science between the two world wars. These biographies bring to vivid life a contentious moment in American intellectual history and reveal its significance in the shaping of social science in this country. (shrink)

This article is a précis of Mark C. Murphy’s _Divine Holiness and Divine Action_ (Oxford University Press, 2021), which offers an account of God’s holiness and of the difference this view of God’s holiness should make to our understanding of divine action.

This book deals with a central problem in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the themes of time and the self as developed in the pseudonymous writings. Arguing that a most effective way to grasp the unity of Kierkegaard's dialectic of the stages of existence is to focus on the dramatic presentation of time and the self that appears at each stage, Mark C. Taylor pursues these themes from the viewpoints of theology, philosophy, psychology, and related areas of study. The (...) author works from the original texts and makes much use of untranslated primary and secondary material. His concluding evaluation offerse a critical perspective from which to view Kierkegaard's interpretation of time and selfhood and indicates the importance of Kierkegaard's work for our time. Mark C. Taylor teaches religion at Williams College. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations.

Explores the strategies of design, contrast, and resonance in the works of Hezel, Heidegger, Bataille, Blanchot, Derrida, and Kierkegaard The history of society and culture is, in large measure, a history of the struggle with the endlessly ...

Political communities across the world have recently sought to tackle rising rates of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, by implementing coercive immunization programs, or by making existing immunization programs more coercive. Many academics and advocates of public health have applauded these policy developments, and they have invoked ethical reasons for implementing or strengthening vaccine mandates. Others have criticized these policies on ethical grounds, for undermining liberty, and as symptoms of broader government overreach. But such arguments often obscure or abstract away from (...) the diverse values that are relevant to the ethical justifications of particular political communities’ vaccine‐mandate policies. We argue for an expansive conception of the normative issues relevant to deciding whether and how to establish or reform vaccine mandates, and we propose a schema by which to organize our thoughts about the ways in which different kinds of vaccine‐mandate policies implicate various values. (shrink)

In the first book wholly concerned with divine authority, Mark C. Murphy explores the extent of God's rule over created rational beings. The author challenges the view—widely supported by theists and nontheists alike—that if God exists, then humans must be bound by an obligation of obedience to this being. He demonstrates that this view, the "authority thesis," cannot be sustained by any of the arguments routinely advanced on its behalf, including those drawn from perfect being theology, metaethical theory, normative (...) principles, and even Scripture and tradition. After exposing the inadequacies of the various arguments for the authority thesis, he develops his own solution to the problem of whether, and to what extent, God is authoritative. For Murphy, divine authority is a contingent matter: while created rational beings have decisive reason to subject themselves to the divine rule, they are under divine authority only insofar as they have chosen to allow God's decisions to take the place of their own in their practical reasoning. The author formulates and defends his arguments for this view, and notes its implications for understanding the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. (shrink)

Although the commonly accepted view is that there are such things as natural talents, more than 20 years of research suggests the opposite. What passes for talented is attributable to a combination of social and environmental factors. If the current research on this topic holds true, then there are implications not only for various theories of distributive justice, but there are also serious implication for real world distributions. In this article I will argue that talent is not innate and that (...) our belief in its innateness has serious theoretical and practical implications for distributive justice. Many of these implications can be seen in the ways resources and opportunities are distributed; particularly in the way they affect distributions to children. (shrink)

In Robust Ethics, Erik Wielenberg criticizes all theistic ethical theories that explain creaturely value in terms of God on the basis that all such formulations of theistic ethics are committed to the denial of the existence of creaturely intrinsic value. Granting Wielenberg’s claim that such theistic theories are committed to the denial of creaturely intrinsic value, this article considers whether theists should take such a denial to be an objectionable commitment of their views. I argue that theists should deny the (...) existence of creaturely intrinsic value, and that such a denial is not an objectionable commitment of theism. (shrink)

In the fall of 2005, Mark C. Taylor, the controversial public intellectual and widely respected scholar, suddenly fell critically ill. For two days a team of forty doctors, many of whom thought he would not live, fought to save him. Taylor would eventually recover, but only to face a new threat: surgery for cancer. "These experiences have changed me in ways I am still struggling to understand," Taylor writes in this absorbing memoir. "After the past year, I am persuaded (...) that I have done enough fieldwork to write a book that combines philosophical and theological reflection with autobiographical narrative. Writing is not only possible but actually seems necessary." _Field Notes from Elsewhere_ is Taylor's unforgettable, inverted journey from death to life. Each of his memoir's fifty-two chapters and accompanying photographs recounts a morning-to-evening experience with sickness and convalescence, mingling humor and hope with a deep exploration of human frailty and, conversely, resilience. When we confront the end of life, Taylor explains, the axis of the lived world shifts, and everything must be reevaluated. As Taylor sorts through his remembrances, much that once seemed familiar becomes strange, paradoxical, and contradictory. He reads his experience with and against ghosts from his past, recasting the meaning of mortality, sacrifice, solitude, and abandonment, along with a host of other issues, in light of modern ways of dying. "You never come back from elsewhere," Taylor concludes, "because elsewhere always comes back with you.". (shrink)

The age of information, media, and virtuality is transforming every aspect of human experience. Questions that have long haunted the philosophical imagination are becoming urgent practical concerns: Where does the natural end and the artificial begin? Is there a difference between the material and the immaterial? In his new work, Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices. Nothing defines postmodernism so well as its refusal of depth, (...) its emphasis on appearance and spectacle, its tendency to collapse a three-dimensional world in which image and reality are distinct into a two-dimensional world in which they merge. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality. For many cultural commentators, postmodernism's inescapable play of surfaces is cause for despair. Taylor, on the other hand, shows that the disappearance of depth in postmodern culture is actually a liberation repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives--the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter--lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Taylor looks at the contemporary preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing, and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. Phrenology and skin diseases, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks--all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation. Embodying the very tendencies it analyzes, Hiding is unique. Conceived and developed with well-known designers Michael Rock and Susan Sellars, this work transgresses the boundary that customarily separates graphic design from the story within a text. The product of nearly three decades of reflection and writing, Hiding opens a window on contemporary culture. To follow the remarkable course Taylor charts is to see both our present and past differently and to encounter a future as disorienting as it is alluring. (shrink)

In addressing objections to the theological voluntarist program, the consensus response by defenders of theological voluntarism has been to affirm a restricted theological voluntarism on which some, but not all, important normative statuses are to be explained by immediate appeal to the divine will. The aim of this article is to assess the merits and demerits of this restricted view. While affirming the restricted view does free theological voluntarism from certain objections, it comes at the cost of committing the theological (...) voluntarist to the view that no theses about the divine nature itself could alone be sufficient to motivate a theological voluntarist thesis about any normative status. And when we examine the case for a theological voluntarist account of any particular normative status – say, rightness, or obligatoriness – there are severe difficulties with that case as it stands. It is thus unclear whether the theological voluntarist program of providing good reasons to affirm a voluntarist explanation of non‐trivially‐theistic normative statuses has borne fruit. (shrink)

Natural law theory has been undergoing a revival, especially in political philosophy and jurisprudence. Yet, most fundamentally, natural law theory is not a political theory, but a moral theory, or more accurately a theory of practical rationality. According to the natural law account of practical rationality, the basic reasons for actions are basic goods that are grounded in the nature of human beings. Practical rationality aims to identify and characterize reasons for action and to explain how choice between actions worth (...) performing can be appropriately governed by rational standards. These standards are justified by reference to features of the human goods that are the fundamental reasons for action. This book is a defence of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality, demonstrating its inherent plausibility and engaging systematically with rival egoist, consequentialist, Kantian and virtue accounts. (shrink)

I offer a reading of the role of freedom in Descartes’ Meditations and other writings that sees freedom’s role in “assenting to ideas” as a matter of psychological possibility, and its role in acti...

NATURAL LAW ARGUMENTS CONCERNING the political order characteristically appeal, at some point or other, to the common good of the political community. To take the clearest example: Aquinas, perhaps the paradigmatic natural law theorist, appeals to the common good in his accounts of the definition of law, of the need for political authority, of the moral requirement to adhere to the dictates issued by political authority, and of the form political authority should take. But while united on the point that (...) arguments for normative political conclusions must take the common good as a principle, natural law theorists have not been united in their understanding of the nature of the common good. The differences among natural law views on the character of the common good are not trivial: they concern such deep issues as whether the common good should be understood as an intrinsic or an instrumental good, and whether the common good should be understood in relation to the good of individuals of that community or solely in relation to the good of the community as a whole. If one aims to develop a natural law account of the political order, then, one cannot remain neutral with respect to the various natural law understandings of the common good, for these various understandings are almost certain to yield differing conclusions on the source, functions, and limits of political authority. (shrink)

Nots is a virtuoso exploration of negation and negativity in theology, philosophy, art, architecture, postmodern culture, and medicine. In nine essays that range from nihility in Buddhism to the embodiment of negativity in disease, Mark C. Taylor looks at the surprising ways in which contrasting concepts of negativity intersect. In the first section of this book, Taylor discusses the question of the "not" in the religious thought of Anselm, Hegel, Derrida, and Nishitani. In the second part, he analyzes artistic (...) efforts "to figure not" in the work of artists Arakawa and Madeline Gins, architect Daniel Libeskind, pop artist David Sallee, and pop icon Madonna. The final section consists of a deeply personal and scientifically informed chapter that discusses the workings of negativity in immunology and illness. Taylor's essays work toward a sense of the not as unnameable as it is irrepressible--an "unthinkable third" that falls between being and nonbeing. Bringing together concerns that span Taylor's early investigations of Hegel and Kierkegaard and recent studies of art and architecture, Nots is an important contribution by one of the most original and distinctive voices now writing on the American scene. Religion and Postmodernism series. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NATURAL LAW, IMPARTIALISM, AND OTHERS' GOOD* MARK C. MURPHY Georgetown University Washington, D.C. The title of a recent article by Henry Veatch and Joseph Rautenberg asks "Does the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?'"; the answer that the text of that article produces is, unsurprisingly, "Yes." Veatch and Rautenberg argue that despite superficial similarities between the moral theory defended by Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle (...) and the eudaimonist moral theories defended by Aristotle and Aquinas, the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle (hereafter "GFB") view is more akin to utilitarian impartialism than to Aristotelian or Thomistic eudaimonism. I shall argue that although Veatch and Rautenberg are correct to label the GFB view a type of impartialism, they misunderstand both the character of its impartialism and the mistake on which it rests. A clearer understanding of what is at issue between impartialist and eudaimonist natural law theories will bring into focus the severity of the problem faced in trying to decide between these accounts. I Call the thesis that all correct practical reasoning proceeds from one's own good as a principle "eudaimonism"; call the thesis that all correct practical reasoning proceeds from the good * I owe a debt of gratitude to Melissa Barry, Lenn Goodman, Trenton Merricks, and (especially) Thomas Williams for their comments on early drafts of this article. 1 Henry Veatch and Joseph Rautenberg, "Does the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" Review of Metaphysics 44 (1991): 807-830. 53 54 MARK C. MURPHY impartially considered "impartialism." As Veatch and Rautenberg point out, the GFB view endorses impartialism: from the point of view of practical reason, whether a good is instantiated in you or in me makes no difference.2 This impartialism places the GFB view on the side of the utilitarians against the eudaimonism of Aristotle and Aquinas. That Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle part ways with Aristotle and Aquinas on this issue is, of course, no argument against the GFB view. Veatch and Rautenberg attempt to call the GFB impartialism into question, though, by arguing both that the GFB impartialism has absurd consequences and that the argument by which Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle reach the impartialist thesis contains plain errors. Veatch and Rautenberg hold that the impartialism advocated by the GFB view is a result of modern moral philosophy's disconnecting the concept of a good from that of human needs, desires, and interests: The notion of 'good' [on the 'modern' view] needs to be denatured and completely dissociated from all reference to our liking, desiring, or finding pleasing those things which we take to be good. Instead, all 'goods' are to be converted into so many 'oughts', and as 'oughts' they are to be furthered and pursued.3 On the modern view, to assert that pleasure is a good is to assert only that pleasure ought to be promoted; to say that knowledge is a good is to say only that knowledge ought to be pursued. From this sundering of the relationship between the idea of a good and that of human needs and interests it is a small step 2 Although both utilitarianism and the GFB view endorse impartialism, they differ importantly in that utilitarianism is consequentialist whereas the GFB view is not. To move from the impartialist thesis that the good impartially considered is the starting point for practical reason to the utilitarian thesis that one ought to act so as to maximize overall goodness requires, among other presuppositions, the assumption that another's good and my own are commensurable. This premise the GFB view denies; no two instantiations of basic values between which choice is possible are commensurable. See Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis, "Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends," American Journal ofJurisprudence 32 (1987): 99-151, esp. 110.· 1 Veatch and Rautenberg, "Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy," 816. NATURAL LAW, IMPARTIALISM, AND OTHERS' GOOD 55 indeed to impartialism: once goods are no longer such in virtue of anyone's needing or desiring them, there is no reason to promote one's own good over that of anyone else: "Instead, all goods having now been converted into so many 'oughts', it would seem to... (shrink)

Disfiguring is constructive or, perhaps more accurately, reconstructive. By exploring the religious dimensions of twentieth-century painting and architecture, he shows how the visual arts continue to serve as a rich resource for the theological imagination.

Vaccine mandates can take many forms, and different kinds of mandates can implicate an array of values in diverse ways. It follows that good ethics arguments about particular vaccine mandates will attend to the details of individual policies. Furthermore, attention to particular mandate policies—and to attributes of the communities they aim to govern—can also illuminate which ethics arguments may be more salient in particular contexts. If ethicists want their arguments to make a difference in policy, they should attend to these (...) kinds of empirical considerations. This paper focuses on the most common and contentious vaccine mandate reform in the contemporary United States: the elimination of nonmedical exemptions (NMEs) to school and daycare vaccine mandates. It highlights, in particular, debates about California's Senate Bill 277 (SB277), which was the first successful recent effort to eliminate NMEs in that country. We use media, secondary sources, and original interviews with policymakers and activists to identify and evaluate three ethics arguments offered by critics of SB277: parental freedom, informed consent, and children's rights to care and education. We then turn to one ethics argument often offered by advocates of SB277: harm prevention. We note, however, that three arguments for mandates that are common in the immunization ethics literature—fairness/free-riding, children's rights to vaccination, and utilitarianism—did not play a role in debates about SB277. (shrink)

"Religion," Mark C. Taylor maintains, "is most interesting where it is least obvious." From global financial networks to the casinos of Las Vegas, from images flickering on computer terminals to steel sculpture, material culture bears unexpected traces of the divine. In a world where the economies of faith are obscure, yet pervasive, Taylor shows that approaching religion directly is less instructive than thinking about it. Traveling from high culture to pop culture and back again, About Religion approaches cyberspace and (...) Las Vegas through Hegel and Kant and reads Melville's The Confidence-Man through the film Wall Street. As astonishing juxtapositions and associations proliferate, formerly uncharted territories of virtual culture disclose theological vestiges, showing that faith in contemporary culture is as unavoidable as it is elusive. The most accessible presentation of Taylor's revolutionary ideas to date, About Religion gives us a dazzling and disturbing vision of life at the end of the old and beginning of the new millennium. (shrink)

In this article I consider the respective merits of three interpretations of divine command theory. On DCT1, S’s being morally obligated to φ depends on God’s command that S φ; on DCT2, that moral obligation depends on God’s willing that S be morally obligated to φ; on DCT3, that moral obligation depends on God’s willing that S φ. I argue that the positive reasons that have been brought forward in favor of DCT1 have implications theists would find disturbing and that (...) the positive reasons brought forward in favor of DCT2 support only a weak formulation of DCT2 that is indistinguishable from other theistic moral theories. DCT3 is, however, a distinctive theory that theists have strong reasons to affirm. (shrink)

The desert has long been a theme in Mark C. Taylor’s work, from his inquiries into the religious significance of Las Vegas to his writings on earthworks artist Michael Heizer. At once haunted by absence and loss, the desert, for Taylor, is a place of exile and wandering, of temptation and tribulation. Bones, in turn, speak to his abiding interest in remnants, ruins, ritual, and immanence. Taylor combines his fascination in the detritus of the desert and its philosophical significance (...) with his work in photography in Mystic Bones. A collection of remarkably elegant close-up images of weathered bones—remains of cattle, elk, and deer skeletons gathered from the desert of the American West—Mystic Bones pairs each photograph with a philosophical aphorism. These images are buttressed by a major essay, “Rubbings of Reality,” in which Taylor explores the use of bones in the religious rituals of native inhabitants of the Western desert and, more broadly, the appearance of bones in myth and religious reality. Meditating on the way in which bones paradoxically embody both the personal and the impersonal—at one time they are our very substance, but eventually they become our last remnants, anonymous, memorializing oblivion—Taylor here suggests ways in which natural processes can be thought of as art, and bones as art objects. Bones, Taylor writes, “draw us elsewhere.” To follow their traces beyond the edge of the human is to wander into ageless times and open spaces where everything familiar becomes strange. By revealing beauty hidden in the most unexpected places, these haunting images refigure death in a way that allows life to be seen anew. A bold new work from a respected philosopher of religion, Mystic Bones is Taylor’s his most personal statement of after-God theology. (shrink)

_A leading thinker asks why “faster” is synonymous with “better” in our hurried world and suggests how to take control of our runaway lives_ We live in an ever-accelerating world: faster computers, markets, food, fashion, product cycles, minds, bodies, kids, lives. When did everything start moving so fast? Why does speed seem so inevitable? Is faster always better? Drawing together developments in religion, philosophy, art, technology, fashion, and finance, Mark C. Taylor presents an original and rich account of a (...) great paradox of our times: how the very forces and technologies that were supposed to free us by saving time and labor now trap us in a race we can never win. The faster we go, the less time we have, and the more we try to catch up, the farther behind we fall. Connecting our speed-obsession with today’s global capitalism, he composes a grand narrative showing how commitments to economic growth and extreme competition, combined with accelerating technological innovation, have brought us close to disaster. Psychologically, environmentally, economically, and culturally, speed is taking a profound toll on our lives. By showing how the phenomenon of speed has emerged, Taylor offers us a chance to see our pace of life as the product of specific ideas, practices, and policies. It’s not inevitable or irreversible. He courageously and movingly invites us to imagine how we might patiently work towards a more deliberative life and sustainable world. (shrink)

Behavioral ecologists often assume that natural selection will produce organisms that make optimal decisions. In the context of information processing, this means that the behavior of animals will be consistent with models from fields such as signal detection theory and Bayesian decision theory. We discuss work that applies such models to animal behavior and use the case of Bayesian updating to make the distinction between a description of behavior at the level of optimal decisions and a mechanistic account of how (...) decisions are made. The idea of ecological rationality is that natural selection shapes an animal's decision mechanisms to suit its environment. As a result, decision-making mechanisms may not perform well outside the context in which they evolved. Although the assumption of ecological rationality is plausible, we argue that the exact nature of the relationship between ecology and cognitive mechanism may not be obvious. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Nature does not begin, as we expect, with nature. Instead, Hegel describes the practical and theoretical approaches we make to nature as philosophers; that is, in thought and, metaphorically, with our teeth. This ledge on the climb into nature is often overlooked as we rush from the logic into space and time. There may be two reasons for this. The first is a natural expectation that a philosophy of nature begin by describing natural phenomena, not our approaches (...) to them. The second is that the terms ‘practical’ and ‘theoretical’, familiar from the Logic and Philosophy of Spirit, may seem at first glance to be out of place here. Whatever the reason, these paragraphs have not been discussed at any length in the secondary literature. (shrink)

He notes that the order of the book is random and arbitrary, and that there is no unity, thematic or otherwise--an innovative approach to making sense of the universe. Several of the dozen essays have been previously published. No index.

“To hear silence is to find stillness in the midst of the restlessness that makes creative life possible and the inescapability of death acceptable.” So writes Mark C. Taylor in his latest book, a philosophy of silence for our nervous, chattering age. How do we find silence—and more importantly, how do we understand it—amid the incessant buzz of the networks that enmesh us? Have we forgotten how to listen to each other, to recognize the virtues of modesty and reticence, (...) and to appreciate the resonance of silence? Are we less prepared than ever for the ultimate silence that awaits us all? Taylor wants us to pause long enough to hear what is not said and to attend to what remains unsayable. In his account, our way to hearing silence is, paradoxically, to see it. He explores the many variations of silence by considering the work of leading modern and postmodern visual artists, including Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, James Turrell, and Anish Kapoor. Developing the insights of philosophers, theologians, writers, and composers, Taylor weaves a rich narrative modeled on the Stations of the Cross. His chapter titles suggest our positions toward silence: Without. Before. From. Beyond. Against. Within. Between. Toward. Around. With. In. Recasting Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit and Kierkegaard’s stages on life’s way, Taylor translates the traditional Via Dolorosa into a Nietzschean Via Jubilosa that affirms light in the midst of darkness. Seeing Silence is a thoughtful meditation that invites readers to linger long enough to see silence, and, in this way, perhaps to hear once again the wordless Word that once was named “God.”. (shrink)