Moral Conviction

We often praise people who stand by their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. Two significant questions here are (1) whether conviction itself — taken as a mode of belief — has any distinctive value, or whether all the value of conviction derives from its substantive content, and (2) how conviction can be made responsible in a way that mitigates the risks of falling into dogmatism, fanaticism, and other vices. In response to the first question, I suggest that conviction has instrumental value that derives from its relationship to integrity and courage. On the second question, I articulate the roles that reflection, discourse (engagement with others), and humility must play in the dialectical process of maintaining responsible convictions.     

Issues in the Pharmacological Induction of Emotions

abstract   In this paper, we examine issues raised by the possibility of regulating emotions through pharmacological means. We argue that emotions induced through these means can be authentic phenomenologically, and that the manner of inducing them need not make them any less our own than emotions arising 'naturally'. We recognize that in taking drugs to induce emotions, one may lose opportunities for self-knowledge; act narcissistically; or treat oneself as a mere means. But we propose that there are circumstances in which none of these concerns arise. Finally, we consider how the possibility of drug-regulation might affect duties to feel emotions.     

PARTICIPATION AND EXEGESIS: RESPONSE TO CATHERINE PICKSTOCK

This essay pursues Catherine Pickstock's "metaphysical-epistemological" insights but in a "metaphysical-hermeneutical" direction. In particular, Pickstock's case for a fourteenth-century break from the metaphysics/epistemology of "participated-in perfections" receives further plausibility by looking at the movement away from patristic-medieval biblical interpretation. Drawing upon the work of Matthew L. Lamb in particular, the essay argues that nominalist metaphysical rejection of participation led to time and history being understood no longer primarily as a participatory and teleological conversatio Dei but instead now as a strictly linear (autonomous) continuum of distinct moments. "History" thus understood proved difficult to square with patristic-medieval biblical interpretation, which gradually became unintelligible to many as a "mystical" zone cut off from the "conceptual" realm of facts. As an example of the resources available in such patristic-medieval biblical interpretation, the essay treats Aquinas's exegesis of John 3:27–36.     

TAKING EXCEPTION TO THE GRENZFALL'S RECEPTION: REVISITING KARL BARTH'S ETHICS OF WAR

This article investigates Karl Barth's ethics of war and its reception by placing the discussion within the larger framework of the general ethics of Church Dogmatics II/2 and the special ethics of Church Dogmatics III/4. It gives careful attention to the infamously problematic “exceptional case” to illumine what sort of “exception,” if any, the provocative passages on war entail. The outlines of Barth's ethical framework and the Grenzfall, or borderline case, provide the background for the re‐evaluation of three common interpretations of his views on war.