THE MORALITY,POLITICS, AND IRONY OF WAR: Recovering Reinhold Niebuhr's Ethical Realism

The American experience of war is ironic. That is, there is often an intimate and unexamined relationship between seemingly contrary elements in war such as morality and politics. This article argues that without understanding such irony, we are unlikely to reflect in morally comprehensive ways on past, present, or future wars. Traditional schools of thought, however, such as moralism and political realism, reinforce these apparent contradictions. I propose, then, an alternative—“ethical realism” as informed by Reinhold Niebuhr—that better explains the irony of war. Through an ethical realist examination of the U.S. Civil War, World War II, and the Iraq War, I consider how American political interests have been inextricably linked with deep moral concerns. Ethical realism charts a middle path that ennobles traditional realpolitik while eschewing certain perfectionist tendencies of moralism. Ethical realism provides a conceptual framework for evaluating these other frameworks—a distinct form of moral‐political deliberation about war.     

Teachers as informants: countering extremism and promoting violence

ABSTRACT

This article is a response to Muslim students reporting that they had been silenced by fear of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy. By adopting a Critical Realist stance, real generative mechanisms of this actual phenomenon are investigated and theorised. Recognition of changing definitions of both ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ in different versions of PREVENT results in the discursive aspect of these real generative mechanisms being investigated using critical discourse analysis (CDA). This analysis identifies the emergence of a violent discourse of ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ (RadEx) that it is theorised has the capacity to promote rather than prevent violence. Finally, a process by which this production of violence in the classroom might have been avoided is explored and this indicates that critique of government efforts to counter ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ is a vital aspect of pedagogy in the context of PREVENT and the War on Terror.     

Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature

In recent metaethical debate over ways to justify the notion of intrinsic natural value, some neopragmatists have challenged realist conceptions of scientific and moral truth. Holmes Rolston defends a critical-realist epistemology as the basis for a metaphysics of "projective nature" and a cosmological narrative—both of which set up a historical ontology of objective natural value. Pure ecological science informs the wilderness experience of Rolston's ideal epistemic subject, the "sensitive naturalist." The author argues that Rolston's account of the relation between knowing and valuing can be clarified and strengthened by appropriating Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method. Conversely, Lonergan's view of moral self-transcendence can be developed further in light of Rolston's virtue epistemology, which is embodied in the figure of the sensitive naturalist.     

Islam,the Divine Command Theory,and Religious Fundamentalism

ABSTRACT

In 1980, George F. Hourani and, more recently in 2010, Mariam al-Attar argued that Islam is not compatible with divine command theory. They rehearsed some standard objections (namely the objectivity of morality, divine goodness, moral knowledge) targeted against meta-ethical divine command theory taking the Qur’an into consideration, and argued that it should be discarded from an Islamic point of view. In addition, they criticized divine command theory since it involves obedience to God and, therefore, does not allow moral reasoning but rather is the source of religious fundamentalism and violence. Although these objections are powerful when applied to the early Ash?arite version of divine command theory, they are not powerful against recent formulations of it presented by Christian philosophers. For example, a divine command theory like that of Robert Merrihew Adams is well suited to respond to these objections. Thus, divine command theory, in its recent formulations, is a genuine option for Muslims and should be given due consideration.     

Was Schopenhauer a Kantian Ethicist?

ABSTRACT

Commentators have generally seen the compassionate person as a second-rate character vis-à-vis the ascetic ‘saint’ who denies the will-to-life and resigns from willing altogether in Schopenhauer's ethical thought. In this paper I offer another way to interpret Schopenhauer’s ethics of compassion, which is textually grounded and genuinely Schopenhauerian, but which draws out similarities to Kant’s ethics that, I shall argue, have not been hitherto appreciated. Once these Kantian similarities are appreciated one sees that the compassionate person is no longer a runner up ethically and epistemically to the saint, rather, the compassionate person and the saint are at odds with each other, and really represent – unbeknownst to Schopenhauer himself–two distinct and incompatible ethical ideals.

To motivate this interpretation, I will first delineate the traditional interpretation of what Schopenhauer means by the compassionate person’s intuitive insight into the way the world really is. Second, I will offer a novel, and to my mind, textually preferable reading of what this intuitive insight consists in. Finally, I’ll suggest in light of recent work in metaethics by Colin Marshall – notably in his 2018 book titled Compassionate Moral Realism–that my interpretation of Schopenhauer’s ethics offers a creditable moral realist option for the contemporary landscape.     

Ambivalences about Nature and Naturalism A Supernaturalist Response to Theodore W. Nunez

As a die-hard supernaturalist, someone "at two with nature" (Woody Allen) who would be at one with God, the author has mixed feelings about Theodore Nunez's defense of "naturalism." Unlike neopragmatists, the author is not troubled by Nunez's general realism about value; he takes exception not to Nunez's theoretical account of truth, but to his specific axiology. He does not share Nunez's confidence that "projective nature" can provide reliable moral inspiration, suggesting instead that such inspiration can arise only from trust in the holiness of God.     

CHRISTIAN REALISM FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Christian realism has provided a theological understanding of politics that identifies the limits within which all political choices are made. Those limits are set by a theological understanding of judgment, which reserves the ultimate meaning of history to divine judgment, and by a theological understanding of responsibility, which gives proximate meaning to the choices between greater and lesser goods that are available to human politics. The assessments of global politics offered by Reinhold Niebuhr and other Christian realists during the Second World War and the Cold War which followed owe their influence partly to an astute and historically informed reading of events, but primarily, their influence is due to this basic theological understanding of politics. While the world has changed in ways that clearly reveal limitations in the original formulations of Christian realism, the theological principles of judgment and responsibility continue to provide an understanding of global politics adequate to the new realities of the twenty-first century.     

Place and Philosophical Topography: Responding to Bubbio,Farin and Satne

ABSTRACT

Diego Bubbio, Ingo Farin and Glenda Satne have advanced a range of comments, questions and challenges relating to the ideas and arguments set out in the new edition of my Place and Experience (2018). Rather than address each of my interlocutors separately, my responses here are organized around four main topics: the relation between space and place, including the nature of space; the relation between place and subjectivity, and the foundational role of place; the relation between place and conceptuality; and the relation between place and normativity.     

Naturalism,Formalism, and Supernaturalism: Moral Epistemology and Comparative Ethics

If the much discussed fragmentation of the West meansthat we can seldom hold constructive moral conversations with our near neighbors, why imagine that comparative ethics is feasible as a critical enterprise with a coherent method? How, more specifically, do we understand the relative merits of naturalism, formalism, and supernaturalism as ethical orientations? The author addresses these questions first by examining the meaning of the quoted terms, then by criticizing the inordinate optimism of most naturalisms and formalisms. The article ends by briefly elaborating and defending a supernaturalist conception of Christian love. As a fruit of the Spirit, agape leaves one neither heteronomous nor autonomous, but holy. Such holiness can move one to appreciate, judiciously, cultures different from one's own.     

Where is the Fundamental Disagreement Between Naive Realism and Intentionalism?

This paper aims to reveal the source of the dispute between naive realism and intentionalism. To accomplish this task, it examines Adam Pautz’s challenge to naive realism, according to which a naive intuition about visual phenomenology, which is the only workable case for naive realism, is problematic. It argues that naive realists can address the challenge from Pautz by rejecting his assumption that naive realists and intentionalists agree on the nominal definition of visual phenomenology. The paper then argues that the reason naive realists want to preserve the naive intuition is its irresistibility rather than its reliability. Given this, it concludes that the disagreement between naive realism and intentionalism is rooted in what philosophical projects they tackle. Naive realists are engaged in the philosophical project of delineating a coherent view of the actual world in which the irresistible naive intuition can be true; the intentionalist philosophical project differs from it.