THE RELATIONSHIP OF RELIGION AND ETHICS: A COMPARISON OF NEWMAN AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

John Henry Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is a commonly cited source for the idea that religion and ethics are in some fashion mutually implicated, and specifically the idea that religious belief can be grounded in our moral experience. ¹ In this paper I aim to do two things. First of all, I shall try to show that Newman's account of the relationship between religious and ethical understanding, as expounded in the Grammar , is more richly nuanced than one might suppose from reading the work of his commentators, and indeed anticipates a great deal of recent discussion in the philosophy of religion. Secondly, I shall argue that one strand of Newman's case in particular merits further attention in the context of current debate; here I shall argue that Newman's position is reminiscent of recent discussion in the philosophy of mind concerning the sense in which feelings are intentional, and articulates a view which is at best underdeveloped in recent work in philosophy of religion.