scholarly journals From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Moral Universe ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
The Relationship

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a period of remarkable intellectual vitality in British philosophy, as figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Smith attempted to explain the origins and sustaining mechanisms of civil society. Their insights continue to inform how political and moral theorists think about the world in which we live. The aim of this book is to reconstruct a debate which preoccupied contemporaries, but which seems arcane to us today. This concerned the relationship between reason and revelation as the two sources of mankind’s knowledge, particularly in the ethical realm: to what extent, they asked, could reason alone discover the content and obligatory character of morality? This was held to be a historical, rather than merely a theoretical question: had the philosophers of pre-Christian antiquity, ignorant of Christ, been able satisfactorily to explain the moral universe? What role did natural theology play in their ethical theories—and was it consistent with the teachings delivered by revelation? Much recent scholarship has drawn attention to the early-modern interest in two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions—Stoicism and Epicureanism. Yet in the English context, three figures above all—John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume—quite deliberately and explicitly identified their approaches with Cicero as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition, critical of both the Stoic and the Epicurean: academic scepticism. All argued that Cicero provided a means of addressing what they considered to be the most pressing question facing contemporary philosophy: the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the key themes and questions to be explored in the work. In particular, it discusses the tendency of much recent scholarship on early-modern philosophy to emphasize the importance of two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions: the Stoic and the Epicurean. It indicates that three important British writers—John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume—deliberately and explicitly aligned their approaches with Cicero, as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition: academic scepticism. This, they argued, offered the conceptual resources more satisfactorily to address a question that contemporaries recognized to be particularly pressing: the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy. It further yielded highly distinctive narratives of the historical relationship between classical moral philosophy and the Christian moral theology which had appropriated and displaced it. These narratives were in turn challenged by Shaftesbury and Mandeville, who placed themselves (respectively) within the Stoic and Epicurean traditions.

The Place of Cicero in Locke’s Moral Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-88
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unpublished Works

Locke’s published and unpublished works disclose a marked contempt for classical moral philosophy, with one signal exception: Cicero. This chapter reconstructs Locke’s interpretation of Cicero, to explain why he was held to be an exception to Locke’s more general disdain for ancient ethical theories. This approach also illuminates our understanding of the relationship between Locke’s moral theory, political philosophy, writings of Christian apologetic, and theory of toleration. It suggests that Locke’s moral philosophy is decidedly more complex, and richer, than is often recognized: pregnant with naturalistic impulses that were nonetheless subordinated to a grounding of morality in the authority, will, and command of a divine legislator. These aspects of Locke’s moral theory proved to be immensely stimulating to later British philosophers such as Hume, even if they sought systematically to decouple moral philosophy from Christian theology.

The British Naturalist Tradition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick D. Aquino
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Natural Element ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter argues that Newman draws upon the British Naturalist tradition in fresh ways, especially in his effort to take up the challenge of epistemological scepticism. It examines the scholarly literature that has drawn attention to how John Locke and David Hume feature as formative influences on Newman’s philosophical thought while providing a closer look at how Newman engages with and appropriates insights from the Naturalist tradition in his own context. This chapter also furnishes two examples (the trustworthiness of our cognitive faculties and conscience as a natural element of our mind) to illustrate the extent to which Newman is working within the Naturalist tradition. It concludes with two areas that deserve further reflection and development, namely, a more constructive understanding of the relationship between Newman’s naturalized epistemology and natural theology and a deeper analysis of how Newman appropriates and transforms the British Naturalist tradition.

Faith

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas P. Wolterstorff
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

Faith became a topic of discussion in the Western philosophical tradition on account of its prominence in the New Testament, where the having or taking up of faith is often urged by writers. The New Testament itself echoes both Hellenistic concepts of faith and older biblical traditions, specifically that of Abraham in the Book of Genesis. The subsequent attention of philosophers has been focused primarily on three topics: the nature of faith, the connection between God’s goodness and human responsibility, and the relation of faith to reason. Discussions on the nature of faith, from Aquinas to Tillich, have tried to examine the subject in terms of whether it is a particular form of knowledge, virtue, trust and so on. Regarding divine goodness, the argument has primarily focused on the relationship between faith and free will, and whether lack of faith is the responsibility of the individual or of God. Concerning the relation between faith and reason, there are two quite separate issues: the relation of faith to theorizing, and the rationality of faith. Aquinas in particular argued that faith is a necessary prerequisite for reasoning and intellectual activity, while later, John Locke explored the relationship between faith, reason and rationality, and concluded that faith can be reached through reason. This latter viewpoint was later heavily criticized by Wittgenstein and his followers.

Persons in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy

Persons ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 154-181
Author(s):  
Antonia LoLordo
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Moral Personhood ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Early Modern Britain ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the rise of the problem of personal identity and the relation between moral and metaphysical personhood in early modern Britain. I begin with Thomas Hobbes, who presents the first modern version of the problem of diachronic identity but does not apply it to persons. I then turn to John Locke, who grounds the persistence of persons in a continuity of consciousness that is important because it is necessary for morality, thus subordinating metaphysical personhood to moral personhood. Finally, I examine how the relationship between moral personhood and metaphysical personhood is treated in three of Locke’s critics: Edmund Law, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, and David Hume.

Adam Smith and David Hume: with Sympathy

Utilitas ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. L. Van Holthoon
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Basic Issue

Why did Hume drop sympathy as a key concept of his moral philosophy, and why—on the other hand—did Smith make it into the ‘didactic principle’ of his Theory of Moral Sentiments? These questions confront us with the basic issue of ethical theory concerning human nature. My point in dealing with these questions is to show what views of human nature their respective choices involved. And my procedure will be to take a close look at the revisions they made to their ethical theories to bring out the contrasting aspects of their views of human nature.

Natural theology and the Scottish philosophy in the thought of Thomas Chalmers

1971 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel F. Rice
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind

It was the observation of Princeton's James McCosh that ‘the reconciliation between the philosophy and the religion of Scotland was effected by Thomas Chalmers’. That Chalmers’ roots run deep in the soil prepared by the philosophy of Common Sense is indisputable. The Reid-Beattie-Stewart tradition in philosophy provided the backdrop against which the formation and development of Chalmers’ theology was framed. The important questions, however, are how Chalmers appropriated this philosophical tradition, for what ends he employed it, and to what extent it informed the content of his theology. It is certainly the case that Chalmers embraced Reid's repudiation of Locke's theory of ideas on both moral and religious grounds. The ‘constancy of nature’ whose rational and empirical demonstrability David Hume had called into question was crucial for Chalmers, and he attempted to reinstate it with the aid of every intellectual weapon the Scottish philosophers could provide. Furthermore, Chalmers accepted much of the programmatic work of the Common Sense philosophers in their efforts to ground morality and the ‘moral sense’ on a priori laws constitutive of the mind itself.

The Making of the Evangelical Conscience

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
The Law ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
The Relationship

When it came to human nature, evangelicals did not share the optimism of those who felt moral philosophy could follow the precedents of natural philosophy. The distinctive evangelical doctrine of the “spirituality and extent of the law” was the key to diagnosing the sinful human condition, establishing the urgency of conversion, and defining evangelical moral agency. In this emphasis on law, evangelicals drew upon analogues in their law-minded culture, for this was England’s “century of law.” George Whitefield preached, quite literally, with the scaffold in the background. The relationship between what John Locke called divine law, civil law, and the law of public opinion can be seen clearly in the case of the lawyer-turned-preacher Martin Madan, and the assize sermons of John Wesley and Henry Venn.

From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-222
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cause Of Error ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Methodology ◽  
Civil Societies

Hume gave more attention, and wrote more extensively, on the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy than on any other issue. In doing so, he made clear the importance of Cicero—when interpreted as an academic sceptic—to the explanations he formulated. Hume quite explicitly identified his own variant of sceptical philosophy with Cicero’s, and argued that it alone was consistent with the empirical methodology upon which the ‘science of man’ had to be constructed. In contrast to Locke—with whose moral theory he engaged more closely than scholars have recognized—Hume argued that Cicero justified a complete conceptual separation between the realms of morality and religion. This informed Hume’s narrative of the history of philosophy, which identified the pathological human tendency to demand certainty and to avoid doubt as the greatest cause of error and disruptive of the ties which held people together in civil societies.

scholarly journals Damaris Masham, Ralph Cudworth and John Locke: Some Philosophical Continuities

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 11-35
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
John Locke ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper, I focus on Damaris Masham, to re-consider the relationship of her philosophy to the two philosophers with whom she was most closely associated: John Locke, and her father, the Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth. After considering some of the problems of interpretation which have arisen in scholarly debates, I focus her Occasional Thoughts to highlight continuities with both Locke and Cudworth in her epistemology, moral philosophy and metaphysics. I argue these show that Damaris Masham’s philosophy does not fit the received categories of empiricist or rationalist of the dominant narrative. Her position requires us to reconsider not just the relationship of her philosophy to that of Cudworth and Locke, but also of the relationship of Cudworth and Locke. Ultimately, therefore, reintegrating women into the history of philosophy challenges us to rethink standard narratives of the history of philosophy.

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