scholarly journals Is Kierkegaard a “Virtue Ethicist”?

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-342
Author(s):  
Robert C. Roberts ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Good Source ◽  
Virtue Ethicist ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Relationship

Several readers of Kierkegaard have proposed that his works are a good source for contemporary investigations of virtues, especially theistic and Christian ones. Sylvia Walsh has recently offered several arguments to cast doubt on the thesis that Kierkegaard can be profitably read as a “virtue ethicist.” Examination of her arguments helps to clarify what virtues, as excellent traits of human character, can be in a moral outlook that ascribes deep sin and moral helplessness to human beings and their existence and salvation entirely to God’s grace. The examination also clarifies the relationship between virtues and character and between the practices of virtue ethics and character ethics. Such clarification also may provide a bridge of communication between Kierkegaard scholarship and scholars of virtue ethics beyond the theistic communities. In particular, I’ll argue that a character ethics that is not a virtue ethics would be suboptimal as an aid to the formation of Christian wisdom and sanctification. Kierkegaard’s character ethics is a virtue ethics.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING YOGASUTRA: A FRAMEWORK FOR ECOLOGICAL VIRTUE ETHICS

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 270-279
Author(s):  
P.S. Sreevidya
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Relationship

This is an endeavor to seek the possibilities of the application of ethical principles of yoga in present day of ecological issues. The relevance of this research paper is evident from the fact that ecological issues are not only scientific but also an ethical and this research paper is reliable and informative in the extent that it seeks to challenge the existing relationship between human beings and nature with the description of the present crisis of ecology as a crisis of human-nature relationship. To talk of ecological issues signifies that most of the issues may occur because of the attitude and behavior patterns of man towards environment. The confluence of ethical principles of yoga and ecology offer profoundly relevant response to the ecological issues and brings forth an ecological virtue ethics, which care for all natural entities with main focus of the relationship between man and environment. It offer systematic framework for understanding the traits of character and types of action that cause problems for environment. Yoga approach on ecology is intrinsic in nature, which includes moral expansionism that tries to expand outward from human centered ethics towards animals and sentient life in general. All life forms of plants and animals are interrelated and have an intrinsic value. Ethical principles of yoga give greater importance to the attitude of the mind rather than on postulation of the elaborate theories of what is right and wrong.  So the virtues of yoga ethics would be used as a remedy towards changing an attitude of the common man towards his environment.

Sin, Grace, and Free Choice in Post-Reformation Reformed Theology

2014 ◽  
pp. 227-241
Author(s):  
Stephen Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Strong Commitment ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Theological Vision ◽  
Moral Capacity

This chapter discusses Reformed thought on sin, grace, free choice, and ethics, by focusing on some prominent theologians—particularly Samuel Maresius, Francis Turretin, Petrus van Mastricht, and Pierre Du Moulin. It argues that the freedom and moral capacity of human beings is central to the Reformed theological vision. The Reformed deploy careful distinctions to demonstrate that the fundamental contingency of human action is compatible with the divine decrees. The disastrous effects of the Fall are highlighted, but the persistence of natural human faculties is also underlined. God’s grace is conceived as working so powerfully within the elect, that it invariably achieves its end, but not by undermining the rational faculties of its recipients. In ethics, the Reformed are shown to have a strong commitment both to natural law and virtue ethics, without tension with their overarching commitment to God’s revealed law.

An explanation of the relationship between artificial intelligence and human beings from the perspective of consciousness

2021 ◽  
pp. 209660832110563
Author(s):  
Jianhua Xie
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Evolution Of Consciousness ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Development Level ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
The Relationship

What will be the relationship between human beings and artificial intelligence (AI) in the future? Does an AI have moral status? What is that status? Through the analysis of consciousness, we can explain and answer such questions. The moral status of AIs can depend on the development level of AI consciousness. Drawing on the evolution of consciousness in nature, this paper examines several consciousness abilities of AIs, on the basis of which several relationships between AIs and human beings are proposed. The advantages and disadvantages of those relationships can be analysed by referring to classical ethics theories, such as contract theory, utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. This explanation helps to construct a common hypothesis about the relationship between humans and AIs. Thus, this research has important practical and normative significance for distinguishing the different relationships between humans and AIs.

Mary's Womb as the 'Space Within Our Space for the Gestating Son of God'

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Lyn Holness
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
Similar Vein ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractSpeaking of Mary's womb, Hans Urs von Balthasar draws attention to the place where the Word 'staked out' a space in a human being in order there itself to become man (human), as the child of a mother. In similar vein we are directed to the mystery that Catholic and Orthodox Christians have always overtly recognized: Mary's unique place among human beings as the one who 'contains the uncontainable God.' If this mystery lies at the heart of our faith, then at the heart of that heart is God's grace. In grace God selects a poor, Galilean girl to be the locus of what Christians believe to be the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened. There is much to learn about 'grace, space and race' through reflection on what occurred in Mary's womb, not least in the relationship between immanence and transcendence. This and other themes which have their origin here provide both the imagery and the theological undergirding for other themes – more concrete, specific, and contemporary – that we might explore in a theology of place in (South) Africa today.

Why We Cannot Make History. Some Remarks on a Lesson from Early Historicism

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-137
Author(s):  
Peter Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Caspar David Friedrich ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Human Finitude

AbstractThere are various perspectives from which the meaning of historicism can be understood. Historically, the interpretation of historicism has predominantly been interested in either questions concerning historical methodology, or the relationship between the natural and human sciences, or the normative consequences of historicism. My intention is not to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of these different research approaches, but rather to supplement them by confronting the meaning of historicism from the perspective of a different question. Did historicism in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries formulate a notion of historical chance or of historical contingency, a notion of what is neither necessary nor impossible in history but rather the result of accident and chance? To answer this question, I begin with Reinhart Koselleck’s interpretation of historicism presented in two rather short essays, “Der Zufall als Motivationsrest in der Geschichtsschreibung” and “Über die Verfügbarkeit von Geschichte”. In the next step of my analysis, I confront Koselleck’s interpretation of the historicist sensibility for contingency and chance with Odo Marquard’s conceptual distinction between two notions of contingency and chance. This line of argumentation gives rise to a definition of historicism as a theoretical sensibility for the “fatefully accidental” (Marquard). I further support this claim with an analysis of Savigny’s legal history, of Schleiermacher’s theology and of the “anti-Faustian” (Werner Busch) art of Caspar David Friedrich. Historicism ultimately teaches us that history is never the exact outcome of the intentions of historical actors. Though human beings undeniably act in history, they cannot make history or at least cannot make it as they please. It is in this regard that I find, in my concluding remarks, Hermann Lübbe’s description of historicism as a “sermon of human finitude” to be wholly accurate.

Mission And Grace of God According to the Book of Jonah

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susilo Susanto
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Relationship

In the Old Testament there is a debate between two related topics, namely the mission and grace of God. Specifically seen in the Book of Jonah, this book contains several dialogues which perfectly support the motion of the story and the themes it carries. Its structure provides a contrasting picture of Yahweh and Jonah. To answer this debate, by looking at the relationship between mission and God's grace in the Book of Jonah. We can find in it Jonah's disobedience in carrying out the mission that God gave him and the rewards he experienced by God's grace to him. Likewise the Ninevites received the grace of God which the prophet of God did not want. Then the question arises what is the mission and mercy of God in universal relationships. Thus this paper seeks to elaborate on these two topics.

Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Kasperbauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

Fellow Creatures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Good For ◽  
Treat All ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This book argues that we are obligated to treat all sentient animals as “ends in themselves.” Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, it offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings who have a good. Drawing on a revised version of Kant’s argument for the value of humanity, it argues that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends in ourselves in two senses. As autonomous beings, we claim to be ends in ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. As beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends in ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of reciprocal moral lawmaking. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient animal as something of absolute importance. The book also argues that human beings are not more important than, superior to, or better off than the other animals. It criticizes the “marginal cases” argument and advances a view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. It offers a non-utilitarian account of the relationship between the good and pleasure, and addresses questions about the badness of extinction and about whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us, and keep them as pets.

Religion and Toleration from the Enlightenment to the Post-Secular Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Forst
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the classical question of the relationship between enlightenment and religion. In doing so, the chapter compares Jürgen Habermas's thought to that of Pierre Bayle and Immanuel Kant. For, although Habermas undoubtedly stands in a tradition founded by Bayle and Kant, he develops a number of important orientations within this tradition and has changed his position in his recent work. The chapter studies this change to understand Habermas's position better. It also draws attention to a fundamental question raised by the modern world: what common ground can human reason establish in the practical and theoretical domain between human beings who are divided by profoundly different religious (including antireligious) views?

"A Dismal Swamp": Darwin, Design, and Evolution in Our Mutual Friend

1994 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard W. Fulweiler
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Dismal Swamp ◽  
Human World ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Our Mutual Friend ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend, published just six years after Darwin's The Origin of Species, is structured on a Darwinian pattern. As its title hints, the novel is an account of the mutual-though hidden-relations of its characters, a fictional world of individuals seeking their own advantage, a "dismal swamp" of "crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures." The relationship between the two works is quite direct in light of the large number of reviews on science, evolution, and The Origin from 1859 through the early 1860s in Dicken's magazine, All the Year Round. Given the laissez-faire origin of the Origin, Dicken's use of it in a book directed against laissez-faire economics is ironic. Important Darwinian themes in the novel are predation, mutual relationships, chance, and, especially, inheritance, a central issue in both Victorian fiction and in The Origin of Species. The novel asks whether predatory self-seeking or generosity should be the desired inheritance for human beings. The victory of generosity is symbolized by a dying child's "willing" his inheritance of a toy Noah's Ark, "all the Creation," to another child. Our Mutual Friend is saturated with the motifs of Darwinian biology, therefore, to display their inadequacy. Although Dickens made use of the explanatory powers of natural selection and remained sympathetic to science, the novel transcends and opposes its Darwinian structure in order to project a teleological and designed evolution in the human world toward a moral community of responsible men and women.

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