3. Atheist ethics

‘Atheist ethics’ argues that atheists are not only capable of leading moral lives, they may even be more able to do so than those who confuse divine law and punishment with right and wrong. The Euthyphro dilemma is very powerful argument against the idea that God is required for morality. An objection to the possibility of a godless morality is the degree of personal choice it seems to leave to the individual. It is important to identify the source(s) of morality and look at the concept of moral thinking. Ultimately, many remain unconvinced that secular ethics really can thrive without some kind of religious foundation.

Quasi-Dependence

Quasi-realists aim to account for many of the trappings of metanormative realism within an expressivist framework. Chief among these is the realist way of responding to the Euthyphro dilemma: quasi-realists want to join realists in being able to say, “It’s not the case that kicking dogs is wrong because we disapprove of it. Rather, we disapprove of kicking dogs because it’s wrong.” However, the standard quasi-realist way of explaining what we are up to when we assert the first of these two sentences rests on a mistaken identification of metaphysical dependence (or grounding) with counterfactual covariation. This chapter proposes a better way for expressivists to understand such sentences, on which they serve to express complex states of mind in which an attitude bears a relation of psychological dependence (or basing) to another state of mind. It is argued that this proposal is a natural, versatile, and fruitful approach for expressivists to take that helps them secure the first half of the Euthyphro contrast—but at the cost of making it difficult to see how expressivists can make sense of that contrast’s second half.

A Response to Old Riddles and a New Typology: On the Euthyphro Dilemma and Theomonism

This chapter argues for a reading of Schelling that is able to offer a satisfactory response to the Euthyphro Dilemma while also avoiding the pitfall of onto-theology, that is, grounding God’s existence in reason alone while grounding the being of reason in God. Eternal truths of reason exist only because God exists, but God only exists as God by means of this consequence. This does not, however, identify God and reason as onto-theology has done, as it is argued that all identification is only possible on the basis of a more radically conceived and more original process of differentiation. God only exists as God on the basis of a consequence that has acquired an independence and autonomy. There is thus not one God, but God only exists as One by means of that which results from him, hence theomonism rather than monotheism.

Judaism and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Towards A New Approach

This article attempts to utilize representative talmudic source-material that bears on the Euthyphro dilemma, and more widely, that discusses the central role of human agency in the foundations of Jewish law, in order to sketch a modified version of divine command theory (DCT), under which both horns of the traditional dilemma are grasped. That is, the proposed modified DCT, based on talmudic sources, is one in which God is properly placed at the foundation of the moral law, while simultaneously providing a central role for human moral reasoning. The first main section presents and evaluates Michael Harris’s pioneering analysis of the Euthyphro dilemma in classical Jewish sources, while the second main section attempts to sketch a new approach out of classical Jewish sources.

The Contingency of Necessity

This book shows how all necessity – logical, mathematical, physical, transcendental or metaphysical - is consequent. It argues that reason and God, although necessary with respect to essence, are, with respect to existence, eternal contingencies. The first chapter critically reverses Meillasssoux’s claim for the necessity of contingency. The second chapter positively outlines the possibility of contingent necessity by means of Boutroux’s neglected book The Contingency of the Laws of Nature. The third chapter further grounds this possibility by means of the early Schelling’s reading of Plato’s Timaeus. Chapters four and five turn to Schelling’s late philosophy, detailing an ontology that treats reason and God as matters of fact rather than as truths of reason. Chapter six draws parallels and differences between Schelling’s approach and the “passing by” of the last God in Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy. The book’s final chapter argues for a new typology for philosophical theology, theomonism, and how this conception can provide a contemporary response to the Euthyphro Dilemma. While some authors, e.g. Meillassoux and Kearney, have recently argued for a possible God who does not exist now but may in the future, this book addresses an unexplored alternative, a contingent God that eternally exists but could have eternally never existed.

On Moral-Natural and Moral-Positive Duties: A Combination Metaethical Theory in the Restoration Tradition

This article elucidates a unique metaethical theory implicit in the work of several thinkers associated with the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. After positioning that theory within a broader landscape of metaethical positions endorsed by several prominent contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians, we address the concern that, when attending to the Euthyphro dilemma, the Restoration-inspired combination metaethical theory inevitably collapses into either an unalloyed divine command theory or an unalloyed natural law theory. In explaining how this sort of worry can be mitigated, we offer reason to think that the nonreductive, combination metaethical theory in question constitutes potentially fertile territory for further scholarly work in Christian ethics.