Robert Green Ingersoll (original) (raw)
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Kingdom Ethics and the Case for Virtue Ethics
The paper observes that traditional Reformed theology has concentrated on deontological ethics to the neglect of virtue ethics and argues that there should also be room for the latter.
Over the last decade, philosophers of education have begun taking a renewed interest in Rousseau’s educational thought. This is a welcome development as his ideas are rich with educational insights. His philosophy is not without its flaws, however. One significant flaw is his educational project for females, which is sexist in the highest degree. Rousseau argues that females should be taught to “please men…and make [men’s] lives agreeable and sweet.” The question becomes how could Rousseau make such strident claims, especially in light of his far more insightful ideas concerning the education of males. This paper attempts to make sense of Rousseau’s ideas on the education of females. While I maintain that Rousseau’s project for Sophie ought to be rejected, I argue that we should try to understand how this otherwise insightful thinker could make such surprising claims. Is it a bizarre inconsistency in his philosophical reasoning or an expression of his unabashed misogyny, as so many have claimed? I argue that it is neither. Rather, it is a product of his conception of human happiness and his belief in the irreducible role human sexual relations has in achieving and prolonging that happiness. For Rousseau, sex, love and happiness are inextricably connected, and he believes that men and women will be happiest when they inhabit certain sex roles—not because sex roles are valuable in themselves, but because only through them can either men or women hope to be happy.
While histories of human rights have proliferated in recent decades, little attention has been given to the history of thinking about duties to protect these rights beyond sovereign borders. We have a good understanding of the history of duties of sovereign states to ensure the safety and well-being of their own citizens and of the right of other states to forcefully intervene when these duties are violated. But the story of the development of thinking about duties to assist and protect the vulnerable beyond borders remains to be told. This article defends the importance of excavating and examining past thinking about these duties. It then sketches key aspects of Western natural law thinking about such duties, from Francisco de Vitoria through to Immanuel Kant, claiming that such study holds the promise of exposing from where ideas that prevail in international law and politics have come and retrieving alternative ideas that have been long forgotten but that may reward renewed consideration. It concludes by briefly outlining how three such retrieved ideas might be of particular use for those seeking to push international law and politics in a more just direction today.
Common Home as an Ethical Schema
The environment, as a subject of moral consideration and responsibility, has only recently engaged Christian theologians. Official church documents have been following this trend more slowly, but evolved significantly with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. This profound document has a pastoral purpose, but makes significant ethical and moral claims while calling for development of ecological education. This paper seeks to respond by drawing out of Laudato Si’ the framework of an ethical schema that is based on the fruitful image of ‘common home’.
The Virtue of Equity and the Contemporary World
Journal of Moral Theology, 2019
In this paper, I argue for a retrieval of the virtue of equity in the contemporary world. I consider the significance of the virtue in Aquinas's moral theology, and then argue, contra Fuchs and Haring, that equity should be understood as modifying civil law, not natural law. I then consider how the virtue is, implicitly, applied in a contemporary context through the pastoral letters of St. Oscar Romero