Search results
Ethics. Ethics attends to complex questions of how one should live and what kind of person one ought to be, both individually and in community. Whatever tradition, geographic complex, or historical time period considered, ethics examines the nature of human flourishing in religious texts, lives, and communities, and seeks to understand ...
Mar 14, 2023 · Religious ethics can serve intrinsic goods insofar as it pursues ends that are admirable features of human knowing and self-awareness, and it can serve instrumental purposes insofar as it can assist in securing recognition, legitimacy, and support in the study of religion and humanities education—what I have called the politics of religious ethics.
- Religion and Ethics
- Divine Command Theory
- Natural Law Theory
- Putting This Into Practice: The Doctrine of Double Effect
- Some Thoughts About Natural Law Theory
A great many people around the world are religious and look to their religion for moral guidance. See the graphic “Religions by a Percentage of Population” to get a sense of how many people are religiously affiliated around the globe. If this many people are religious, then it is worth taking a moment to look at how their religion informs their eth...
Religion and morality seem to go hand-in-hand, and specific moral codes are often grounded in specific religious traditions. Identifying the nature of the relationship between religion and morality may therefore seem straightforward: the right thing to do is whatever is right according to religious tradition. Justification for this claim derives su...
Introduction to Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was an intellectual and religious revolutionary, living at a time of great philosophical, theological and scientific development. He was a member of the Dominican Friars and taught by one of the greatest intellects of the age, Albert the Great (1208–1280). In a nutshell Aquinas wanted to move away from Plato’s thinking, which was hugely influential at the time, and instead introduce Aristotelian ideas to science, nature and theology. Aquinas wrote an incredible amou...
Law
Aquinas’s Natural Law Theory contains four different types of law: 1. Eternal Law, 2. Natural Law, 3. Human Law and 4. Divine Law. The way to understand these four laws and how they relate to one another is via the Eternal Law, so we’d better start there… By Eternal LawAquinas means God’s rational purpose and plan for all things. And because the Eternal Law is part of God’s mind then it has always, and will always, exist. The Eternal Law is not simply something that God decided at some point...
Summary of Aquinas’s Natural Law Theory
For Aquinas everything has a function (a telos) and the good thing(s) to do are those acts that fulfill that function. Some things such as acorns, and eyes, just do that naturally. However, humans are free and hence need guidance to find the right path. That right path is found through reasoning and generates the “internal” Natural Law. By following the Natural Law we participate in God’s purpose for us in the Eternal Law. However, the primary precepts that derive from the Natural Law are qui...
Let’s consider some examples to show that what we have said so far might actually work. Imagine someone considering suicide. Is this morally acceptable or not? Recall, it is part of the Natural Law to preserve and protect human life. Clearly suicide is not preserving and protecting human life. It is therefore irrational to kill oneself and cannot b...
There are many things we might consider when thinking through Aquinas’s Natural Law Theory. There are some obvious problems we could raise, such as the problem about whether or not God exists. If God does not exist then the Eternal Law does not exist and therefore the whole theory comes tumbling down. However, as good philosophers we ought always t...
- Andrew Fisher, Mark Dimmock, Henry Imler, Kristin Whaley
- 2019
Religious Ethics. The Religious Ethics Area is concerned with the meaning, merits, and validity of religion for the lives of human and non-human animals and the ordering of societies and ecosystems. The Religious Ethics Area addresses problems of the good life, justice, and the common good. Study in the history, methods, and theories of ...
Overview. As an academic discipline, “ethics” is, broadly speaking, the scrutiny and self-critical analysis of how people live, and the critical construction of proposals for how they might live better. Scholarship in religious ethics investigates sources, ideas, archives, and practices that shape understandings of moral life.
Dec 30, 2022 · What is Religious Ethics? is a reliable and easily digestible introduction to the field. With chronologically structured chapters, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and interviews with scholars of religious ethics, this is an ideal guide to those approaching the study of religious ethics for the first time.
People also ask
Why should we study Religious Ethics?
How do you understand religious ethics?
What is the focus of the Religious Ethics Area?
What exams do I need to study Religious Ethics?
How do scholars contribute to the study of religion and ethics?
What is religious ethics?
Aug 14, 2023 · If a core reason to study religious ethics is to strengthen one's ability to reason ethically in a diverse and complex world, one that is profoundly shaped by religious phenomena, then the ways we educate students of ethics (religious and otherwise) should focus more intentionally on the practice of moral reasoning than is often the case.
