JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS最新文献

The emotion of admiration and the semantic theory of natural kinds and direct reference are foundational for Linda Zagzebski's exemplarist moral theory and divine motivation theory. Many have examined difficulties that arise from the central role of admiration, while others have engaged her account of the incarnation. Little attention has been given to her semantic theory or philosophy of language. This essay demonstrates the difficulties and problems that arise from this theory, problems that could be avoided with a sociopractical account of language and exemplarity. One set of problems pertain to the “principle of the division of linguistic labor.” Related problems come to light in Zagzebski's attempt to account for radical changes in perceptions of exemplars through social, political, and ethical revolutions. In the end, her semantic theory creates the very epistemological uncertainties that it is meant to forestall. It also fails to account for radical disagreements about exemplars and the role moral exemplars play in sociopolitical and ethical revolutions.

This paper is an aesthetic analysis of the practice of serpent handling by Christians in the Appalachian region of the United States. The purpose of this analysis is to understand serpent handling's aesthetic relationship to the Pentecostal tradition and exposit the implications of this relationship for the practice's legal status. The first section examines the history and defining characteristics of serpent handling and introduces the controversial problem of whether the practice can be categorized within the Pentecostal movement. The second section argues that serpent handling can be understood as belonging within the broader global Pentecostal tradition through engagement with the Pentecostal aesthetics of Nimi Wariboko. The final section concludes that if serpent handling is legible according to the aesthetic norms of Pentecostalism, a now broadly tolerated religious tradition in the United States, then this necessitates a wholesale reconsideration of antiserpent handling legislation.

Though there has been much debate about whether Abelard's ethics are dangerously subjective or surprisingly absolutist, one thing is unanimous: they are intentionalist. The goal of this article is to parse out what should be meant by this claim, distancing his ethical account from the popular Kantian appraisal. Though much of the secondary literature on Abelard likens him to Kant, I argue that this is mistaken. For Abelard, an agent's intentions are informed by their affections—whether carnal or spiritual. This becomes clear when contextualizing Abelard's use of intentio with a view to his Commentary on Romans. Using the account of intention I suggest—one nuanced by Abelard's own theological commitments and biblical exegesis—it will be clear that Abelard's ethics is not a case for the moral neutrality of the passions nor an ethic of pure reason.

This study underscores The Lily and the Bird's response to despair in The Sickness unto Death. By suggesting in The Lily and the Bird that we look to nature's creatures to learn an attunement and responsiveness to our situation as physical creatures subject to finite constraints, Kierkegaard's text comes into dialogue with a form of misalignment portrayed in The Sickness unto Death as a refusal of the given, “the finite,” and “the necessary.” One way of seeking alignment in The Lily and the Bird entails learning to hear and to answer within one's given environment, opening up the possibility of embodied joy.