Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T17:47:27.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Divine attitudes, divine commands, and the modal status of moral truths

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2011

MATTHEW CAREY JORDAN
MATTHEW CAREY JORDAN*
Affiliation:
Department of English and Philosophy, Auburn University at Montgomery, P.O. Box 244023, Montgomery, AL 36124
*
e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay presents a theistic account of deontic properties that can lay claim to many of the advantages of divine command theory but which avoids its flaws. The account, divine attitude theory, asserts that moral properties should be understood in terms of divine attitudes, such that an action is morally wrong just in case God would be displeased with the performance of that action. Among the virtues of this account is its ability to explain the modal status of fundamental moral truths, something that divine command theory cannot do.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 45 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, R. (1999) Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Almeida, M. (2004) ‘Supervenience and property-identical divine command theory’, Religious Studies, 40, 323–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbard, A. (1990) Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hare, R. M. (1981) Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hursthouse, R. (1999) On Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Jackson, F. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon).Google Scholar
Jordan, M. (2009) ‘Theistic ethics: not as bad as you think’, Philo, 12, 31–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, M. (forthcoming) ‘Some Metaethical desiderata and the conceptual resources of theism’, Sophia.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1710) Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard, ed. Farrer, A. (Chicago: Open Court, 1985).Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1989) ‘Dispositional theories of value’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 63, 113–137.Google Scholar
Murphy, M. (2002) ‘A trilemma for divine command theory’, Faith and Philosophy, 19, 22–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, M. (2004) ‘Reply to Almeida’, Religious Studies, 40, 335–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plantinga, A. (1974) God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row).Google Scholar
Railton, P. (1986) ‘Moral realism’, Philosophical Review, 95, 163–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M. (1994) The Moral Problem (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Zangwill, N. (1995) ‘Moral supervenience’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 20, 240–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar