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1 - Introducing the Issues
Katherine Chambers, University of New England, Australia
Book:

Augustine on the Nature of Virtue and Sin

Published online:

10 January 2024

Print publication:

23 November 2023, pp 1-44
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Summary

This chapter notes that current scholarship on Augustine’s idea of pagan virtue and current scholarship on his political thought contain different, and conflicting, interpretations of his notions of virtue and vice, or sin. This chapter proposes that to determine which interpretation is correct we need to situate Augustine’s moral thought in relation to the ancient moral tradition of eudaimonism. Oliver O’Donovan and Nicholas Wolterstorff have proposed that Augustine broke with classical eudaimonism, but this chapter argues that their interpretation of the Stoic and Platonic tradition in eudaimonism is incorrect, and that a correct understanding of this tradition leads to the conclusion that Augustine in fact remained faithful to the eudaimonist approach to ethics.

Forming Communities of Charity
Joel Harrison
Published online:

06 July 2020

Print publication:

09 July 2020
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Why should we care about religious liberty? Leading commentators, United Kingdom courts, and the European Court of Human Rights have de-emphasised the special importance of religious liberty. They frequently contend it falls within a more general concern for personal autonomy. In this liberal egalitarian account, religious liberty claims are often rejected when faced with competing individual interests – the neutral secular state must protect us against the liberty-constraining acts of religions. Joel Harrison challenges this account. He argues that it is rooted in a theologically derived narrative of secularisation: rather than being neutral, it rests on a specific construction of 'secular' and 'religious' spheres. This challenge makes space for an alternative theological, political, and legal vision. Drawing from Christian thought, from St Augustine to John Milbank, Harrison develops a post-liberal focus on association. Religious liberty, he argues, facilitates creating communities seeking solidarity, fraternity, and charity – goals that are central to our common good.

Chapter 8 - Re-evaluating the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology
- By Duncan Pritchard
Edited by Abrol Fairweather, San Francisco State University, Owen Flanagan, Duke University, North Carolina
Book:

Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue

Published online:

05 April 2014

Print publication:

27 March 2014, pp 143-154
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Summary

This chapter considers whether, in epistemology, ought implies can. It offers an account of the epistemic ought. This account of oughts and cans will be virtue theoretic in that epistemic norms are cashed out in terms of proper functioning and essential kinds. In order to isolate the kind of can that is implied by the epistemic ought, the chapter considers three recently proposed views of the epistemic ought. It turns out that, while each of these views is insightful, and to some extent true, none of them is explanatorily adequate. Nicholas Wolterstorff clarifies the notion of proper functioning at issue by appeal to other, typically non-epistemic. Richard Feldman takes the epistemic ought to fall into a general category of ought that he calls role oughts. The criticism of Feldman's account of the epistemic ought was anticipated by Hilary Kornblith, in an article critical of Feldman's account of the ought.