78 research outputs found
Religious Dietary Practices and Secular Food Ethics; or, How to Hope that Your Food Choices Make a Difference Even When You Reasonably Believe That They Don't
Religious dietary practices foster a sense of communal identity, certainly, but traditionally they are also regarded as pleasing to God (or the gods, or the ancestors) and spiritually beneficial. In other words, for many religious people, the effects of fasting go well beyond what is immediately observed or empirically measurable, and that is a large part of what motivates participation in the practice. The goal of this chapter is to develop that religious way of thinking into a response to a motivational problem that arises from our awareness of the insensitivity of
contemporary food supply chains. If someone can have faith, or at least tenacious hope, that the significance of her food choices goes well beyond what is immediately observed or empirically measurable, then she may be less demoralized by the apparent inefficacy of those choices. The chapter concludes by considering a way in which this broadly religious way of thinking might be available to secular people as well
Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action
Commentators typically neglect the distinct nature and role of hope in Kantâs system, and simply lump it together with the sort of Belief that arises from the moral proof. Kant himself is not entirely innocent of the conïŹation. Here I argue, however, that from a conceptual as well as a textual point of view, hope should be regarded as a different kind of attitude. It is an attitude that we can rationally adopt toward some of the doctrines that are not able to be proved from within the bounds of mere reason â either theoretical or practical. This does not mean that hope is unconstrained; there are rational limits, as we shall see. In fact one of my central claims here is that a crucial difference between knowledge, rational Belief, and rational hope is that they are governed by different modal constraints; section II discusses those constraints and the kind of modality involved. In section III, I return to Religion and offer what I take to be Kantâs account of the main objects of rational hope in that text â namely, âalleged outer experiences (miracles)â;a âsupposed inner experience(effect of grace)â;and a future collective experience (the construction of a truly ethical society)
Leibniz and Kant on Empirical Miracles: Rationalism, Freedom, and the Laws
Leibniz and Kant were heirs of a biblical theistic tradition which viewed miraculous activity in the world as both possible and actual. But both were also deep explanatory rationalists about the natural world: more committed than your average philosophical theologian to its thoroughgoing intelligibility. These dual sympathiesâsupernaturalist religion and empirical rationalismâgenerate a powerful tension across both philosophersâ systems, one that is most palpable in their accounts of empirical miraclesâthat is, events in nature that violate one or more of the natural laws. The primary goal of this chapter is to exhibit their respective efforts to resolve this tension, and to show how Kantâs noumenal ignorance doctrine allows him to set aside some key difficulties that Leibnizâs model leaves unresolved. The chapter concludes with the unorthodox suggestion that both systems leave conceptual space for the idea that finite free beings, rather than just God, can produce empirical miracles
Knowledge, Discipline, System, Hope: The Fate of Metaphysics in the Doctrine of Method
In this chapter I highlight the apparent tensions between Kantâs very stringent critique of metaphysical speculation in the âDiscipline of Pure Reasonâ chapter and his endorsement of Belief (Glaube) and hope (Hoffnung) regarding metaphysical theses in the subsequent âCanon of Pure Reason.â In the process I will examine his distinction between the theoretical and the practical bases for holding a âtheoreticalâ conclusion (i.e. a conclusion about âwhat existsâ rather than âwhat ought to beâ) and argue that the position is subtle but coherent. In the second part of the paper I focus on Kantâs account of rational hope in the Doctrine of Method: its nature, scope, conditions, and role in the philosophy of religion generally
Inefficacy, Despair, and Difference-Making: A Secular Application of Kant's Moral Argument
Those of us who enjoy certain products of the global industrial economy but also believe it is wrong to consume them are often so demoralized by the apparent inefficacy of our individual, private choices that we are unable to resist. Although he was a deontologist, Kant was clearly aware of this âconsequent-dependentâ side of our moral psychology. One version of his âmoral proofâ is designed to respond to the threat of such demoralization in pursuit of the Highest Good. That version of the argument says that the capacity that faith and trust in God has to sustain our moral resolve licenses that faith and trust, from a practical point of view. My goal here is to argue that Kantâs proof has a contemporary, secular analogue in modern industrial contexts where the apparent âinefficacyâ of an individual consumerâs choices in the face of massive insensitive supply-chains is a threat to her moral resolve. I conclude by suggesting that the Kantian approach may license us in adopting (as an item of defeasible moral faith) an evidential decision-theoretic principle regarding what it is to âmake a difference.â This in turn licenses trust -- if not in God then in other right-minded people
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