Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T11:08:17.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Examination of the Argument from Theology to Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

George E. Hughes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is not infrequently said that the true justification of moral beliefs lies in theology. I wish here to examine precisely what is meant by this contention, and by what arguments, if any, it can be substantiated.

The view I am examining is not that the only valid reason for doing what is right is a theological reason (e.g. the fact that God wills it); as if we could know independently of theology what was right, but required a theological motive to make it reasonable to do it. It is rather that the very fact that it is right is logically dependent on certain facts of a theological nature; or, to express the matter otherwise, that from certain theological propositions it is possible validly to draw certain conclusions in the form of propositions which state what I ought to do, and that this fact is the source of the validity of these latter propositions.

This, however, is not yet a sufficiently precise account of the theory in question, since it might cover a number of different contentions, some of which I think may be reasonably maintained, while others, I think, may not. I propose to work towards a clearer formulation by considering certain arguments which have been advanced in order to deny outright the very possibility of arguing validly “from theology to ethics”; for I do believe that these arguments prove something, and rule out certain theories as untenable.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 81 , April 1947 , pp. 3 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1947

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

page 3 note 1 Some of these arguments are taken from an article entitled “Ethics and Belief in God,” by DrEwing, A. C. (Hibbert Journal, 07 1941)Google Scholar, but I have arranged them in my own way.

page 5 note 1 I do not wish to suggest that this type of argument could be employed only by someone who believed in the autonomy of ethics, but a person who so believed would be most likely to use this argument, and I therefore take this as a convenient way of referring to it.

page 8 note 1 With which of these terms it is more nearly analogous I shall not here enquire, since to do so would involve a discussion of the whole question of the relation between the terms “morally wrong” and “morally bad,” which would be out of place in this context.

page 8 note 2 I do not wish to suggest that these are adequate definitions of intemperance and injustice (they are in fact obviously defective); I use them merely in order to illustrate a logical point.

page 10 note 1 Kant also says this. For after distinguishing his three types of Imperatives, based on different kinds of grounds, he goes on to speak of the “marked distinction” between them “in the dissimilarity of the obligation of the will” (Grundlegung, p. 41). But Kant is quite sure that even Hypothetical Imperatives are imperatives; and “all imperatives are expressed by the word ought” (p. 36). Kant does not, of course, go on to work this out in the way I have chosen to do here.

page 10 note 1 I may remark here that my argument at this point does not depend on an acceptance of the view that there ever is such a thing as a valid aesthetic obligation. We can distinguish two questions: (a) Is the notion of a (non-moral) aesthetic obligation a self-consistent one? (b) Granting that it is, do such obligations ever in fact arise? Even if the answer to (b) be in the negative, the answer to (a) may still be in the affirmative. All that is required here is the admission that the notion of an obligation which rests on aesthetic grounds and is not to be analysed in moral terms is a self-consistent notion. If this is admitted, then it follows that the notion of obligation is not such that all obligation must necessarily be moral obligation, and that therefore the notion of a distinctively religious obligation is not a self-contradictory one. And this is all that I am concerned to maintain here.

page 11 note 1 “Somehow”—because there are several forms of the theory.

page 11 note 2 Whether this theory is in general true or not, it is worth stating here, since a person who believes in distinctively religious obligation will almost certainly try to base this obligation on some value-characteristic possessed by God. And in any case, whether I should accept this theory without qualification or not, I should at least wish to maintain (in common with most moral philosophers) that value is one of the things which can give rise to an obligation.

page 11 note 3 I use this phrase rather than “an argument from theology to ethics” or “to morality,” because the predicates of the propositions I refer to are not the ordinary moral predicates, and it may be urged that the terms “ethics” and “morality” should be used only with reference to propositions expressed in the ordinary moral terms.

page 15 note 1 I use the term “aesthetically valuable” rather than “beautiful,” because, while “beautiful” is admittedly often used simply to mean aesthetically good, it is also often used to refer to a quality which is not identical with aesthetic value simply; a quality which, e.g. a Botticelli Madonna possesses to a markedly greater degree than El Greco's “Laocoon,” though this fact does not mean that the former is aesthetically better than the latter. Neglect of this ambiguity seems to me to be a common source of confusion in discussions of aesthetic questions.

page 18 note 1 I am aware that orthodox Christianity does not hold that this is the main purpose of the Christian revelation.

page 24 note 1 I do not mean by this to suggest that a philosopher who is using a mystic's experience in order to construct an argument from religious experience to the existence of God must necessarily accept the mystic's own interpretation of his experience as valid; but the more careful and critical the mystic's account of his experience is, the better, position will the philosopher be in to grasp the nature of that experience and to assess what value it may possess for the construction of such an argument.