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16What's Wrong with Moralism (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2006.This thought-provoking book examines exactly what people mean when they accuse others of being “moralistic”. Written by an international team of philosophers Analyses what the “vice” of moralism might be and contrasts this with a genuine concern for morality Contributors draw upon literary sources, philosophical theories and political theory Helps readers to appreciate the role that morality really plays in our judgements and decisions
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112Morality and Political ViolenceCambridge University Press. 2007.Political violence in the form of wars, insurgencies, terrorism and violent rebellion constitutes a major human challenge. C. A. J. Coady brings a philosophical and ethical perspective as he places the problems of war and political violence in the frame of reflective ethics. In this book, Coady re-examines a range of urgent problems pertinent to political violence against the background of a contemporary approach to just war thinking. The problems examined include: the right to make war and cond…Read more
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20The Significance and Complexity of ConsciencePhilosophia 51 (5): 2497-2516. 2023.The concept of conscience continues to play a central role in our ethical reasoning as well as in public and philosophical debate over medical ethics, religious freedom, and conscientious objection in many fields, including war. Despite this continued relevance the nature of conscience itself has remained a relatively neglected topic in recent philosophical literature. In this paper I discuss some historical background to the concept and outline the essential features required for any satisfacto…Read more
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32Military ethics (edited book)Ashgate Pub. Co.. 2008.Recent developments such as the 'new wars' or the growing privatisation of warfare, and the ever more sophisticated military technology, present the military with difficult ethical challenges. This book offers a selection of the best scholarly articles on military ethics published in recent decades. It gives a hearing to all the main ethical approaches to war: just war theory, consequentialism, and pacifism. Part I includes essays on justice of war (jus ad bellum), focussing on defence against a…Read more
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2War and TerrorismIn R. G. Frey & Christopher Heath Wellman (eds.), A Companion to Applied Ethics, Wiley-blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: The Just War: Jus ad Bellum The Jus in Bello Terrorism.
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4Dirty HandsIn Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit & Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 1996.When Huck Finn embarks upon his hilarious education of the slave Jim in the moral vagaries of the monarchies of Europe, he takes himself to be propounding the merest common sense. He may have thought large‐scale villainy restricted to autocracies, but his creator was clearly not so naive. More to the present point, Huck ends his discourse on princely rule with remarks that show he was not merely cataloguing the fact of widespread royal vice, but willing to countenance it as necessary. As he puts…Read more
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5Applied Philosophy of ReligionIn Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownlee & David Coady (eds.), A Companion to Applied Philosophy, Wiley. 2016.This essay characterises applied philosophy of religion as a certain sort of engagement with what religion means in the private and public lives of its practitioners. After emphasising continuities with the past, such as Hume's critique of miracles and Hobbes and Spinoza's discussions of scriptural meanings, it then discusses John Cottingham's recent work on spirituality and religious sensibility, followed by a section on new explorations of religious epistemology citing Linda Zagzebski's work o…Read more
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3Religion and PoliticsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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16Review of Dorothy Emmet: The role of the unrealisable: a study in regulative ideals (review)Ethics 106 (2): 453-455. 1996.
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13VIII*—Descartes' Other MythProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 83 (1): 121-142. 1983.C. A. J. Coady; VIII*—Descartes' Other Myth, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 121–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/ar.
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27William Joseph (bill) GinnaneAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (3). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
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55The Socinian Connection – Further Thoughts on the Religion of Hobbes: C. A. J. COADYReligious Studies 22 (2): 277-280. 1986.Peter Geach supports his case that the religion of Thomas Hobbes was both genuine and a version of Socinianism principally by comparing the theological and scriptural sections of Leviathan with the main doctrines of Socinianism and its latter-day developments in Unitarianism and Christadelphianism. He pays particular attention to comparisons with the Racovian Catechism, the theological writings of Joseph Priestley and the Christadelphian document Christendom Astray by Robert Roberts
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18The Moral Reality in RealismJournal of Applied Philosophy 22 (2): 121-136. 2005.abstract This paper aims to gain a deeper understanding of the different forms of moralism in order to throw light upon debates about the role of morality in international affairs. In particular, the influential doctrine of political realism is reinterpreted as objecting not to a role for morality in international politics, but to the baneful effects of moralism. This is a more sympathetic reading than that usually given by philosophers to the realist doctrines. I begin by showing the ambiguity …Read more
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45The Idea of ViolenceJournal of Applied Philosophy 3 (1): 3-19. 1986.ABSTRACT Violence is a central idea for political theory but there is very little agreement about how it should be understood. This paper examines some fashionable approaches to the concept and argues against ‘wide’ definitions, particularly those of the ‘structuralist’ variety of which that offered by the sociologist, Johan Galtung, is taken as typical. A critique is also given of ‘legitimist’ definitions which incorporate some strong notion of illegitimacy into the very meaning of violence. St…Read more
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43Testimony and intellectual autonomyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 33 (2): 355-372. 2002.Recent epistemology has been notable for an emphasis, or a variety of emphases, upon the social dimension of knowledge. This has provided a corrective to the heavily individualist account of knowledge previously holding sway. It acknowledges the ways in which an individual is deeply indebted to the testimony of others for his or her cognitive endowments, both with respect to capacities and information. But the dominance of the individualist model was connected with a concern for the value of cog…Read more
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15Terrorism, Just War and Right ResponseIn Georg Meggle, Andreas Kemmerling & Mark Textor (eds.), Ethics of Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism, De Gruyter. pp. 135-150. 2004.
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34The common premise for uncommon conclusionsJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (5): 284-288. 2013.Recent controversy over philosophical advocacy of infanticide (or the comically-styled euphemism ‘postnatal abortion’) reveals a surprisingly common premise uniting many of the opponents and supporters of the practice. This is the belief that the moral status of the early fetus or embryo with respect to a right to life is identical to that of a newly born or even very young baby. From this premise, infanticidists and strong anti-abortionists draw opposite conclusions, the former that the healthy…Read more
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162Terrorism and innocenceThe Journal of Ethics 8 (1): 37-58. 2004.This paper begins with a discussion of different definitions of “terrorism” and endorses one version of a tactical definition, so-called because it treats terrorism as involving the use of a quite specific tactic in the pursuit of political ends, namely, violent attacks upon the innocent. This contrasts with a political status definition in which “terrorism” is defined as any form of sub-state political violence against the state. Some consequences of the tactical definition are explored, notabl…Read more
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22St. Augustine and the Ideal of PeaceAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 74 (1): 153-161. 2000.
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28Oakeshott.Polanyi.Carl Schmitt.Chesterton.Scheler.SantayanaPhilosophical Quarterly 45 (179): 273. 1995.
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2Reviews (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 54 (3). 1976.This Article does not have an abstract
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3NotebookPhilosophy 62 (n/a): 413. 1987.//static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS0031819100038961/resource/name/firstPage-S0031819100038961a.jpg.
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69Messy Morality and the Art of the PossibleAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 64 (1). 1990.
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34Moralism and Anti-Moralism: Aspects of Bonhoeffer’s Christian EthicSophia 51 (4): 449-464. 2012.Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thinking about ethics and Christianity is a fascinating attempt to combine different, and often conflicting, strands in the Christian intellectual tradition. In this article, I outline his thinking, analyse the advantages and disadvantages in his approach, and relate it to developments in contemporary philosophy. His critique of an excessive stress upon principles and abstraction in opposition to a concern for concrete circumstances is, I argue, best seen as a necessary cri…Read more
North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Social and Political Philosophy |