Charles Taliaferro

Charles Taliaferro has written a dynamic narrative history of philosophical reflection on religion from the seventeenth century to the present, with an emphasis on shifting views of faith and the nature of evidence. The book begins with the movement called Cambridge Platonism, which formed a bridge between the ancient and medieval worlds and early modern philosophy. While the book provides a general overview of different movements in philosophy, it also offers a detailed exposition and reflection on key arguments. The scope is broad, from Descartes to contemporary feminist philosophy of religion. Written with clarity and verve, this is a book that will appeal to professionals and students in the philosophy of religion, religious studies, and the history of ideas, as well as informed lay readers.

Christian theism gives rise to what may be termed the problem of Divine vanity. The God of Christianity seems to be vain with respect to matters of creation, worship, and redemption. God’s creating beings in His own image is akin to an artist creating self-portraits. The Divine command (or invitation) that these image-bearers worship Him seems to be the height of egotism. In matters of redemption, God still insists upon being in the limelight, the talk of the town. This prima donna God does not seem very self-effacing. In “The Vanity of God” I articulate and reply to the charge that God is vain.

Parfit’s new two-volume book, On What Matters, is used to make three points about the use of thought experiments in philosophy: thought experiments must be relevantly focused, finely-grained in descriptive force, and, when they meet these conditions, a thought experiment can overturn a substantial philosophical position, namely Parfit’s rejection of libertarian freedom. While principally a contribution to philosophical methodology, along the way this paper defends moral realism, Parfit’s rejection of a combined egoist and contractualist ethic, and a defense of libertarian free agency.

H. D. Lewis once remarked he did not think ‘any case for immortality can get off the ground if we fail to make a case for dualism’. Lewis vigorously defended both mind body dualism, the theory that minds are nonphysical, spatially unextended things in causal interaction with physical, spatially extended things, as well as the conceivability of an after life. Lewis defended the intelligibility of supposing distinct, individual persons continue existing after bodily death, possibly even after all physical objects pass out of existence. Prominent philosophers such as Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Liebniz, and Reid have subscribed to both the truth of dualism and belief in continued personal existence after bodily death. Descartes' work might even be construed as reversing the order of Lewis' dictum. For Descartes, the case for dualism ‘gets off the ground’ because of the conceivability of an afterlife. Briefly put, Descartes sought to establish that a person is distinct from physical objects on the basis of it being metaphysically possible for a person to exist without his or her body, indeed without there being any physical objects whatever. If A can exist without B, then A is not identical with B. Thus, if it is possible for God to bring it about that I exist and there be no physical objects, I am not a physical object. The purpose of this article is not to develop a case for dualism, nor to query whether the case for immortality can get off the ground assuming nondualist theories of the self. I hope instead to assess a popular objection to dualism, and consequently to a dualist conception of the afterlife, which could be termed the problem of individuation

Is Christian faith compatible with a thoroughgoing naturalist view of the cosmos? Hardwick thinks so, and in this book he articulates and defends a naturalist form of Christianity. Hardwick argues that Christianity is not committed to the truth of theism, nor to any view that there is a God who created and redeems the cosmos through an incarnation. Instead, Christian faith witnesses to “events of grace” in which believers develop an “openness to being”. “To live a life of faith is to live with a fundamental openness toward the future”. This openness to being and the future is compatible with the denial that God exists, Jesus is the incarnate God-man, and other components of the various creeds of Christian tradition. While Hardwick does not think there is a God from a scientific or metaphysical point of view, he endeavors to read the Christian claim “God exists” as the referral to, and the affirmation of, a valuable way of life.