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19Reason and the passionsIn James A. Harris (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford University Press. pp. 226. 2013.The project of this chapter is to examine how two key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment—Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid—think of the role of reason and passion in moral judgment. According to a standard way of categorizing these figures, Hutcheson is a sentimentalist, while Reid is a rationalist. Although this categorization can be illuminating in certain respects, it also distorts both Hutcheson’s and Reid’s views. For a close reading of both these men reveals that their views are more ec…Read more
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46Nonnaturalism, EthicalIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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125Another look at divine hiddennessReligious Studies 49 (2): 151-164. 2013.In his fine book The Wisdom to Doubt, J. L. Schellenberg builds a case for religious scepticism by advancing a version of the Hiddenness Argument. This argument rests on the claim that God could not love, in an admirable way, those who seek God while also remaining hidden from them. In this article, I distinguish two arguments for this claim. Neither argument succeeds, I contend, as each rests on an unsatisfactory understanding of the nature of admirable love, whether human or divine
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30The Significance of Liturgical SingingRes Philosophica 91 (3): 411-429. 2014.This is an essay on two topics—singing and liturgy—that lie well outside the standard repertoire of topics that form the subject matter of contemporary philosophy of religion, let alone Anglo-American philosophy more generally. Nonetheless, I maintain that thinking through the topic of liturgical singing can bear philosophical fruit. My discussion takes as its starting point the striking fact that the liturgies of Eastern Christianity are almost entirely sung. I explore the question why this wou…Read more
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125Ritual KnowledgeFaith and Philosophy 31 (4): 365-385. 2014.Most work in religious epistemology has concerned itself with propositional knowledge of God. In this essay, I explore the role of knowing how to engage God in the religious life. Specifically, I explore the role of knowing how to engage God in the context of ritualized liturgical activity, exploring the contribution that knowing how to perform liturgical rites of various sorts can make to knowing God. The thesis I defend is that the liturgy provides both activities of certain kinds and concepti…Read more
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26Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of SpeakingOxford University Press. 2014.Terence Cuneo presents a new argument for moral realism. According to the normative theory of speech, speech acts are generated by an agent's altering her normative position with regard to her audience. In doing so she takes on rights and responsibilities, some of which are moral and objective: these are a necessary condition of speech
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138Christine Korsgaard’s Self-ConstitutionJournal of Moral Philosophy 11 (1): 97-110. 2014.Christine Korsgaard’s 1996 book, The Sources of Normativity, attracted a great deal of attention. And rightly so. It is a highly engaging attempt to answer what she calls the normative question, which is the question of what could justify morality’s demands. Korsgaard’s latest book, Self-Constitution, develops and defends the broadly Kantian account of action and agency that hovers in the background of Sources, drawing out its implications for the normative question. In this review, we present t…Read more
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1054The moral fixed points: new directions for moral nonnaturalismPhilosophical Studies 171 (3): 399-443. 2014.Our project in this essay is to showcase nonnaturalistic moral realism’s resources for responding to metaphysical and epistemological objections by taking the view in some new directions. The central thesis we will argue for is that there is a battery of substantive moral propositions that are also nonnaturalistic conceptual truths. We call these propositions the moral fixed points. We will argue that they must find a place in any system of moral norms that applies to beings like us, in worlds s…Read more
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41Love and LiturgyJournal of Religious Ethics 43 (4): 587-605. 2015.For two millennia Christians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why do it? Why structure one's life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one's comings and goings? The project of this essay is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the Christian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between an ethic of proximity, which enjoins us to attend t…Read more
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39Reid on the Autonomy of Ethics: From Active Power to Moral NonnaturalismJournal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (4): 523-541. 2016.Thomas Reid has the unusual distinction of arriving at a metaethical position very much like G. E. Moore’s via a route very similar to that employed by the Kantians. That is, Reid embraces a version of nonnaturalist moral realism by appeal not to open question-style considerations but to a particular account of agency. In this essay, we reconstruct Reid’s agency-centered argument for his constitutivist version of moral nonnaturalism, highlighting its commitments. Having presented Reid’s argument…Read more
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65Destabilizing the Error TheoryIn Martin Grajner & Pedro Schmechtig (eds.), Epistemic Reasons, Norms and Goals, De Gruyter. pp. 71-94. 2016.
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35From Romans to Liberal Democracy: Some Questions for Nick WolterstorffJournal of Analytic Theology 4 373-376. 2016._ _.
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20Ritualized Faith: Essays on the Philosophy of LiturgyOxford University Press UK. 2016.Central to the lives of the religiously committed are not simply religious convictions but also religious practices. The religiously committed, for example, regularly assemble to engage in religious rites, including corporate liturgical worship. Although the participation in liturgy is central to the religious lives of many, few philosophers have given it attention. In this collection of essays, Terence Cuneo turns his attention to liturgy, contending that the topic proves itself to be philosoph…Read more
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32Aligning with lives of faithInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2): 83-97. 2017.The philosophical and theological discussion regarding religious faith has primarily concerned itself with the abstract issues of what faith is, whether it can be rationally held, and how an agent can acquire, sustain, or deepen faith. The issue of how we should orient ourselves to the faith of others and the role such orientation might play in the religious life hasn’t been much discussed. It is this topic that I propose to address in this essay. I do so by considering a little-known nineteenth…Read more
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345Defending the Moral/Epistemic ParityIn C. McHugh J. Way & D. Whiting (eds.), Metaepistemology, . forthcoming.
Burlington, Vermont, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophy of Religion, Miscellaneous |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophy of Religion, Miscellaneous |