Charlotte Katzoff

This book explores the conjuncture of human agency and divine volition in the biblical narrative - sometimes referred to as "double causality." A commonly held view has it that the biblical narrative shows human action to be determined by divine will. Yet, when reading the biblical narrative we are inclined to hold the actors accountable for their deeds. The book, then, challenges the common assumptions about the sweeping nature of divine causality in the biblical narrative and seeks to do justice to the roles played by the human actors in the drama. God's causing a person to act in a particular way, as He does when He hardens Pharaoh's heart, is the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, the biblical heroes act on their own; their personal initiatives and strivings are what move the story forward. How does it happen, then, that events, remarkably, conspire to realize God's plan? The study enlists concepts and theories developed within the framework of contemporary analytic philosophy, featured against the background of classical and contemporary bible commentary. In addressing the biblical narrative through these perspectives, this book holds appeal for scholars of a variety of disciplines - bible studies, philosophy, religion and philosophical theology -- as well as for those who simply delight in reading the Bible.

Recently, Widerker has attacked Fischer’s contention that one could use Frankfurt-type counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities to show that even from a libertarian viewpoint an agent might be morally responsible for a decision that he could not have avoided. Fischer has responded by: (a) arguing that Widerker’s criticism presupposes the falsity of Molinism and (b) presenting a version of libertarianism which avoids Widerker’s criticism. Here we argue that: (i) Fischer’s first response is unconvincing and undermines Molinism itself; (ii) the version of libertarianism he presents is fallacious, and (iii) even on the version of libertarianism he proposes, avoid ability remains a necessary condition for moral responsibility.

In this paper, I propose a principle of doxastic rationality based on Bernard Williams's argument against doxastic voluntarism. This principle, I go on to show, undermines a number of notions of epistemic duty which have been put forth within the framework of virtue theory. I then suggest an alternative formulation which remains within the bounds of rationality allowed for by my principle. In the end, I suggest that the failure of the earlier formulations and the adoption of the latter tend to vindicate the initial grounding of virtue epistemology in reliabilist intuitions. (edited).

Oakeshott’s thesis is that political knowledge is essentially praetical: it is not given to propositional formulation and cannot be deliberately exercised, but rather is expressed in conduct and transmitted by example and practice. I argue that this is true primarily of physical skills which depend upon unconscious, automatic physiological processes. Political practice, by contrast, is largely a matter of rule-governed activity. It is an empirical fact that we do have introspcetive access to many of the rules whieh govern our political conduct, and there is good evidence for the claim that we can deliberately and reflectively set ourselves to apply them.

Following Linda Zagzebski's discussion of the paradoxical implications of moral luck for Christian morality, I explore the role of religious luck in two accounts of divine election – that of Paul the Apostle and that of the sixteenth-century Jewish thinker, Rabbi Judah Loeb of Prague. On both accounts, special religious status is conferred unrelated to the deserts of the beneficiary. What sense does it make to ascribe religious worth to someone if it simply came his way? Both accounts appeal to the notion of religious virtue to answer this question. On Rabbi Judah's account, like ethical virtues, religious virtues inhere within the essence of their bearer and thus belong to him necessarily; on Paul's they are accidental, a matter of luck. Thus Paul's account, more than Rabbi Judah's, suffers from the paradox troubling Zagzebski. (Published Online February 17 2004).

It is quite common that a claim to knowledge is dismissed as a matter of luck. It is demonstrated that when one cites as the reason for rejecting a true belief that it is merely lucky, this is typically because the belief has not satisfied the requirements of one's theory. So disputes on luck in fact turn out to be disputes on deep epistemological issues. Criterea for epistemological luck suggested by Thomas Nagel, Nicolas Rescher, Alvin Goldman, Mylan Engel and Richard Foley are analyzed and reconstructed and compared with accounts on luck in the moral sphere.