-
68The problem of arbitrary requirements: an abrahamic perspectiveInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 89 (3): 221-242. 2020.Some religious requirements seem genuinely arbitrary in the sense that there seem to be no sufficient explanation of why those requirements with those contents should pertain. This paper aims to understand exactly what it might mean for a religious requirement to be genuinely arbitrary and to discern whether and how a religious practitioner could ever be rational in obeying such a requirement. We lay out four accounts of what such arbitrariness could consist in, and show how each account provide…Read more
-
16On the reasonability of reasoning with the religiously unreasonableCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. forthcoming.Political liberals argue that religious citizens should exercise religious restraint: they ought, at least as a rule, not to rely directly on religious reasons in public political debates, and should instead draw only from the contents of a ‘reasonable’, secular political conception of justice. Political liberals hold that direct religious reasoners’ who fail to follow this rule fail to be ‘reasonable’ (in a technical sense) and contend that liberal polities may thus dismiss their religiously-mo…Read more
-
13Against insular liberalism: Sayyid Qutb, illiberal Islam and the forceless force of the better argumentPhilosophy and Social Criticism. forthcoming.Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often presents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this art…Read more
-
14The Moral Duty Against DogmatismThe Journal of Ethics 26 (4): 563-589. 2022.In this paper, I argue for a _(pro tanto)_ _moral duty against dogmatism_: I argue that the _social costs_ of a disagreement can give those who are party to it added moral reasons to reconsider their controversial beliefs and (so) not to be dogmatic. In Sect. 1, I motivate the idea _that_ the social costs of disagreement may give rise to reasons to reconsider our beliefs by considering intuitive examples to that effect. I suggest that some of the stock intuitions that epistemologists of disagree…Read more
-
20Between Mysticism and Philosophical Rationality: Al-Ghazālī on the Reasons of the HeartComparative Philosophy 12 (2). 2021.In his seminal Orientalism and Religion, Richard King argues that Western scholars of religion have constructed a conceptual dichotomy between “mysticism” and “rationality” that has caused them to systematically distort the claims and arguments of Eastern thinkers. While King focuses primarily on Western scholarship on the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, this essay shows that his argument can also be extended to apply to Western scholarship on al-Ghazālī, whose sympathy for Sufism and apparent re…Read more
-
Rutgers - New BrunswickDoctoral student
-
-
Hope CollegeRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Moral Psychology |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Mind |