Doctoral Dissertations

David Lipe

Date of Award

3-1986

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Philosophy

Major Professor

Glenn C. Graber

Committee Members

John Davis, L. B. Cebik, Charles Reynolds

Abstract

One of the major problems in moral philosophy centers around the debate between religious and secular ethics concerning the foundations of our moral conceptions. According to the religious ethicist there is an inseparable connection between religion and morality. Most religious ethicists hold that in some sense ethical terms and concepts are grounded in and dependent upon religious considerations. On the other hand, the secular ethicist holds that ethics is relative to human experience and that the foundations of ethical terms and concepts are not found in the religious or the metaphysical sphere.

This study is primarily a metaethical one and attempts to show that religious ethics (specifically Christian ethics) is possible. This is the exact opposite of the majority of contemporary thinking in moral philosophy; nevertheless, this study advances the thesis that there is an inseparable link between ethics and religion, that a theological definist analysis makes the strongest possible connection between the two, and that challenges from major secular ethicists against this position can be met.

Although the study refers to different figures in history, it is primarily concerned with the contemporary scene and focuses on three scholars and their works: (1) Richard Robinson's An Atheist's Values. (2) Kai Nielsen's Ethics Without God, and (3) William Prankena's "Is Morality Logically Dependent on Religion?" and the second edition of his Ethics. All three work in the analytic tradition and serve as a good framework to discuss the issues in the present debate. After introducing the basic problem of this study, I discuss the various senses in which ethics may be claimed to be dependent on religion. Following these two chapters, I devote three chapters to challenges against religious ethics (by the scholars mentioned above) taking as my starting point Socrates' question in Plato's Euthyphro; "Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because the gods love it?" In the final chapter, I sketch the directions my future research will take regarding secular value theory, secular moral obligation theory, and my own view that certain value considerations and moral principles have a religious heritage.

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