Ethics Precedes Religious Beliefs: The Basis of Solidarity
Main Article Content
Abstract
In this paper, I attempt to engage with the evidentialist principle of William Clifford in conjunction with the normative that the doctrinal and practical correlates of religious beliefs ought not to endorse any serious moral violations. This in turn facilitates the articulation of a structure for the basis of solidarity amongst people of different faiths. With the help of Kant's reflections on the concept of faith and on religion, I argue that ethics ought to have priority over religious beliefs, and this is essential in establishing a foundation for fostering an integrative existence amongst members of a multi-religious polity.
Article Details
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Alston, W. P. 1991/1993. Perceiving God: The epistemology of religious experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Aristotle. 1976, 4th cent. BCE. The ethics of Aristotle: the Nicomachean ethics, trans. Thomson, J. A. K.. London: Penguin Books.
Atran, S. 2006. The moral logic and growth of suicide terrorism. The Washington Quarterly 29(2): 127–147.
Barcalow, E. 2001. Open questions: An introduction to philosophy, 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Clifford, W. K. 1879/1877. The ethics of belief. In Lectures and essays, vol. 2, eds. Stephen, L. and F. Pollock, F., 177–211. London: Macmillan and Co.
Feldman, R. and Conee, E. 1985. Evidentialism. Philosophical Studies (Minneapolis) 48(1): 15–34.
Garcia, R. K. and King, N. L., eds. (2009). Is goodness without God good enough? A debate on faith, secularism, and ethics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1821/1967. Philosophy of right, trans. Knox, T. M. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
______. 1830/1971. Philosophy of mind: Part III of the encyclopaedia of the philosophical sciences, trans. Wallace, W. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Huemer, M. 2001. Skepticism and the veil of perception. Lanham, Maryland: The Rowman & Littlefield.
Inwood, M. 1992. A Hegel dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
James, W. 1897/1912. The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.
Kant, I. 1787/1991. Critique of pure reason, 2nd ed., trans. Meiklejohn, J. M. D. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.
______. 1790/2000. The critique of judgment, trans. Bernard, J. H. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
______. 1793/1960. Religion within the limits of reason alone, trans. Green, T. M. and Hudson, H. H. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
______. 1798/1979. The conflict of the faculties, trans. Gregor, M. J. New York: Abaris Books.
______. 1817/1978. Lectures on philosophical theology, trans. Wood, A. and Clark, G. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kearney. R. 2010. Anatheism: Returning to God after God. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. 1843/1994. Fear and trembling: The book of Adler, trans. Lowrie, W. London: Everyman's Library.
Kurtz, P. 2001. Skepticism and humanism: The new paradigm. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Kurtz, P. and Craig, W. L. 2009. The Kurtz/Craig debate: Is goodness without God good enough? In Is goodness without God good enough? A debate on faith, secularism, and ethics, eds. Garcia, R. K. and King, N. L., 25–46. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
McCain, K. 2014. Evidentialism and epistemic justification. New York: Routledge.
Mittag, D. n. d. Evidentialism. Internet encyclopaedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/evidenti/ on 3 July 2014.
Moser, P. K. 2008. The elusive God: Reorienting religious epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Myers, P. Z. 2013. The happy atheist. New York: Random House.
Pascal, B. 1910. Thoughts, letters, and minor works, trans. Trotter, W. F., Booth, M. L. and Wight, O. W. New York: PF Collier and Son.
Putnam, R. D. and Campbell, D. E. 2010. American grace: How religion unites and divides us. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Schopenhauer, A. 1851/1897. Essays of Schopenhauer, trans. Dircks, R. London: Walter Scott Publishing Co.
Shah, N. 2006. A new argument for evidentialism. The Philosophical Quarterly 56(225): 481–498.
Singer, P., ed. 1991/1993. A companion to ethics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Sinhababu. N. 2013. Distinguishing belief and imagination. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94: 152–165.
Wood, A. 2008. The duty to believe according to the evidence. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 63(1): 7–24, DOI: 10.1007/s11153-007-9140-y.