Theistic Ethics

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Call ‘theism’ the view that there exists a perfect being (God) who is the creator of the natural world. There is a cluster of philosophical issues regarding the relationship between theism thus understood and ethics. Some of these issues concern the standards that we should employ in the practical assessment of ourselves and our fellow humans: if theism is true, in what way should theism enter into the explanation of why those standards of assessment are correct? Some of these issues concern the standards that we should employ in the practical assessment of God: if theism is true, what are the standards by which we should assess the quality of divine attitudes and actions, and in what ways (and why) do they differ from the standards by which we should assess ourselves and our fellow humans? In this course, we will consider some recent work on issues of both sorts.