A Preliminary Essay from Studies of Religion II, which received a 20/20 mark and with a bibliography and intext referencing recieved 25/25.

Covers syllabus dotpoints under Ethics (plus some of Scared Text syllabus covered).

Question: Evaluate the importance of ethical teachings for Christians.

ETHICS: A PLURALISTIC APPROACH TO MORAL THEORY, FIFTH EDITION provides a comprehensive yet clear introduction to the main traditions in ethical thought, including virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. Additionally, the book presents a conceptual framework of ethical pluralism to help readers understand the relationship among various theories. Lawrence Hinman, one of the most respected and accomplished professionals in ethics and philosophy education today, presents a text that gives readers plentiful opportunities to explore ethical theory and their own responses to them, using fascinating features such as the "Ethical Inventory" sections that appear at the beginning and the end of the text. End-of-chapter discussion questions, and the use of current issues and movies help students retain what they've learn and truly comprehend the subject matter

The volume "New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties Across the Abrahamic Religions," edited by Todne Thomas, Asiya Malik and Rose Wellman, undertakes a comparative analysis of "spiritual kinship" (such as God-parenthood) in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. My chapter, "Kinship as Ethical Relation," starts by questioning the usefulness of spiritual kinship as a category for the understanding of Judaism and expands that critique into an alternate model that might be more useful for comparative purposes. I argue that the idea of "Spiritual Kinship" emerges precisely from an a set of Christian taxonomies that are often implicitly or explicitly anti-Jewish (kinship of the flesh vs. kinship of the spirit, the letter and the spirit of the law, etc.) which makes it unsuitable as an "Abrahamic" category. Moreover, the specific ways in which it is unsuitable for comparative purposes actually demonstrate the importance of this category for understanding of Christianity and of the anthropological kinship categories (affinal, consanguineal and fictive)  that were in large measure adapted from European Christian sources. Viewing kinship as a set of ethical relations, by contrast, does indeed allow for useful comparison across these religious divides and makes better sense of the ethnographic and textual data. Examples are brought from both modern and medieval Jewish life.

Theistic or atheistic beliefs, has fundamental role in defining human's free will and moral responsibility, so far as, it can determine the nature, quality and quantity of human's freedom. After believing in God, maintaining to revealed or non-revealed religions and the way of human's interpretation of God's attributes has essential role in definition of free will. In fact, the kind of our understanding of some God's attributes, like knowledge, power, will, creation and sovereignty, and His relation to human, can show the quality and quantity of human's free will. In revealed religions, God is introduced as the personal and all power God who is the real creator of humans, and they are His creatures, servants and vicegerents so that human's free will and moral responsibility is defined in the light such theistic viewpoint.

Religions of the world view disability differently. Judaism, Islam and other Semitic religions regard it as a curse from God due to sins of either the parents or the individual. African Traditional Religion regards disability as a curse from the ancestors or the whole blame is cast on the mother of the disabled. In Hinduism, disability is believed to be linked to " karma " , sins that have been committed in past lives. It is a punishment for misdeeds in the past lives of the People with Disability, or the wrongdoings of their parents. Buddhists believe that disability is a result of having done something negative in a former life. Most religions of the world construe disability as a result of sin. Christianity today has mixed feelings towards disability. Some denominations consider it to be a result of sin while others take it as a biological issue and has nothing to do with sin. Christianity is diverse hence it has diverse views on disability. It is against this background that this paper would like to reflect on the role of Pentecostal churches in curbing the marginalisation of people with disability. The paper would assess the initiatives of Pentecostal churches in addressing the issues of disability. Documentary analysis supported by interviews and personal observations shall be used to gather data for this paper.

Religions may provide functions at an individual/personal level, as well as in the society in the form of so-called 'organized religions.' At the individual level, religions can form the foundation of spiritual health as an important dimension of human health. This paper however argues that at the societal level, following an organized religion may function as a 'proof of righteousness'. The paper further explains how the followers of a certain religion may use religious affiliation as a guide in making choices on complex social issues, because religion to them provides a reliable source for making the right choices; they can thus identify and be identified as the 'righteous members'

This paper represents a detailed analysis of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook's evolutionary understanding of taamei hamitzvot ("reasons for the commandments"), which he invokes to bridge modernity and tradition, philosophy and Jewish mysticism, halakha and aggadah. I explore R. Kooks reliance on medieval thinkers like Maimonides and Ibn Paquda as well as the classical kabbalah and explore his writing in the context of other contemporary Jewish thinkers.

In this paper the author tries to show that the introduction of Roman Catholicism to the Philippines has effected two fundamental influences, viz., Westernization (in terms of Hispanization and later Americanization), which enables the native Filipinos to see and gradually adopt a different culture, and syncretism, where the sacred and the profane are blended, that is to say, the Filipino indigenous rituals and practices are made compatible to Catholicism. The author likewise tries to argue that folk Catholicism is in general the Filipino way of expressing religion as a way of life.


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I'm grateful to have the chance to respond to Hsiao-Lan Hu. Thinking about it as I prepared these brief remarks, I realized it was the first time, if I'm honest, that I have had the chance to participate in an academic conversation that might actually mean something, given the state of our world, a world in which there can be no quote-unquote ivory tower apart from the world. That old image-like the idea of a "nature" apart from human culture-is tattered and spent and more than ready to be carted off to the recycling bin. I found Hu's essay stimulating. It clarified issues for me that feel important. I'll talk about two of them here. The first concerns, to use a Buddhist image, the true nature of Buddhism as a religion or a family of practices. The second is about what we might learn from this understanding of the nature of Buddhist practice as we think about improving our global beingtogether-in-the-world-which is what I understand the aims of the Global Ethic to be. I'll take the insight into the nature of Buddhist practice first. Buddhism is too often, especially here in what we call "the West," understood to "really" be, first, a philosophy, or a set of doctrines about the nature of the impermanence of things. That is, very simply put, that things, understood as separate and distinct from other things, are evanescent and ever changing. Yet we cling to them anyway, misunderstanding their nature. This causes all kinds of problems for us. The basic Buddhist insight here is that no thing, in fact, exists separately and distinctly from all other things; that what actually exists, is a web of ever shifting relationships that we construe in particular ways dependent on our psychological and cultural minds. On this same view of what Buddhism most basically is, Buddhism is said to be a set of contemplative techniques intended to clarify these insights, to make them real in one's own life. And this is true, to an extent. But thinking that this is really what Buddhism is, is, as Hu shows, on a Buddhist reading simply delusional. Just like my own standard thoughts about myself being separate from everyone else are delusional. The ideas and practices I just too-simply outlined only arise under social conditions-particular cultural and historical social conditions, from which they are in no sense separable. As if, here in Chicago where I live, particular waves (philosophy, contemplation, devotion) could arise independent of this area's history and culture. Here we get to one of the important insights into the nature of Buddhist practice-and I would say into the Global Ethic-offered in Hu's essay. This is the centrality of habit to the formation of worlds-and not merely personal habit but institutional and cultural habit. Buddhist texts sometimes speak of the ways we are as if smoked-through with predilections

There are no unethical people on earth and indigenous Africans are no exceptions. Ethics is a people’s way of life whether good or bad. In this paper, a reflection is done on the indigenous African ethical values with the Akan and Ewe as reference points. The paper then goes on to discuss the foundation for the two society’s ethical behaviours. The paper discusses the principles behind their ethical making process, the ethical making process itself and their ethical values. The paper concludes that the two societies, Akan and Ewe have developed an ethical system that has helped to sustain their societies.
Key words: Indigenous African, ethics, values, Akan, Ewe

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers.

In the past, teenage pregnancy was very rare among the traditional Akan people, currently, however it has reached an
alarming stage. The traditional rites that were effective in instituting measures that ensured chastity among the Akan
teenagers are now replaced by foreign rites that seem to be less effective. This paper examines teenage pregnancy and its
morality among the traditional Akan of Ghana. The paper discovers that the morality of teenage pregnancy among the
traditional Akan depends on the circumstances under which the pregnancy occurs. The following among others are identified
as the major factors responsible for the upsurge of teenage pregnancy among the Akan: the breakdown of the extended
family system and social cohesion; the influx of foreign cultural and religious practices coupled with the wrong mentality that
indigenous African cultural practices are uncivil. The paper posits that the bragorɔ and kyiribra rites are important
traditional tools which can be refined and used together with other modern methods to remedy the upsurge of teenage
pregnancy and restore the moral sanity that existed among the Akan.

Kierkegaard is habitually identified with fideism, yet a significant aspect of his primarily ethical criticism of established Christendom is its confusion of what is appropriately religious and what is appropriately secular. Kierkegaard’s critical assessment of modern secularization is well-known. Less appreciated is his critique of the politicizing Christendom that fails to recognize its difference from the secular, thereby conflating redemptive faith with worldly power. Contrary to overly simplifying fideistic interpretations that excessively subordinate the secular to the religious, I argue that the religious and the secular both have their own ethical significance for Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard interpreted Christianity as the ethical renunciation rather than the intensification of worldly authority and power, including making war and controlling marriage, calling on Christendom to become more genuinely Christian by turning away from coercion and calculations of power, status, and wealth. Kierkegaard consequently radically differentiates the secular and the religious for the sake of Christianity itself by turning it toward individual and self-reflexive issues of freedom, responsibility, and redemption.

Guard thy Tongue: Halakhah and Ethics in the Writings of Rabbi Israek Meir Hakohen of Radun, the “Hafetz Hayim” by Naftali Rothenberg, in: Naftali Rothenberg, editor, Wisdom by the Week: The Weekly Torah Portion as an Inspiration for Thought and Creativity, New York 2011: Yeshiva University Press and VLJI, pp. 332-343.
The talmudic and midrashic literature contain numerous references to leprosy and nega’im.  Few of these sources however, associate leprosy with sinful speech.  To the sources cited above, we would add: Sifrei, Deut. 24:8, which links the leprosy with which Miriam was afflicted to evil speech; Avot de-Rabbi Nathan A, 9,3; and a number of other midrashim.  This state of affairs is inconsistent with the prevailing outlook among Torah scholars in recent generations, who have viewed the leprosy described in the Torah as inexorably linked to the sins of evil speech.  The architect of this outlook is Rabbi Israel Meir Hakohen of Radun - the “Hafetz Hayim”– author of the books Hafetz Hayim and Shemirat Halashon.  In this sense, it is a modern approach.  The way in which Torah scholars and Jewish thinkers throughout the ages - from the geonic period to the late 19th century – read the portions of Tazri’a and Metzora and studied the tractate Nega’im differed substantially from the manner in which these subjects have been approached since the publication of Hafetz Hayim.  It is difficult for us to discern, some one hundred and twenty years later, because we naturally approach earlier sources through the prism of the HH’s writings, and our Weltanschauung has been shaped by the discourse he elicited.

— This article attempts a case for ethical leadership in Africa. The study reveals that ethical leaders have strong personal characters: passion to do the right; are proactive; consider stakeholder's interests; are role models for decision-making in their group; and make transparent decisions. Linking these features to the current socioeconomic problems that beset the continent of Africa, the study concludes that much of this suffering could be averted if post-colonial African leadership would commit itself to setting a blueprint for what the corporate culture should be in terms of shared goals and values.

L'objectif de cet article, dans le cadre de ce séminaire, est de poser les jalons d'une réflexion sur l'Ethique (la Bioéthique n'étant qu'une des composantes les plus étudiées actuellement) qui se base sur une approche chrétienne du sens de la personne comme un être entier indivisible, faisant de l'Ethique une partie intégrante de la Spiritualité en tant que Vie en Christ.
          En posant la problématique créée par une certaine ambiguïté au niveau du discours, des références ainsi que de la pratique, cette intervention veut proposer une optique ouverte: (i) revalorisant le discours sur le Corps, (ii) consolidant le référence aux sources comme vécues pleinement dans l'Eglise, Corps du Christ Un dans sa divinité et multiple par les charismes de ses membre, (iii) et redonnant à la Spiritualité son sens dynamique.
          Après avoir posé la problématique, cette intervention développera une lecture du sens du Corps, suivie d'une optique de l'unité intrinsèque de l'Etre, pour terminer sur la façon dont l'Ethique peut être vécue comme partie intégrante de la Croissance en Christ.

This essay seeks to explore the intersection of disability and religion within our South African context. All the authors are South Africans concerned with human rights and social inclusion issues. Swartz was born into a Jewish family but identifies as atheist, and has a long history of academic and personal engagement with emancipatory disability politics in southern Africa. Claassens is a Christian theologian who as part of her work on human dignity, religion and social inclusion has over the past few years become more concerned with disability issues and with questions of how a disability studies lens may enrich theological scholarship. Shaikh is a Muslim religious studies scholar who has worked on issues of gender justice and Sufism, and has more recently become interested in disability issues. We have formed a group to explore religion and disability issues in our context, and to use various forms of engagement (including engagement with academic and faith communities) to work towards greater social inclusion and human rights for persons with disabilities. We recognise and value our differences but also believe that engagement across divides is essential for emancipatory practices. The next two sections of this chapter, the first of which was formulated chiefly by Claassens and the second by Shaikh, explore issues at the intersection between Christianity and Islam respectively. The final section of the chapter, formulated chiefly by Swartz, considers the implications of these views for practice in the global south. Despite our obvious differences, we share common questions. How can we explore issues of religion and existential meaning in a manner which takes account of legitimate concerns about the potentially oppressive role of religion? How do we reread important religious texts in the context of disability activism? What is an engaged scholarship of disability and religion which allows for contestation, difference and debate, and which is inclusive enough to honour what at surface level may appear to be contesting views of the world, but which, we believe, may have underlying commonalities?

This interview with Charles Taylor explores a central concern throughout his work, viz., his concern to confront the challenges presented by the process of ‘disenchantment’ in the modern world. It focuses especially on what is involved in seeking a kind of ‘re-enchantment.' A key issue that is discussed is the relationship of Taylor’s theism to his effort of seeking re-enchantment. Some other related issues that are explored pertain to questions surrounding Taylor’s argument against the standard secularization thesis that views secularization as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of religion. Additionally, the relationship between Taylor’s religious views and his philosophical work is discussed.

Italian philosophy provides a long-overdue and much-needed supplement to continental thinking. This book offers some living and lively examples, some for the first time in English, of original thought from the Italian philosophical scene. The contributors—seventeen leading Italian philosophers—offer perspectives from many areas, particularly ethics, politics, and religion. Contemporary Italian Philosophy includes a primarily historical introduction and is composed of three parts, corresponding with the unfolding of past, present, and futural thinking.

This interview with John Cottingham explores some major themes in his recent work in moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion. It begins by discussing his views on the task of philosophy and focuses particularly on philosophy’s role in achieving an overall view of the world and for understanding and achieving the good life. It also discusses some ‘limits of philosophy’ with respect to understanding and achieving the good life; i.e., some ways in which philosophical reflection on the good life needs to draw on insights found in other domains such as psychoanalysis and religious faith and spiritual practice. The role of philosophy and spiritual practice in coming to religious faith and supporting it is also discussed.

This introduction provides an overview of the significance of this Symposium on Islam and Science in the Future. Compiling this project began in early 2019 and various articles by philosophers , Islamicists and historians tackle the relationship between Islam and science from different angles. The question of how nature works is one of the oldest, prompting various inquiring minds to engage with it. This question was raised by religious believers as well, whose attempts to answer it were not limited to the mechanism of the universe, but also included how it is displayed in their scriptures. They made an extra effort to show how nature is, in both real and imaginary worlds, touchable by means of religious-based piety. For them, nature was manifested into three states: (1) Self, which was about soul and body; (2) Environment, which was about their surroundings, and (3) Heaven, which connected physical celestial bodies with scripture-based unseen and metaphysical elements of skies. In the believers' eyes, reaching heaven needs piety as much as knowing self and surrounding need it; the better the understanding of one, the better the comprehension of the other. The desire to reach and behold heaven is obvious in Judeo-Christian literature, particularly 3 Baruch (known as "the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch" ["a pseudepigraphical work"]):

[See also the more recent and more comprehensive "Inspiring Ethics" article from 2021, also here on my academia website.] The potential relevance of biblical ethics for today is a contested issue. What is the significance of individual ethical texts of the Bible, and how – if at all – can they be dialogue partners for the ethical discourses of the 21st century? This article suggests and discusses a number of interpretative steps on the way towards a fruitful dialogue between the biblical text and contemporary concerns of religious-ethical life. After some introductory remarks on the use of the Bible in a Christian context, the article submits six different parameters of practical hermeneutics in two sections (1. Text and culture, and 2. Text and canon). From the perspective of the parameter of canonical centrality, for example, it is argued that the biblical narrative of love as it culminates in the gospel of Jesus Christ stands out as a primus inter pares reference point for the dialogue between biblical ethics and ethics today. In the course of a nuanced discussion of these hermeneutical parameters the article also provides a critical review of a number of alternative proposals on the relationship of the Bible and ethics.

This essay explores how the principles of ahimsa and reverence for life provide a foundation for animal welfare in the thought of Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, respectively. This exploration unfolds through a consideration of the contextual background of both thinkers, the scope of life to which they apply their respective principles, and both the ethical ramifications and limitations of this application. Within this common framework, the author delineates the striking commonalities and the significant disparities between Gandhi and Schweitzer. This comparison opens a common space within which ecologically-minded Hindus and Christians can dialogue, augmenting each other's positions by drawing on respected thinkers in their traditions. It also provides an opportunity, within the tensions highlighted at the intersection of Gandhi and Schweitzer's thought, to further construct a foundation for animal welfare in contemporary discussions.

This article traces the history of the Aqedah theology (the relationships between religion and ethics) as developed by Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik and Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and its ethical, halakhic, and gender implications in contemporary Modern Orthodox and National Ultraorthodox thought. The idea that ethics has an autonomous status and may conflict with religious injunctions is exemplified by two recent books, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow’s Between the Tabernacle and the Golden Calf and Rabbi Hayyim Navon’s Benot Yaakov Bridge. The present article proposes that the permanent conflict between autonomous ethical principles and divine precepts – even if, on the surface, the latter (as embodied in Halakhah) is accorded decisive weight a priori, it keeps ethics constantly in mind and leads to an attempt to minimize the divergence between the ethical and the religious. With regard to National Ultraorthodox thought, the article proposes that there has been a sharp change of direction, moving toward the idea (almost never found in earlier Jewish thought) that ethics does not have an independent status and is defined exclusively by God’s commandments. Here the focus is on The Faith of our Time, by Rabbi Zvi Tau. I conclude that this approach is liable to dull one’s ethical sensitivities, because, whereas the confrontation between religious precepts and ethical principles keeps the latter permanently in mind, when the conflict is repressed, the ethical voice becomes increasingly softer and may no longer be heard.

Moral injury describes the effects of violence on veterans beyond what trauma dis- course can describe. I put moral injury in conversation with a separate but related concept, dirty hands. Focusing on Michael Walzer’s framing of dirty hands and Jonathan Shay’s understanding of moral injury, I argue that moral injury can be seen as part of the dirt of a political leader’s dirty hands decisions. Such comparison can focus more attention on the broader institutional context in which such dirty hands decisions are executed, while contributing to the growing vocabulary of moral conflict, trauma, and harm.

Although little analyzed, the concept of divine honor or glory (kavod shamayim) has been central to formulations of classical Jewish thought and ethics. In the aftermath of the 1994 Hebron massacre, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg deployed the concept of divine honor as a religious sanction for murder. His tract Barukh Ha-Gever treats attrocity as a mystical technique for the attainment of unmediated, ecstatic, and personal experience of the divine. This article examines the genealogy of Ginsburg's anarchic ideology, which it contrasts with that of Rabbi Abraham Issac Kook and the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, two important twentieth-century Jewish thinkers for whom divine honor was also central, but whose vision for that honor was antithetical to the quest for unmediated divine experience, or to acts that violate religious law and human dignity. This article assays a phenomenology of divine honor and its relationship to violence in modern times. Don Seeman is an assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at

Религията и етиката са две области на социалния живот, които могат да бъдат разглеждани както като автономни сфери, така и в тяхната взаимообуловеност. Първият тип отношение е характерен най-вече за редукционизма и атеизма, вторият – за християнската теология. Статията разглежда в сравнителна перспектива отношението между етика и религия у Сьорен Киркегор и Рудолф Ото, като по такъв начин това отношение е представено през две призми: на християнския екзистенциализъм и феноменологията на религията.

The mosque occupies a central position in the social as well as religious life of Muslims. It is not only a place of worship where rituals are performed, but also serves as a social space where Muslims take part in welfare activities. The design and architecture of the mosque have local as well as global influences, representing religious, economic, and esthetic dimensions of Muslim social organization. Therefore, Muslims' association with the mosque has much significance from social, political, and economic perspectives. Based on an ethnographic example, this report aims to highlight the use of mosque space in the cultural context of rural Pakistan. In addition to discussing the sociospatial relationships around the mosque, I discuss how Muslims' beliefs about the world and the afterlife shape these relationships.

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This paper raises the question as to whether Charles Taylor can endorse the ethical naturalism of John McDowell and David Wiggins. It first tries to show how, despite recognizing that McDowell and Wiggins defend the reality of moral/ethical values in a manner congenial to his defence of moral phenomenology, Taylor fails to recognize how their understanding of naturalism is equally congenial to his objectives. The paper then turns to how the latter is true only up to a certain point: Taylor believes that an essential part of moral phenomenology is articulacy about values/goods, and this involves what he calls constitutive goods and moral sources. It is here where it appears Taylor must part ways with ethical naturalism. In this  final version of the paper, there is now a section at the end that completes the discussion of those elements of Taylor's account of moral phenomenology which he believes are essential not to basic moral agency, but to the fullest, most robust agency we are capable of, namely constitutive goods and moral sources. It raises the question of the role of a transcendent moral source as the only adequate moral source.