Temporal moral relativism is the view that some moral rules are binding at one time but not other times. For example, some people think that adultery was morally wrong in 1965 and adultery is not morally wrong in 2016. The view is a denial of the existence of universal moral rules. Universal moral rules are rules that are binding for all people at all times in all circumstances. Thorsten J. Pattberg gives a reason why we might be tempted to hold such a view: Certain forms of moral corruption that were once considered despicably evil are now acceptable behavior already; we don’t even think about them as moral failings at…
-
-
When is Too Late? An Analogy from Spontaneous Combustion.
Imagine you are one of the thousands of people who have been looking forward to receiving a brand new Samsung Galaxy Note. However, after hearing news of their vulnerability to spontaneous combustion, you call Samsung and are told that there is indeed a possibility of your phone exploding in your pocket. If you so choose you may decide to stop the delivery and the phone will be destroyed along with all the other phones that have yet to be delivered. The trouble is, you really want the phone. If you choose to receive the phone it may never explode, but you will always live in fear that at any moment…
-
Not a Victim
This was Politico’s attempt to explain one man’s evil deed: “He fell victim to an increasingly common, sometimes overwhelming, temptation that the online world offers up to exhibitionists.” When in doubt, Politico informs us, blame the internet and some kind of personal identity. The identity in question is ‘exhibitionist’; that’s just what he is. It’s not something he does that is wrong, but an immutable part of his personal identity. And if you give someone who has that kind of identity a twitter account, then the inevitable follows and who can blame him? If anything is to blame it is the ‘online world’, a kind of playground for his type.…
-
Augustine’s Evil-Evil Distinction
If you tell a lie, you commit an immoral act. But what if you just believe something that turns out to be false? Is that evil? Augustine thought so. He didn’t think an intententional lie was the same as an unintentional false belief but both are evil. How so? Surely a mistaken belief isn’t evil, is it? Augustine distinguished between moral evil and metaphysical evil. Augustine thought that to believe some false proposition may not be a sin if it is believed unintentionally, but it is nonetheless a metaphysical evil, a lack, or a corruption, of the good. Lying, on the other hand, is a moral evil since it is…
-
Why There’s an Ought in Art
In his controversial essay, On Moral Fiction, John Gardner argues that art is “essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy.” He argues that truly great art shows the story of humanity; it takes the random experiences of life and shows their worth: “Life is all conjunctions, one… thing after another, cows and wars and chewing gum and mountains; art—the best, most important art—is all subordination: guilt because of sin because of pain.” Ever since a certain artist nailed a urinal to a wall and called it fountain, much art has subverted this idea. It is now more concerned with fragmentation, disjunction and the doing away with any idea of human nature related to a guiding narrative.…
-
So, You’re a Calvinist. But What About Free Will?
Just what, if one is a Calvinist, can be meant by human free will? And how, given that everything that happens is decided in advance, makes a human beings responsible for their actions? These are the most common questions aimed at those who are committed to a strong doctrine of sovereignty, one that features the idea that God determines all that happens in advance. Determinism is the idea that for everything that happens there are antecedent conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could occur. For a Calvinist, the antecedent condition in question is ultimately God’s will. God’s will is such that every event in creation is determined by God in advance of the event. We call…
-
Losing the Measure
The number of false beliefs, bad attitudes, and general naughtiness is very large, but the number may never be known. It has been reported that the device used for measuring human bad thought, action, and attitude has been buried in a stack of fingers-in-your-ears leaving most people with no way to know just how much bad stuff has befallen us. The device, found in most houses, is supposed to be regularly attended to, meditated upon and loved. However, neglect has led to vastly different ideas as to how much wickedness has been going on lately. Some report vast blizzards of wickedness while others report very little or even none at all. Many…
-
O’Donovan’s Love Dilemma (pt.2)
Oliver O’Donovan suggests that another way to think about the priority or the inclusiveness of love is to think about the object of love (for the first way, see here). Who or what is it that one should love, given the immigration situation, for example? Should we supremely love those who cannot defend themselves and, having no power, find themselves at the mercy of an impersonal immigration system? Or should our loves be focused on either ideals of law or those for whom our decisions will most affect? What we love or, more precisely, what we are supposed to love entails a presupposed order of loves. Self, nation, future generation, ideals, oppressed…