The Life Of Irony And The Ethics Of Belief

Wisdo concludes that the fragility of religious belief is due to the unavoidable irony intrinsic to the religious life.

Wisdo concludes that the fragility of religious belief is due to the unavoidable irony intrinsic to the religious life.

W. K. Clifford (1845-1879) was a noted mathematician and popularizer of science in the Victorian era. Although he made major contributions in the field of geometry, he is perhaps best known for a short essay he wrote in 1876, entitled "The Ethics of Belief", in which he argued that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Delivered initially as an address to the august Metaphysical Society (whose members included such luminaries as Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Gladstone, T. H. Huxley, and assorted scientists, clerics and philosophers of differing metaphysical views, "The Ethics of Belief" became a rallying cry for freethinkers and a bone of contention for religious apologists. It continues to be discussed today as an exemplar of what is called 'evidentialism', a key point in current philosophy of religion debates over justification of knowledge claims. In this book, Timothy J. Madigan examines the continuing relevance of "The Ethics of Belief" to epistemological and ethical concerns. He places the essay within the historical context, especially the so-called 'Victorian Crisis of Faith' of which Clifford was a key player. Clifford's own life and interests are dealt with as well, along with the responses to his essay by his contemporaries, the most famous of which was William James's "The Will to Believe." Madigan provides an overview of modern-day critics of Cliffordian evidentialism, as well as examining thinkers who were positively influenced by him, including Bertrand Russell, who was perhaps Clifford's most influential successor as an advocate of intellectual honesty. The book ends with a defense of "The Ethics of Belief" from a virtue-theory approach, and argues that Clifford utilizes an "as-if" methodology to encourage intellectual inquiry and communal truth-seeking.' The Ethics of Belief' continues to provoke and stimulate controversy, which was perhaps Clifford's own fondest hope, although he had no right to believe it would do so.

While some see the comic as trivial, fit mainly for amusement or distraction, Søren Kierkegaard disagrees. This book examines Kierkegaard’s earnest understanding of the nature of the comic and how even the triviality of comic jest is deeply tied to ethics and religion. It rigorously explicates terms such as “irony,” “humor,” “jest,” and “comic” in Kierkegaard, revealing them to be essential to his philosophical and theological program, beyond aesthetic interest alone. Drawing centrally from Kierkegaard’s most concentrated treatment of these ideas, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), this account argues that he defines the comic as a “contradiction” or misrelation that is essentially (though not absolutely) painless because it provides a “way out.” The comic lies in a contradiction between norms and so springs from one’s viewpoint, whether ethical or religious. “Irony” and “humor” play essential transitional roles for Kierkegaard’s famous account of the stages of existence because subjective development is closely tied to one’s capacity to perceive the comic, making the comic both diagnostic of and formative for one’s subjective maturity. For Kierkegaard, the Christian is far from humorless, instead having the maximal comic perception because he has the highest possible subjective development. The book demonstrates that the comic is not the expression of a particular pseudonym or of a single period in Kierkegaard’s thinking but is an abiding and fundamental concept for him. It finds his comic understanding even outside of Postscript, locating it in such differing works as Prefaces (1844), Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), and the Corsair affair (c.1845-1848). The book also examines the comic in contemporary Kierkegaard scholarship. First, it argues that Deconstructionists, while accurately perceiving the widespread irony in Kierkegaard’s corpus, incorrectly take the irony to imply a lack of earnest interest in philosophy and theology, misunderstanding Kierkegaard on the nature of irony. Second, it considers two theological readings to argue that their positions, while generally preferable to the Deconstructionists’, lack the same attentiveness to the comic’s role in Kierkegaard. Their significant theological arguments would be strengthened by increased appreciation of the legitimate power of the comic for cultivating ethics and religion.

While the question "Is faith reasonable?" has continually occupied philosophers and theologians, little attention has been paid to what faith itself is. The Act of Faith remedies this neglect by looking at what it means for a person of Christian faith to believe. Eric Springsted contrasts modern views of faith with the Christian tradition running from Augustine through Aquinas and Calvin. In reviewing such thinkers as Locke and Hume, Springsted discovers that behind modern discussions of the reasonableness of faith lie key assumptions about the human self, including the views that the good is a matter of choice and that we can exercise objective, uninvolved reason. According to Springsted, however, the church has not viewed faith in this way. His survey of the Augustinian tradition shows that the self our most esteemed Christian thinkers had in mind when talking about faith was a "moral self"--one defined by character and self-involvement. Christian faith is at root a participation in the good, and reasoning within faith is reasoning within the life of God. Drawing on contemporary philosophers and theologians like John Henry Newman and Simone Weil, Springsted builds a fresh understanding of faith for today. He shows how the "inner act" of faith is ultimately a radical willingness to be open to God, and he argues that the faithful self is one that develops within a community that shapes its members through the morally formative activities of interaction, teaching, and sacramental practice.

The concept of irony is difficult to pin down, difficult to capture. This book is a critical examination of how Soren Kierkegaard and the pragmatist Richard Rorty approach the complex subject of irony. Gregory L. Reece traces the development of the philosophical concept of irony from Socrates to Hegel, Schlegel, Kierkegaard and Rorty, while addressing the very question that is central for both Kierkegaard and Rorty, the question of the relationship of ironic philosophy to an ironic life. Must ironic philosophy result in what Kierkegaard calls infinite, absolute negativity or in what Rorty describes as doubt and meta-stability? Gregory L. Reece argues that the answer is no, and that the belief that it must is based on an important philosophical mistake which in different forms is committed by both the early Kierkegaard and by Rorty. The insights of these philosophers, as well as those developed by Wittgenstein, are used to develop the beginning of an ironic philosophy of religion. Specifically, this work follows Kierkegaard and pursues these questions with special concern for the relation of ironic philosophy to religious belief.

The modern apologetic enterprise, according to Myron Penner, is no longer valid. It tends toward an unbiblical and unchristian form of Christian witness and does not have the ability to attest truthfully to Christ in our postmodern context. In fact, Christians need an entirely new way of conceiving the apologetic task. This provocative text critiques modern apologetic efforts and offers a concept of faithful Christian witness that is characterized by love and grounded in God's revelation. Penner seeks to reorient the discussion of Christian belief, change a well-entrenched vocabulary that no longer works, and contextualize the enterprise of apologetics for a postmodern generation.

Covering a vast array of disciplines, this prescient Encyclopedia analyzes the many roles that applied ethics plays in the social sciences. Entries scrutinize the various manifestations of ethics across a range of disciplines and subdisciplines such as animal studies, criminology, and global health.