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Majid Amini
Visiting Fellow
Philosophy of literature
"Public Theology and Religious Identity"
It is almost a commonplace to hear the statement that throughout the world revival of religion is on the rise. Increasingly, we see across the globe that socially and politically conscious individuals take religion as an important factor, if not the only deciding factor, in determining their private and public aspirations and expectations. Religion is not only providing the standards and goals for what a person should pursue personally and publicly but also, more significantly, defining the identity of each person. In other words, people see and identity themselves solely in terms of the religion to which they belong. My religion, for example, decides who I am and what I should believe in and thereby how I should behave in private and public. Indeed, given that a considerable part of religion deals with moral issues and ethical values, there is a greater desire for a lot of people to bring their religion to bear on the affairs of society in pursuit of an ethically upright and morally healthy social environment. This is basically what public theology is about: to shape and influence not only our private lives but also our public lives on the basis of our religious identity.
However, despite the good intentions and sincere beliefs of people advocating public theology, not only does an ethically upright and morally healthy society appear to be more than ever an unachievable ideal state but also religion itself has become a source of social strife and strain. In national and regional politics, religious identity has led to sectarianism and exclusion of other, including non-religious, points of view, and, on the international scene, the world has increasingly become a patchwork of rival religions and a platform for religious rivalry. Paradoxically, religion as the call for compassion and care has been turned into a harbinger of death and destruction: lives and livelihoods are destroyed in the name of religion. But, what did go wrong? It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important questions facing humanity. The key to the question lies in our understanding of religion and, more fundamentally, in how one acquires one’s religious identity. What is it for me, for example, to be a Buddhist, a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Zoroastrian? The purpose of the project is to show that religion is ultimately a matter of choice, and choices are made on the basis of reason. But, reason is something that each of us shares with the rest of humanity and provides the grounds for our coexistence. Consequently, it is not surprising that a religious identity not based on reason and catering only for our religious kith and kin becomes a recipe for carnage and calamity.
Majid Amini is a Professor of Philosophy at Virginia State Univeristy.
Carla Fehr
Visiting Fellow
Philosophy of Science
"Where Have All The Women Gone?
Social Accounts of Science and the Need for Women Scientists
"
Since the 1970’s the number of women earning doctorates has tripled, but the number of women full-time professors has only increased by 1.5 times. Women are especially underrepresented in science and engineering.
Traditional philosophical accounts of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, pay little attention to the identity of the knower. In these accounts it doesn’t matter who the knower is, for instance whether the knower is a man or a woman. In this context philosophers of science tend to see the underrepresentation of women scientists as regrettable, but as someone else’s problem; a problem best dealt with on political or ethical or sociological terms.
However, there is a relatively recent turn in philosophy of science that characterizes science as a social practice. Philosophers of science, such as Helen Longino, have argued that the objectivity of scientific knowledge is dependent on the structure and practices of communities of scientists. According to Longino, objectivity requires a diverse community that fosters critical and constructive social interactions. In this view, the underrepresentation of women among scientists and the culture of scientific communities becomes a problem that philosophers of science can tackle. It is not only a problem concerning ethics, it is also a problem concerning the production of scientific knowledge. This social account of science has practical uses.
For this project, Fehr continues interdisciplinary research she has conducted on actual scientific communities. This research is designed to explore the structure of scientific communities and to test strategies that can help those communities recruit excellent women scientists and engineers.
Carla Fehr is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ioan State Univeristy.
Brian Huschle
Regional Fellow
Applied Ethics
"Confusing Goods: 'Intrinsic Value' in Contemporary Debate"
Contemporary moral debates over stem cell research, genetic engineering, animal rights, abortion, and other controversial issues are confusing, with different parties in the dispute seemingly talking past one another. And, although people disagree about the value of stem cells, the worth of various animal species, and the moral status of human fetuses, why they disagree is unclear. There is no single and simple explanation for the disagreement, but one can be found in debates around the notion of intrinsic value.
What intrinsic value means is unclear, but standard definitions revolve around the idea that the thing in question is valued for itself, and not for some other reason. The purpose of this project is to examine the role of differing understandings of intrinsic value in contemporary moral debates. It contains two key elements: characterizing clear positions about intrinsic value and evaluating the debates on controversial moral issues through our understanding of intrinsic value. While the original impetus for the project stems from my work in applied ethics, my project here will focus on intrinsic value itself, including questions related to how notions of the sacred relate to intrinsic value, and how the categories of intrinsic value, the final good, and extrinsic value relate to one another.
Brian Huschle is Professor of Philosophy at Northland College, East Grand Forks, Minnesota.
John Lippitt
Visiting Fellow
Ethics
"Self Love"
Do you love yourself? If that question strikes you as strange or even obnoxious, perhaps that’s because you think of the very idea of ‘self-love’ as narcissistic. On this view, love should be directed at others. Focusing it on oneself is just vain and self-absorbed. Down that route lies the absurdity of the Dutch artist Jennifer Hoes, who married herself in a public ceremony, telling a Haarlem newspaper: ‘I want to celebrate with others how much I’m in love with myself’.
But if the question seems innocuous, perhaps that’s because you share a commonly held view: that you have to love yourself before you can love others. Only someone sufficiently at ease with themselves is capable of loving other people – and you can’t build a house until the foundations are in place. You might even go so far as the contemporary philosopher Harry Frankfurt, who claims that true self-love is ‘the deepest and most essential ... achievement of a serious and successful life’.
Or perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle: slightly nervous about the connotations of a term like ‘self-love’, but viewing it as a necessary evil. As Voltaire quipped, self-love ‘resembles the instrument that perpetuates the species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and it must be hidden.’
Ever since the ancient Greeks, philosophers have asked questions about the nature of self-love. The problem of whether we should love ourselves – and if so how - has a particular resonance within the Christian tradition. After all, many think of Christian love as selfless. And yet the second love commandment in the gospels tells us that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves. So how do we love ourselves? How should we? And are these the same?
Philosophers within this tradition – including St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Søren Kierkegaard – have aimed to tease apart good and bad, proper and improper, forms of self-love. But this is by no means only a problem for Christians. Less theologically minded philosophers – including Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche and Frankfurt – have wrestled with essentially the same issue. Further, some have argued that distinguishing such forms of self-love is also crucial for contemporary psychotherapy, as therapists and their clients wrestle with the need to avoid such extremes as narcissistic personality disorder on the one hand and chronically low self-esteem on the other.
In this project, I draw upon numerous thinkers to address the question of what true self-love really means. But I’ll argue that the work of two thinkers – Kierkegaard and the contemporary Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor - prove especially useful in thinking through this problem. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard poses a stark and troubling challenge. He argues that the relationships we typically treasure most – romantic love and friendship – are, all too often, merely disguised forms of selfish self-love. Yet I’ll argue that Kierkegaard also gives us valuable resources for answering his own challenge, by applying to the self key aspects of the picture of love that emerges from the second part of Works of Love. Central to this picture are the virtues of hope, trust and self-forgiveness. We find different yet complementary resources in Taylor. In such books as Sources of the Self and A Secular Age, Taylor develops an account of the development of the modern self that is at once historically and philosophically grounded. I argue that we can draw on this account to articulate a rich and nuanced account of true self-love for the present age. We need to take into account the fact that we are self-interpreting beings, whose sense of who we are is intimately related to our purposes in life. The way we understand ourselves matters profoundly to us: it is crucial that we take on projects and live by commitments that we have made our own. And yet we are also creatures to whom dialogue is so central that we cannot be ‘selves’ in isolation. We also need, then, to consider the vital role of others and ‘the good’ in the development of this self we are to love. My project aims to show how this combined account can address the ‘problem of self-love’.
John Lippitt is a Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the Univeristy of Hertfordshire.
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