Overview

This work focuses on divine command, and in particular the theory that what makes something obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes something wrong is that God commands us not to do it. Focusing on the Abrahamic faiths, eminent scholar John E. Hare explains that two experiences have had to be integrated. The first is that God tells us to do something, or not to do something. The second is that we have to work out ourselves what to do and what not to do. The difficulty has come in establishing the proper relation between them. In Christian reflection on this, two main traditions have emerged, divine command theory and natural law theory.Hare successfully defends a version of divine command theory, but also shows that there is considerable overlap with some versions of natural law theory. He engages with a number of Christian theologians, particularly Karl Barth, and extends into a discussion of divine command within Judaism and Islam. The work concludes by examining recent work in evolutionary psychology, and argues that thinking of our moral obligations as produced by divine command offers us some help in seeing how a moral conscience could develop in a way that is evolutionarily stable.

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9780198829843

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Reviews

The book is incredibly rich in scope and ambition, canvassing just about every major philosophical issue that arises in connection with divine commands. In the process Hare discusses a dizzying array of thinkers who have reflected on relevant issues, critiquing many of them with insights both trenchant and penetrating. The net effect is an impressive and comprehensive articulation and defense of divine command theory. * David Baggett, Liberty University *

Ambitious in its scope and awe-inspiring in its erudition, Hare s most recent offering is nothing short of a tour de force that warrants the serious attention of philosophers. The work is highly recommended for upper-division undergraduate and graduate seminars on meta-ethics. --Religious Studies Review

Author Information

John E. Hare received his BA from Oxford University, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He then taught at Lehigh University, with a couple of years on the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, DC. He then taught at Calvin College, and went to Yale in 2003, where he teaches in the Divinity School, the Philosophy Department, the Religious Studies Department, and the Classics Department. His publications include The Moral Gap (OUP, 1997) and God and Morality (Wiley Blackwell, 2009).

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