RELG 2300 All Readings

James Bond Stockdale

"He learned that persons of little learning or philosophy were more vulnerable to brainwashing and the weakness that leads to treasonable betrayal of fellow prisoners. As a result, Stockdale recommends training in history and philosophy for professional soldiers."

Plato (Euthyphro)

Euthyphro is prosecuting his father for murder (manslaughter) -- is it right to prosecute your father?; Euthyphro extremely anti-moral relativism-- murder is murder; E feel justified because "what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious" but Socrates pokes holes in this; S says that the gods love pious things, and piety is independent from the love from gods

Menachem Marc Kellner

Jewish ethics; "Jewish ethical teaching … is conditioned by the fact that Judaism is a religion which emphasizes human behavior over general claims of theology and faith" (p. 13)

Soren Kierkegaard

God must be real because if there was nothing then all life should be despair; love, admiration, and FAITH at the center of ethics; the most powerful thing you can do is submit to God; faith must be tested before it can be rewarded and seen as real; Abraham's feat of faith was incredible. Faith could have been lost in many ways during Akedah, but none was lost

Azim Nanji

focus on exercising reason in islamic ethics; linked ethics to theroertical knowledge, which was to be acquired by rational means. Goal of ethics is the attainment of happiness; ethics bleed into and intertwine with secular life

Noumanel Haq

advances of the Islamic world integral to Enlightenment but is now oppressed by the West; because Islam had a role in constructing modernity, it is apt to address modern problems, such as the state of the environment; Quran requires "religious imagination" and there is no particularly true interpretation; nature is a sign pointing to God; humans unique bc they can exercise reason and have moral burdens; all of this amounts to great reasoning why environmental destruction leads to spiritual destruction -- both in loss of information externally (signs) and loss of information internally (losing the world that Humans are a part of); hima: the principle of land protection and consecration

Ibrahim Ozdemir

nature is not incidental, but there on purpose, and can be "read" to reveal the existence of a Creator who is All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and All-Merciful; emphasis on a balanced life--in both social life and interactions w/ environment; any sort of wastefulness is admonished; "since every thing in the universe behaves in accordance with law enacted by God, the whole universe is therefore muslim"; "the natural world has not been created just for humankind's use"; human beings are above nature, but are not owners of nature

Flannery (Sunflower)

Christian perspective; all those who repent should be granted forgiveness, no sin is unforgivable

Heschel (Sunflower)

tells story of a man who wrongs a Rabbi (with light physical violence and hostility) who, after realizing he is a Rabbi, begs for forgiveness, and the Rabbi refuses bc the man offended against who he thought was a common man. He is not begging forgiveness from the man he offended. The Rabbi cannot forgive for this illusory common man he stepped into the role of when he was acosted; shows how strongly in Jewish tradition you cannot forgive on the behalf of someone else, and Wiesenthal would have been doing that if he forgave

Kaplan (Sunflower)

cannot be forgived because the trend of his action is still in effect (Jews are still being killed); cannot grant forgiveness in this scenario because you were not the ones offended against

Konvitz (Sunflower)

God forgives all sins; Man is commanded to live a life in the imitation of God, but does not have the power to actually forgive the sins; should still offer compassion

Levi (Sunflower)

refusing to pardon was the lesser evil: would have hurt self in the process of forgiveness; Karl would not have repented until his death, or maybe never if things went "well" for him; asking to have a Jew brought to him is objectifying of Simon

Tutu (Sunflower)

must address both the psyches of the victims and the offenders, since they both exist in the world; "without forgiveness, there is no future"

Soelle (Sunflower)

cannot forgive, but can believe Karl's remorse; Simon didn't have to forgive him, Karl was in conversation with God about his sins

Marcuse (Sunflower)

"I believe that the easy forgiving of such crimes perpetuates the very evil it wants to alleviate"

Marty (Sunflower)

Christian perspective; "Non-Jews and perhaps especially Christians should not give advice about Holocaust experience to its heirs"; afraid of "cheap grace" -- no one should think grace is that easy, "the author's silence in that hospital room was a guard against the cheapening of grace" BUT "gracelessness helps produce totalitarianisms as much as cheap grace might"

Ozick (Sunflower)

Forgiveness can brutalize; forgiveness of this kind is only useful as a teaching moment, when there is a next time; "forgiveness is pitiless, it forgets the victim" but vengance knows pity for the victim

L. Gregory Jones (Sunflower) silence is not explicit refusal to forgive, this is the best that could be afforded; You can show compassion without explicit forgiveness, it is argued that is what the silence showed

Ta-Nehisi Coates

housing inequality (understatement); Clyde Ross wronged by housing scheme, demanded reparations; "the black family in america is working without a safety net"; Roosevelt's New Deal (whiche stablished social safety nets) rested on the foundation of Jim Crow, serving populations which were majority white and excluding those (such as domestic workers) that were majority black; maybe there are no reparations that could truly compensate; "Reparations--by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences -- is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely"

Jesse McCarthy

echoing Coates' idea of reparations as a moral rather than material debt; monetary reparations not appropriate or feasible; shift emphasis from wealth gap to the other ways Black people are disproportionately targeted (i.e. policing)

Anne Minas

contests that actually forgiveness is especially human, much more than it is divine; forgiveness can be rectifying an inaccurate moral judgement, and since God has perfect morals, a God cannot do this; God would not do forgiveness based on exceptions since his rules are perfect; God will not condone offenses; asking for forgiveness after repentance is not about undoing the prior judgement, but asking for new judgement after transformation, BUT God takes into account the whole of someone's life

Plato (on truth and lying)

true lie = a deception in the soul about reality; falsehoods can be useful; noble lie = fables that suggest true things about the world

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

different relationships have more or less difficult demands for truth (parent-child; teacher-student); truth is not intrinsically good; truth is "alive", it cannot be absolutely defined by hard rules

St. Augustine (on lying)

eight kinds of lie that i wont list; lying cannot be rectified by lying, don't be deceitful even if its for a good cause; we never ought to lie

Louis Jacobs

three times you can tell a lie: 1.) tractate: saying you do not know something so you appear humble, 2.) bed: lying as not to reveal secrets within marital relation, 3.) hospitality: downplay how generously one was treated as a guest so that unwelcome guests do not seek out that hospitality; Also general rule: "where peace demands it a lie may be told"

Norman Lamm and Israel Meir Ha-Kohen

mostly about talebearing: telling a story of what someone else did in a way that causes strife; disclosing information MAY BE PERMITTED if it will "avoid unecessary damage and still a conflict," but this is difficult to navigate with certainty; all circumstances for talebearing, even ones of inconsequential information, are bad bc of relational harm

A.S.M.H. Tabatabai

Taqiyah: "to avoid or shun any kind of danger"; discussing Taqiyah more narrowly as shunning danger by concealing religion; you can conceal your religion in times where your religion puts you in danger

Danya Ruttenberg

every aspect of human life is a holy piece of the Torah, even sex; sexual relations need full presence and love; sexual service is non-negotiable as part of the marital relationship; intersex is mentioned in the Mishnah and Talmud

Stanley Hauerwas (Sex in Public)

political function of marriage in the Christian communtiy must be understood; critique of realism (well, people have sex) and romanticism (sex is about love!); "Marriage (as well as the family) stands as one of the central institutions of the political reality of the church, for it is a sign of our faithfulness to God's kingdom come through the providential ordering of history"; the question of what sexual activities are right or wrong are actually questions of "what kind of people we should be to be capable of supporting the mission of the church"

Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae)

sexual acts which further the human race are good; lust can be applied usefully; natural and unnatural vices, unnatural lustful sins are more than natural ones

Karl Barth (on sex)

male and female only exist in opposition to each other, and this union is essential and sacred; one must know themselves within this essential relationship; homosexuality is a sickness caused by segregation of the sexes

Abdelwahab Bouhdiba (Sexuality in Islam)

procreation, sex, symbolizes divine creation; sexuality is social, as it involves other people; meaning making

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (Advantages and Disadvantages)

marriage is a duty; satisfies sexual organs so prevents corruption; marriage is an inherent virtue; marriage is bad if it distracts you; advantages: procreation, satisfying pleasure, companionship, ordering household, self-discipline; disadvantages: financial burden, failure to uphold wives' rights, distractions from God; pulling out is bad, abortion is worse, killing a child is worst

Samuel H. Dresner

reprehension for sexual deviance (homosexuality included) works to affirm the natural order of heterosexuality; we are not fully human until we marry someone of the opposite sex; you are only half a person; heterosexuality upholds society, and sexual deviation/misconduct unravels it

Gordon Tucker

gays and lesbians can be equally good people (and Jews) to heterosexuals, and homosexuality is not a "choice"; Jewish law is living and we continually create new meanings; center Jewish tradition's emphasis of sexual fulfillment, companionship, and family life: all of these can be fulfilled by same sex relationships

Bouhdiba (Sexuality in Islam, on Homosexuality)

complementarianism of the sexes; each sex brings something valuable to create the world; homosexuality is not just a violation, but so is being an effeminate man or masculine woman

Eugene Rogers

marriage as an ascetic practice, it is committing ourselves to others; faith, hope, and charity do not happen in isolation but within communities, so homosexuals should be given the chance to participate in religious communities equally, including marriage; complentarianism is not inherently male-female; we can find growth in other bonds

Luke Timothy Johnson

crisis over homosexuality is really about the "perceived threat to the authority of Scripture and the teaching authority of the church"; homosexuality is created by God; God creates the world anew at every moment, so we can reappraise old scripture and place different emphasis

Eve Tushnet

personal experience is difficult to interpret, we cannot rely on it to interpret scripture; Love of God trumps love of other people; being attracted to the same sex isn't wrong but you shouldn't live it out

Hannah Arendt

Eichmann's actions were actually led by his conscience, which was developed in Hitler's image; Nazi created a world where not doing evil was the hard thing to do

Jonathan Bennett

sympathy =/= moral judgment; sympathy mostly conflicts w/ bad moralities; HB Finn thought he did the wrong thing by following sympathy and protecting Jim, this is bc he had a bad morality; example of Himmler-said u should retain sympathy but work against it; example of Jonathan Edwards-said u should give up sympathies entirely bc authority of action should be in God; moralities open to revision, but not wholy trumped by sympathy

Ruth Graham and Elisabeth Dias

southern baptist sex abuse report; tension between justice for victims or returning to strict purity

Reinhold Niebuhr (Love and Justice)

the law of love is big in christianity, but it does not trump Justice, it only enhances it; justice > philanthropy bc it acknowledges that u are equals and could be in the wrong; you do not have to be selfless to be in favor of general welfare, humans are inherently self interested; "a profounder Christian faith must encourage men to create systems of justice which will save society and themselves from their own selfishness"; we cannot know the outcomes of our actions, sometimes we have to try and make a "lesser of two evils" choice. and sometimes that fails

Stanley Hauerwas (Tragedy and Joy)

Niebuhr thinks that "the tragedy that marks our existence" is that the highest good can only be achieved through coercion and violence; it is actually (according to Hauerwas) that the peace that Christians witness may make the world more dangerous, because "we do not give up our violent illusions without a struggle; "All social orders and institutions to a greater and lesser extent are built on the lie that we, not God, are the masters of our existence"; we must have hope and patience (as Christians) not for the idea that history will sort itself out, but that God has determined the second coming which will set all things right; truth is challenging and challenge can produce hurt, so Christians must be prepared to deal with this hurt (in themselves and others); "Joy is thus finally a result of our being dispossed of the illusion of security and power that is the breeding ground of our violence"

James Cone (Gospel of Jesus)

focusing on the social justice orientation of Jesus gives a good orientation for Christianity that aligns with Black lived experience; "if the work of Christ is that of liberating men from alien loyalties"… then it must be concerned with liberating men from racism (which is an alien loyalty/faith); confronting white sentimental love (love without justice) by affirming God's love as a black person; violence may be an expression of love if it fights for equality

Hugo Bedau

death penalty abolitionist; reforms make it harder to abolish death penalty; minimal invasion argument -- there are less restrictive ways of acheiving social good than death penalty; long-term imprisonment is sufficient; death penalty is not uniquely retributive

Louis. P. Pojman

death penalty is proportional; "because human beings, as rational agents, have dignity, one who with malice aforethought kills a human being forfeits his right to life and deserves to die"; "punishment ought to serve as a deterrent, and that capital punishment is an adequate deterrent to prospective murderers"

David Novak

principle of retribution: the consequences of an act determine a reaction proportionate to it; "eye for an eye" eventually interpreted as figurative: compensation equal in weight but doesn't have to be fully equal in context; "Physical mutilation of any kind violates the principle of equality because it can never be equal in reality"; in cases of murder, equal retribution is the only concern bc the victim cannot be compensated: thus capital punishment is mandated; large focus on context of murder happening within a community/society, and how that loss is experienced communally

Elie Spitz

death penalty so present in the bible somewhat because they had no concept of prison; thinks that prisons today meet the three goals of execution in the bible (deterrence, realignment of God w/ creation, and retribution)

John Howard Yoder (on Death Penalty)

Only God can kill bc (among other reasons) he is the only one w/o sin; vengeance comes natural to fallen man and the justice system should control this urge, not facilitate it; always meet those who have sinned w/ God's love; modeling love of Jesus; it is right to apply Christian conviction to political matters

U.S. Bishops' Statement on Capital Punishment

pro-abolition, shows us we can break the cycle of violence; value life, forgiveness; death penalty provents reform of the criminal; death penalty causes more harm than good; not convinced by deterrance argument

J. Budziszewski

being made in God's image makes you morally accountable; just punishment > rehabilitation, deterrance, protection; divine mercy includes atonement (justice); human punishment is a sign of the wrath to come (from God); death row is more conducive to a change of heart than lifetime imprisonment; death penalty grants more protection to public; death penalty may "whet the appetite for revenge", but so can other societal goods like policing-- every good thing can be perverted; God gives authority to the state so the state may as well use the tools at its disposal

Joseph Bottum

narrative of death penalty is "pagan" (bad); state oversteps by trying to "balance the cosmic books" w/ death penalty; state using power to keep order is important but killing still isnt right; in our current politics, state is not given power by God; death penalty devalues life specifically in this social context; need to look at how Christ, by dying on cross, repaid all blood debts

Khaled Abou el Fadl

only God can kill, the state should kill on behalf of God but authority may not be legitimate today; "The very act of spilling blood, even if for justifiable reasons, destroys the life created by God and, in fact, disassembles and subverts the very logic of creation"; states need to introduce reforms that prevent murder; victim chooses, somewhat, what happens to perpetrators of crimes

Reinhold Niebuhr (on Pacifism)

we need to use force because humans are inherently sinful and peace is not a valid option on the world stage; modern forms of Christian pacifism are heretical because it rejects original sin; because we are never free from vindictiveness, pacifists think we are best to withdraw, but it is all too possible that our submission creates a worse vindictiveness

Stanley Hauerwas (on Pacifism)

states cannot conform to the demands of the gospel because the Church is not supposed to be worldly; "Christian pacifism stated in its simplest form is that Christians cannot see how war can be an imperative of the Christian life"; basis of man is living up to Christ's ideals, not held down by original sin; non-action does have "complicity" in evil, but only so that the sinner is allowed to come to God on their own and seek redemption; eschatological -- it's God's job to make things right in the end

James Childress

just-war theorists need pacifist to remind them that we should have a starting point against force and war, but pacifists need just-war theorists to provide a framework to talk about how we should be acting when we are in a war already; prima facie duties: not killing is a prima facie duty but so is upholding justice, and these can trump each other

James Turner Johnson

war needs to be for the public good; war can never be just in the nuclear age; need to focus more on criteria to go to war, no what we should do in war; just war should be justified by international institutions, not states

Averroes (ibn Rushd)

jihad is a collective, not personal obligation; lots of rules. very fair.

Mahmud Shaltut

people should NOT be made to believe in the Mission (Islam) by force, as it will make people resist it and limit them engaging with it genuinely

Lynn White

animals, including humans, always impact our environment. we cant just stop; ecological crisis extremely influenced by western science + christianity; science and technology tainted with ideal of domination of nature; anthropocentric view; worldview of man above nature must change

Robert Gordis

Jewish view on environment; command to "subdue the Earth" does not mean free reign; treat animals through reverence for life; things are not created for man, there are animals that have their independent reason for being; theocentric worldview; no wanton destruction of natural objects; sabbatical years, letting the soil rest; sustainability + reverence for life; God owns the land, we're only temporary custodians

Karl Barth (Environment)

treating plants + animals exactly like humans devalues humanity, but must have respect for them; plants + animals benefit humans, so care for them is care for humans; Earth belongs to God, we take temporary precedence; eating veggies ok cus we gotta + we r allowed; murdering animals is not ok but if u acknolwedge the authority of God then its ok

Rosemary Radford Reuther

We need to use our consciousness and ability for complex thought to find a way to live in harmony with the earth, not dominate it; Must give up the idea that there is a possible perfect world without tragedy and death and commit to living in harmony with all of the Earth; Vision of God as a non-anthromoporphic entity which is life-giving; preferential option for the poor: caring for the poorest of us perhaps at the expense of the richest of us, so that the whole community of life can flourish in balance

James Cone (Environment)

Trying to bridge the gap between black liberationists and environmentalists; environmental racism: black communities are disproportionately impacted by hazardous waste facilities; Need to engage in mutual dialogue so that environmentalists can understand the lineage of human greed, both when it comes to the Earth and other people

Ramachandra Guha

Deep ecology implemented world wide is not fitting, and could even be harmful; Deep ecology has a focus on unspoilt wilderness, which humans have not "ruined", but we can and are stewards of environment; Deep ecology thinks itself radical, but it fits perfectly into American consumer society; disproportionate harm to the third world

Max Weber

Roots of the urge to always be doing something is protestant, it impacts our society/economics in a big way

Josef Pieper

Western culture is built on leisure (draws on Ancient Greek culture); intellectual culture used to be divorced from work, but then labor was used as a justification for the legitimacy of philosophy much later; idea that doing the right thing should be difficult, and the more difficult it is, the more good it is (doesnt believe this); we need a conception of place in the world without being constantly instumentalized, we need liberal arts (which are intrinsically justified)

Abraham Joshua Heschel (the Sabbath)

in the technological age, we "expend time to gain space"; while the control of space is fine task, the problem starts when we begin to forfeit aspirations in the realm of time; time is holy; The Sabbath is for the intrinsic value in being alive, not just for rest from toil so the body comes back better the next day (work to live, not live to work)

Moshe Sokol

goral existence - feeling completely without agency, things are done to you; yi'ud - taking part in creating your existence; suffering can be productive; meaning making in the face of evil

Fazlur Rahman

the struggle between good and evil is reality for man alone; Satan is not strong and he can only prey on the weak; Satan does not force people to do things, he merely entices them

Susan Wolf

absolute moral perfection creates dull people as it discourages engagement with things that are not perfectly moral (even if there is absence of clear moral content); a person may be perfectly good without being perfectly moral; rational saint is dominated by duty and loving saint is made most happy by serving others -- both are dull

Robert M. Adams

in context, Saints perceive their goodness as coming from a divine source, and that source can be tapped into for various, nonmoral means. Saints in canon are not the perfectionists that Wolf paints them as; Sainthood comes from God, and as the creator of all thing, God reasonably may be interested non-moral forms of human excellence

Thomas Aquinas (Name Applied to God?)

our words are real and not just symbolic, but our language falls short of actually capture the essence of God; when we say "God is good" we mean "whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God"

Zbigniew Herbert

very unlikely to come up on test; poem; learn from old "humanity fables and legends"