Samuel Fleischacker defends what the Enlightenment called 'revealed religion': religions that regard a certain text or oral teaching as sacred, as wholly authoritative over one's life. At the same time, he maintains that revealed religions stand in danger of corruption or fanaticism unless they are combined with secular scientific practices and a secular morality. The first two parts of Divine Teaching and the Way of the World argue that the cognitive and moral practices of a society should prescind from religious commitments -- they constitute a secular 'way of the world', to adapt a phrase from the Jewish tradition, allowing human beings to work together regardless of their religious differences. But the way of the world breaks down when it comes to the question of what we live for, and it is this that revealed religions can illumine. Fleischacker first suggests that secular conceptions of why life is worth living are often poorly grounded, before going on to explore what revelation is, how it can answer the question of worth better than secular worldviews do, and how the revealed and way-of-the-world elements of a religious tradition can be brought together.
| ISBN | 019921736X | | Pages | 576 | | ISBN13 | 9780199217366
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 1018 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Height (mm) | 240 | | Format | Hardback | | Width (mm) | 170 | | Publication date | 21 Apr 2011 | | Spine width (mm) | 37 | | DEWEY | 210 | | Academic level | Postgraduate | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; 1. The Way of the World (I): Truth; 2. The Way of the World (II): Ethics; 3. Beyond the Way of the World: Worth; 4. Divine Teaching; 5. Divine Teaching and the Way of the World; Epilogue; Appendix I: Proofs of God; Appendix II: Maimonides on the Evidence for Revelation; Appendix III: Kant on Art and Natural Beauty
In this ambitious volume, Fleischacker provides an intricate and sophisticated argument for rationally justifying one's taking a religious text as divine revelation. The argument is rich in creative thinking and in its breadth... Fleischacker presents an extended argument with an expansive sweep, reminding one of how philosophy used to be done in the grand style. The book's architecture is imposing and its argumentation for its main ideas, as I have shown in part, often clever and fresh. This in itself makes reading its 475 pages of text and 58 pages of notes most worthwhile and exciting... The book is studded with excellent critical discussions of Kant at important junctures, including Kant's idea of private reasoning, and displays a richness of philosophical exploration... Fleischacker's book should become an object of careful discussion serving for progress in philosophy of religion. Jerome Gellman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
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