euthyphro dilemma | Pandaemonium

WITHOUT A MORAL SAFETY NET

May 12, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the text of a talk about my book The Quest for a Moral Compass that I gave at the Glasgow Aye Write festival last month. You can buy the book from my Pandaemonium bookshop. For other talks that I am giving see the Events page. What can the history of morality tell us about the nature of morality? And about ourselves as human beings? Those are the questions at the heart of my book. And those are the questions […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: alasdair macintyre, christianity, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, greek philosophy, greek tragedy, history of moral thought, holocaust, human agency, human nature, modernity, religion, sam harris, viktor frankl

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 17]: SCIENCE, NIHILISM & MORALITY

June 28, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I am publishing from my book-that-is-almost-finished on the history of moral thought we have reached Chapter 18, which explores the contemporary debates about the relationship between science and morality, from Joshua Greene’s work to Sam Harris’ arguments. This extract is from the section that unpacks Alex Rosenberg’s arguments about morality in his book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. The desire to root morality in science derives from a laudable aspiration to demonstrate the redundancy of […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Science & Technology • Tags: alex rosenberg, atheism, emotivism, euthyphro dilemma, evolutionary ethics, jl mackie, moral nihilism, morality, scientism

WHO NEEDS GOD?

February 6, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Like a lion, perhaps, in a den of Daniels, I gave a talk last week on ‘Why I am an atheist’ to theology students at Bristol’s Trinity College. It was an enjoyable event, and hopefully helped me to think through and sharpen my arguments (though not, I suspect, to change anyone’s mind). Here’s the transcript. There are three kinds of arguments that an atheist can make in defence of the insistence that no God exists. First, he or she can argue […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, atheism, camus, christianity, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, first cause, god, greek philosophy, religion, william craig

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 9]: MARTIN LUTHER’S ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTION

October 14, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from the book that I am writing on the history of moral thought, we have reached Chapter 10, which looks at the Renaissance and the Reformation and at the impact of both on moral philosophy. This excerpt is about Martin Luther’s theology and about the ambiguities of the Reformation, an intensely conservative religious reaction against the spirit of reason that Aquinas had introduced into Christianity that was nevertheless also the source of a radically libertarian revolution, the harbinger […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History of moral thought • Tags: anabaptists, christianity, diggers, euthyphro dilemma, kenan malik's books, levellers, martin luther, morality, protestantism, reformation, religion, renaissance, secularism, theology, william ockham

FIVE BOOKS ON MORALITY WITHOUT GOD

September 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I was asked by the The Browser, a wonderful, indispensable website that trawls the web and fishes out some of the best writing, to choose, for its ‘Five books’ section, five books (naturally) on morality without God. Here’s my somewhat eclectic list and the interview that accompanies it. Many believers think that the only way to be truly moral is to follow a religion which teaches us morality. How would you respond? One of the great selling points of religions – […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: al-ma'arri, arab literature, camus, dostoevsky, enlightenment, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, god, greek philosophy, human agency, humanism, islam, jonathan israel, plato, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 7]: ISLAM AND RATIONALISM

August 6, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts I’m running from my still-being-written book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 8, which explores the struggle between the Rationalists and the Traditionalists in early Islam, and the significance of that struggle not just to Islam but to Christianity and to the development of modern secularism too. The expansion of the Islamic empire from India to Iberia created new political tensions and theological dilemmas. It also created new kinds of administrative […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: al-farabi, al-ghazzali, al-kindi, al-ma'mun, al-mansur, aristotle, christianity, enlightenment, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, falsafah, god, history of moral thought, ibn rushd, ibn sina, judeo-christian tradition, kenan malik's books, mu'tazilite, muslim rationalism, neo-platonism, parmenides, plato, qur'an, religion, theology, via negativa

MORALITY ON THE BRAIN

June 1, 2011 by Kenan Malik

This week’s Moral Maze on Radio 4 explores the relationship between science and morality, and in particular the idea that science provides the means to establish moral norms. It has an all-star cast of witnesses including Jerry Coyne, Joshua Greene, Ray Tallis and Giles Fraser. I gave a talk last year to the ‘Talking Brains’ conference at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, on ‘Science, Morality and the Euthyphro Dilemma’ that took a skeptical look at some of the arguments of […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: ethics, euthyphro dilemma, free will, human agency, human nature, julian savulescu, moral maze, morality, neuromoralism, patricia churchland, plato, religion, sam harris

TEST TUBE TRUTHS

April 14, 2011 by Kenan Malik

‘IF GOD DOES NOT EXIST, EVERYTHING is permitted.‘ Dostoevsky never actually wrote that line, though so often is it attributed to him that he may as well have. It has become the almost reflexive response of believers when faced with an argument for a godless world. Without religious faith, runs the argument, we cannot anchor our moral truths or truly know right from wrong. Without belief in God we will be lost in a miasma of moral nihilism. In […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Science & Technology • Tags: euthyphro dilemma, god, human agency, human nature, liberalism, liberties, religion, sam harris, torture

THE SEARCH FOR ETHICAL CONCRETE [PART 2]

March 31, 2011 by Kenan Malik

This is the second part of my talk on ‘God, science and the quest for moral certainty’. I posted the first part yesterday. The whole of the transcript is on my archive site. IF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SAW THE ‘DEATH OF GOD’ – MUCH EXAGGERATED though that death may have been – the twentieth century witnessed what we might call the Fall of Man. The history of the twentieth century – two world wars, the Depression and Holocaust, Auschwitz and […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: alister mcgrath, atheism, berlin wall, camus, death of god, eo wilson, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, french revolution, god, human agency, human nature, julian savulescu, michael ignatieff, murray bookchin, plato, sam harris