Fact, Value, and God

by Arthur Holmes

Overview

Philosopher Arthur F. Holmes surveys the historical ways of grounding moral values objectively in the nature of reality, pausing along the way to consider such major landmarks in Western thought as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Ockham, the Reformers, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche.

Holmes is not convinced that we live in a value-free universe, that fact and value are ultimately unrelated, or that we have to create all our own values rather than discovering the good. He explores the fact-value connection in the larger context of metaphysical and theological views. What emerges is a pervasive-and convincing-link between religious and moral beliefs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802843128
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/19/2005
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Cosmic Justice and the Pre-Socratics
2. Plato and the Improvement of the Soul
3. Aristotle and Nature's Teleology
4. The Divine Logos and the Goodness of Creation
5. Augustine: God and the Soul
6. Thomas Aquinas: A Creational Ethic
7. Scotus, Ockham, and the Reformers: What God Commands
8. Right Reason and the Scientific Revolution
9. Human Nature and Moral Teleology
10. Kant's Moral Worldview
11. Hegel: Idealist Ethics
12. Ethics as Empirical Science
13. Nietzsche: Fact and Value with No God
14. In Retrospect

Index

Editorial Reviews

Arthur Holmes' accomplishment in Fact, Value, and God is to provide orientation as opposed to argument or detailed history. He presupposes some philosophical background but his book can be read with profit by relative newcomers to the field as well as by professionals; it will commend itself to anyone who likes a good yarn, spun by a storyteller who sees pattern and purpose even in what ostensibly might look like the loss of such.... Holmes offers a timely reminder that while we postmoderns may be inclined to reduce intellectual moves to political power plays, the intellectuals whose movements make up the canon of western thought had a very real and considered commitment to truths that transcend our powers.

Faith and Philosophy

"A thorough and lucid study of the ways in which moral values have been grounded in the nature of reality throughout the history of philosophy.... This is a good book, well written and sure-footed in its scholarship. It is a valuable historical prolegomenon to the debate that philosophers and theologians are engaged in today over the justification of moral beliefs."

Theology (U.K.)

The value of this work lies not only in its accessible treatment of a single issue in ethics—the relation of fact and value—but also in the clear and concise introduction it provides to the history of Western philosophy, especially ethics. Both novice and expert, students of theology as well as students of philosophy, can benefit greatly from this readable study.

Themelios

Remarkably clear and well informed discussion.

Expository Times

Holmes has succeeded in making the history of ethics an engaging story. The book is noteworthy both for its inclusion of lesser-known figures and for its serious treatment of theological ideas, whether expressed by thinkers ordinarily classified as theologians or theologically minded philosophers.... The book is highly readable and, accompanied by an appropriate anthology, would work well as a text for an undergraduate course in ethics.

Ethics

Holmes traces the development of moral thinking from the Greeks to the present in terms of its acceptance or rejection of a relationship to God. While providing a clear and insightful look at the fundamental aspect of moral theory, he also supplies a very readable introduction to how ethical, metaphysical and religious views have affected one another.

Choice