Religion and Morality

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 452.

Autor desconocido

First published Wed Sep 27, 2006

From the beginning of Western thought, religion and morality have been closely intertwined. This is true whether we go back within Greek philosophy or within Christianity and Judaism. The present article will not try to step beyond these confines. The article proceeds chronologically, giving greatest length to the contemporary period. It attempts to explain the main options as they have occurred historically. The purpose of proceeding historically is to substantiate the claim that morality and religion have been inseparable until very recently, and that our moral vocabulary is still deeply infused with this history. Since there are historically so many different ways to see the relation, a purely schematic or typological account is not likely to succeed as well. The ethical theories of the individual philosophers mentioned will not be described in depth, since this encyclopedia already contains entries about them; instead, the focus will be on what these philosophers say about the relation between morality and religion.

• 1. Ancient Greek Philosophy
• 2. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament
• 3. The Middle Ages
• 4. Modern Philosophy
• 5. The Twentieth Century
• Bibliography