In search of moral knowledge : overcoming the fact-value dichotomy /
R. Scott Smith.
- 361 pages ; 23 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
A short history of Western ethics. -- Christian, biblical ethics -- Ancient ethics : Plato and Aristotle on moral knowledge -- Moral knowledge from Augustine through Aquinas -- Moral knowledge in the Reformation and the Enlightenment shift -- Naturalism, relativism and postmodernism : understanding and assessing today's dominant moral paradigms. -- Options for naturalistic ethics -- Naturalism, knowledge and the fact-value split -- More modern options : ethical relativism, Rawls's political liberalism and Korsgaard's constructivism -- Introduction to the postmodern period : a plurality of different voices -- MacIntyre's recovered Thomistic ethics -- Hauerwas's narrative Christian ethics -- Assessing MacIntyre's and Hauerwas's projects -- Toward a theory of moral knowledge. -- Moral realism and addressing the crisis of (moral) knowledge -- Religiously based moral knowledge--and final issues.
For most of the church's history, people have seen Christian ethics as normative and universally applicable. Recently, however, this view has been lost, thanks to naturalism and relativism. R. Scott Smith argues that Christians need to overcome Kant's fact-value dichotomy and recover the possibility of genuine moral and theological knowledge. --From publisher's description.