Fittingness explores the nature, roles, and applications of the notion of fittingness in contemporary normative and metanormative philosophy. The fittingness relation is the relation in which a response stands to a feature of the world when that feature merits, or is worthy of, that response. In the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, this normative notion of fittingness played a prominent role in the theories of the period's most influential ethical theorists, and in recent years has regained prominence, promising to enrich the theoretical resources of contemporary theorists working in the philosophy of normativity. This volume is the first central discussion of the notion to date. It is composed of seventeen new essays covering a range of topics including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relation between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. In addition to making important contributions to the debates in the philosophy of normativity with which they're concerned, the essays in the volume support the hypothesis that the notion of fittingness has great theoretical utility in investigating a range of normative matters, across a variety of domains.

Examines a series of British ethical theorists from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century who shared the view that moral judgements can be objectively true, have a distinctive subject matter, and are known by direct insight.

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano (1838–1917) had an often underappreciated influence on the course of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy. The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A general introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume, and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates.

Living Theodrama is a fresh, creative introduction to theological ethics. Offering an imaginative approach through dialogue with theatrical theory and practice, Vander Lugt demonstrates a new way to integrate actor-oriented and action-oriented approaches to Christian ethics within a comprehensive theodramatic model. This model affirms that life is a drama performed in the company of God and others, providing rich metaphors for relating theology to everyday formation and performance in this drama. Different chapters explore the role of the triune God, Scripture, tradition, the church, mission, and context in the process of formation and performance, thus dealing separately with major themes in theological ethics while incorporating them within an overarching model. This book contains not only a fruitful exchange between theological ethics and theatre, but it also presents a promising method for interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and the arts that will be valuable for students and practitioners across many different fields.

Love has been the subject of much fascination. It is indeed one of those things which elude us in many ways. The long-lasting disagreement over love's nature is unsurprising. In light of this, a piecemeal approach to love is in order. Instead of asking what love is down the line, we might need to investigate its various features and its connection to other things. The Rationality of Love addresses the question whether love belongs, paradoxically enough, to the realm of reason, whether love belongs to the class of responses, such as belief and action, that admit of norms of justification and rationality. Are there normative reasons to love someone? Can it be an appropriate or fitting response to an individual? Can it be rational? Or is love, like perceptual experiences, sensations and urges, the sort of thing we just have and for which we cannot be rationally criticizable? Hichem Naar provides a sustained defense of the rationality of love. There are reasons to love others, reasons provided by the unique value of each individual. This will in turn rule out popular accounts of love which deny love's rationality and vindicate those accounts that make room for it. Drawing on various domains of philosophical inquiry such as the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of normativity, and epistemology, Naar provides a careful assessment of the various positions in the debate over reasons for love and develops his own answer to the normative question about love.

This book explores the justification of our beliefs about intrinsic value.

Observing a strange disappearance of doctrine within the church, Kevin Vanhoozer argues that there is no more urgent task for Christians today than to engage in living truthfully with others before God. He details how doctrine serves the church--the theater of the gospel--by directing individuals and congregations to participate in the drama of what God is doing to renew all things in Jesus Christ. Taking his cue from George Lindbeck and others who locate the criteria of Christian identity in Spirit-led church practices, Vanhoozer relocates the norm for Christian doctrine in the canonical practices, which, he argues, both provoke and preserve the integrity of the church's witness as prophetic and apostolic.