In Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, Thomas Hibbs recovers the notion of practice to develop a more descriptive account of human action and knowing, grounded in the venerable vocabulary of virtue and vice. Drawing on Aquinas, who believed that all good works originate from virtue, Hibbs postulates how epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and theology combine into a set of contemporary philosophical practices that remain open to metaphysics. Hibbs brings Aquinas into conversation with analytic and Continental philosophy and suggests how a more nuanced appreciation of his thought enriches contemporary debates. This book offers readers a new appreciation of Aquinas and articulates a metaphysics integrally related to ethical practice.

Engages two provocative contemporary philosophers of religion

This work places Thomas Aquinas's moral theory in its full philosophical and theological context in a way that makes Aquinas accessible to students and interested general readers.

Morality has traditionally been understood to be tied to certain metaphysical beliefs: notably, in the freedom of human persons (to choose right or wrong courses of action), in a god (or gods) who serve(s) as judge(s) of moral character, and in an afterlife as the locus of a “final judgment” on individual behavior. Some scholars read the history of moral philosophy as a gradual disentangling of our moral commitments from such beliefs. Kant is often given an important place in their narratives, despite the fact that Kant himself asserts that some of such beliefs are necessary (necessary, at least, from the practical point of view). Many contemporary neo-Kantian moral philosophers have embraced these “disentangling” narratives or, at any rate, have minimized the connection of Kant’s practical philosophy with controversial metaphysical commitments ‐ even with Kant’s transcendental idealism. This volume re-evaluates those interpretations. It is arguably the first collection to systematically explore the metaphysical commitments central to Kant’s practical philosophy, and thus the connections between Kantian ethics, his philosophy of religion, and his epistemological claims concerning our knowledge of the supersensible.

Although interest in the theology of Karl Barth is greater today than at any time since his death, Barth's moral thought continues to be widely misunderstood. This groundbreaking study of the twentieth-century's most important Christian thinker offers the first treatment of Barth's ethics from a Roman Catholic perspective. Focusing particularly on Barth's 'ethics of creation' in the Church Dogmatics, Rose reclaims Barth from a number of misinterpretations and presents Barth's account of the good life within his distinctively Christian metaphysics. Among the most provocative of Rose's claims is that Barth sees the Christian life as guided by reason and nature, an interpretation that finds Barth in conversation with ancient and medieval ethical theories about the nature of human happiness. A significant contribution to Barth studies and current debates in contemporary Christian theology, Ethics with Barth sheds valuable light on the connection between metaphysics and ethics, the trinitarian dimensions of Christian moral thought, the nature of the divine good, the role of Christian philosophy, Barth's conception of moral reasoning, and his views on eudaimonism and the natural law.

Helping readers create a consistently Christian worldview, William Hasker addresses key questions of metaphysics and discusses possible answers. In the Contours of Christian Philosophy series.

Unified Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Metaphysics, Cyberethics, and Liberal Arts presents an integrated vision of metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy and posits that philosophy is a form of theoretical and applied metaphysics. This integration forms the foundation of general education, or what is considered to be liberal arts and sciences. The book shows how introductory philosophy courses can be adapted for freshman and faculty orientation to 2 and 4 year colleges, and universities, and senior reorientations revising traditional capstones. The book opens with an outline of the general theory of metaphysics. Having identified four options for subject-object relations, the book then applies these to examinations of linguistics, hermeneutics, determinism, the ethics of economics as cyberethics and cybereconomics, and the social sciences. The books also dissects "lifeworld" into "object" and "methodological" or "approach" lifeworld and shows through semantics that human factors engineering as probably identified with metaphysics as theoretical and applied. Other topics for intellectual discourse include public versus private property, God, empirical and rational knowledge, and technology's relation to science and art. The second edition features improved organization of sections within chapters based upon classroom testing, as well as substantial changes and updates to the content across all chapters. Written in recognition of ethics and metaphysics as fundamental components of philosophy and the quest for wisdom, Unified Philosophy is a thought-provoking text for students of theology, ethics, and engineering. With its focus on philosophy as an integral part of liberal arts and sciences, it is also an excellent supplement for courses in economics, anthropology, and the arts. Michael M. Kazanjian holds a master's degree in philosophy from De Paul University and is an instructor of philosophy at Triton College in Illinois. He has published extensively, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications including the Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter and Contemporary Philosophy. Professor Kazanjian is the author of Phenomenology and Education: Cosmology, Co-Being, and Core Curriculum and Learning Values Lifelong: From Inert Ideas to Whole. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association and the Association for the Development of Philosophy Teaching.