Ethics and Religious Ideas
Research on the Idea of Goodness.
- Project I. Spiritual and mystical articulations of ethics
- Project II. Religiously motivated suicide terror
- Project III.
Ethics and the idea of an absolute good. The research deals with the question whether a moral orientation upon a non tradition-, culture- or context-based norm is viable and whether it makes sense.
Dr. H.W. Sneller
Project I. Spiritual and mystical articulations of ethics
Secular, Enlightenment-based conceptions of ethics, tend to dispense with spiritual sources. The current rediscovery of religion as an ongoing source of moral inspiration, however, has shown some serious motivational deficits in secular conceptions of morality. This project aims at shedding light onto alternative moral sources. Mystical traditions, vitalistic and hermeneutical philosophy, phenomenology, psychical research, etc., contain hidden ‘metaphysical’ orientations that, though frequently denied relevance in contemporary debates, continue to inspire moral reflection. A study of them will contribute new elements from a different angle to ethical discussions.
Project II. Religiously motivated suicide terror
Contemporaneous religiously motivated suicide terrorism entails serious interpretative questions that defy the dominating Enlightenment discourse of the Modern western civilization. Whereas the latter seems to privilege a moral language that is almost entirely deprived of religious reminiscences, the former intentionally reaffirms divine dimensions in the moral vocabulary.
Although from an ‘‘enlightened’’ point of view it could be stated that suicide terrorism is simply morally wrong and to be rejected altogether, it remains an intriguing fact that the dominating, highly secularised moral frameworks originating in the Age of Enlightenment turn out to be insufficient, sometimes even inappropriate, to understand moral extremism.
It appears to be of the utmost importance, therefore, to investigate reflective sources within western intellectual traditions capable of doing intellectual justice to religiously motivated moral extremism. These sources, unmistakably neglected by the predominant ethical systems, would perhaps give access to dimensions of moral phenomena that are indispensable for any adequate understanding of morality as such, these dimensions, though, being perhaps immoral or extra-moral themselves.
Project III.
An investigation of some fundamental metaphysical concepts in ethical discourse, such as sovereignty, transcendence, goodness, and alterity. This research project is meant to be subservient to the former. Authors studied are Plato, Plotinus, Schmitt, Derrida, Cohen, Moore, Levinas etc.