Category Archives: Moral Philosophy

Published on
22 November 2012

Religion, Secular Politics and Intelligible Values

Posted in Christianity, Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Human Rights, Liberty, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy, Religion, Social Commentary, Virtue

Religious experience is, for many sceptical or simply indifferent secularists, something unintelligible. The idea that there is a God who can become a man and forgive sins — even that there is such a thing as God or as sin — is for them unacceptable. Religious people must remember that this is no simple matter […]

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Published on
12 November 2012

We Need Saints in the Cabinet, not Vigilantes in the Newsroom

Posted in British Politics, Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Ethics in the Media, Liberty, Moral Philosophy

When Philip Schofield passed a list of alleged sexual abusers to David Cameron on camera it was clear the Prime Minister was not pleased. This was not a simple matter of the government or the Tory party facing charges of ‘honours for cash’ or of political ‘u-turns’. The possibility that senior members of the party […]

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Published on
13 September 2012

Nick Clegg and the ‘Bigot’ Row

Posted in British Politics, Culture, Human Life, Moral Philosophy, Same-Sex Marriage, Uncategorized

For many supporters of same-sex marriage (SSM) in the UK their opponents are ‘bigots’. They are entitled to their opinion but the epithet in question is, to parody Samuel Beckett, fast becoming a word in search of some meaning. The assumption is that there are people who want something, and that there is no problem […]

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Published on
5 September 2012

‘Darwinian Honesty’, and Vegas

Posted in Culture, Human Life, Moral Philosophy, Uncategorized

There is a school of thought that holds we are at our most honest, and most essentially human, when at our most animal level. This, at least, is a suggestion made by Marc Cooper in his book, The Last Honest Place in America, about high-stakes poker games in Las Vegas. ‘Its thesis’, writes David Flusfeder, […]

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Published on
16 August 2012

‘One Nation Under CCTV’ Or Welcome to the Dictatorship of Relativism

Posted in Christianity, Civil Liberties, Culture, Ethics in Business, Freedom, Human Rights, Moral Philosophy, Public Policy, Religion

‘Modernity’, wrote Hegel, ‘is the secularisation of religion’. In many ways this is true of twentieth-century Europe during which we saw one responsibility after another pass from churches into the hands of government. Chief among these was, of course, the Welfare State, but education and moral authority followed not far behind. The last-mentioned is most […]

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Published on
24 February 2012

Sex-Selective Abortion: The Failed Autonomy of Modern Man

Posted in Abortion, British Politics, Civil Liberties, Conscience, Human Life, Human Rights, Moral Philosophy, Social Commentary, Virtue

From a guest blogger: The news that some private abortion clinics in Britain may be carrying out here the sex-selective abortions which are horrifyingly common in parts of Asia is no real surprise to us at Blog for All Seasons. In today’s society each person is seen as an autonomous individual who cannot make authoritative […]

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Published on
3 February 2012

Democracy, Morality and the Common Good

Posted in Big Society, British Politics, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Human Rights, Liberty, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy, Religion, Virtue

From a guest blogger: A position commonly held by ‘reformers’ in various religious traditions in this country may be summarised roughly in the following lines: If the central authority of a religion is at odds with beliefs held by the majority of that its adherents, the former is duty-bound to reconsider and even to change […]

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