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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski Jan 2016

New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to …


Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis Jan 2007

Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In the United States privacy is a hot topic, not least because of the current administration's desire to have unbridled access to its citizens' overseas conversations. But in what follows I do not plan to deal directly with any legal or policy concerns. Instead, I am interested in the philosophical foundations,- if any there be, of privacy as something to which individuals and other groups may be entitled. Because much of the discussion of "privacy rights" has revolved around matters sexual, I shall key the discussion to individual access to sexually explicit publications and what limits, if any, moral reflection …


Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis Jan 2005

Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, which first appeared in three installments of Fraser's Magazine in 1861, was intended as a defense of the notorious doctrine identified with the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and with the author's father, James Mill (1773-1836). The defense was successful. While "the principle of utility, or as Bentham has latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle," may have scandalized Victorian England, Mill's Utilitarianism became one of the defining documents of modern British and American liberalism. It is impossible to appreciate contemporary social and political life without coming to grips with utilitarianism.


Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis Jan 2005

Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

When Principia Ethica appeared, in 1903, it became something of a sacred text for the Cambridge-educated elites-Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes-who, along with Virginia Woolf, would form the core of the Bloomsbury Group. In a letter of October 11, 1903, Strachey confesses to Moore that he is "carried away" by Principia, which inaugurates, for him, "the beginning of the Age of Reason." Moore's critique of convention, his caustic dismissal of his philosophical predecessors, and the relentless rigor of his method promised a revolution in morality commensurate with the modernist transformation of art and literature. Principia Ethica shifted …


Guarding Moral Boundaries: Shame In Early Confucianism, Jane Geaney Jan 2004

Guarding Moral Boundaries: Shame In Early Confucianism, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Claims that China is a ‘‘shame culture’’ tend to presume that guilt is the superior moral motivation. Such claims characterize guilt as internally motivated and operative even if no outsider is aware of any wrongdoing. By contrast, they assume that shame occurs only when someone is observed. The observer represents the moral opinion of an outsider, and, as a result, shame is said to be externally motivated. In this view, genuinely moral motivation is internal. Internality is seen as a requirement for moral autonomy (the ability to make decisions independent of particular social norms), and only guilt cultures are thought …


Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis Jan 1993

Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Policraticus, edited and translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.


Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis Jan 1992

Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson by Terry Godlove. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.