Terence Cuneo
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1105160 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Terence Cuneo |
| NOMBRES | Terence |
| APELLIDO | Cuneo |
| FIRMA | CUNEO T |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Vermont |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9850-5490 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 65 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 33 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1999 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Does the Orthodox tradition have anything to contribute to analytic theology
A prominent challenge to analytic theology charges that its methodology leads to idolatry. This article explores a response to this challenge that draws upon the Eastern Orthodox apophatic tradition. Apophatic approaches, which emphasize how little we can truthfully say or know about God, are not exclusive to Orthodox Christianity. But these views take a unique form within the tradition insofar as they accord a prominent role to the distinction b…
The Moral Universe
The Moral Universe develops a metaethical theory that is both realist and nonnaturalist. Employing a distinctive methodology, the book constructs a view designed to capture the idea that moral standards regarding what to do and how to be are not only objectively authoritative, but essentially so. Rather than arising from personal schemes or collective ideals, morality flows from the nature of things. One of the principal aims of the book is to sh…
Moral Conceptual Truths
This chapter defends the view that a set of substantive moral propositions qualify as conceptual truths: they are true in virtue of the essences of their constituent concepts. The discussion has four distinctive features. First, it encompasses concrete moral claims regarding the moral status of richly intentional actions, specific character traits, and the like. Second, the view is backed by a systematic account of what it is to be a conceptual t…
Pricean reflection
We offer a reconstruction of Richard Price’s intuition-based epistemology of normative essences, highlighting its key elements and showing how it differs from the approaches taken by other intuitionists such as Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore, as well as sentimentalists such as Francis Hutcheson and David Hume. While our analysis aims to shed light on Price’s moral epistemology, it also seeks to contribute to contemporary debates about the epistemolo…
Socially conscious moral intuitionism
In “Trusting Moral Intuitions” we argued that moral intuitions are trustworthy due to their being the outputs of a cognitive practice, with social elements, in good working order. Backes, Eklund, and Michelson present several criticisms of our defense of a socially conscious moral intuitionism. We respond to these criticisms, defending our claim that social factors enhance the epistemic credentials of moral intuitions, answering worries pertainin…
The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology
The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology, the first to appear on the topic, introduces the current state of religious epistemology and provides a discussion of fundamental topics related to the epistemology of religious belief. Its wide-ranging chapters not only survey fundamental topics, but also develop non-traditional epistemic theories and explore the religious epistemology endorsed by non-Western traditions. In the first section, Fai…
Reid's Regress
Thomas Reid's Essays on the Active Powers presents what is probably the most thoroughly developed version of agent-causal libertarianism in the modern canon. While commentators today often acknowledge Reid's contribution, they typically focus on what appears to be a serious problem for the view: Reid appears to commit himself to a position according to which acting freely would require an agent to engage in an infinite number of exertions of acti…
On the religious worth of bodily liturgical action
A striking feature of the Eastern Orthodox liturgies is how much movement and touching occurs during their performance. For example, when participants in these liturgies enter into a church building, they do not simply look at the icons; they typically venerate them by kissing them. Call events such as these scripted movement-touching sequences . The question I pursue in this article is why movement-touching sequences play such prominent roles in…
Ritualized Faith
Although the participation in liturgy is central to the religious lives of many, few philosophers have given it attention. In this collection of essays, Terence Cuneo turns his attention to liturgy, contending that the topic proves itself to be both philosophically rich and rewarding. Taking the liturgical practices of Eastern Christianity as its focal point, Ritualized Faith examines issues such as what the ethical importance of ritualized relig…
Two Challenges to Knowing Better
Love and Liturgy
For two millennia C hristians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why do it? Why structure one's life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one's comings and goings? The project of this essay is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the C hristian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between…
Transforming the self
Philosophers have paid almost no attention to the baptismal rite. This is puzzling not only because the rite is central to the Christian life but also because the rite itself is very puzzling, making audacious claims about what its performance accomplishes. According to one of these audacious claims, by the performance of the rite the one baptized is transformed, enjoying states such as purification, sanctification, regeneration, and illumination…
Protesting Evil
The ancient Christian liturgies face Godward: their purpose is to worshipfully acknowledge God’s unsurpassable worth. But they also take place in the face and recognition of vast evil. Part of their aim is to help us to live well in the face of this evil, especially when we are more or less powerless to prevent or rectify it. In this article I explore this last idea by examining the Eastern Orthodox eucharistic liturgies, understanding their dyna…
The moral fixed points
Speech and Morality
Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of Speaking develops a new line of argument for moral realism. The book's argument comes in three stages. The first stage of the argument consists in presenting and defending the normative theory of speech, according to which, speech acts are generated by an agent's altering her normative position with regard to her audience, gaining rights, responsibilities, and obligations of certain kinds. T…
Another look at divine hiddenness
In his fine book The Wisdom to Doubt , J. L. Schellenberg builds a case for religious scepticism by advancing a version of the Hiddenness Argument. This argument rests on the claim that God could not love, in an admirable way, those who seek God while also remaining hidden from them. In this article, I distinguish two arguments for this claim. Neither argument succeeds, I contend, as each rests on an unsatisfactory understanding of the nature of …
Justice
Book Review| January 01 2013 Justice: Rights and Wrongs Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. vii+400 pp. Terence Cuneo Terence Cuneo Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2013) 122 (1): 132–134. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-1728768 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Terence C…
The Paradoxical Role of Coercion in the Theory of Political Liberalism
What is the proper role, in a liberal democracy, of religious reasons for and against proposed laws or abolition of laws? The various positions taken on the issue have come to be classified as “exclusivist” or “inclusivist.” This chapter identifies and critiques what may be the deepest component in the line of thought of those who espouse the exclusivist position. Instead of focusing on respect, this line of thought focuses on coercion. It tells …
Do Christians Have Good Reasons for Supporting Liberal Democracy?
This paper traces the history of Christian political thought, noting that it has shifted from a perfectionist understanding of government to a protectionist understanding. A protectionist understanding places a very high priority on the government's preventing (and itself avoiding) the great evil of violating persons. Liberal democracy is fundamentally protectionist in its orientation. If one attends to the nature and worth of the person and reco…
Liberal Democracy as Equal Political Voice
This essay moves beyond critique of public reason liberalism to propose an alternative interpretation of the governing idea of liberal democracy. At the heart of that idea is a commitment to not public reason, as Rawls understands that, but to the equal right of citizens to full political voice – this voice to be exercised within an explicit or implicit constitution that imposes limits and guarantees on government, and within a legal order that p…
Understanding Liberal Democracy
This book collects Nicholas Wolterstorff's papers in political philosophy. While this collection includes some of Wolterstorff's earlier and influential work on the intersection between liberal democracy and religion, it also contains nine new essays in which Wolterstorff stakes out novel positions regarding the nature of liberal democracy, human rights, and political authority. The overall position is one that is intended to be an attractive alt…
Reidian Metaethics
Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, 'Reidian Metaethics, Part II', I maintain that Thomas Reid's moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argumen…
Reidian Metaethics
Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, 'Reidian Metaethics, Part I', I maintain that Thomas Reid's moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argument…
William C. Davis' Thomas Reid's Ethics
Intuitionism's Burden
Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable. 1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists i…
The moral fixed points
Speech and Morality
Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of Speaking develops a new line of argument for moral realism. The book's argument comes in three stages. The first stage of the argument consists in presenting and defending the normative theory of speech, according to which, speech acts are generated by an agent's altering her normative position with regard to her audience, gaining rights, responsibilities, and obligations of certain kinds. T…
Reidian Moral Perception
It is a common antirealist strategy to reject realism about some domain of entities for broadly epistemological reasons. When this strategy is applied to realism about moral facts, it takes something like the following form: The moral realist believes that there are full-blooded, irreducible moral facts. But if there are moral facts of this sort, then we shall have no plausible story to tell about how we have epistemic access to them. After all, …
Reconciling Realism with Humeanism
Intuitionism's Burden
Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable. 1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists i…
"An Externalist Solution to the "Moral Problem
In his recent book, The Moral Problem (Basil Blackwell, 1994), Michael Smith presents a number of arguments designed to expose the difficulties with so-called 'externalist' theories of motivation. This essay endeavors to defend externalism from Smith's attacks. I attempt three tasks in the essay. First, I try to clarify and reformulate Smith's distinction between internalism and externalism. Second, I formulate two of Smith's arguments-what I cal…
The Moral Universe
The Moral Universe develops a metaethical theory that is both realist and nonnaturalist. Employing a distinctive methodology, the book constructs a view designed to capture the idea that moral standards regarding what to do and how to be are not only objectively authoritative, but essentially so. Rather than arising from personal schemes or collective ideals, morality flows from the nature of things. One of the principal aims of the book is to sh…
Recent Faces of Moral Nonnaturalism
Despite having occupied a peripheral position in contemporary metaethics, moral nonnaturalism has recently experienced a revival of sorts. But what is moral nonnaturalism? And what is there to be said in favor of it? In this article, I address these two questions. In the first place, I offer an account of what moral nonnaturalism is. According to the view I propose, nonnaturalism is better viewed not as a position, but as a theoretical stance. An…
Moral Facts as Configuring Causes
The overarching aim of this essay is to argue that moral realists should be “causalists” or claim that moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. To this end, I engage in two tasks. The first is to develop an account of the sense in which moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. After having sketched the concept of what I call a “configuring” cause, I contend that the exercise of the moral virtues is plausibly viewed as …
Critical Notice
Reidian Metaethics
Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, 'Reidian Metaethics, Part I', I maintain that Thomas Reid's moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argument…
"An Externalist Solution to the "Moral Problem
In his recent book, The Moral Problem (Basil Blackwell, 1994), Michael Smith presents a number of arguments designed to expose the difficulties with so-called 'externalist' theories of motivation. This essay endeavors to defend externalism from Smith's attacks. I attempt three tasks in the essay. First, I try to clarify and reformulate Smith's distinction between internalism and externalism. Second, I formulate two of Smith's arguments-what I cal…
Reconciling Realism with Humeanism
Reidian Moral Perception
It is a common antirealist strategy to reject realism about some domain of entities for broadly epistemological reasons. When this strategy is applied to realism about moral facts, it takes something like the following form: The moral realist believes that there are full-blooded, irreducible moral facts. But if there are moral facts of this sort, then we shall have no plausible story to tell about how we have epistemic access to them. After all, …
Critical Notice
Saying what we Mean
Some years ago I heard a well-known professor tell an audience that the best response he had witnessed to expressivism was that of a colleague who pointed to an expressivist paraphrase of a moral sentence on a blackboard and exclaimed, while rapping his knuckles on the board, that this paraphrase did not capture what he meant to say when engaging in moral discourse. On that occasion, I recall feeling that this was a simple-minded response to a ve…
Moral Facts as Configuring Causes
The overarching aim of this essay is to argue that moral realists should be “causalists” or claim that moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. To this end, I engage in two tasks. The first is to develop an account of the sense in which moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. After having sketched the concept of what I call a “configuring” cause, I contend that the exercise of the moral virtues is plausibly viewed as …
The Normative Web
Many philosophers hold antirealist views about morality according to which moral facts or truths do not exist. Does this imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemtic facts, do not exist? This book develops a positive answer to this question.
Recent Faces of Moral Nonnaturalism
Despite having occupied a peripheral position in contemporary metaethics, moral nonnaturalism has recently experienced a revival of sorts. But what is moral nonnaturalism? And what is there to be said in favor of it? In this article, I address these two questions. In the first place, I offer an account of what moral nonnaturalism is. According to the view I propose, nonnaturalism is better viewed not as a position, but as a theoretical stance. An…
William C. Davis' Thomas Reid's Ethics
Intuitionism's Burden
Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable. 1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists i…
Teaching & Learning Guide for
Authors' IntroductionMetaethics is a perennially popular subject, but one that can be challenging to study and teach. As it consists in an array of questions about ethics, it is really a mix of (at least) applied metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and mind. The seminal texts therefore arise out of, and often assume competence with, a variety of different literatures. It can be taught thematically, but this sample syllabus offers a…
Reidian Metaethics
Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, 'Reidian Metaethics, Part II', I maintain that Thomas Reid's moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argumen…
Reidian Metaethics
Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, 'Reidian Metaethics, Part I', I maintain that Thomas Reid's moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argument…
The Paradoxical Role of Coercion in the Theory of Political Liberalism
What is the proper role, in a liberal democracy, of religious reasons for and against proposed laws or abolition of laws? The various positions taken on the issue have come to be classified as “exclusivist” or “inclusivist.” This chapter identifies and critiques what may be the deepest component in the line of thought of those who espouse the exclusivist position. Instead of focusing on respect, this line of thought focuses on coercion. It tells …
Do Christians Have Good Reasons for Supporting Liberal Democracy?
This paper traces the history of Christian political thought, noting that it has shifted from a perfectionist understanding of government to a protectionist understanding. A protectionist understanding places a very high priority on the government's preventing (and itself avoiding) the great evil of violating persons. Liberal democracy is fundamentally protectionist in its orientation. If one attends to the nature and worth of the person and reco…
Liberal Democracy as Equal Political Voice
This essay moves beyond critique of public reason liberalism to propose an alternative interpretation of the governing idea of liberal democracy. At the heart of that idea is a commitment to not public reason, as Rawls understands that, but to the equal right of citizens to full political voice – this voice to be exercised within an explicit or implicit constitution that imposes limits and guarantees on government, and within a legal order that p…
Understanding Liberal Democracy
This book collects Nicholas Wolterstorff's papers in political philosophy. While this collection includes some of Wolterstorff's earlier and influential work on the intersection between liberal democracy and religion, it also contains nine new essays in which Wolterstorff stakes out novel positions regarding the nature of liberal democracy, human rights, and political authority. The overall position is one that is intended to be an attractive alt…
Another look at divine hiddenness
In his fine book The Wisdom to Doubt , J. L. Schellenberg builds a case for religious scepticism by advancing a version of the Hiddenness Argument. This argument rests on the claim that God could not love, in an admirable way, those who seek God while also remaining hidden from them. In this article, I distinguish two arguments for this claim. Neither argument succeeds, I contend, as each rests on an unsatisfactory understanding of the nature of …
Justice
Book Review| January 01 2013 Justice: Rights and Wrongs Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. vii+400 pp. Terence Cuneo Terence Cuneo Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2013) 122 (1): 132–134. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-1728768 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Terence C…
Transforming the self
Philosophers have paid almost no attention to the baptismal rite. This is puzzling not only because the rite is central to the Christian life but also because the rite itself is very puzzling, making audacious claims about what its performance accomplishes. According to one of these audacious claims, by the performance of the rite the one baptized is transformed, enjoying states such as purification, sanctification, regeneration, and illumination…
Protesting Evil
The ancient Christian liturgies face Godward: their purpose is to worshipfully acknowledge God’s unsurpassable worth. But they also take place in the face and recognition of vast evil. Part of their aim is to help us to live well in the face of this evil, especially when we are more or less powerless to prevent or rectify it. In this article I explore this last idea by examining the Eastern Orthodox eucharistic liturgies, understanding their dyna…
The moral fixed points
Speech and Morality
Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of Speaking develops a new line of argument for moral realism. The book's argument comes in three stages. The first stage of the argument consists in presenting and defending the normative theory of speech, according to which, speech acts are generated by an agent's altering her normative position with regard to her audience, gaining rights, responsibilities, and obligations of certain kinds. T…
Love and Liturgy
For two millennia C hristians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why do it? Why structure one's life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one's comings and goings? The project of this essay is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the C hristian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between…
Ritualized Faith
Although the participation in liturgy is central to the religious lives of many, few philosophers have given it attention. In this collection of essays, Terence Cuneo turns his attention to liturgy, contending that the topic proves itself to be both philosophically rich and rewarding. Taking the liturgical practices of Eastern Christianity as its focal point, Ritualized Faith examines issues such as what the ethical importance of ritualized relig…
Epistemology (27 obras) · Philosophy (25 obras) · Sociology (21 obras) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (15 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras) · Computer Science (11 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (10 obras) · Moral psychology (10 obras) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (10 obras) · Psychology (9 obras)