Toni Alimi
Biographic Data
| ID | 997474 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Toni Alimi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Toni |
| FAMILY NAME | Alimi |
| SIGNATURE | ALIMI T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6245-0638 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Moral Psychology and the Aesthetic Turn in Christian Ethics
In the last fifteen to twenty years, there has been a significant increase in scholarship on aesthetics in Christian ethics. Call this “the aesthetic turn.” Much of the literature in this area claims (or relies on the claims) that (1) engaging with beauty/art positively affects moral judgments, attitudes, and behaviors; (2) these effects are greater than the effects of engaging with arguments on moral judgments, attitudes, and behaviors; and (3) …
Divine domination
This article develops the problem of divine domination. Classical theism describes God as essentially all-powerful, sovereign, personal, omnipresent, and a se . If such a being exists, then he dominates humans in virtue of his essential properties. Since dominative relationships are unjust, the divine-human relationship is unjust. I reject solutions to this problem that appeal to humanity’s childlikeness or divine goodness, justice, or greatness.…
Natural Liberty and Slavery in Suárez
Francisco Suárez is typically understood as having believed that all humans are capable of self‐rule by virtue of their human nature. I argue that that standard interpretation is mistaken. Unlike most of his predecessors, Suárez understood natural slavery as the absence of a right, not the absence of a capacity. He denied that there are any natural slaves in this revised sense. Suárez's understanding of liberty as a right explains many of his oth…
No Longer Slaves? The Evolution of Augustine’s Interpretations of John 15
Augustine believed that humans are called to be both slaves and friends of God. John 15:15, Jesus tells his disciples that they are no longer his slaves, but are instead his friends, thus posed a significant interpretive problem for him. This paper surveys Augustine’s thirteen discussions of the passage, presenting several themes Augustine developed and interpretive strategies he tried out over two decades of interpreting the passage. His favorit…
How Many Slaves Does God Have
Christians have often claimed that everyone is a slave of God. This is not a politically inert idea; abolitionists like David Walker argued from it that chattel slavery is inherently wrong. However, the origins and development of this idea are hazy. It has, for instance, no clear scriptural warrant. This article traces the idea’s provenance in Christian thought and thinks about it alongside one of its earliest proponents, Lactantius. It argues th…
Slaves of God
Augustine on Temporal Law and Virtue
Augustine is typically interpreted as having believed that temporal laws cannot help people become virtuous and thus are not deficient for failing to do so. In this respect, he is seen as out of step with much of ancient political philosophy and a precursor to modern liberal legal theory. However, examining Augustine’s analyses of two temporal legal systems – Roman law and Mosaic law – reveals this interpretation to be false. Augustine believed t…
Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of Religio
Scholars of religion sometimes argue that a distinctively modern conception of religion takes religion to be a trans‐cultural category, divisible into “true” and “false” versions, of which Christianity is the core type. Thus, according to the so‐called modern conception of religion, every culture has its own religion. Some are true (paradigmatically Christianity), some are false. This paper argues that these ideas were present in Lactantius's (c.…
Augustine, Confessions. Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Thomas Williams
Covenants and Commands
Robert Adams’s account of divine command theory argues that moral obligations are idealized versions of everyday social requirements. One type of social requirement is the ordinary demand one person makes of one another. Its idealized version is the perfect command a perfect God makes of those he loves. This paper extends Adams’s account of moral obligation by considering another kind of social requirement: promises. It argues that we can underst…
Covid‐19 and Religious Ethics
The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics
No prominent works on this page.
Augustine, Confessions. Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Thomas Williams
Covenants and Commands
Robert Adams’s account of divine command theory argues that moral obligations are idealized versions of everyday social requirements. One type of social requirement is the ordinary demand one person makes of one another. Its idealized version is the perfect command a perfect God makes of those he loves. This paper extends Adams’s account of moral obligation by considering another kind of social requirement: promises. It argues that we can underst…
Covid‐19 and Religious Ethics
The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics
Augustine on Temporal Law and Virtue
Augustine is typically interpreted as having believed that temporal laws cannot help people become virtuous and thus are not deficient for failing to do so. In this respect, he is seen as out of step with much of ancient political philosophy and a precursor to modern liberal legal theory. However, examining Augustine’s analyses of two temporal legal systems – Roman law and Mosaic law – reveals this interpretation to be false. Augustine believed t…
Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of Religio
Scholars of religion sometimes argue that a distinctively modern conception of religion takes religion to be a trans‐cultural category, divisible into “true” and “false” versions, of which Christianity is the core type. Thus, according to the so‐called modern conception of religion, every culture has its own religion. Some are true (paradigmatically Christianity), some are false. This paper argues that these ideas were present in Lactantius's (c.…
Slaves of God
No Longer Slaves? The Evolution of Augustine’s Interpretations of John 15
Augustine believed that humans are called to be both slaves and friends of God. John 15:15, Jesus tells his disciples that they are no longer his slaves, but are instead his friends, thus posed a significant interpretive problem for him. This paper surveys Augustine’s thirteen discussions of the passage, presenting several themes Augustine developed and interpretive strategies he tried out over two decades of interpreting the passage. His favorit…
How Many Slaves Does God Have
Christians have often claimed that everyone is a slave of God. This is not a politically inert idea; abolitionists like David Walker argued from it that chattel slavery is inherently wrong. However, the origins and development of this idea are hazy. It has, for instance, no clear scriptural warrant. This article traces the idea’s provenance in Christian thought and thinks about it alongside one of its earliest proponents, Lactantius. It argues th…
Moral Psychology and the Aesthetic Turn in Christian Ethics
In the last fifteen to twenty years, there has been a significant increase in scholarship on aesthetics in Christian ethics. Call this “the aesthetic turn.” Much of the literature in this area claims (or relies on the claims) that (1) engaging with beauty/art positively affects moral judgments, attitudes, and behaviors; (2) these effects are greater than the effects of engaging with arguments on moral judgments, attitudes, and behaviors; and (3) …
Divine domination
This article develops the problem of divine domination. Classical theism describes God as essentially all-powerful, sovereign, personal, omnipresent, and a se . If such a being exists, then he dominates humans in virtue of his essential properties. Since dominative relationships are unjust, the divine-human relationship is unjust. I reject solutions to this problem that appeal to humanity’s childlikeness or divine goodness, justice, or greatness.…
Natural Liberty and Slavery in Suárez
Francisco Suárez is typically understood as having believed that all humans are capable of self‐rule by virtue of their human nature. I argue that that standard interpretation is mistaken. Unlike most of his predecessors, Suárez understood natural slavery as the absence of a right, not the absence of a capacity. He denied that there are any natural slaves in this revised sense. Suárez's understanding of liberty as a right explains many of his oth…
Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Augustinian Studies and Theology (3 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Theology (3 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (2 works)