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The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God's Assistance

Online ISBN:
9780191683701
Print ISBN:
9780198269571
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God's Assistance

John E. Hare
John E. Hare

Professor of Philosophy

Calvin College, Michigan
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Published online:
3 October 2011
Published in print:
1 May 1997
Online ISBN:
9780191683701
Print ISBN:
9780198269571
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book is about the gap between the moral demand on us and our natural capacities to meet it. The author starts with Kant’s statement of the moral demand and his acknowledgement of this gap. He then analyses Kant’s use of the resources of the Christian tradition to make sense of this gap, especially the notions of revelation, providence, and God’s grace. Kant reflects the traditional way of making sense of this gap, which is to invoke God’s assistance in bridging it. The author goes on to examine various contemporary philosophers who do not use these resources. He considers three main strategies: exaggerating our natural capacities, diminishing the moral demand, and finding some naturalistic substitute for God’s assistance. He argues that these strategies do not work, and that we are therefore left with the gap and with the problem that it is unreasonable to demand of ourselves — a standard that we cannot reach. In the final section of the book, the author looks in more detail at the Christian doctrines of atonement, justification, and sanctification. He discusses Kierkegaard’s account of the relation between the ethical life and the Christian life, and ends by considering human forgiveness, and the ways in which God’s forgiveness is both like and unlike our forgiveness of each other.

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