
Contents
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Voluntarism and Modern Morality Voluntarism and Modern Morality
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Utilitarianism and the Rejection of Ethical Voluntarism Utilitarianism and the Rejection of Ethical Voluntarism
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Divine and Human Morality in Thomism Divine and Human Morality in Thomism
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Divine and Human Morality in Reformed Scholasticism Divine and Human Morality in Reformed Scholasticism
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Divine and Human Morality in Christian Platonism Divine and Human Morality in Christian Platonism
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Theocentric Moral Cosmologies Theocentric Moral Cosmologies
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1 God and Morality in the Seventeenth Century
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Published:December 2023
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Abstract
The first chapter sets the scene for the earliest emergence of consequentialism in the work of Henry More, which is the topic of the second chapter. J.B. Schneewind has argued, perceptively but misleadingly, that utilitarianism – and, with it, consequentialism – arises as a response to voluntarist theology. Yet many anti-voluntarist approaches to morality were available in the first part of the seventeenth century, none of which were consequentialist. I survey three such options: Thomism, Calvinism (in the work of William Ames), and Christian Platonism (in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius and Ralph Cudworth). I demonstrate that all three options were teleological but non-consequentialist. Henry More, I argue, opts for the Christian Platonic option, primarily due to concerns about salvation. In Christian Platonism, he finds a kind of maximizing logic when it comes to divine morality. Yet Christian Platonism had never given rise to consequentialism in large part because in Christian Platonism, as in Thomism and Calvinism, divine and human morality are not the same. I argue that More’s key innovation is not in his Platonically-inspired opposition to voluntarist theology but in his insistence that human morality must be the same as divine morality.
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