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The Essential Connection Between Human Value and Saintly Behavior

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Notes

  1. See Simone Weil, Simone Weil, ed. Eric O. Springsted (New York: Orbis Books, 2006).

  2. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (London: Routledge 2000).

  3. See, e.g. Christopher Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (2008): 181–195.

  4. Raimond Gaita, After Romulus (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2010), p. 58.

  5. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (London: Routledge 2000), p. 17.

  6. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 18.

  7. Ibid., pp. 18–19.

  8. Ibid., pp. 20, 21.

  9. Ibid., p. 20.

  10. See Mark Wynn, “Saintliness and the Moral Life,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31(3) (2003): 478.

  11. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 24.

  12. Ibid., p. 26.

  13. Ibid., p. 250.

  14. Ibid., p. 22.

  15. See J.O. Urmson, “Saints and Heroes,” Reprinted in A.I. Melden (ed.), Essays in Moral Philosophy (Washington: Washington University Press: 1958) and Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints,” Journal of Philosophy LXXIX (1982), pp. 419–439.

  16. For example, Mark Wynn, “Saintliness and the Moral Life,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31(3) (2003): 484, argues that Gaita’s argument is unstable without religious language and commitment and, indeed, without Christian metaphysics.

  17. Raimond Gaita, After Romulus (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2010), p. 64.

  18. See Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 91. I should also note that Wynn thinks my general response here is unstable. If we need religious language to fully express the resonances of saintly goodness, he suggests, “should we not consider the language of religion as having authority on other matters too?” Mark Wynn, “Saintliness and the Moral Life,” op. cit., p. 474. Wynn means having authority, for instance, about the reality of God. But, must those for whom some of Plato’s poetic myths are irreplaceable resonant metaphors subscribe to other things Plato says or to his metaphysics? Suppose we do take religious language to have real authority on other matters than perfect goodness. Doing so need not depend on either religious or metaphysical commitment. It need only depend, as it would with other aspects of Plato’s work, on us finding that additional religious language poetically and/or conceptually indispensable on its own merits.

  19. Such as Stephen Mulhall, “The work of saintly love: the religious impulse in Gaita’s writing.” In C. Cordner (ed.) Philosophy, Ethics and a Common Humanity: Essays in Honor of Raimond Gaita (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 21–37.

  20. Cf. Raimond Gaita, Good and evil: An Absolute Conception (London: Routledge, 2004), p. xxvi.

  21. See Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 5.

  22. Lloyd Reinhardt, “Is Love What we Need?: Raimond Gaita’s A Common Humanity,” Arena Journal 15 (2000), p. 145.

  23. Elizabeth Drummond Young, “Defending Gaita’s Example of Saintly Behavior,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (2012), pp. 200–201.

  24. Elizabeth Drummond Young, “Defending Gaita’s Example of Saintly Behavior,” op. cit. p. 194.

  25. Christopher Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (2008), p. 183.

  26. Christopher Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” op. cit. p. 185.

  27. Mark Wynn, “The Moral Philosophy of Raimond Gaita and Some Questions of Method in the Philosophy of Religion,” New Blackfriars 90 (1030) (2009), p. 642.

  28. Raimond Gaita, After Romulus, op. cit. p. 56.

  29. Ibid., p. 58.

  30. Ibid., p. 59.

  31. Ibid., p. 59.

  32. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 22.

  33. Ibid., p. 59.

  34. Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi on Non-violence, ed. Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 2007), p. 84.

  35. Simone Weil, Simone Weil (New York: Orbis Books, 2006), p. 45.

  36. Raimond Gaita, After Romulus, op. cit. p. 55.

  37. Simone Weil, Simone Weil, op. cit. p. 47.

  38. Ibid., pp. 54–55.

  39. Elizabeth Drummond Young, “Defending Gaita’s Example of Saintly Behavior,” op. cit. p. 200.

  40. Simone Weil, Simone Weil, op. cit. pp. 62, 63.

  41. Ibid., p. 62.

  42. See Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 202.

  43. See Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, op. cit. p. 50.

  44. See Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, op. cit. pp. 202–203.

  45. Christopher Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” op. cit. p. 186.

  46. For more on this debate, which I do not further engage, see Andrew M. Flescher, Heroes, Saints, and Ordinary Morality (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2003).

  47. See Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, op. cit. pp. 84–85.

  48. Elizabeth Drummond Young, “Defending Gaita’s Example of Saintly Behavior,” op. cit. p. 191.

  49. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 38.

  50. See Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil, op. cit. p. 7.

  51. See Christopher Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” op. cit. pp. 190–191.

  52. Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil, op. cit. p. xv.

  53. See Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 24. Thus, Lloyd Reinhardt – in “Is Love What we Need?: Raimond Gaita’s A Common Humanity”, op. cit. p. 154 – is mistaken when he says: “The idea of respect for wrongdoers is embodied (more or less effectively) in such [fine legal] practices. Would equal preciousness demand something more or something different? Gaita does not tell us.”

  54. Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil, op. cit. p. xxx.

  55. See Christopher Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” op. cit. p. 190.

  56. Elizabeth Drummond Young, “Defending Gaita’s Example of Saintly Behavior,” op. cit. p. 199.

  57. Ibid., p. 200.

  58. Tony Milligan, Love (Durham: Acumen, 2011), p. 128.

  59. Tony Milligan, Love, op. cit. p. 128.

  60. See Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil, op. cit. p. xxx and A Common Humanity, op. cit. p. 24.

  61. Elizabeth Drummond Young, “Defending Gaita’s Example of Saintly Behavior,” op. cit. p. 197.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Peter Coghlan, Chris Cordner, Rai Gaita, and an anonymous reviewer for invaluable comments and advice.

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  1. Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia

    Simon Coghlan

  2. 114 Queensville St, Kingsville, Melbourne, 3012, Australia

    Simon Coghlan

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Coghlan, S. The Essential Connection Between Human Value and Saintly Behavior. J Value Inquiry 51, 123–140 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9561-x

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