The Real Meaning of Jihad…

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The word ‘jihad’ is becoming increasingly used in news, on the internet and even in films like Matt Parker and Trey Stone’s Team America. Your task is to research an example where someone has claimed that a violent act is somehow justified in Islam and to use everything you know about Islam to decide wheter or not you think this claim is well-founded.

Your answer should include a substantial description of the event itself, an account of your understanding of Islam’s teachings on violence and, finally, an evaluation of whether you think ‘true’ Islam would approve of the actions you have described. You should give balanced reasons for your answer.

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Good Luck.

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Tutu on Christianity Research Task

Today’s challenge is to find out as much as you can about Desmond Tutu’s understanding of Christianity. Tutu, though not as famous as his close friend Nelson Mandela, is in the words of Ron Burgundy ‘quite a big deal’! He is, however, quite controversial in some Christian Communities. Mandela claimed Tutu had made animmeasurable contribution to [his] nation” and that “Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless”, but in other places has been called “evil” by Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and even racist, idolatrous and a bastion of the New World Order by Dean Ministries.

Your job today is to find out exactly what he thinks Christianity is all about. Obviously that’s a pretty big question and it’s going to be hard!

The following are just ideas and you might want to spend a bit of time reading as well as watching… The laptops are booked for you and there are some questions at the bottom that might help….

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Some questions to think about:

  • Why is Tutu so involved in human rights?
  • Tutu has been a key player in a number of big disagreements, take notes on as many as you can.
  • In South Africa, DT got into a lot of problems for claiming that “God is not a Christian”. What could that mean?
  • Find out about the Truth & Reconciliation in South Africa. What does it have to do with his Christianity?
  • Find about the fears about a ‘reversed’ apartheid that South Africans shared in 1994. What was Tutu’s understanding of it?

Vardy on the Ontological Argument

In high-school education, Philosophy of Religion in general, and the traditional arguments for God are becoming a well (perhaps over-?)trodden path. The danger of this is that if it is taught badly, or even indifferently, students can be left at the end of a unit feeling like they haven’t changed their minds about anything and feeling that they must agree with a certain understanding of causation, say, to maintain their original beliefs. Philosophy then becomes a sort of stroll or tour to apparent complexity but remains uncritical and impotent. Perhaps this is unavoidable before university (though I certainly it is not) and I am sure I have just condemned myself in saying the above.

I’m certainly not claiming that there is a clear and obvious ‘right’ answer in a lot of the areas we discuss, only that there are plenty of ideas that, under closer inspection, show themselves to be problematic.

ANYWAY, the reason I was prompted to think of this was that in his Thinkers Guide to God, Peter Vardy makes a claim that breaks from this ‘tour’ of different but equally valid offerings. He quite plainly accuses John Hick of misunderstanding non-realism, claiming that this leads him to err in his judgement of ontological arguments (87).

In doing so he is making a claim about what the religious believer means by ‘God exists’ in a way that reminds the reader of Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s interpretation of Anselm’s famous argument. Noting Malcom’s reliance on Wittgenstein, Vardy suggest that we must look at religious experience to progress in discussions about God’s existence. For the believer, God’s existence is certainly thought to be necessary, where the non-believer do not presume this in the same way. Vardy is claiming that such an argument offers no proof that the YHWH of Christianity, Islam and Judaism exists and in doing so he is in the company of both Hume and Kant.

Every year…

Every year I get at least one email from a student that shows me they have really ‘got’ what we have been studying. Last year a guy found Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons and was adamant (completely correctly in my view) that the philosophy described a sort of Christian ‘Platonism’, an idea of the human’s essence that was rejected by Jean-Paul Sartre (this was what we had been studying).

Anyway there’s more about that on my ib philosophy page, but the email I got this year was about the experience of doing philosophy. IB philosophy is a wonderful course with an emphasis on doing philosophy rather than just learning about it.It takes two years and the entire structure of the course is about helping the students to become the IB learner profile rather than just gaining some knowledge in order to repeat it. It is far more academically challenging and philosophically useful than any of the courses I have encountered that are taught elsewhere in Scotland or England. Those students that choose to take the ‘higher level’ (HL) version of the subject complete and exam paper on the question of ‘What is Philosophy?’, reflecting upon their mounting experience of studying it, and all students of both HL and Standard levels are required to complete a unit on ‘what makes a person?’

Of course this question is central to almost every other philosophical foray and it has always astounded me how certain exam boards think they can simply ‘miss it out’ of their syllabi. What’s nice about the song the student above emailed me is that it includes both of these elements:

Imagine if the life that you thought you shared
Wasn’t really there.
It was made up in your mind,
Could be anyone/anywhere

and

As the dust clears and it all starts to disappear,
It may get harder ’cause you just restarted.
And wherever you are, land on another star!
It may get harder ’cause you just restarted.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Great for testing your critical thinking skills:

So It’s a well known fact that if we got rid of the Queen, within a couple of years we’d be a communist state led by anarchists led by Ken Livingston.

Look at the French, they got rid of the Monarchy and they’re a bunch of Ar***oles. Do we want to be like the French?

 

We’ve got not not actual evidence that she is a witch, but then again we have no actual evidence that she is not a witch.

If you ask yourself why has The Sun witch-hunts against paedophiles, Muslims and Gypsies but never against actual witches? conspiracy theory?

God and right and wrong

This is a wonderful clip for thinking about religion and ethics. For those not familiar with The West Wing the bald gentleman plays Toby Ziegler, a senior aide to the President. In this episode, President Bartlett is face with a decision on whether to pardon a criminal due to be executed.

Non-religious people tend to think that religious people suppose they have some sort of ‘monopoly’ on truth when it comes to ethics, but this clip shows the ‘uncomfortableness‘ of religious ethics.

A long long time ago Plato recorded Socrates posing a difficulty for all those who believe right and wrong are what the god(s) say they are. This was the position held by the young and ‘upright’ Euthyphro.

For more relating to IB Philosophy click here.

MacIntyre on Nietzsche ( vs Aristotle)

Hello, I promised the other day that I would have a look at this for you… I’ve just managed to find a few hours just now so I’ll stick down some quick ideas useful for the exam and try to find time to organise properly later….

Firstly I thought I would start with a strength… IB exam answers sometimes miss out the massive positives and evidence for a position and forget that these are key in making an informed and careful evaluation (which, of course, you get good marks for)…

As you know, MacIntyre’s argument in After Virtue* claims that all modern ‘moral discourse’ is broken as it tries to make sense of fragments of a lost language; and it is this, according to MacIntyre, that Nietzsche observed and took great issue with. Nietzsche correctly observed the problematic use and nature of moral language at play in the world around him. MacIntyre claims he ‘disposes of [recent attempts] to discover rational foundations for an objective morality’. And in only five paragraphs! (*113)

This said, however, MacIntyre is by no means a champion of Nietzsche. Nietzsche, he writes,

‘illegitimately generalised from the condition of moral judgement in his own day to the nature of morality as such…but it is worth noting that [he] began from a genuine insight.’ (*113 emphasis mine)
MacIntyre’s argument against Nietzsche is that if the original rejection of Aristotle was in fact a mistake, then it follows that each of the following philosophies based upon this rejection would be ill informed and unnecessary. And if these philosophies were indeed mistaken, then their logical conclusion (which Nietzsche ably voices) could be seen to be unnecessary also. Put another way, MacIntyre states clearly that if Nietzsche is correct that all moral philosophies are faulty then his position is inescapable. MacIntyre, of course, believes that it is possible to verbalise a coherent ‘virtue ethics’ account and so believes that this makes Nietzsche’s account not just unnecessary but incorrect (117). Nietzsche was right to call ‘Enlightenment’ moral philosophy a failure but, according to MacIntyre, it was only a failure because it left virtue ethics behind. MacIntyre is claiming that the vast majority of moral philosophy you have studied was ‘not only mistaken, but should never have been commenced in the first place’ (118).
In class we discussed that what sets virtue ethics apart from other normative accounts is that it is primarily concerned about a human telos. Of course there may be discussions about what to do in a certain situation, there may even be talk of prohibitions, but these are never the essential focus. In a claim very similar to Nietzsche’s, MacIntyre feels able to reject the entire of what he calls the ‘enlightenment project’ of moral philosophy. He points out that even Rawls understood virtues as tendencies that keeping the rules led to, the very same mistake that was made with the banishment of Aristotle. To see why I feel able to say this criticism has a Nietzschean ‘feel’, go back through your notes on Nietzsche’s ‘frustration’ with Kant.
Interestingly, Nietzsche and Aristotle are agreeing that the correct subject matter of this question of living well should be character. And both are rejecting the primacy of rules or legislation. Indeed a number of recent writers (eg Fraser above) understand Nietzsche as intimately concerned with flourishing and character. Following MacIntyre, we might agree that those virtues described by the German as ‘noble’ are the very same described in the Iliad.

Following this claim, MacIntyre traces the development of virtue ethics. You could look at Vardy’s description for a brief summary. In his conclusion he seeks to adjudicate on the question he posed midway through the book: Nietzsche or Aristotle?

Even more interestingly, MacIntyre asserts that a thoughtful Nietzschean would have just as much difficulty with the emotivism apparent in our society as a serious Aristotlean would. In making his case for the mistake rejection of Aristotle, MacIntyre has two key premises. The first is that contemporary moral vocabulary is composed of fragments and ‘left-overs’ from Aristotle’s teleological approach. The second is that Aristotle’s account of virtues, and the tradition to which it leads is rational and ultimately invulnerable to the Nietzschean attacks. To further make his case, MacIntyre attacks Nietzsche’s notion of the Ubermensch. This solitary individual finds no ‘good’ in the world of others and, according to MacIntyre, is necessarily deceptive (258). For this individual the congratulation or rebuke of another is empty for it does not originate in his or her own will.
MacIntyre believes that, in his defence of the virtues, he has shown that the human person is not individual by nature. And it is because Nietzsche assumes this that he understood all moral discourse as an articulation of the individual’s will – for what else could the latter be if the former is the case? The rather ironic claim is that it is Nietzsche, in addition to Kant et al., who assumes his conclusion on his way to arguing for it. In one sense you might hold us to be at a stalemate. For how are we to adjudicate on such a basic question? For MacIntyre the answer is clear. One has to be a member of a community in order to gain the skills required to condemn it. The absolute individual is an illusion, and it is only by assuming this radical individualism that one is led to see all community conceptions of ‘good’ as expressions of ‘will’. Of course, MacIntyre believes he has given a good account of virtue ethics which has the community conception of good as its foundation. For this reason he believes Nietzsche’s base assumption is false, as are the conclusions it necessitates.

MacIntyre reads Nietzsche as the closing prophet of the doomed enlightenment project of moral philosophy. Though Nietzsche mistakenly saw himself to be outside this period, condemning it completely, his entire position stemmed from the mistake that was hidden deep beneath Kantianism, Utilitarianism and Emotivism. He saw that there was a problem, a failure, but he mistook Aristotle’s tradition for part of the problem rather than its solution.

 

Sorry I realise my ‘quick ideas’ have been less than quick. In summary for analysing and evaluating Nietzsche’s Genealogy:

STRENGTH: Even scholars who certainly would not see themselves as Nietzscheans see that Nietzsche was the first to see the brokenness of much of our moral discourse.

CRITICISM: Nietzsche ‘illegitimately generalised from the condition of moral judgement in his own day to the nature of morality as such…”

CRITICISM: If Aristotle is right, then Nietzsche is wrong.

CRITICISM: Nietzsche’s ideal, his Ubermensch is based upon the assumption that the human person is radically isolated. MacIntyre reads the vast majority of FN’s writings as proceeding from this premise, one which AM finds faulty.

EVALUATION: I think your evaluation of each of these will be intertwined. You might mention Wittgenstein really quickly (arguments against private language), as well as having an opinion on MacIntyre’s argument as well as his reading of Nietzsche.

Nietzsche in a t-shirt slogan….

Okay so not Nietzsche, but perhaps his Genealogy… I’m always trying to get my IB philosophy students to summarise difficult passages in t shirt slogans… it’s a bit lame but it totally helps them to be brief and precise enough to get ace marks…

Anyway I recently discover this phrase in one of the old IB marking schemes, and I kinda like it…

Genealogy traces the moral version of each strand back to pre-moral sources

The ‘strands’ of which it speaks are the threads or elements that are woven together in Christian (Western?) morality and, as it says, Nietzsche’s mission is to show that each of these threads has a non-moral origin. Thoughts?

Kingdom of Heaven Challenge Year 2

Jesus had this massive idea to try and explain to people. To help them get it he gave lots of pictures. Try and work out what you think the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ really is…

To post your paragraph click on ‘leave a reply’ below. Just put your initials in the name box, any email (it won’t come up) and leave the web page blank, then paste your answer from word or pages… Try and make your answer the very best you can…

Thank You 🙂

What was the BIG BANG? 6KU (Int 2 / Higher RMPS)

The Big Bang: What was it? When was it? Why do so many of us believe in it?

You need to answer this as if it was an 6 mark question and be confident that you are going to get full marks. Expect to talk about Hydrogen atoms, gravity, cooling and gases. Obviously you need to give more information than this poster.

MacIntyre on Nietzsche’s Criticism of Kant’s Ethics

 

I’m a bit of a big fan of Alasdair MacIntyre. His Short History of Ethics carried me through my studies at university before reading After Virtue and then moving in a slightly different direction. Here he describes Nietzsche’s criticism of Kant very clearly. I would have this discussed in any IB or A Level (this isn”t in Higher or AH but good to know about) essay on Kant’s Ethics:

…Nietzsche’s accusation is that in fact Kant assumes what he sets out to prove. He takes it for granted that we are entitled to make moral judgements and enquires what must be the case if this is so; he never asks, as Nietzsche does, whether we are so entitled.

 

The Case for God? – BBC Documentary

With religion coming under increasing attack from atheists and sceptics, The Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, goes into the lion’s den, putting his faith publicly on the line by debating with some of the sharpest critics of his faith. Howard Jacobson believes ritual demeans religion, Alain de Botton doubts that any one faith has the truth, Professor Colin Blakemore thinks science makes religion redundant, and Professor Lisa Jardine questions why God allows evil and suffering in this world (BBC).