An Eminent and Erudite Platonist

Abstract

A. E. Taylor argued at length against an artificial dichotomy between fact and value, in an effort to carve out evidential space for morality. Divorcing facts and values is like trying to separate the sounds of a great symphony from its musical quality. More important than what we do is who we are, and what’s needed is an adequate account for the sort of external assistance we desperately require to be radically transformed (even transfigured)—after all, Taylor said, we can’t pull ourselves up by our own hair—so we can enjoy a good never left behind and never superseded. The inherent features of moral guilt point in the direction of a personal and perfectly loving God as our first and final cause. Taylor counseled close and sustained attentiveness to the moral evidence and (as we’ve seen in others) modeled a laudably expansive epistemology.