{"title":"The Nature of Faith","authors":"Mark Wynn","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198862949.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198862949.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines what kind of assent a person needs to give to a theological narrative if it is to support their pursuit of hybrid goods whose realization is tied to the truth of the narrative. It expounds Aquinas’s account of faith as in the relevant senses cognitive, action-guiding, voluntary, confident and certain, and notes how the idea of hybrid goods allows us to understand the spiritual life in comparable terms. The chapter proposes that faith is best conceived not as first of all a commitment to a world view, from which we are then to read off a set of practical implications, nor as first of all a commitment to a way of life, which then calls for the introduction of a supporting world view, but instead as a commitment to a way of life and world view taken in combination. In this way, the notion of hybrid goods allows us to develop an account of the practical reasonableness of particular forms of the spiritual life, where it is axiological questions at least as much as evidential or epistemic questions that determine the shape of that life.","PeriodicalId":438076,"journal":{"name":"Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues","volume":"101 6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123160912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Philosophy as a Way of Life","authors":"Mark R. Wynn","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198862949.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198862949.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter introduces some of the guiding questions of the investigation, here drawing on Pierre Hadot’s text Philosophy as a Way of Life. These questions include: how should we understand the nature of spiritual goods? What is the relationship between a tradition’s world view and its conception of the well-lived human life? How should we conceive of the connection between the different vocabularies that can be used to describe progress in the spiritual life, for instance, those involving metaphysical and experiential categories? What epistemic conditions, if any, does a world view need to meet if it is to be capable of informing a spiritual ideal of life? And what is the contribution of tradition in shaping our understanding of the spiritual life? The key concept that runs through this volume is Thomas Aquinas’s notion of infused moral virtue, and this chapter also introduces this notion and considers its fruitfulness for addressing the second of these questions, concerning the relationship between world view and ideal of life. A contrast is drawn between Aquinas’s account of these matters, according to which some spiritual goods—the goods that are the object of the infused moral virtues—cannot be identified independently of reference to our theological or metaphysical context, and Hadot’s account, according to which ethical or spiritual ideals come first, and provide the basis for metaphysical commitments. We note some reasons for thinking that this distinction between the two authors should not be too sharply drawn.","PeriodicalId":438076,"journal":{"name":"Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126890181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}