Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T09:18:54.387Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Flannery O'Connor and religious epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2018

JASON BAEHR
JASON BAEHR*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, One LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, USA
*
e-mail: jbaehr@lmu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What are the demands of religious inquiry? It can be tempting to think of these demands in strictly epistemic terms, e.g. as a function of the inquirer's background beliefs, cognitive faculties, natural cognitive ability, intellectual skills, and intellectual character. In this article, I extrapolate an alternative model of religious inquiry from three stories by the Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964). According to the model, a person's fitness for religious inquiry also depends on whether she possesses a certain moral posture. In particular, I argue that something like moral humility functions as an epistemic virtue in the theistic domain.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 349 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Robert (2002) Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baehr, Jason (2011) The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Olivia (forthcoming) ‘Empathy and testimonial trust’, Philosophy.Google Scholar
Becker, Ernest (1997) The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press).Google Scholar
Craig, William Lane & Moreland, J. P. (2012) The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Malden MA: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Dougherty, Trent & McBrayer, Justin (2014) Skeptical Theism: New Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fantl, Jeremy & McGrath, Matthew (2009) Knowledge in an Uncertain World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund (1961) The Future of an Illusion (New York: Doubleday Anchor).Google Scholar
James, William (1907) The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, & Company).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moser, Paul (2008) The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Moser, Paul (2010) The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas (1997) The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Nemoianu, V. Martin (2015) ‘Pascal on divine hiddenness’, International Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 325–343.Google Scholar
O'Connor, Flannery (1988) Collected Works (New York: Library of America).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (2000) Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schellenberg, J. L. (2015) The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (2010) Wandering in Darkness (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitcomb, Dennis, Battaly, Heather, Baehr, Jason, & Howard-Snyder, Daniel (2017) ‘Intellectual humility: owning our limitations’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94, 509–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagzebski, Linda (1996) Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar