1st Edition
Teleology and Modernity
The main and original contribution of this volume is to offer a discussion of teleology through the prism of religion, philosophy and history. The goal is to incorporate teleology within discussions across these three disciplines rather than restrict it to one as is customarily the case. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, from individual teleologies to collective ones; ideas put forward by the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau and the Scottish philosopher David Hume, by the Anglican theologian and founder of Methodism, John Wesley, and the English naturalist Charles Darwin.
List of contributors
Introduction
by Dan O’Brien, Marius Turda and William Gibson
Section I: Religion
Chapter 1: ‘We Apply these Tools to our Morals’: Eighteenth-century Freemasonry, A Case Study in Teleology
by Richard Berrman
Chapter 2: Teleologies and Religion in the Eighteenth Century
by William Gibson
Chapter 3: John Wesley and the Teleology of Education
by Linda A. Ryan
Section II: History
Chapter 4: Teleology and Race
by Marius Turda
Chapter 5: Charles Darwin and the Argument for Design
by David Redvaldsen
Chapter 6: Teleology and Jewish Heretical Religiosity: Nietzsche and Rosenzweig
by David Ohana
Section III: Philosophy
Chapter 7: Can the Sciences Do without Final Causes?
by Stephen Boulter
Chapter 8: Hume, Teleology and the ‘Science of Man’
by Lorenzo Greco and Dan O’Brien
Chapter 9: What is the Function of Morality?
by Mark Cain
Chapter 10: Is Intuitive Teleological Reasoning Promiscuous?
by Johan de Smedt and Helen de Cruz
Index
Biography
William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History at Oxford Brookes University.
Dan O’Brien is Reader in Philosophy and Subject Co-ordinator for Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University
Marius Turda is Professor in 20th Century Central and Eastern European Biomedicine at Oxford Brookes University.
