Books by Kevin Kinghorn

This book provides an ethical framework for understanding the good and how we can experience it in increasing measure. In Part 1, Kevin Kinghorn offers a formal analysis of the meaning of the term "e;good,"e; the nature of goodness, and why we are motivated to pursue it. Setting this analysis within a larger ethical framework, Kinghorn proposes a way of understanding where noninstrumental value lies, the source of normativity, and the relationship between the good and the right. Kinghorn defends a welfarist conception of the good along with the view that mental states alone directly affect a person's well-being. He endorses a Humean account of motivation-in which desires alone motivate us, not moral beliefs-to explain the source of the normative pressure we feel to do the good and the right. Turning to the place of objectivity within ethics, he concludes that the concept of "e;objective wrongness"e; is a misguided one, although a robust account of "e;objective goodness"e; is still possible. In Part 2, Kinghorn shifts to a substantive, Christian account of what the good life consists in as well as how we can achieve it. Hume's emphasis of desire over reason is not challenged but rather endorsed as a way of understanding both the human capacity for choice and the means by which God prompts us to pursue relationships of benevolence, in which our ultimate flourishing consists.

Christian theologians have historically described a ''saving faith in God'' as containing a fundamental element of ''belief''. However, philosophers present strong arguments exist that we are not capable of freely deciding which beliefs we will hold. Rather, we simply find ourselves believing things as the evidence before us seems to dictate. So, if belief is indeed involuntary, and if certain beliefs are requisite for Christian faith, then how can the matter of one''s salvation rest on whether one has freely put one''s faith in God? After explaining this objection to the Christian affirmation that faith is a voluntary matter for which God will hold all people morally accountable, this study in philosophical theology explores how the Christian theist might respond to this objection. Kevin Kinghorn uses experimental studies within the psychological literature on self-deception to make sense of the Christian idea of ''spiritual blindness''; and argues that whether or not a person wilfully contributes to self-deception will hinge on decisions he or she makes either to embrace or avoid the truth as he or she sees it. Kinghorn then attempts to show that decisions of this type - more specifically, decisions to embrace or avoid the truth about God, wherever the truth lies - are ultimately more fundamental to the kind of relationship with God commended by the Christian religion than is the question of what a person believes. Kinghorn''s conclusion is that the Christian theist can indeed rebut the objection pending against him or her, but only if he or she adopts Kinghorn''s own account of the nature of faith, which provides a sharper distinction between faith and belief than is generally found in accounts of faith within the Christian tradition.