Aug 2026· Das Questões· Vol 23, pp. 424-435· 0 citations· 2 references
Abstract
The present article presents and discusses the foundations of the New Moral Realism proposed by Markus Gabriel in Ethics for Dark Times (2020), a work that extends his New Realism project into the field of ethics. Starting from a metaethical defense of moral realism, Gabriel argues that there are objective moral facts, independent of individual or cultural opinions, yet accessible to human reason and recognizable across all societies. The article examines the three central theses of his system — Realism, Humanism, and Universalism — and his opposition to relativism, pluralism, and nihilism. Gabriel’s critique of “postmodern cynicism” and the contemporary crisis of truth is analyzed in contrast with authors such as Bruno Latour and Friedrich Nietzsche. It is argued that overcoming relativism and nihilism is a necessary condition for global moral progress, which must be understood as a collective endeavor of humanity. Through the recognition of universal moral facts — such as the condemnation of evidently evil practices, like torture for amusement — Gabriel proposes a New Enlightenment that unites reason and morality in response to the ethical challenges of the 21st century, such as nationalism, ecological collapse, and global inequalities. The article concludes that New Moral Realism offers a robust alternative to moral pessimism and cultural fragmentation, affirming the objectivity of ethics without appealing to theological foundations.
This article examines the limits of human reason as a source of moral and religious knowledge in the thought of the tenth-century Karaite scholar Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī. While Qirqisānī assigns reason a central role in theology, legal analogy, and dialectical deliberation, the article focuses on a neglected dimension of his thought: the epistemological status of morally neutral actions—those neither intrinsically obligatory nor forbidden. Through close analysis of chapter 51 of the fourth treatise of the Kitāb al-Anwār wa-al-Marāqib, it is shown that Qirqisānī proposes a tripartite framework—necessity, rational morality, and revelation—arguing that the status of neutral actions cannot be determined by reason alone and requires explicit divine legislation. This positivist stance is contrasted with that of Rav Saʿadya Gaʾon, who holds that reason, grounded in the premise of God’s goodness, can establish the permissibility of beneficial actions without explicit revelation. Additional perspectives from Yefet ben ʿEli complicate the assumption that this debate mapped neatly onto the Rabbanite–Karaite divide. The article situates Qirqisānī’s position within contemporary Muslim theological debates on the moral status of human actions before revelation.
According to the biblical narrative, among the creatures of the Earth, human beings are uniquely God’s image-bearers, and we are also tragically prone to claim divinity for ourselves in ways that produce violence and judgment. Technology is a human good, part of our cultural mandate, but it also magnifies our worst tendencies. One of the great temptations of artificial intelligence is its mimetic capacity. AI systems mimic human creativity and judgment but lack human moral capacities. Granting a concern about mimesis, perhaps some version of non-reductive physicalism is correct and something we could call true
intelligence
might emerge from a future AI system. It could be that humans would owe some kind of duties toward AI as moral patients akin to what we, the stewards of creation, owe the various components of the natural world. But, from the perspective of Christian theological ethics, even if we entertain a kind of Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of emergence and causal powers that could admit this possibility, we should remember the biblical narrative concerning human uniqueness. The great chain of being retains vitality as a metaphor in that it reminds us about the role of mediation in the relationship between God and creation.
D. Opderbeck· The Journal of Law and Relig...· 0 citations
Contemporary AI systems are increasingly designed to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, and cognitive burden. This article argues that such systems do not merely expand human capacities but progressively externalize forms of judgment and existential burden that Christian traditions have historically understood as necessary conditions for the cultivation of moral agency. Drawing on the theological anthropologies of Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the article develops a theological-anthropological critique of what it terms optimization culture: the normative logic through which the reduction of friction and existential difficulty becomes a dominant telos of technological design. Contemporary articulations of this logic are examined through the work of Jacques Ellul, Byung-Chul Han, Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and William Davies. The article argues that AI systems shaped by this logic risk progressively externalizing the practices of disciplined attention, existential responsibility, and costly judgment through which mature moral agency has historically been cultivated. In response, it proposes a formative anthropology of technology as a framework for evaluating AI not only according to functional criteria such as safety or efficiency, but according to the kinds of human beings such systems actively help to form.
Åke Elden· Studies in Christian Ethics· 0 citations