How are justifications for religious violence developed and do
they differ from secular justifications for violence? Can liberal
societies tolerate potentially violent religious groups? Can those
who accept religious justifications for violence be dissuaded from
acting violently? Including six in-depth contemporary case studies,
The Justification of Religious Violence is the first book to
examine the logical structure of justifications of religious
violence.
* The first book specifically devoted to examining the logical
structure of justifications of religious violence
* Seeks to understand how justifications for religious violence
are developed and how or if they differ from ordinary secular
justifications of violence
* Examines 3 widely employed premises used in religious
justifications of violence – ‘cosmic war’, the
importance of the afterlife, and ‘sacred values’
* Considers to what extent liberal democratic societies should
tolerate who hold that their religion justifies violent acts
* Reflects on the possibility of effective policy measures to
persuade those who believe that violent action is justified by
religion, to refrain from acting violently
* Informed by recent work in psychology, cognitive science,
neuroscience and evolutionary biology
* Part of the Blackwell Public Philosophy Series
Inhoudsopgave
Preface ix
1 Justification, Religion, and Violence 1
2 Religion 27
3 Morality 58
4 Justifying Violence, War, and Cosmic War 89
5 The Afterlife 114
6 The Sacred 134
7 Recent Justifications of Religious Violence 153
8 Tolerance 183
9 Reducing Religious Violence 198
References 215
Name Index 243
Subject Index 251
Over de auteur
Steve Clarke is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Australia, and a Senior Research Associate of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. He has published over sixty academic papers and is the author of Metaphysics and the Disunity of Scientific Knowledge (1998), and co-editor of three books including Religion, Intolerance and Conflict: a Scientific and Conceptual Investigation (with Russell Powell and Julian Savulescu, 2013).