Moral Cosmology: On Being in the World Fully and Well

Albert Borgmann

doi:10.5771/9781666900477

Summary

A moral cosmology was the ordinary background knowledge of prescientific peoples, who took the divinity and the moral rules of the heavenly bodies for granted. That unified world view was disrupted by the European Enlightenment, which divided moral cosmology into physics and ethics: physics tells us what is, ethics tells us what we ought to do. While knowledge of physics has become hard, and understanding ethics has become shifting and uncertain, nostalgia for a unified cosmic understanding continues. Moral Cosmology: On Being in the World Fully and Well demands that we search for one world and learn to be truly at home in that world once again. Albert Borgmann argues that a basic understanding of quantum physics and relative theory offers the widest possible background for the renewal of a moral cosmology, inviting us into a deeper understanding that can inform the focal occasions and practices that we implicitly know to be valuable. We may not always be able to completely understand or explain the depth of the world gathered and disclosed in these focal occasions, but to greet it with celebration deepening into wonder orients us and makes it possible for us to be at home in the universe.

Keywords

Search publication

Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2024
Copyright Year: 2024
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-0046-0
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-0047-7
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 118
Product Type: Monograph

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
3. Introduction No access
1. The Rise and Fall of Moral Cosmology No access Pages 1 - 44
2. Ethics within Physics No access Pages 45 - 52
3. Background Conditions No access Pages 53 - 60
4. Ordinary Cosmology and Mathematics No access Pages 61 - 68
5. Ordinary Cosmology and Physics No access Pages 69 - 76
Conclusion No access Pages 77 - 80
Afterword: Opening the Door to Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory No access Pages 81 - 104
Bibliography No access Pages 105 - 110
Index No access Pages 111 - 116
About the Author No access Pages 117 - 118