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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010254198 | BJ47 W37 2010 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Here is a pugnacious book by a philosopher who often hits the headlines. The book reflects on the nature of religion and how it relates or ought to relate to the rest of life. ¿ Many¿people today are totally indifferent to religion but religion is far from dead. Indeed religions are intensely defended and aggressively pursued. Religion is a cause for dissension and death. This is beyond dispute. ¿ Mary Warnock is concerned with Christianity.¿ She argues that to value religion as the essential foundation of morality is a profound and probably dangerous mistake. Warnock's overriding¿purpose is to prise apart religion and morality. Judges for example are constantly being asked to pass judgement on moral issues in court. Because of The Human Rights Act, the law perforce is involved. Morality is therefore increasingly a public and not just a private matter. ¿ This book¿attempts to clarify the foundation of morality in a society largely indifferent to and ignorant of religion. Religion nevertheless emerges as a source of deep and unique imaginative experience.
Author Notes
Mary Warnock was born Helen Mary Wilson in Winchester, England on April 14, 1924. She studied classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She taught philosophy at St. Hugh's College, Oxford from 1949 to 1966. She was the headmistress of the all-girl Oxford High School from 1966 until 1972 and was the mistress of Girton College at the University of Cambridge from 1984 to 1991.
She served on government panels that examined special education and laboratory experimentation using animals and was the chairwoman of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology in 1982. She was appointed a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1984 and became a life peer the following year. She took the title Baroness Warnock of Weeke and a seat in the House of Lords, from which she retired in 2015. She died after a fall on March 20, 2019 at the age of 94.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 Life, Death and Authority: A Legislative History - Part One | p. 7 |
| 2 Life, Death and Authority: A Legislative History - Part Two | p. 41 |
| 3 The Law and Moral Values | p. 69 |
| 4 Morality and Religion: Where Morality Comes From | p. 93 |
| 5 The Spirit of Man | p. 125 |
| Conclusion | p. 163 |
| Index | p. 167 |
