Prof. Erik Wielenberg Authors Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism

September 27, 2014

Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism, authored by Erik J. Wielenberg, professor of philosophy at DePauw University, has been published by Oxford University Press.

In the book, Dr. Wielenberg "draws on recent work in analytic philosophy and empirical moral psychology to defend non-theistic robust normative realism and develop an empirically-grounded account of human moral knowledge," notes a synopsis. "Non-theistic robust normative realism has it that there are objective, non-natural, sui generis ethical features of the universe that do not depend on God for their existence. The early chapters of the book address various challenges to the intelligibility and plausibility of the claim that irreducible ethical features of things supervene on their non-ethical features as well as challenges from defenders of theistic ethics who argue that objective morality requires a theistic foundation. Later chapters develop an account of moral knowledge and answer various recent purported debunkings of morality, including those based on scientific research into the nature of the proximate causes of human moral beliefs as well as those based on proposed evolutionary explanations of our moral beliefs."

Order Robust Ethics at the publisher's website.

Professor Wielenberg contributes chapters to two recent books -- Skeptical Theism: New Essays and The Philosophy and Psychology of Character and Happines.  Read more here.

He has previously authored New Waves in Philosophy of Religion, God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell and Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe.

Wielenberg spoke to DePauw's Class of 2016 at the University's opening convocation in August 2012. Video of the address is embedded below.

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