Divine Commands and Morality ed. by Paul Helms (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 337 philosopher's relationship to Nazism raises new points. Steiner poignantly asks about Heidegger's silence after 1945 rather than about his unclear actions of earlier years, and he points out the similarity of the language of Being and Time's psychological ethics to Nazi jargon. Did Heidegger, who in his egoism could identify his thought as the denouement of a tradition reaching back through Hegel to Plato and who identified the thought of the West with Greek and German ontology, become aware that Germany's destiny had proven to be not only positive but negative? The negative dialectic of Hegel had found empirical verification all too soon: for Bach, a Hitler. The later Heidegger perhaps saw himself not as one charting the triumph of culture and thinking but as an existent caught up in the tidal waves of time and being expressed through language in ways beyond his control. The book ends with the mind-set of the 1950s: Heidegger along with Marxism may be a " meta-theology " ... but certainly not, miserably, a "mysticism." To recent scholars we owe a richer reading of Heidegger. John Caputo's book suggests a new perspective for viewing Heidegger, wider than Kierkegaard or Bultmann, deeper than Sartre or Wittgenstein. It is the perspective of Meister Eckhart, one who, Heidegger said early in his career, united the metaphysical tradition of the West with its mystical counterpart. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana THOMAS F. O'MEARA, O.P. Divine Commands and Morality. Edited by PAUL HELMS. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. 186. Paper $7.95. This work is a collection of papers dealing with the question whether moral precepts are dependent on divine commands for their justification. I shall only consider some of the papers in this volume. William Frankena holds that morality is not logically dependent on religion or revelation for complete human fulfillment to be established. There may be psychological, historical, or motivational dependencies, but there cannot be a relationship of logical dependence among these. He would not disagree that all moral claims are justified ultimately by theology, but to say this makes the notion of religion vacuous. Frankena fails to give a clear explanation of what he means by a "logical dependence", and his argument is hampered by his consideration of religion in purely formal terms without any reference to the material content of either religion or morality. One must be very cautious in claiming that there is not any logical relationship of dependence between religion and morality on account 338 BOOK REVIEWS of the intricate nature of morality as a product of the practical reason. The logical character of practical reasoning is very complex, and it may be too hasty to say that there is no dependency between this mode of reasoning and revelation. For there seems to be a dependence of morality on religion in the sense that true religious doctrines will not only provide the source and end of morality but also give a clarity, coherence, and consistency to morality in providing these ultimate dimensions. The truth of this can be seen by examining the specific content of various religious doctrines and moral precepts. For so doing will show how specific precepts are linked and also how the ultimate effects, sources, and meanings of these precepts are consistently and coherently joined. James Rachels argues that God cannot be proven to exist because as a perfect being God would violate the autonomy of moral agents by His commands and could not be a fitting object of praise. Rather than proving that God does not exist, this argument seems to prove that any act of praise is logically incoherent and demeaning because it implies the inferiority and dependence of the one giving praise. Rachels misunderstands the relationship between the dictates of conscience to divine commands when he assumes that God tricks moral agents by speaking through conscience and giving the illusion of self-government. Conscience is not just an internal loudspeaker through which God issues his commands to agents. The dictates of conscience are conclusions of practical reason which itself directs agents to the good. Practical reason naturally apprehends the human good to which the...