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Spiritual Language and the Ethics of Redemption: a Reply to Jim Mackenzie
Author(s) -
Carr D.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.00148
Subject(s) - confessional , soul , epistemology , sketch , spirituality , morality , sociology , mysticism , philosophy , law , theology , medicine , alternative medicine , algorithm , pathology , politics , political science , computer science
I argue in this paper that Jim Mackenzie's critique of my recent work on religious and spiritual education fails on two main counts. First, his imputation to me of a confessional approach to religious education is simply misdirected, insofar as my previous papers are quite clearly concerned to sketch an alternative to both confessional and phenomenological approaches. Secondly, his attempt to reduce my ‘spiritual truths’ to moral and other claims turns on some question‐begging decontextualisation of such judgements, as well as upon demonstrable ambiguities in his use of the terms ‘moral’ and ‘soul’. In particular, I argue that the language of spirituality is indexed to an ‘ethics of redemption’ which is clearly distinguishable from any discourse of secular morality.