The Relation Between Religion and Morality from Zagzebsk’s Viewpoint

The relation between religion and morality is one of the most heated philosophical discussions in the fields of philosophy of religion and philosophy of morality. Linda Zagzebski is one the contemporary philosophers who tries to consider this subject with a new sight. She suggests virtue ethics as Divine Motivation theory to show that morality should be based on motives of God. For this, she adapts the exemplarist approach, insisting upon the importance of emotions to the need to identify exemplars. Zagzebski introduces God as the ultimate paradigm of goodness whose motivational states are ontologically and explanatorily the basis for all moral properties and values. Zagzebski’s views contain five steps. In the first step, she proves the personhood of God. In the second step, she argues that God has perfect virtues and motives. In the third step, she shows that God’s central and fundamental motive in the creation is love. In the fourth step, she discusses the doctrine of imitatio Dei in different schools of philosophy and religion and shows the problems of this doctrine. In the last step, she attempts to link this doctrine to the doctrine of the Incarnation to resolve its problems. Although Zagzebski’s view of the relation between religion and morality has insightful aspects, it has considerable problems that undermine the justifiability of her theory.