Dallas Willard: On the Disappearance of Moral Knowledge

Moral knowledge deals with “the thoughts and intents of the heart,” with a person’s character, and with good and evil. But can the moral life really be a subject of knowledge, or only of tradition, sentiment, and opinion or “faith”? This talk will draw upon themes from Willard’s forthcoming book, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. With the ascendancy of empirical thinking, moral knowledge has become more elusive for modern men and women, precisely because knowledge of the self is not empirical. Concurrent with the rise of exclusively empirical thinking in the modern world, the will has been elevated above the intellect and the affective faculties of the human person. The implications of these trends for the psychological sciences, and the possibility of recovering a shared moral knowledge, will be explored.