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Are Ninian Smart's Temptations Irresistible?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Antony Flew
Antony Flew
Affiliation:
University College, Keele, Staffordshire.
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Extract

Mr Ninian Smart distinguishes what he calls the Utopia Thesis from the Compatibility Thesis. The latter he formulates as the contention: ‘that causal determinism (i.e. the claim that all human actions are the results of prior causes) is compatible with free will.’ The former is ‘the assertion that God could have created men wholly good’. Smart clearly has his doubts about the truth of this Compatibility Thesis. But his sole aim in ‘Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen’ is to try to show ‘that the Utopia Thesis does not follow from the Compatibility Thesis, despite appearances.’

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 37 , Issue 139 , January 1962 , pp. 57 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1962

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References

page 57 note 1 ‘Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen’ in Philosophy for April and July 1961, p. 188. Other page references to this article are given in parentheses in the text.

page 57 note 2 ‘Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom’ in New Essays in Philosophical Theology edited by Flew, A. and Maclntyre, A. (S.C.M. Press: Revised Edition, 1958), § (4). Page references to quotations are given in parentheses in the text.Google Scholar

page 60 note 3 Lectures on Political Economy (London, 1832), Lecture IX. Substantially the same point had been made slightly earlier by Nassau, Senior in his Two Lectures on Population (London, 1831).Google Scholar