Can modern philosophers of religion take ancestor regard seriously? How might ancestor regard make a decisive and defensible contribution to the interpretation of life? This paper seeks to clarify the “ancestor” field of religious reference and proposes a new framing of its ideal significance. On the model of “life is a conference” (complementary to Knepper’s “life is a journey”), ancestors figure as stakeholders in shared life whose supposed presence in our councils distinctively activates ethical, historical, and religious forms of responsibility: ethical in occupying the role of Ideal Observers, historical in anchoring long-term group endeavors, and religious in representing ideal human relations with ultimate reality and value. The combination of these activations is a sweet spot for ambitious moral reflection. The principle of responsibility prompting makes normative sense of ancestor regard without depending on unconvincing and culturally less regulated speculation about souls or deities.
Attached Paper
Annual Meeting 2024
Responsibility Prompts: A Global-Critical Philosophical Approach to Ancestor Regard
Papers Session: Ancestors
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