What to Do When You Don’t Make a Difference: Moral Arguments for God and Other Hope-Sustaining Thing

The Wheaton College Department of Philosophy presents a lecture by Dr. Andrew Chignell ’96, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Religion at Princeton University, titled “What to Do When You Don’t Make a Difference: Moral Arguments for God and Other Hope-Sustaining Things" on Thursday, October 1 at 7:30 PM.

 Chignell writes, "It is easy to become demoralized in the face of massive, structural evils that suggest that our individual moral efforts will almost certainly be inefficacious. The goal of this talk is to explore the challenge that such futility poses to our moral resolve in a variety of contexts, and to argue for an approach that is non-consequentialist at bottom -- but still sensitive to the role that consequences play in our moral psychology. My view is inspired by Immanuel Kant’s 'moral argument' for the existence of God and the afterlife, though it departs from Kant at a few key junctures. Along the way I examine several different accounts of what it means to 'make a difference' and then articulate my own.” Andrew Chignell ’96 is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, with appointments in the Religion and Philosophy departments. A graduate of Wheaton College and Yale University, he previously taught in the Philosophy departments at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University. His work focuses on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and related early modern figures, the philosophy of religion, the ethics of belief, and the moral psychology of hope and despair. From 2020-2023 he served as President of the North American Kant Society. Together with (fellow Wheaton grad!) Matthew Halteman and Terence Cuneo, he is the co-editor of Philosophy Comes to Dinner (2016). His open online course “Food Ethics” is available on Coursera. And fun fact: he will be at Wheaton celebrating his 30th reunion the weekend just after this lecture.

This event is free and open to the public and will take place in Blanchard Hall Room 339, located at 501 College Avenue in Wheaton. For more information, contact Amy Park at 630.752.5040 or philosophy@wheaton.edu.