“School of Philosophy”
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| Paper IPM / Philosophy / 17983 |
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| Abstract: | |||||
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The relation between faith and extremism has not been sufficiently explored in the recent literature; given that some extremists have sought to justify their attitude by appeal to faith, this lack ought to be rectified. Borrowing ideas from Cassam's account of extremism, we argue that the extremist mindset is similar to faith in significant relevant respects. Our suggestion is intended to have the advantages of the standard account of the extremist mindset, i.e., in terms of fanaticism, but without its disadvantages. In particular, we argue that while the good virtuous faith and the extremist mindset are distinct states, they share similar central features such that someone who began by seeking the former might end up with the latter. Our suggestion also explains why some exemplars of extremism refer to faith to justify their extremist acts. In order to keep these two states distinct, we subsequently propose a moral as well as an epistemic criterion to define the differences between the good, virtuous form of faith, and the bad, extremist form. According to our suggestion, moral sensitivity to the Golden Rule, and (strong and/or weak) epistemic sensitivity to evidence can underpin, in turn, the moral and the epistemic criteria for good, virtuous, non-extremist faith.
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