At a time of acute danger, people commonly petition God for help for themselves or their loved ones; such as praying that an avalanche heading in one’s direction be diverted, or that an organ donor be found for one’s dying child. Such prayer seems natural and, indeed, for believers, reasonable and acceptable. It seems perverse to condemn such typical prayer, as wrong. But once we closely examine what is actually happening in such situations, we shall see that frequently prayer of this sort is morally problematic. The author argues that such prayer ought to be seen as a form of action (rather than, say, mere hope), thereby needing to meet the higher moral standards ones which apply to actions; and that the assumption of the benevolence of the deity does not suffice to make such prayer legitimate.

Our discussion of Saul Smilansky’s paper “A Problem about the Morality of Some Common Forms of Prayer” consists of two parts. In the first part, we argue for the thesis that the fictitious examples given by the author of the paper either are not commonly acceptable forms of prayer (being unethical), or are interpretable in a way which removes the ethical problem altogether. It is always unethical to wish someone’s death, but in each imaginable situation of deadly danger there is a sense of a prayer for a solution which does not multiply death.In the second part, we defend the thesis that the attitude towards God depicted in Smilansky’s examples is not religious at all, and the acts desrcibed in them do not deserve to be called “prayers.” When all what really matters to us about God is that He is able to change the course of events in our favor, and His goodness escapes our attention, then by “God” we do not mean the God of religious tradition. At this point we recall the thinkers belonging to the so-called Wittgen- steinian fideism, whose critique of petitionary prayer goes maybe too far, but also invites us to rethink the limits of the right attitude towards God.

In the article “A Problem about the Morality of Some Common Forms of Prayer,” Saul Smilansky reconstructs the basics of morally unacceptable prayer. These assumptions relate to the way in which God hears the petitions of praying people, the moral level of deity and those who pray, as well as the the nature of the relationship between prayer and God’s awareness (acceptance) of it. In this article, I present the reasons why I believe that the reconstruction made by Smilansky is not correct. I argue that morally inadmissible prayer is not at all possible. Assumptions indicated by him cannot be found among the assumptions of actually praying people. Even if we could find some of these assumptions, it is not possible that they all can occur together. So everyone who prays, does a good thing. Smilansky’s criticism is directed against something that does not exist and cannot exist and therefore does not provide reasons why any prayer should be considered as unacceptable.

In my paper, I present the view that moral evaluation of praying persons in existentially extreme situations (danger of death) should be based on knowledge concerning the truth value of some counterfactual propositions. I have in mind the counterfactual propositions describing situations in which praying people might choose, according to their will, other means of salvation for themselves or for their loved ones—other than petitionary prayer (also called “impetratory prayer”). However, since we do not know the truth value of such counterfactual propositions, we do not have sufficient means to issue any moral evaluation of such persons. In the second part of the paper I consider some general assumptions of rationality of petitionary and intercessory prayers in the context of various forms of theism. I suggest there that the concept of the divine answer to such prayers may have a literal meaning provided that we accept open or probabilistic theism, and a merely metaphoric or figurative meaning if we accept classical theism.

This paper takes a Thomistic point of view to critically analyze several points of Saul Smi- lansky’s article on petitionary prayer. The most controversial aspects of Smilansky’s paper are as follows: 1. It seems that the author has some difficulties with the principle of double effect, because his understanding of the human right to self-defense is highly debatable. 2. The author fails to appreciate the role of just punishment. 3. Apparently, Smilansky doesn’t know or doesn’t accept the theology of God’s permission which narrows his view of the cases he discusses. 4. His psychological account of petitionary pray is far from convincing. Generally speaking, although the title cites petitionary prayer as its central problem, in fact the main controversies refer to moral questions which can be discussed without introducing the concept of God’s agency. In order to solve Smilansky’s paradoxes we should first answer these fundamental moral difficulties.

The article is a polemic with Saul Smilansky’s essay “A Problem about the Morality of Some Common Forms of Prayer.” According to Smilansky some petitionary prayers, especially prayers for one’s own good at the expense of someone else, are immoral. I agree that not every prayer is morally acceptable but at the same time I argue that Smilanksy’s justification of this thesis presupposes or includes some false premises. In particular I give four reservations about (or objections to) his argument: (i) philosophy of prayer should start not with the private beliefs of the philosopher but (if one does not have empirical knowledge about praying people) with a given religious orthodoxy or orthopraxis (the methodological reservation); (ii) a praying person (especially in a difficult life situation) does not consider the consequences of his or her prayer’s being answered (the psychological reservation); (iii) according to the Biblical model every petitionary prayer involves the conditional clause ‘if God wills’ (the theological reservation); (iv) in spite of a common opinion (represented by Smilansky) petitionary prayer is not action in the ordinary meaning of this word (the ontological reservation). I defend the last thesis using Charles Taliaferro’s distinction between the Petitionary World and the Non-Petitionary World. I also try to introduce my own criterion of the morality of petitionary prayer: such a prayer is morally good if it builds a positive relationship between a petitioner and God or other people and if it is spoken together with the supplement ‘God, your will be done!’

Leslie Stephen, one of the main representatives of Victorian agnosticism and an important Victorian historiographer, devoted much space in his works to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, interpreted by Stephen as a confirmed sceptic; Hobbes’ thought partially inspired Stephen’s own philosophy—especially when it comes to such problems as the role of religion and the nature of faith. An analysis of Stephen’s comparison of Hobbes to Herbert Spencer shows an analogy between two accounts of the problem of the knowledge of God: (1) that of Hobbes and Henry Longueville Mansel, a fideist, and (2) that of Herbert Spencer, an agnostic. The analysis sheds light on the modern inspirations of Victorian agnosticism and its influence on Victorian historiography.

The subject of the article is an analysis of the idea of human liberty. Nietzsche denies the idea of freedom of will. Although he believes that it is possible to become free, that freedom is a realizable ideal. Human beings are able to improve. Nietzsche is creating the concept of superman as a more excellent kind of being. Nietzsche’s elitism was devoted towards the self-creation of an individuality of great strength. People demand freedom only when they have no power.Freedom means that the manly instincts dominate over other instincts. The free man is a warrior. Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves. In real life it is only a question of strong and weak wills.

One of the philosophical problems that developed on the basis of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature is the debate on “nature and art.” The formation of the experimental viewpoint which influenced the philosophical discussion and its criteria for distinguishing products of nature and products of art are also proposed as part of this debate. The purpose of this article is to elaborate on how the arguments surrounding “nature and art” influenced the experimental design of Robert Boyle’s philosophy of naturalism and the philosophical assumptions of modern experimentalism.

This text is a translation of the treatise De principiis naturae (On the Principles of Nature), written by Thomas Aquinas. It provides a description of the basic questions occupying the philosophy of nature and metaphysics as Aquinas sees them. These questions are, first and foremost, the ones concerning the phenomenon of becoming, which, according to Aquinas, constitutes the basic object of investigations conducted by the philosopher of nature. In the treatise, Aquinas distinguishes substance from accidents; describes the composite of matter and form, the four kinds of causes and how they are related to one another; and, finally, presents different kinds of necessity and identity.

The author argues that immortality need not be as bad as Bernard Williams says it would be. He argues that if an immortal life were characterized by a sufficiently diverse package of experiences, appropriately distributed, there is no reason to think that one would become bored (just as there is no reason to think that one would become bored of such experiences in a finite life). He acknowledges that some pleasurable experiences would be “self-exhausting,” but he says that there are enough “repeatable pleasures” to avoid the tedium of which Bernard Williams speaks.