Christian B. Miller

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Christian B. Miller
20130710miller3458-5.jpg
Miller, photographed in 2013
SubjectPhilosophy
Website
college.wfu.edu/philosophy/miller

Christian B. Miller is an American philosopher specializing in ethics and philosophy of religion. He is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University.

Contents

Education and career

Miller earned his B.A. at Princeton University and his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught at Wake Forest University since 2004. Miller has written five books, edited five books, and published over 125 articles, introductions and commentaries. [1]

From 2010 to 2015 he was the director of the Character Project, funded by $5.6 million in grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The project examined character from the disciplines of philosophy, theology, and psychology, and supported the work of dozens of scholars around the world. [2]

From 2015 to 2018, he was the philosophy director of the Beacon Project, funded by a $3.9 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. The project examined the morally exceptional from the disciples of philosophy, theology, and psychology. [3]

From 2018 to 2023, he is the director of the Honesty Project, funded by grants totaling $4.6 million from the John Templeton Foundation. The project examines the virtue of honesty from the perspectives of philosophy and the empirical study of honesty. [4]

Miller is a regular contributor to Forbes. [5] He has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, Aeon, Christianity Today, and many other places. [6]

Miller has been awarded the 2014 Kulynych Family Omicron Delta Kappa Award for Student Engagement, [7] the 2009 Wake Forest University Reid-Doyle Prize for Excellence in Teaching [8] and the 2009 Wake Forest University Award for Excellence in Research. [9]

Books

Related Research Articles

Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtue</span> Positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good

A virtue is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is valued as an end purpose of life or a foundational principle of being. In human practical ethics, a virtue is a disposition to choose actions that succeed in showing high moral standards: doing what is said to be right and avoiding what is wrong in a given field of endeavour, even when doing so may be unnecessary from a utilitarian perspective. When someone takes pleasure in doing what is right, even when it is difficult or initially unpleasant, they can establish virtue as a habit. Such a person is said to be virtuous through having cultivated such a disposition. The opposite of virtue is vice, and the vicious person takes pleasure in habitual wrong-doing to their detriment.

Integrity is the quality of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or earnestness of one's actions. Integrity can stand in opposition to hypocrisy. It regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that people who hold apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter those values.

Eudaimonia, sometimes anglicized as Eudaemonia, Eudemonia or Eudimonia, is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of good spirit, and which is commonly translated as happiness or welfare.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Divine command theory</span> Meta-ethical theory of morality

Divine command theory is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by God's commands and that for a person to be moral he is to follow God's commands. Followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions in ancient and modern times have often accepted the importance of God's commands in establishing morality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtue ethics</span> Normative ethical theories

Virtue ethics is a philosophical approach that treats virtue and character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honesty</span> Moral quality of truthfulness

Honesty or truthfulness is a facet of moral character that connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, straightforwardness, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Honesty also involves being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere.

Ethics involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than traditional moral conduct.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moral character</span> Steady moral qualities in people

Moral character or character is an analysis of an individual's steady moral qualities. The concept of character can express a variety of attributes, including the presence or lack of virtues such as empathy, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviors or habits; these attributes are also a part of one's soft skills.

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Aristotle first used the term ethics to name a field of study developed by his predecessors Socrates and Plato which is devoted to the attempt to provide a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. Aristotle regarded ethics and politics as two related but separate fields of study, since ethics examines the good of the individual, while politics examines the good of the city-state, which he considered to be the best type of community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian ethics</span> Branch of theology that defines virtuous and sinful behavior from a Christian perspective

Christian ethics, also known as moral theology, is a multi-faceted ethical system. It is a virtue ethic, which focuses on building moral character, and a deontological ethic which emphasizes duty. It also incorporates natural law ethics, which is built on the belief that it is the very nature of humans – created in the image of God and capable of morality, cooperation, rationality, discernment and so on – that informs how life should be lived, and that awareness of sin does not require special revelation. Other aspects of Christian ethics, represented by movements such as the social Gospel and liberation theology, may be combined into a fourth area sometimes called prophetic ethics.

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James R. Otteson is an American philosopher and political economist. He is the John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. Formerly, he was the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Economics, and executive director of the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University. He is also a Senior Scholar at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., a Research Professor in the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and in the Philosophy Department at the University of Arizona, a Visitor of Ralston College, a Research Fellow for the Independent Institute in California, a director of Ethics and Economics Education of New England, and a Senior Scholar at the Fraser Institute. He has taught previously at Yeshiva University, New York University, Georgetown University, and the University of Alabama.

Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.

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References

  1. "Christian B. Miller". college.wfu.edu.
  2. "The Character Project". thecharacterproject.com.
  3. "Home - The Beacon Project". The Beacon Project.
  4. "The Honesty Project".
  5. "Christian Miller". Forbes.
  6. "Christian B Miller - Popular Writing". Christian B Miller.
  7. "The Kulynych Family Omicron Delta Kappa Award - Office of the Provost - Wake Forest University". Archived from the original on 2017-07-28. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  8. "Faculty Teaching Awards - Teaching - Wake Forest University". teaching.wfu.edu.
  9. "Graduate School Awards - Office of the Provost - Wake Forest University". Archived from the original on 2017-07-28. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  10. "Christian B Miller - Publications". Christian B Miller.
  11. "Christian B Miller - Publications". Christian B Miller.
  12. Miller, Christian B. (1 December 2017). The Character Gap: How Good Are We?. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. ISBN   9780190264222 via Google Books.
  13. Miller, Christian B. (21 September 2017). Character and Moral Psychology. OUP Oxford. ISBN   9780199674367 via Google Books.
  14. Miller, Christian B. (9 May 2013). Moral Character: An Empirical Theory. OUP Oxford. ISBN   9780199674350 via Google Books.
  15. "Grove City Faculty Ink Book Contracts with Oxford". 14 June 2017.
  16. Miller, Christian B. (24 March 2017). Moral Psychology: Virtue and Character. MIT Press. ISBN   9780262035576 via Google Books.
  17. Miller, Christian B.; Furr, R. Michael; Knobel, Angela; Fleeson, William (21 September 2017). Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780190204600 via Google Books.
  18. Miller, Christian (25 September 2014). The Bloomsbury Companion to Ethics. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   9781472567802 via Google Books.
  19. Quinn, Philip L. (12 October 2006). Essays in the Philosophy of Religion. Clarendon Press. ISBN   9780191569500 via Google Books.