Abstract

Gustaf son's ethics is both conservative and revolutionary. By taking Calvin, Luther, and Augustine as discussion partners, he avoids the "culs-de-sac" into which seventeenth-century physical science drove the "theology" of nature. In doing so, he shares the Stoic tendency in late twentieth-century science, e.g., in ecology. For him, "the powers that bear down on us and sustain us" are present in our experience of the world; and this experience must square with our other empirical knowledge, e.g., in biology. Yet it is not clear how we are to ground, in detail, the "moral" perceptions of nature to which Gustafson finally appeals.