J. L. Mackie

For other people named John Mackie, see John Mackie (disambiguation).

J. L. Mackie
FBA
Born
John Leslie Mackie

(1917-08-25)25 August 1917
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died12 December 1981(1981-12-12) (aged 64)
Oxford, England
Alma mater
Spouse
Joan Meredith
​
(m. 1947)​
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Institutions
Academic advisorsJohn Anderson
Main interests
Notable ideas
Argument from queerness
Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox philosopher with unknown parameter "influences"
Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox philosopher with unknown parameter "influenced"

John Leslie Mackie FBA (25 August 1917 – 12 December 1981) was an Australian philosopher. He made significant contributions to ethics, the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Mackie had influential views on metaethics, including his defence of moral scepticism and his sophisticated defence of atheism. He wrote six books. His most widely known, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), opens by boldly stating, "There are no objective values." It goes on to argue that because of this, ethics must be invented rather than discovered.

His posthumously published The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1982)[1] has been called a tour de force in contemporary analytic philosophy.[2] The atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen described it as "one of the most, probably the most, distinguished articulation of an atheistic point of view given in the twentieth century."[3] In 1980, Time magazine described him as "perhaps the ablest of today's atheistic philosophers".[4]

  1. ^ "The title is a clever allusion to Hume's remark in the tenth chapter of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that it is a miracle that anyone assents to the Christian religion." Craig, W. (1984). Professor Mackie and the KalĀm cosmological argument. Religious Studies, 20(3), fn.1, p. 367 doi:10.1017/S0034412500016243 JSTOR 20006071
  2. ^ Allan, James (1996). "The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God" (PDF). Otago Law Review. 8: 633.
  3. ^ Moreland, James Porter; Nielsen, Kai (1993). Does God exist? : the debate between theists & atheists. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-823-6. OCLC 27171769.
  4. ^ "Religion: Modernizing the Case for God". Time. 7 April 1980. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 28 April 2020.