The Dallas Willard Podcast 53. The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge: How It Happens and What It Means (2010)
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Oct 13, 2025 
Dallas Willard, a renowned philosopher and Christian thinker, explores the troubling decline of moral knowledge. He defines this disappearance as institutions failing to provide testable moral truths. Willard discusses cultural shifts and their impact on ethics, the dangers of relativism, and how this loss leads to societal issues like family breakdown and crime. He emphasizes the necessity of moral knowledge for character development and encourages faith communities to play a role in teaching virtues publicly. His insights challenge listeners to reconsider how they approach morality.
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Power And Psychology Recast Morality
- Theorists like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud reframed moral standards as power or psychological byproducts.
- Such accounts treat moral claims as expressions of power or unconscious drives, not as knowledge.
Taboo On Moral Judgment Harms Discernment
- A growing taboo against moral judgment confuses condemnation with discernment and hinders moral discourse.
- Avoiding moral judgment often serves to dodge responsibility rather than promote love.
Moral Knowledge As Social Infrastructure
- Without moral knowledge society drifts at the behest of desire, force, and chance.
- Moral knowledge acts like electricity for life, enabling coherent, constructive action over time.
