Everyone has moral opinions; but almost no one thinks they can actually know they're true. That's the strange place our culture is in, and Dallas Willard spent his last years arguing it didn't have to stay that way.
Learn what has happened to moral knowledge over the past two centuries and what Dallas said we could do about it in this 8-week interactive online course taught by Dr. Aaron Preston.
We will survey the main ideas and arguments from Dallas’s final academic book, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. We will put them into dialogue with some of Dallas's other academic and popular writings, as well as with writings from other authors ranging from Plato to James Davison Hunter and Julie Reuben.
Scott Soames, chairman of the philosophy department at USC, called the book "Willard's most important philosophical work." We put together a free guide that you can read in about ten minutes. It walks through Dallas's main argument and why he thought this topic was so important.
Preview Webinar: Wednesday, September 2 (4pm PDT, 7pm EDT)
Classes: Wednesdays, September 16 - November 4 (4pm PDT, 7pm EDT)
Office Hours: Saturdays, September 19 - November 7, 2026
(Office hours are for additional discussion, participants will help select meeting time.)
Zoom
Cost
$97
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern.
Join Aaron Preston for a free webinar introducing Dallas Willard’s project in The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. We will focus on the specific nature of the problem, and sketch Dallas's general strategy for addressing it. We will also discuss the general structure of the course, and how it relates to the content of the book.
Refund Policy: A full refund is available when requested by email within 14 days of the first class session.
Session1
Causes I - The Disappearance of the Self (DMK Chapter 1)
Session 2
Causes II - Fear and Loathing about Knowledge; The Decline of Religion and the Rise of Relativism (DMK Chapter 1)
Session 3
Moral Knowledge and our Key Social Institutions: the University, Government, and the Professions. (DMK Chapter 1)
Session 4
20th Century Moral Theory I – From Spencer to Moore (DMK Chapters 2-3)
Session 5
20th Century Moral Theory II – From Ethics to Metaethics; from Cognitivism to Non-Cognitivism. (DMK Chapters 4-5)
Session 6
20th Century Moral Theory III – Attempts to Recover Moral Knowledge by Redefining Knowledge (DMK Chapters 6-7)
Session 7
A Sketch of a Solution to the Problems of Moral Epistemology (DMK Chapter 8)
Session 8:
The Problem of Moral Knowledge Today: from Skepticism to Dogmatism.
Electronic copies of the reading for each week is included in the cost of the course.
The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge is available in e-book formats for FREE thanks to the generosity of DWM donors. Find it on Kindle, Nook, and other Open Access channels. There is no need to read the book to take the class, but having a copy on hand might be helpful if one wishes to review key sections covered in class
Another way to prepare for the course is to watch Dallas's 2010 lecture:
The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge - How it Happens and What it Means.
Dr. Aaron Preston is Dallas Willard Ministries' Philosopher in Residence. He studied classics (B.A.) and theology (M.Th.) before earning his PH.D. in philosophy under Dallas Willard at USC, and has been a philosophy professor for 24 years.
His early work, beginning with his doctoral dissertation written under Dallas’s supervision, developed a critique of the analytic tradition in philosophy related to what Dallas would eventually dub “the disappearance of moral knowledge.” He later helped to complete and publish Dallas’s final academic book on this topic (The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, Routledge, 2018).
Aaron is continuing Dallas's work in this important area as a co-leader of Dallas Willard Ministries' Moral Knowledge Initiative.
No previous philosophy experience is needed.
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