ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why, even in principle, to talk about the possibility of a canonical, morally normative account of the family requires at least the equivalent of a God's eye perspective, not out of religious but out of moral and epistemic considerations. Properly to evaluate different instantiations of the family, one needs to take a God's eye perspective—the regulative idea of an unconditioned perspective on reality. Reference to God and a God's eye perspective provides a philosophical regulative function. One must embrace a particular God's eye perspective in order to secure canonical moral content. The atheistic methodological postulate begins epistemic and moral analysis with the underlying functional assumption that there is no God. Methodological theism, in contrast to methodological atheism, begins from embracing the practical moral-ontological standpoint that there is a deep metaphysical foundation for reality grounding empirical knowledge and the coherence of the moral life.
