In her seminar paper, Fiona Ellis explored the prospects for defending a philosophically cogent theology of desire.

In particular, she sought to undermine the idea that proposing a theistic framework for desire involves something deeply problematic which could undermine our relation to goodness. Drawing on the work of Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and Emmanuel Levinas, Fiona argued that, on the contrary, desire for God is continuous with our interest in morality.

Desire thus understood is a mode of cognition: it is that by virtue of which we are attracted to God in some sense. Spelling out what this could mean involved thinking more generally about the reason/desire relation as it applies in a moral context.

Using this framework allowed Fiona to make some important distinctions (between belief and desire, and between different varieties of desire), and to raise the question of God in a manner which lends justice to the idea that this question is deeply bound up with the question of morality.