God and his imaginary friends: a Hassidic metaphysics

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMUEL LEBENS
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

AbstractWhat happens when you assume that the world is a dream in the mind of God, or that the world's history is a story that God is spinning? Focusing on the role that this assumption plays in the thought of Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner (1801–1854), at least as it is understood by Rabbi Herzl Hefter, I argue that this assumption generates interesting solutions to old riddles in the philosophy of religion and interesting insights into the nature of religious language.

The Place of Myth in Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 11 (42) ◽  
pp. 131-145
Author(s):  
W. R. Inge
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Real ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Fact ◽  
The Mind

My subject is the place of myth in philosophy, not in religion. If I were dealing with the philosophy of religion, I should, of course, have much to say on the place of myth in theology; and what I have to say may have some bearing on this subject; but I am not dealing with particular dogmas of Christianity or of any other religion. My thesis is that when the mind communes with the world of values its natural and inevitable language is the language of poetry, symbol, and myth. And, further, that philosophy has to deal with a number of irreducible surds which cannot be rationalized. They must be accepted as given material for reason to work upon. For example, we do not know why there is a world; we cannot unify the world of what we call facts and the world of values; there are antinomies in space and time which do not seem to disappear when we put a hyphen between them. Our reason–some would say reason itself— has reached its limits. We are driven to mythologize, confessing that we have left the realm of scientific fact. We give rein to the imagination, not exactly claiming with Wordsworth that it is reason in her most exalted mood, but hoping that the creative imagination may reveal to us some of the real meaning of questions which we cannot answer.

Wittgenstein and Religious Belief

Philosophy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (246) ◽  
pp. 427-452
Author(s):  
John W. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Language Games ◽  
The World ◽  
Principal Objection ◽  
Recent Idea

I find myself in profound disagreement with Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion and hence in disagreement also with those philosophers who have undertaken to elaborate and defend Wittgenstein's position. My principal objection is to the idea that religion is a language-game (or perhaps that each religion is a language-game) and that because of the kind of language-game it is, religious believers are not to be thought of as necessarily harbouring beliefs about the world over and above their secular beliefs. I reject this position, not because I think that there are language-games and that religion happens not to be one, but because I find the very idea of a language-game to be indefensible. Put another way, I find myself out of sympathy with the recent idea that in philosophy of religion we ought to be discussing something called ‘religious language’ or ‘the kind of language involved in religious beliefs’.

scholarly journals The Late Heidegger and a Post-Theistic Understanding of Religion

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 182-193
Author(s):  
Rico Gutschmidt ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Cosmological Argument ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

The relation of Heideggerʼs philosophy to theology is a problem that remains of current interest, particularly because Heideggerʼs later philosophy offers some hints towards an interpretation of religious language between theism and non-cognitivism. According to this post-theistic reading, the talk about god neither refers to an existent being, nor simply expresses religious feelings. Instead, religious language can be interpreted as describing in its own way the groundlessness of the world. This paper discusses Heideggerʼs later philosophy against this background. In what follows, I will draw upon the work of Wittgenstein and refer to the cosmological argument to read Heidegger in terms of a post-theistic account of religion. This not only contributes to a philosophical understanding of religious language, but also yields a new interpretation of Heideggerʼs later philosophy, which, in spite of its hermeticism, has a specific relevance to the philosophy of religion that still needs to be explored.

scholarly journals Beyond reconciliation – Monistic Yahwism and the Problem of Evil in philosophy of religion

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-92
Author(s):  
J W Gericke
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Mind

I want everything explained to me. And reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart. The mind aroused by this insistence seeks and finds nothing but contradictions and nonsense. The world itself, whose single meaning I do not understand, is a vast irrational.

Understanding Theism

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Millar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Theistic Belief

Much contemporary philosophy of religion is preoccupied with highly general problems about the nature of religious belief and of religious language, rather than with how to interpret, in detail, specific religious beliefs or forms of religious discourse. Among the matters of dispute there seem to be two of overriding importance. The first concerns the relation between religious beliefs and experience and centres on the question, what sorts of experience are relevant to the acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs. The second concerns whether or not religious beliefs have an explanatory function. Discussion of both these themes in relation to theistic belief is still largely dominated by conceptions of God and of his relation to the world which have been developed by natural theologians, particularly, though not exclusively, those who have worked within traditions significantly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. Thus the idea that religious beliefs have an explanatory function is commonly associated with the view that they present answers to questions raised by those alleged traits or features of the world which have been the concern of natural theologians and which have been described by means of concepts of ‘contingency’, ‘purposiveness’, ‘order’, and ‘design’. Consequently, the sort of experience often held to be relevant to the acceptance or rejection of theistic belief is that which is relevant to the application of these problematic concepts.

Nihilistic Thinking as the Self-Will of the Mind and the Projects of Its Overcoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Transformation

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.

The Russian People as They Are. Turgenev’s View

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Sergey Nickolsky
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Natural Man ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Philosophical Nature

The question of the Russian man – his past, present and future – is the central one in the philosophy of history. Unfortunately, at present this area of philosophy is not suffciently developed in Russia. Partly the reason for this situation is the lack of understanding by researchers of the role played by Russian classical literature and its philosophizing writers in historiosophy. The Hunting Sketches, a collection of short stories by I.S. Turgenev, is a work still undervalued, not fully considered not only in details but also in general meanings. And this is understandable because it is the frst systematic encyclopedia of Russian worldview, which is not envisaged by the literary genre. To a certain extent, Turgenev’s line is continued by I. Goncharov (the theme of the mind and heart), L. Tolstoy (the theme of the living and the dead, nature and society, the people and the lords), F. Dostoevsky (natural and rational rights), A. Chekhov (worthy and vulgar life). This article examines the philosophical nature of The Hunting Sketches, its structure and content. According to author’s opinion, stories can be divided into ten groups according to their dominant meanings. Thus, in The Hunting Sketches the main Russian types are depicted: “natural man,” rational, submissive, cunning, honest, sensitive, passionate, poetic, homeless, suffering, calmly accepting death, imbued with the immensity of the world. In the image and the comments of the wandering protagonist, Ivan Turgenev reveals his own philosophical credo, which he defnes as a moderate liberalism – freedom of thought and action, without prejudice to others.

The concepts of Ayurveda and Pāli Literature in connection to Psychotherapy

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kolarkar Rajesh Shivajirao ◽  
Kolarkar Rajashree Rajesh
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
Traditional System ◽  
The World ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Buddha

The perfect balance of Mind and body is considered as complete health in Pāli literature as well as in Ayurveda. Pāli literature and Ayurveda have their own identity as most ancient and traditional system of medicine in India.The universal teachings of the Buddha are the most precious legacy ancient India gave to the world. The teachings are a practical code of conduct, a way of purity and of gracious living. There is a scientific study of the truth pertaining to mind and matter, and the ultimate truth beyond. In fact, the Buddha should be more appropriately known as a super-scientist who studied the entire laws of nature governing the Universe, by direct personal experience. The Buddha's rational teachings are clearly explained in the Eight-fold Noble Path, divided in three divisions of Sīla (morality), Samādhi (mastery over the mind), Paññā i.e. ‘Pragya' (purification of the mind, by developing insight). In Ayurveda Psychotherapy can be done by Satvavajaya Chikitsa and good conduct. Aim is to augment the Satva Guna in order to correct the imbalance in state of Rajas (Passion) and Tamas (Inertia). Sattvavajaya as psychotherapy, is the mental restraint, or a "mind control" as referred by Caraka, as well as Vagbhata is achieved Dnyan (education), Vidnyan (training in developing skill), Dhairya (development of coping mechanism), Smruti (memory enhancement), Samadhi (concentration of mind). According to WHO, Mental disorders are the common problem. The burden of mental disorders continues to grow with significant impacts on health and major social, human rights and economic consequences in all countries of the world.

Are there Non-Propositional Intentional States?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Searle
Keyword(s):  
Intentional State ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
The World ◽  
Essential Idea ◽  
Limited Class ◽  
The Mind

Intentionality is that feature of the mind by which it is directed at or about objects and states of affairs in the world. Intentionality is simply aboutness or directedness. “Proposition” is more difficult, but the essential idea is this: every intentional state has a content. Sometimes it seems that the content just enables a state to refer to an object. So if John loves Sally, then it appears that the content of his love is simply “Sally”. But if John believes that it is raining, then the specification of the content requires an entire “that” clause. “Are there non-propositional intentional states?” amounts to the question, “Are there intentional states whose content does not require specification with a ‘that’ clause?” This chapter explores whether there are any non-propositional states, and suggest that a very limited class, such as boredom, is in fact non-propositional.

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