In what ways can reflective practices enhance human flourishing?

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Ghaye
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Practices ◽  
Human Flourishing

Personal, political, professional

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niki WALLACE
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reflective Practices ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Participant Engagement ◽  
Auto Ethnography

It is widely agreed that in order to contribute to transitions towards sustainability, both practitioners and design itself must also transition. This paper presents findings from the first two years of transition in my Australian-based design practice. The paper explores what this transition has required of me personally, politically, and professionally, and draws on cases from my PhD. The PhD and paper are both part of an analytic auto-ethnography of my practice’s transition from ‘making greener things’ towards design for transitions. The projects discussed use ethnography, action research and reflective practices in their temporal approaches. This paper explores how slower methods such as transition design and autonomous design can extend the political reach of a design practice and discusses sacrifice and the financial stabilisation that comes from enveloping old practices within the new. The analysis presented here also reflects on my experiences practicing design for transitions and on data collected through participant engagement.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

Biblical Interpretation in the Majority World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. K. Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Majority World ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bible Reading

This chapter challenges the ‘received’ view that traces the expansion of the dominant theologies of the European and North American colonial powers and their missionaries into the Majority World. When they arrived, these Westerners found ancient Christian traditions and pre-existing spiritualities, linguistic and cultural forms, which questioned their Eurocentric presumptions, and energized new approaches to interpreting the sacred texts of Christianity. The emergence of ‘creative tensions’ in global encounters are a mechanism for expressing (D)issent against attempts to close down or normalize local Bible-reading traditions. This chapter points to the elements which establish a creative tension between indigenizing Majority World approaches to the Bible and those described in the ‘orthodox’ narrative, including: self-theologizing and communal readings; concepts of the Spirit world and human flourishing; the impact of multiple contexts, vernacular languages, sociopolitical and ethno-national identities, and power/marginalization structures; and ‘framing’ public and ecological issues.

Reasons to Worry: Interest and Love

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Scheffler
Keyword(s):  
Future Generations ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Future ◽  
Reasons Of Love

Apart from considerations of beneficence, we have reasons of at least four different kinds to ensure the survival of future generations under conditions conducive to human flourishing. This chapter explores two of those categories of reason: reasons of love and reasons of interest. Reasons of love rest on the fact that the fate of humanity matters to us in its own right. Reasons of interest appeal to our self-interest: that is, to our interest in leading lives engaged in worthwhile activities. These two categories of reason are conceptually independent, but it is partly because the future of humanity matters to us in its own right that the survival of future generations is in our interest.

Reclaiming the System

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Organizational Role ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
System P ◽  
The World ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Globalized World

The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but ‘cogs’ in this system—but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a ‘system’. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, however, that they cannot leave room for moral responsibility, and maybe even human flourishing. Drawing on detailed empirical case studies, Lisa Herzog analyses the nature of organizations from a normative perspective: their rule-bound character, the ways in which they deal with divided knowledge, and organizational cultures and their relation to morality. She asks how individual agency and organizational structures would have to mesh to avoid common moral pitfalls. She develops the notion of ‘transformational agency’, which refers to a critical, creative way of engaging with one’s organizational role while remaining committed to basic moral norms. The last part zooms out to the political and institutional changes that would be required to re-embed organizations into a just society. Whether we submit to ‘the system’ or try to reclaim it, Herzog argues, is a question of eminent political importance in our globalized world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theological Politics

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.

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