Human and Divine Love Cocreating the Self

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Marandiuc
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Universal Love ◽  
Human Desire

In conversation with Kierkegaard, the chapter argues that human and divine loves interweave to cocreate the self. Referring to Plato’s thought that love is a union between need and desire, the chapter suggests that underneath the gospel commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself, which channels human desire, lies a powerful need for love. It is argued that Kierkegaard’s bilayered theological anthropology corresponds to his theology of love whereby universal love for human beings forms a ground from which preferential loves grow and gives birth to human subjectivity through the Spirit’s mediation. The chapter distinguishes between universal neighbor love, which Kierkegaard counts as Kantian duty, and particular love attachments, which home the self and anchor its freedom. Kierkegaard inherits from Scotus the framework of dovetailing human and divine loves and uses it to portray one’s love for God as a letter sent with a forwarding address to another human being.

The Goodness of Home

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Marandiuc
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Middle Term ◽  
Human Love ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Theological Argument

The question of what home means and how it relates to subjectivity has fresh urgency in light of pervasive contemporary migration, which ruptures the human self, and painful relational poverty, which characterizes much of modern life. Yet the Augustinian heritage that situates true home and right attachment outside this world has clouded theological conceptualizations of earthly belonging. This book engages this neglected topic and argues for the goodness of home, which it construes relationally rather than spatially. In dialogue with research in the neuroscience of attachment theory and contemporary constructions of the self, the book advances a theological argument for the function of love attachments as sources of subjectivity and enablers of human freedom. The book shows that paradoxically the depth of human belonging—thus, dependence—is directly proportional to the strength of human agency—hence, independence. Building on Søren Kierkegaard’s imagery alongside other sources, the book depicts human love as interwoven with the infinite streams of divine love, forming a sacramental site for God’s presence, and playing a constitutive role in the making of the self. The book portrays the self both as gifted from God in inchoate form and as engaged in continuous, albeit nonlinear becoming via experiences of human love. The Holy Spirit indwells the attachment space between human beings as a middle term preventing its implosion or dissolution and conferring a stability that befits the concept of home. The interstitial space between loving human persons subsists both anthropologically and pneumatologically and generates the self’s home.

Self

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-208
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings

Pascal believes that human beings are in thrall to an uncontrollable self-love, a self-centredness that sets them at odds with their fellow creatures and that is intrinsically unjust. (For this reason he rejects the ethic of honnêteté—politeness, consideration for others—as inadequate.) Self-love involves both the urge to tyrannize over others and the desire for recognition from them. A long fragment on the nature of the self establishes that we know others only through their qualities, and thus that a direct self-to-self relationship is impossible. Love between human beings is intrinsically flawed since no human being can be another’s fulfilment. Various objections to this line of argument are considered (Pascal’s conception of love is a very partial one), and the conclusion is that, powerful though his analysis his, he has not established that the nature of self-love is a further reason for believing in the Fall.

A closer look into alterity: eccentricity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Stanghellini
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Subjectivity

This chapter argues that at the heart of alterity lies a double paradox. First, alterity speaks of eccentricity, of the non-coincidence of the Self with itself. Most of the philosophical anthropologies of the last hundred years emphasize that the phenomenon of eccentricity is indigenous to human existence, and characterize Man as an eccentric being. Fundamental to the understanding of human subjectivity is clarifying the ways self-awareness is structured as an experience inextricably entangled with an experience of a basic otherness. To be a human being is to be in juxtaposition with, and sometimes to feel in opposition to, a set of given involuntary dispositions in front of which we need to voluntarily take a position.

scholarly journals Drive for the divine

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darryl Wooldridge
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Final Word ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Derivatives Of

Although the present article stands alone, it is a continuation of ‘Living in the not-yet’ (published in vol. 71, issue 1 of HTS). Both articles are derivatives of a larger study that discusses God as the centre of an often inarticulate and inchoate but innate human desire and pursuit to enjoy and reflect the divine image (imago Dei) in which every human being was created. The current article sets forth foundational considerations and speaks to the ineffaceable drive within humans to find God. It is a reciprocated drive – a response to God who first sought and continues to seek humans – a correlate and concomitant seeking in response to God. Although surely not the final word, this article discusses God as spirit and spiritual, by whom human beings have been created as imago Dei or God’s self-address, showing God’s heart as toward his creation, and humans most especially. Also discussed here is that humans are destined to join the perichoretic relationship that God has enjoyed from eternity. Moreover, in his ascension and glory, Jesus sends the Spirit of adoption into creation so that human creation might enter this same perichoretic relationship with God.

scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

scholarly journals Absurdism in Atirikta Yatra by K. S. Yatri and The American Dream by Edward Albee

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Tika Data Subedi
Keyword(s):  
American Dream ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Edward Albee ◽  
The Status

The purpose of this work is to study Edward Albee and K. S. Yatri’s approach regarding the status of respective societies of America and Nepal with absurd drama following their agenda. K. S. Yatri and Edward Albee seemed to be influenced by the absurdist mode of drama which concerns much about the modern existence of social human beings. Albee follows absurdist traces in the dramatization of uncertainty, alienation and the question of freedom in The American Dream. His characters do not have fixed identities, and they suffer from their individual problems. The notion of the characters and their activities too are uncertain. In the same way, the ambiguity of existence, whether the characters really are or not, is a problem for the characters in Atirikta Yatra. The characters are based on illusions, and the line between the reality and fantasy is missing. Alienation of the human being from the self and the other is existential theme that K. S. Yatri deals with in Atirikta Yatra. Alienation in the play is caused by the lack of communication, and as a result, the isolated self is entrapped in Yatri’s characters due to their own condition. Freedom becomes a confusing question in his works as it makes the characters anxious while choosing one option among various others on their own, and it renders the characters responsible for their free choices. Though, two texts belong to divergent space however both show how absurdism has affected individuals and society everywhere at present.

scholarly journals Gratitude to God: Jonathan Edwards and the Opening of the Self

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Kyle Strobel
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
Natural Counterpart ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Meaningful Research

Abstract: The study of gratitude has become an increasingly important topic among psychologists to address the nature of human flourishing. Of more recent interest is how gratitude to God specifically functions within an account of human flourishing, with theologians seeking to provide a distinctively Christian account of the nature of gratitude. This article enters into the ongoing conversation by attending to Jonathan Edwards’s (1703-1758) theological anthropology and development of natural and supernatural gratitude. In particular, Edwards’s anthropology includes within it an account of how the self can, and should, enlarge to receive another in love. This “enlargement” is the creaturely mirror of God’s self-giving and is the supernatural response to the creature who has received God’s grace and been infused with divine love. As a supernatural response based on God’s action in the soul, this account of gratitude differs from its natural counterpart. On Edwards’s account, therefore, there is a need to develop studies that differentiate natural and supernatural gratitude. Furthermore, this article ends with a suggestion for a study that could pick up this task based on recent psychological studies that attend to how gratitude affects self-relation. On Edwards’s account of the enlargement of the self, as well as his notion of supernatural gratitude, there is meaningful research to be done on how these can help assess development in the formation of gratitude and human flourishing.

MARCUSE:TECNOLOGIA E LIBERDADE NO MUNDO ADMINISTRADO

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (94) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
João Carlos Lino Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Technological World ◽  
Industrial Societies

Este artigo analisa a tecnologia como um fato político na modernidade. Isto significa que houve um tempo no ocidente em que a técnica, depois de ter se transformado num instrumento fundamental para o domínio da realidade, passou, com o surgimento das sociedades industriais, a se constituir no próprio fim da vida humana. Desta forma, o ser humano vive hoje num mundo produzido pela tecnologia e, neste sentido, perdeu a verdadeira experiência da liberdade tanto individual quanto política.Abstract: This article analyses technology as a political fact in our modern society. There was a time in the western hemisphere when the technology was used as a fundamental method to control reality. However, with the forthcoming industrial societies, it has become the self-objective of human being lives. Therefore, living in this technological world, human beings have lost the full significance of individual as well as political freedom.

Human Agents Made in the Image of God

2018 ◽  
pp. 156-170
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Made In

Theological anthropology addresses two central issues: what it is to be made in the image of God and what it is to be fallen creatures. Human agents are extraordinarily complex creatures; being made in the image of God means that they mirror the agency of God in exercising certain powers in the service of creation. An account of the human being in the image of God requires that we think of the human being as an agent. With that account in place, we can identify the relevant features of the human being as bearer of the divine image. There are deep consequences to this vision of human beings and the loss of this vision tends to lead to unwelcome ontological and moral mistakes.

Desiring and Being Desired by Christ: Sebastian Moore’s Notion of Desire in Dialogue with Ignatian Spirituality

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-164
Author(s):  
Teresa Messias
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Exercises ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Saint Ignatius Of Loyola ◽  
Ignatian Spirituality ◽  
Second Moment ◽  
Ignatius Of Loyola ◽  
Human Desire

This article explores the Christian theological work of Sebastian Moore O.S.B. and his notion of human desire as the existential point of impact or subjective dynamics where a human being may discover a call to communion in Love, a presence of the Creating God himself as hidden source of joy and fulfilment, attracting a person to his or her ultimate meaning. Human desire is, in its deepest reality, the emergent presence of the Self as gift. This gift is attracted, oriented, healed and liberated by the presence of Jesus and the discipleship that he awakes in every one of those to whom he revels himself as the Loving other. Desire is, therefore, considered an ontological and theological via to access and undergo the transformative three-phased process of union to God or divinization, following Jesus’ destiny: an awakening, an emptying and a fulfilling of desire. A conscious and consented transformative union ( théosis) may occur, in desire, between God and a human person. Moore’s Christian spiritual itinerary of transformation of human desire is, in a second moment, paralleled with the experience of prayer and transformation that are the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. We draw attention to the fact that the Christian spiritual itinerary exposed in Moore’s theology of desire is strikingly interlocked with the structure and key theological moments of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document