Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 413-432
Author(s):  
Han-luen Kantzer Komline
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Long Line ◽  
The Will ◽  
Western Intellectual

The conclusion comments briefly on the concrete images Augustine uses to represent the will in its various permutations, the matter of defining the Augustinian will, and the contested issue of how Augustine’s theology of the will situates him in the Western intellectual tradition. It addresses the key sources for Augustine’s thinking. These include philosophy but also, first and foremost, the Christian scriptures, and a long line of earlier Christian reflection on human freedom and will, running from Origen to Cyprian and Ambrose. The latter two thinkers supplied key building blocks for the Augustinian will. The originality of Augustine’s thinking on the will rests upon the theological differentiation of his approach, the centrality of divine action in making human willing what it is, and the link he establishes between willing and loving, between the will and the heart.

Moderation and al-Ghazali in Turkey

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-43
Author(s):  
Taraneh Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Western Intellectual ◽  
Freedom Of Thought ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Intellectual Independence

Turkish theology faculties are an important but understudied source of moderate Muslim responses to the challenges of modernity. Although it is strongly associated with questions of such Enlightenment values as tolerance and freedom of thought, modernity is also tied to skepticism, atheism, and pluralism. Thus one way to examine whether the label of “moderate” applies to a given case is to examine how such a position reflects both the positive values of modernity in addition to how it addresses modernity’s challenges. This paper deals with the resources for religious moderation found in the thought of al-Ghazali and how they are used and analyzed in modern Turkish theology faculties. By focusing on two recent works by Turkish theologians Mehmet Bayrakdar and Adnan Aslan, this paper explores skepticism, atheism, and religious pluralism. I argue that not only are both thinkers “moderate,” but that they also engage this label by using their own theological interests and interpretations of al-Ghazali. Both theologians were trained in Turkish theology faculties and did significant graduate study in Europe. Their work reflects an active engagement with the western intellectual tradition. Al-Ghazali plays a crucial – but not final – role in each of their responses to modernity and the western intellectual tradition. For Bayrakdar he functions as a symbol of Muslim intellectual independence, whereas for Aslan he serves as a fundamental resource for making sense of the religious “other.” Thus, a case is presented for the increasing relevance of Turkish theological responses to debates outside Turkey.

Berkeley and Malebranche on Human Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-177
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Will ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Order Variety

For Berkeley, I am not a substance who just happens to associate ideas; rather, I am the differentiation and association of those ideas, the will that there be such an order, variety, and comprehension. In creating minds, God creates an infinity of active principles in terms of which objects are intentionally identified in virtue of actions for which we are justifiably held responsible. As Malebranche suggests, God impels us toward the good in general, but we fixate on particular goods. For both thinkers, we need to see how things exhibit God’s grandeur in being related in infinite ways. In this way, we are freed to identify all things as purposive and harmonious.

Freedom and Personality

Philosophy ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 259-280
Author(s):  
A. E. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Practical Situation ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Speculative Hypothesis

Is it possible to say anything on the well-worn theme of human freedom or unfreedom which has not been ahready better said by someone else before us? It may be doubted; yet it is always worth while to see whether we cannot at least set what is perhaps already familiar to us in a fresh light and so come to a clearer comprehension of our own meaning. This, at any rate, is all that will be attempted in these pages; I have spoken in an earlier essay of the “practical situation” in which we find ourselves whenever we have to make a decision as involving indetermination, and my purpose is simply to make it plainer to myself, and so incidentally perhaps to a reader, what I mean by such an expression. I shall start, then, by adopting what we may perhaps agree to call a phenomenological attitude to the subject; that is, I will try to describe the facts in a way which anyone who recalls occasions when he has been driven to take a decision will recognize as faithful to his experience, without imparting into the description any element of explanatory speculative hypothesis. The description is meant to be one which will be admitted to be true to the “appearances,” independently of any theory about the “freedom of the will”—to describe correctly that which it is the object of all such theories to explain.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document