Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine’s Thought

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Return Journey ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Augustine’s dominant image for the human life is peregrinatio, which signifies at once a journey to the homeland—a pilgrimage—and the condition of exile from the homeland. For Augustine, all human beings are, in the earthly life, exiles from their true homeland: heaven. Only some become pilgrims seeking a way back to the heavenly homeland, a return mediated by the incarnate Christ. Becoming a pilgrim begins with attraction to beauty. The return journey therefore involves formation, both moral and aesthetic, in loving rightly. This image has occasioned a lot of angst in ethical thought in the last century or so. Augustine’s vision of Christian life as a pilgrimage, his critics allege, casts a pall of groaning and longing over this life in favor of happiness in the next. Augustine’s eschatological orientation robs the world of beauty and ethics of urgency. In this book, Stewart-Kroeker sets out to elaborate Augustine’s understanding of moral and aesthetic formation via the pilgrimage image, which she argues reflects a Christological continuity between the earthly journey and the eschatological home that unites love of God and neighbor. From the human desire for beauty to the embodied practice of Christian sacraments, Stewart-Kroeker reveals the integrity of Augustine’s vision of moral and aesthetic formation, which is essentially the ordering of love. Along the way, Stewart-Kroeker develops an Augustinian account of the relationship between beauty and morality.

Gender and the Process of Moral Development in the Thought of Paul Evdokimov

2005 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Klofft
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

[In the writings of Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov (1901–1970), Western theology can find new resources regarding the relationship between gender and moral development. The author presents Evdokimov's unique theological anthropology in the context of both the complicated question of gender, as well as the effects that gender has on the way women and men act. While the goal of the Christian life for both is the transformation of the individual through asceticism, the role each plays in the salvation of the world differs markedly.]

The Sphere of the Human

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-322
Author(s):  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
J. M. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Way

“Centric positionality” is a form of organism-environment relation exhibited by animal forms of life. Human life is characterized not only by centric but also by excentric positionality—that is, the ability to take a position beyond the boundary of one’s own body. Excentric positionality is manifest in: the inner, psychological experience of human beings; the outer, physical being of their bodies and behavior; and the shared, intersubjective world that includes other human beings and is the basis of culture. In each of these three worlds, there is a duality symptomatic of excentric positionality. Three laws characterize excentric positionality: natural artificiality, or the natural need of humans for artificial supplements; mediated immediacy, or the way that contact with the world in human activity, experience, and expression is both transcendent and immanent, both putting humans directly in touch with things and keeping them at a distance; and the utopian standpoint, according to which humans can always take a critical or “negative” position regarding the contents of their experience or their life.

scholarly journals El ejercicio docente y la ética profesional desde la perspectiva de Paulo Freire

2014 ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Antonio Calderón
Keyword(s):  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Paulo Freire ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Education Professional ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

El ejercicio docente y la ética profesional desde la perspectiva de Paulo Freire. The teaching labor and the professional ethics from Paulo Freire’s perspective.  Recibido: 31/07/2013 ∙ Aceptado: 28/08/2013ResumenLa ética es una disciplina que ofrece una perspectiva integral de la conduc­ta, facilitando la comprensión del ser humano sobre su propia realidad, sobre su mundo y la manera en que enfrenta y busca la felicidad. La ética para Freire es la herramienta a través de la cual se puede plantear una reflexión sobre el adecuado comportamiento de las personas; el ámbito profesional no escapa a las consideraciones de la ética porque antes de ser profesional se es persona.Palabras clave: Compromiso - diálogo - crítica - humanismo - profesionalAbstractEthics is a discipline which offers and integrating perspective of behaviour; it facilitates the understanding of human beings on their own realities, the world they live in and the way they look for and face happiness. Freire suggests ethics is also a tool to think about people’s proper behaviour. In consequence, the professional sphere is not away from the scope of ethics as people are human beings before having a certain profession. This article intends to explore the relationship among education, professional ethics in people’s thoughts and the practice of the Brazilian educator.KeyWords: Commitment - dialogue - critical - humanism - professional 

scholarly journals Nature and Culture as Human Spaces

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Thomas Storck
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Philosophy Of Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

Using Tõnu Viik's statement of the relationship between philosophy and culture as a framework, after discussing both nature and world, I investigate how culture affects the ways human beings live in nature and the world, then the implications of living in culture for philosophy and human knowledge, and finally the philosophy of culture, what it is or might be and its place as a focal point for a philosophical understanding of human life and activity

On Power and Time

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 640-652
Author(s):  
Filip Kovacevic
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In this article, the author examines the relationship between power, time, and human reality. Using a novel by the Bosnian writer Meša Selimović as a case study, the author tests two metaphysical claims: power submits to power only, and the passage of time empties the significance of each and every human activity. The author finds that Selimović’s novel confirms both. The conclusion is profoundly pessimistic. The lives of human beings are doubly unhappy: they are spent in protracted struggles for resources and recognition that yield power, and also even the accomplishments of the victorious in these struggles will be erased by the passage of time. However, the understanding of the second claim might retroactively ameliorate the conditions of human life. Yet as evidenced by Selimović’s novel, in the world dominated by power, this does not happen. The case of Šehaga Sočo shows that even the one whose personal experience convinced him of the meaninglessness of it all is unable to break out of the cycle of rivalry and revenge. At his deathbed, he orders the death of his rivals, though he knows that to him dying, it makes no difference whether they live or die. Why not opt for forgiveness? Because, as Selimović emphasizes, power’s insistence on self-perpetuation is illogical, and it is logic that tells us not to engage in meaningless tasks. In other words, human reason is powerless to provide us with a more tolerant world.

scholarly journals Kobieta i jej rola w historii zbawienia według Klemensa Aleksandryjskiego

Vox Patrum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Stanisław Łucarz
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article focuses on the notion of femaleness and its role in the history of salvation in the works of Clement of Alexandria. Although these are not the central themes of his considerations, he reflects on this subject against the back­ground of his magnificent vision of the incarnation of the divine Logos. The be­getting or generating of Logos by Father is the first stage of the incarnation, which is followed by the next stages: the creation of the world and of human beings, the revelation in the Old Testament and – although not directly – in the Greek philosophy. The last stage is the incarnation in Jesus Christ. All this leads towards the divinization and the unity in God. Femaleness in Clement’s work should be considered as a part of cosmic dimensions. For him, men and women are substan­tially – i.e. on the level of their souls – equal, hence in the spiritual and intellectual dimension both sexes are vested with identical dignity and enjoy equal rights. The differences between sexes are located in the body and affect various aspects of human life, mostly biological and reproductive ones, not to mention the family, community and religious reality. In practice, it is the woman who is subordinated to man due to the fact, as Clement holds, that the female body is weaker than the male one, more subjugated to passivity, less perfect and more susceptible to pas­sions. For that reason, on the way to salvation, it is the man who is the head of the woman. However, it is not an absolute subjection. If the woman goes on the way to salvation (a Christian woman), and the man does not, the Lord is the head of the woman (the divine Logos, whom she follows). All these differences resulting from the possession of a body are eliminated in eschatology, in which will be the total equality. On that way to the eschatological fulfillment, the divine Logos is indispensable. He incarnates himself and comes to the world through a woman. He chooses what is weaker in order to reveal His power. This way it is a woman, and not a man, who first experiences His divinizing closeness and action.

Housing Complexes: Redesigning the house of psyche in light of a curious mistranslation of C. G. Jung appropriated by Gaston Bachelard

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Huskinson
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Phenomenological Description ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Complex Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Conceptual Consideration ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Jung's metaphor of house as psyche is often regarded as little more than an arbitrary and reductive ‘diagram’ that imposes structure onto his conception of psyche with its various parts and underpinning libidinal processes. And yet, as this paper argues, the impact and relevance of the architectural metaphor extends beyond a conceptual consideration of psyche into a lived experience of it. It is thus also Jung's phenomenological description of the way human beings dwell and experience their placement or non-placement within the world in which they find themselves. This paper elucidates these different interpretations. First, through Jung's accounts of his ‘dream-house’ in connection with the likely architectural influences of those houses in which he had lived or had designs to live; and second, through an examination of a curious mistranslation of one of Jung's overlooked descriptions of the architectural metaphor found in the celebrated work, La poetique de l'espace (1957)/The poetics of space (1958) by the renowned French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. The metaphorical description under scrutiny is the relationship between cellar and attic rooms, which Jung uses in his essay ‘Allgemeines zur komplextheorie’ (1934)/‘A review of the complex theory’ (1948a) to expound his understanding of the effects of the complex on ego-consciousness. Bachelard's misreading inadvertently reverts the placement of the two rooms, thereby proffering something akin to a ‘topsy-turvy’ house of psyche. The implications of Bachelard's misreading for an understanding of Jungian complex theory is explored, and the wider conceptual and phenomenological implications for the possible redesign or renovation of Jung's metaphor of house as psyche are ascertained.

The Atonement and the Solution to the Problems of Guilt and Shame

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This chapter considers shame in its major varieties and shows that each of these kinds of shame has a defeat in the atonement of Christ. It then considers guilt in all its elements, including the brokenness in the psyche of the wrongdoer and the bad effects on the world resulting from his wrongdoing, and it shows that, on the interpretation of the doctrine of the atonement argued for in this book, the atonement can remedy all human guilt. Consequently, through the atonement of Christ, a person in grace is freed from guilt and reconciled with God and with other human beings as well, and his guilt is defeated in his flourishing. On this interpretation of the doctrine, one can see the way in which the atonement of Christ makes sense as a solution to the main problem that the atonement was meant to remedy.

Can animals sing? On birdsong, music and meaning

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hektor KT Yan
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
A Value ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
To Come ◽  
Factual Issue ◽  
The Way

This article deals with conceptual questions regarding claims to the effect that humans and animals share artistic abilities such as the possession of music. Recent works focusing on animals, from such as Hollis Taylor and Dominique Lestel, are discussed. The attribution of artistic traits in human and animal contexts is examined by highlighting the importance of issues relating to categorization and evaluation in cross-species studies. An analogy between the denial of major attributes to animals and a form of racism is drawn in order to show how questions pertaining to meaning can impact on our understanding of animal abilities. One of the major theses presented is that the question of whether animals possess music cannot be answered by a methodology that is uninformed by the way concepts such as music or art function in the context of human life: the ascription of music to humans or non-humans is a value-laden act rather than a factual issue regarding how to represent an entity. In order to see how humans and animals share a life in common, it is necessary to come to the reflective realization that how human beings understand themselves can impact on their perception and experience of human and non-human animals.

Is God Really in History?

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Frederick Sontag
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.

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