James Frederick Ferrier

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-228
Author(s):  
W. J. Mander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Absolute Idealism

Following a general discussion of how idealism relates to both agnosticism and empiricism, its origin in nineteenth-century British philosophy are explored through consideration of how Ferrier reacted to the philosophy of William Hamilton. Insisting that the minimal epistemic unit is always subject-plus-some-object, Ferrier challenged agnosticism by claiming that we could only be ignorant of what we might at some point know, and this challenge is examined by means of a detailed exploration of his conceptions of knowledge, ignorance and the contradictory, before it is explained how this stance leads to a form of absolute idealism and belief in the existence of God. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Ferrier’s influence on the British Idealists.

Promise and Peril

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Michael Shea
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Faith And Reason

This chapter undertakes a comparison of John Henry Newman’s reflections on faith and reason with those of his French contemporary, Louis Bautain, and the German writer, Georg Hermes. Both writers faced scrutiny from ecclesiastical authorities on the issue of faith and reason in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The analysis shows that Newman shared affinities with both thinkers on the level of technical language and teachings regarding faith and reason. Newman’s view of implicit reason was at times strikingly similar to Bautain’s notion of raison, and Newman’s passing statements on proofs for the existence of God and use of Butler’s language of probability bore close and sometimes misleading resemblances to Hermes’s notion of Wahrscheinlichkeit. There were also key differences between Newman and these writers, which are shown in later chapters to have played a role in the early reception of the Essay on Development.

Religion, Gender Ideology, and the Training of Female Public Elementary School Teachers in Nineteenth Century Chile

2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gertrude Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
National Integration ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modern Thinking

After only five days she felt like a different person, so much unpicked and resown and made over to a different pattern…. Catholicism isn’t a religion, it’s a nationality. In her four years at [school], it [religion] had grown into every fiber of her nature; she could not eat or sleep or read or play without relating every action to her secret life as a Christian and a Catholic. She rejoiced in it and rebelled against it. She tried to imagine what life would be like without it; how she would feel if she were a savage blessedly ignorant of the very existence of god. But it was as impossible as imagining death or madness or blindness. Wherever she looked, it loomed in the background … the fortress of God, the house on the rock.Education became a responsibility of the state in Chile soon after independence. Scholarship has usually linked the expansion of public primary education to the broader liberal agenda of the secularization of society through the introduction of modern thinking, while the common curriculum became a tool of national integration.

PARSING GOD: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE MEANING OF WORDS AND METAPHORS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTHERN AFRICA

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM H. WORGER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
National Character ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Literal Truth ◽  
The World

During the first half of the nineteenth century, European missionaries in southern Africa sought to establish their intellectual and moral authority over Africans and propagate the tenets of Christianity. Men like Jacob Döhne, Robert Moffat, John Colenso, Henry Callaway and others viewed a knowledge of African languages as key to disclosing ‘the secrets of national character’, to the translation and transmittal of ideas about the Christian ‘God’, and to accepting the ‘literal truth’ of the Bible. Africans, especially the Zulu king, Dingane, disputed these teachings in discussions about the existence of God, suitable indigenous names for such a being (including uThixo, modimo, and unkulunkulu), and his attributes (all-powerful, or merely old), arguing for the significance of metaphor rather than literalness in understanding the world.

Green and Sidgwick

2021 ◽  
pp. 440-481
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Final Section ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Henry Sidgwick ◽  
Late Modern

The end of the nineteenth century saw a rethinking of German idealism led by Thomas Hill Green, and a refinement of utilitarianism by Henry Sidgwick. This chapter examines their restatements of the two great late modern syntheses: absolute idealism and utilitarian liberalism. For both, the crisis of religion was fundamental. In Green’s case this meant a return to absolute idealism, with religion at its core, and a new application to the politics of liberalism. In Sidgwick’s case it led to an implicit nihilism. Sidgwick’s analysis of normative ‘intuition’ is discussed, his thesis of the dualism of practical reason is examined, and it is pointed out that on his own penetrating account of normative warrant, neither egoism nor utilitarianism is warranted. The final section of the chapter reconsiders the role of sentiment, will, and reason as bases of impartiality.

The Scottish Idealists: Absolute Idealism and Personal Idealism

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
Jennifer Keefe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
British Idealism

From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century British Idealism was a leading school of philosophical thought and the Scottish Idealists made important contributions to this philosophical school. In Scotland, there were two types of post-Hegelian idealism: Absolute Idealism and Personal Idealism. This article will show the ways in which these philosophical systems arose by focusing on their leading representatives: Edward Caird and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison.

Religion, Gender Ideology, and the Training of Female Public Elementary School Teachers in Nineteenth Century Chile

2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (02) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gertrude Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
National Integration ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modern Thinking

After only five days she felt like a different person, so much unpicked and resown and made over to a different pattern…. Catholicism isn’t a religion, it’s a nationality. In her four years at [school], it [religion] had grown into every fiber of her nature; she could not eat or sleep or read or play without relating every action to her secret life as a Christian and a Catholic. She rejoiced in it and rebelled against it. She tried to imagine what life would be like without it; how she would feel if she were a savage blessedly ignorant of the very existence of god. But it was as impossible as imagining death or madness or blindness. Wherever she looked, it loomed in the background … the fortress of God, the house on the rock. Education became a responsibility of the state in Chile soon after independence. Scholarship has usually linked the expansion of public primary education to the broader liberal agenda of the secularization of society through the introduction of modern thinking, while the common curriculum became a tool of national integration.

A System of Classical Atheism

1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. B. Holland
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Bachelor Of Arts ◽  
Theistic Proofs

Some years ago, the editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology asked me to review what was, to me, an interesting and important book which amounted to a systematic attack on the existence of God, at any rate on the validity of the traditional theistic proofs of classical and modern systematic theology. In addition, such other bases of belief in God as authority revelation, historical event, and religious experience were treated, with the aim of showing that they cannot substitute for a failed philosophical theism. However, some mental block prevented me from completing the review proper. The root of the matter was that, in my Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney University, my philosophical course had involved a system of atheism which I have recognised ever since to be more rigorous and cogent than any others, and I am not alone in this feeling. In particular, I felt that Professor Flew was in a stronger position than most philosophers of the prevailing modern British schools, but that this was because he approximated more than most to what I had learnt at Sydney, and that a still further approximation would tighten his case still more. The professor in question, the late John Anderson, was a Clydesider whose family background was the familiar Leftwing agnosticism and whose training was Absolute Idealism; in his later development, he reacted against both these elements, but his agnosticism hardened into a positive atheism.

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