Re-enchanting a Disenchanted Universe – Post Modern Projects in Theologies of Space

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Anthony Balcomb
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The World ◽  
Spiritual Reality

Abstract'Disenchantment' was an expression coined by Max Weber to describe a process whereby the world was rid of all spiritual reality and subjected to the power of the calculating and rational human mind. An enchanted universe was one in which space was presenced with spiritual agency, where things were subjects, not objects, and in which an epistemology of engagement, not disengagement, operated. Disenchantment involved, amongst other things, the emptying of space, the objectification of being, and the linearizing of time. Christian theology from the seventeenth century became associated with a disenchanted, modernizing agenda through early Christian scientists such as Bacon, Newton, and Descartes. While modernity has brought unprecedented levels of supremacy over nature the association of Christian theology with the modern agenda of disenchantment has been questioned in the postmodern context. Theologies of place and space are now being sought that take seriously an agenda that places God and spirituality back in the world and not beyond the world, that emphasizes an organic and not a mechanistic universe, and that resuscitates the notion of agency in the world.

Is there A Place for Historical Criticism?

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The World ◽  
Christian Origins ◽  
Logical Extension

Modern historical criticism of the gospels and Christian origins began in the seventeenth century largely as an attempt to debunk the Christian religion as a pious fraud. The gospels were seen as bits of priestcraft and humbug of a piece with the apocryphal Donation of Constantine. In the few centuries since Reimarus and his critical kin, historical criticism has been embraced and assimilated by many Christian scholars who have seen in it the logical extension of the grammatico-historical method of the Reformers. The new views of New Testament exegesis and of early Christian history are important and well known. Many New Testament scholars would now hold with Schweitzer and Bultmann that Jesus was a preacher of the imminent end of the world. He may have secretly considered himself to be the Messiah, or he may have simply sought to pave the way for another, the apocalyptic Son of Man. After his execution, his disciples' experiences of his resurrection forced on them a conclusion already implicit in his teachings and personal piety: that Jesus was indeed, or had become, the Messiah, and was in fact God's Son. They expected he would soon return as the Son of Man he had predicted.

Bruno, Giordano (1548–1600)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.J. Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
Scientific Worldview ◽  
The Universe

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher of nature and proponent of artificial memory systems who abandoned the Dominican Order and, after a turbulent career in many parts of Europe, was burned to death as a heretic in 1600. Because of his unhappy end, his support for the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis, and his pronounced anti-Aristotelianism, Bruno has often been hailed as the proponent of a scientific worldview against supposed medieval obscurantism. In fact, he is better interpreted in terms of Neoplatonism and, to a lesser extent, Hermeticism (also called Hermetism). Several of Bruno’s later works were devoted to magic; and magic may play some role in his many books on the art of memory. His best-known works are the Italian dialogues he wrote while in England. In these Bruno describes the universe as an animate and infinitely extended unity containing innumerable worlds, each like a great animal with a life of its own. His support of Copernicus in La Cena de le ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper) was related to his belief that a living earth must move, and he specifically rejected any appeal to mere mathematics to prove cosmological hypotheses. His view that the physical world was a union of two substances, Matter and Form, had the consequence that apparent individuals were merely collections of accidents. He identified Form with the World-Soul, but although he saw the universe as permeated by divinity, he also believed in a transcendent God, inaccessible to the human mind. Despite some obvious parallels with both Spinoza and Leibniz, Bruno seems not to have had much direct influence on seventeenth-century thinkers.

Staging the World: The Devils as Theatrum Mundi

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-514
Author(s):  
Christophe Van Eecke
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Tidal Wave ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
Political Allegory ◽  
The World

When Ken Russell's film The Devils was released in 1971 it generated a tidal wave of adverse criticism. The film tells the story of a libertine priest, Grandier, who was burnt at the stake for witchcraft in the French city of Loudun in the early seventeenth century. Because of its extended scenes of sexual hysteria among cloistered nuns, the film soon acquired a reputation for scandal and outrage. This has obscured the very serious political issues that the film addresses. This article argues that The Devils should be read primarily as a political allegory. It shows that the film is structured as a theatrum mundi, which is the allegorical trope of the world as a stage. Rather than as a conventional recreation of historical events (in the tradition of the costume film), Russell treats the trial against Grandier as a comment on the nature of power and politics in general. This is not only reflected in the overall allegorical structure of the theatrum mundi, but also in the use of the film's highly modernist (and therefore timeless) sets, in Russell's use of the mise-en-abyme (a self-reflexive embedded play) and in the introduction of a number of burlesque sequences, all of which are geared towards achieving the film's allegorical import.

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

Dreams Give Birth to Reality”. Engraving Austroseraphicum Coelum as an Attempt to Create a New Reality by the Spanish Habsburgs Dynastic Propaganda / Sny rodzą rzeczywistość…”. Grafika Austroseraphicum Coelum jako próba kreowania nowej rzeczywistości za pomocą propagandy dynastycznej Habsburgów hiszpańskich

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kurowiak
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
General Condition ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Mission Of God ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

AbstractAs a work of propaganda, graphics Austroseraphicum Coelum Paulus Pontius should create a new reality, make appearances. The main impression while seeing the graphics is the admiration for the power of Habsburgs, which interacts with the power of the Mother of God. She, in turn, refers the viewer to God, as well as Franciscans placed on the graphic, they become a symbol of the Church. This is a starting point for further interpretation of the drawing. By the presence of certain characters, allegories, symbols, we can see references to a particular political situation in the Netherlands - the war with the northern provinces of Spain. The message of the graphic is: the Spanish Habsburgs, commissioned by the mission of God, they are able to fight all of the enemies, especially Protestants, with the help of Immaculate and the Franciscans. The main aim of the graphic is to convince the viewer that this will happen and to create in his mind a vision of the new reality. But Spain was in the seventeenth century nothing but a shadow of former itself (in the time of Philip IV the general condition of Spain get worse). That was the reason why they wanted to hold the belief that the empire continues unwavering. The form of this work (graphics), also allowed to export them around the world, and the ambiguity of the symbolic system, its contents relate to different contexts, and as a result, the Habsburgs, not only Spanish, they could promote their strength everywhere. Therefore it was used very well as a single work of propaganda, as well as a part of a broader campaign

EDUCATION – RETURN TO REALITY

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-130
Author(s):  
Alexander Lukankin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Formal Method ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Production Sector ◽  
The World ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
Natural Science Education ◽  
Technical Professions

The post-socialist transformation of general and vocational education system has led to the loss of many positive gains that were already achieved earlier. The polytechnic character of our school and its practice-oriented foundations, based on a reasonable combination of basic education and professional and applied training, were seriously undermined. Modern Russian secondary schools have become something like pre-revolutionary classical high schools, without taking into account the significant fact that in pre-Soviet Russia, along with high schools, there was a wide network of real schools. They focused students on further mastering technical professions and active participation in the production sector of the country. Today we are witnessing a global revolution in the spiritual sphere, aimed at changing the very essence of a man. Note that natural science education is valuable not only for its formal method, but also for providing the basis for a correct understanding of the world. It fosters independence of thought and distrust of other people’s words and authorities. This is the best protection of the human mind from all sorts of superstitions delusions and mysticism.

Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
The World ◽  
Empirical Realism

This chapter presents a straightforward structural description of Immanuel Kant’s conception of what the transcendental deduction is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. The ‘deduction’ Kant thinks is needed for understanding the human mind would establish and explain our ‘right’ or ‘entitlement’ to something we seem to possess and employ in ‘the highly complicated web of human knowledge’. This is: experience, concepts, and principles. The chapter explains the point and strategy of the ‘deduction’ as Kant understands it, as well as the demanding conditions of its success, without entering into complexities of interpretation or critical assessment of the degree of success actually achieved. It also analyses Kant’s arguments regarding a priori concepts as well as a posteriori knowledge of the world around us, along with his claim that our position in the world must be understood as ‘empirical realism’.

Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?

2006 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Calvin Stapert
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The World

The reception of Mozart's music is rife with extravagant claims that connect it to the divine and see it as a source of hope and comfort. Although that aspect of Mozart reception is still alive and well, recent demystification projects have tried to reduce his music to “social construction.” Christian theology goes some distance with those projects, but it also gives reason to believe that human artifacts can give glimpses of transcendence and reason for hope. Further, it guides our response to them between the dangers of idolatry and ingratitude.

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