scholarly journals Religious feeling and authenticity: Dialogues between William James and Bernard Lonergan

XLinguae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-74
Author(s):  
Toan Dang Ngo ◽  
Nikolay A. Mashkin ◽  
Valeria L. Zakharova ◽  
Olga V. Popova ◽  
Larisa Lutskovskaia
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
William James ◽  
Psychology Of Religion ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Religious Feeling ◽  
Christian Theologian

The paper analyzes the tricky phenomenon of religious feelings related to the question of authenticity. The challenge to describe and make sense of this elusive relationship, providing one exists at all, becomes clearer against the background of two important figures dealing with the psychology of religion – William James (primarily a psychologist) and Bernard Lonergan (primarily a theologian). While James was a naturalist psychologist who put his study on a background of human nature and followed academic scientific discipline, Lonergan was a Christian theologian who set the goal for his whole system not on the level of cognition but on the transcending dimension of being-in-love with God. They both avoided the extremes of their positions and reached out to a more balanced way of understanding religion in its complexity and sometimes ambiguous significance in the lives of human moral subjects.

Bernard Lonergan e a Probabilidade Emergente

2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 1727-1742
Author(s):  
Mendo Castro Henriques
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Heuristic Model ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Generalized Probability ◽  
The Way

In Insight, an essay on human understanding, (1957, 1st edition) Lonergan presents a heuristic model of emerging probability in order to define, explain and extract norms from the dynamism common to all nature, including human nature, a dynamism that mirrors the reality of intellection. Continuity between different levels of nature discloses a directed, upward, but indeterminate dynamism of the emerging generalized probability. In addition to the ethical consequences that he elaborates, Lonergan remains in an open hermeneutic framework, beyond being proportionate to discursive reason; he opens the way for a surprising final manifestation of this universal dynamism through what he calls transcendent conjugated forms of generalized probability emerging – faith, hope and charity – that are proposed to human freedom.

George Fox as a Mystic

1913 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-59
Author(s):  
Josiah Royce
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
William James ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
Ultimate Result ◽  
George Fox

This paper is but a fragmentary contribution to that study of the “Varieties of Religious Experience” which William James has so significantly brought to the attention of students of human nature. I propose to sketch some personal peculiarities of the founder of Quakerism, George Fox, and in the end to show what place was filled in his life by what may be called his experiences as a mystic. Every one knows that the typical Quakers have made prominent amongst their spiritual exercises what they call “silent worship” as conducted in their meetings, and that they have held that this “silent worship” often brings the worshipper under the direct influence of the movings of the Divine Spirit. I have here no concern with any question as to the truth or as to the ultimate merits of this or of any other tenet of George Fox or of his followers. I intend simply to show the place that the experiences of silent worship occupied in the mental life of Fox himself, and why he found this form of what is technically called mysticism a valuable feature of his religious consciousness. This study will bring us into somewhat closer contact with the mental complications of a remarkable personality—a personality in which the normal and the abnormal were in a very interesting way united. We shall see how certain tendencies that, in another context, would have proved highly dangerous to the sanity of their possessor were so combined in Fox that the ultimate result was prevailingly good, both for himself and for his environment. Religious history contains many instances where men whose mental life showed numerous abnormal traits still were so constituted that they retained their essential self-control and accomplished a great work. The study of Fox presents one more such instance, and may also possess genuine psychological interest.Since my discussion deals with Fox as a mystic, I shall first have to explain what one technically means by mysticism in religion. Then I shall have to show that Fox had many traits which were not those of the typical mystic. And, finally, I shall try to point out what part Fox's mystical tendencies played in determining certain aspects of his mind and of his career.

Pragmatic Humanism and the Posthumanist Challenge: Between Biocentrism and the New Human Being

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Ana Honnacker
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
William James ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Human Potentials

Humanism is charged with fostering a harmful anthropocentrism that has led to the exploitation of non-human beings and the environment. Posthumanist and transhumanist ideas prominently aim at rethinking our self-understanding and human-nature relations. Yet these approaches turn out to be flawed when it comes to addressing the challenges of the “age of the humanity”, the Anthropocene. Whereas posthumanism fails in acknowledging the exceptional role of human beings with regard to political agency and responsibility, transhumanism overemphasizes human capabilities of controlling nature and only deepens the human-nature dualism. Therefore, a critical and humble version of humanism is suggested as a viable alternative. Drawing on pragmatist thinkers William James and F.C.S. Schiller, a resource for de-centering the human being is provided that critically reflects our role in the larger ecosystem and underlines human potentials as well as human responsibilities.

scholarly journals A Sketch on Daisaku Ikeda as a Jamesian Psychologist of Religion

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 607
Author(s):  
Kim
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Psychology Of Religion ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
Secular World ◽  
The Arts

This essay attempts to determine whether Daisaku Ikeda can be seen as a Jamesian psychologist of religion. Concerning the development of this essay, it first focuses on a common concern that exists if we look at the work of William James and the Psychology of Religion in terms of how it exists as a distinct movement and how it is related to Ikeda’s perception of religion within a secular world. Next, this essay articulates his notion of self and the role of mediating symbols as this exists, especially in religion, in discourse, and in the arts in correspondence and relation to James’ Psychology of Religion. Finally, this essay critically raises questions that point to further developments as regards the thesis of this article.

scholarly journals JUNG AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH

2018 ◽  
pp. 58-82
Author(s):  
Matei Iagher
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Psychology Of Religion ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Science Of Religion

This paper aims to position Jung’s psychology of religion in the context of the development of the study of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that Jung’s psychology of religion represents a synthesis between the ‘science of religion’ tradition, put forward by luminaries such as Max Müller and Cornelis Petrus Tiele, and the psychology of religion that Jung encountered in the works of his two intellectual masters, Théodore Flournoy and William James. KEYWORDS C.G. Jung, psychology of religion, science of religion, Max Müller, William James

Are There Two Consciousnesses in Christ? Transposing the Secondary Act of Existence

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-168
Author(s):  
Robert M. Doran
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Ontological Ground ◽  
In Christ

Bernard Lonergan has proposed an original thesis concerning two consciousnesses, divine and human, on the part of the incarnate Word Jesus of Nazareth. But he has not specified how these are related to each other precisely as consciousnesses. He has also retrieved from Aquinas the notion of a secondary act of existence bestowed on the assumed human nature of Christ. The article draws on but also modifies Hans Urs von Balthasar’s correlation of person and mission as a way of transposing the secondary act of existence into the condition of possibility, or ontological ground, of Jesus’ mission consciousness, and then uses this transposition to begin to answer the question of how the divine and human consciousnesses are related to each other.

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