scholarly journals Watershed or Cul-de-Sac? Disputes in the Theological Reception of Kant’s Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 121-155
Author(s):  
Maureen Junker-Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Trinity

Kant’s turn to the subject has changed the epistemological conditions for theology. Four intellectual backgrounds of objections are examined: an Aristotelian and Thomistic teleological order of nature (1); Augustinianism based on original sin in which human agency is completely attributed to God’s grace (2); a Hegelian critique of the deontological conception of an “unconditional ought” which also puts Kant’s postulate of the existence of God into question (3); the combination in Radical Orthodoxy of a postmodern critique of the subject, an Augustinian view of human nature, and a monistic understanding of the Trinity (4). Their different diagnoses why Kant’s work constitutes a cul-de-sac are contrasted with theological positions that welcome it as a watershed: its move from ontology to human subjectivity; from a biologically transmitted inescapable sin to a freedom for good and evil; from a strict reciprocity to an unlimited scope of ethics that is faced with the question of meaning; and from condemning the secular as “heretical” to defining it as the genuine space of the free human counterparts created by God, according to Duns Scotus’s late medieval theology which anticipates Kant’s concept of autonomy. The standard by which theologies are judged is how they do justice to the New Testament’s message of salvation by Jesus Christ. The Conclusion argues that Kant’s turn to freedom in its unconditionality and finitude has opened up a thought form in which the truth of the Gospel finds more adequate categories of understanding than in those of earlier eras.

scholarly journals An Intertextual Discourse on Sin and Salvation: John Donne's Sermon on Psalm 51

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Chanita Goodblatt
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
John Donne ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
God's Grace

John Donne as preacher invokes the "Protestant paradigm of salvation," stressing the marring of human nature by Original Sin and the dependence upon God's grace for spiritual reatoration. This paradigm informs his participation in the intertextual discourse on sin and salvation begun by the biblical narrative of David and Bathsheba (II Samuel 11 and 12), and continued by exegetical texts. Donne's sermon on Psalm 51 reveals how he translates the biblical narrative on adultery and murder into an exhortation on the blinded state of the post-Fall Christian.

scholarly journals Okruchy biblijne Jerzego Ficowskiego

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 210-223
Author(s):  
Jakub Kozaczewski
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Good And Evil

Jerzy Ficowski’s biblical fragments The article is a general and panoramic attempt at defining the basic forms of the presence of Bible in Jerzy Ficowski’s poetry. It was estblished that biblical themes are not central elements of the poetic world of the author of Inicjał. Nevertheless, they are constantly present throughout his works. The poet most often refers to the Old Testament. In particular, Ficowski is almost obsessively focused on the motif of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and original sin. The theme is present in a number of poems written during the period of a couple decades. Those poems are the subject of a more detailed analysis and interpretation of the present article.Key words: Jerzy Ficowski; contemporary Polish poetry; biblical inspirations in literature;

scholarly journals Invalid Baptismal Formulas: A Critical View on a Current Catholic Concern

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Judith Hahn
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Critical View ◽  
The Subject ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Alternative Reading ◽  
A Current

In 2008 and 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published two responses to questions posed regarding the validity of modified baptismal formulas. When administering baptism, some Catholic ministers had altered the prescribed formula with regard to the naming of the Trinity and with regard to the declarative introduction of the formula (ie ‘We baptise you …’ instead of ‘I baptise you …’). The Congregation dismissed all of these formulas as invalidating baptism and demanded that individuals baptised with these formulas be baptised again. In explaining its 2020 response the Congregation referred to Thomas Aquinas, who addressed these and similar issues in his sacramental theology. This reference is evidently due to Aquinas’ pioneering thoughts on the issue. However, in studying Aquinas’ work on the subject it is surprising to find that they reveal a far less literalist approach than the Congregation suggests. In fact, his considerations point at an alternative reading, namely that sacramental formulas should be understood as acts of communication which, based on the ministers’ intention of doing what the Church does, aim at communicating God's grace to the receivers in an understandable way.

Clement of Alexandria: the Emergence of Christian Subjectivity

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Аркадий Матвеевич Шуфрин ◽  
И. В. Пашков
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Formula One ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Good And Evil

В статье прослеживается возникновение первого в христианской мысли понимания свободы как основания человеческой субъектности. Оно связано с именем Климента Александрийского. Для этого вначале рассматривается, как понималась свобода сщмч. Иринеем Лионским. Доказывается, что его понимание свободы оставалось в рамках ближневосточного менталитета, примером чего является его трактовка библейской истории о преслушании прародителей, в которой свобода представлена дидактически, как способность человека выбирать между добром и злом. С Климента Александрийского начинается усвоение христианской мыслью греческого философского понимания человеческой природы, согласно которому человек в принципе не способен выбрать то, что не кажется ему благом для него самого. В соответствии с этим пониманием человеческой природы как изначально «эгоистичной», человеческая свобода понимается как стремление к истинному благу (в отличие от блага лишь кажущегося): быть свободным значит служить поистине себе. Таким образом, свобода уже предполагает самоотношение, которое конститутивно для «субъекта» (или «Я») в нашем современном понимании. Для Климента обожение человека не может быть достигнуто одними только его усилиями, но является делом Бога, относящегося к Себе через христианина, в котором Он пребывает. The article traces back to Clement of Alexandria the first emergence of the understanding of freedom as the ground of human subjectivity in Christian thought. Up to Irenaeus, Christian understanding of freedom remained within the framework of the Middle Eastern mentality as exemplified by the Biblical story of the Ancestors’ disobedience, where freedom is pedagogically presented as one’s ability to choose between good and evil. With Clement of Alexandria, Christian thought first appropriates the Greek philosophical understanding of human nature, according to which one is in principle unable to choose whatever does not appear to one as good for him or her. Correlatively to this understanding of human nature as inherently «selfish», human freedom is understood as pursuing one’s true good (as distinguished from a merely apparent one): to be free is to truly serve oneself. Thus freedom already implies a self-relation, which is constitutive of the «subject» (or «I») in our modern sense. Michel Foucault had brought attention to self-forming ascetic practices developed in Late Antiquity within the framework of philosophy understood as a «way of life» (rather than a mere theorizing). In Middle Platonism, such practices aimed at purifying one’s mind so as to enable it to see one’s true good in one’s assimilation to God as much as possible. For Clement, one’s deification cannot be achieved by just one’s own efforts but is a work of God relating to Himself through a Christian in whom He dwells, along the lines of Paul’s words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. This theocentric understanding of human subjectivity was then further developed in Byzantine patristic tradition, resulting, in particular, in Maxim the Confessor’s famous formula «One energy of God and the saints».

Human Nature from a Comparative Psychological Perspective

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Mustapha Achoui
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Islamic Psychology

This paper seeks to advance an understanding of Human Naturethrough Islamic Sources. The paper also seeks to adopt a self-consciouslycomparative approach to psychology, comparing Islamic perspectivewith Western views. The author explores Islamic views on thethree dimensions of psychology - the spiritual, the physiological andthe behavioral. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for atheoretical basis to define the psychological vision of human nature andto identify the subject matter of psychology within Islamic framework.Psychology cannot be separated from religious, philosophical andmoral issues, the paper insists, therefore it is important that they be integratedin the efforts to articulate Islamic psychology.

An Islamic Framework for Employer-Employee Relationships

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ramzan Akhtar
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Wage Structure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Employee Relationships ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Islamic Institutions

IntroductionIslamic teachings envisage a balanced society achieved through thefunctioning of Islamic institutions. This paper visualizes three main institutions:ukhiwah, ‘adl, and ihsan. Ukhuwah (brotherhood) promotes the bonds ofbrotherhood, and ‘adl (justice) enforces a system of individual and socialobligations. Islam stresses the importance of meeting one’s obligations, becauseeach obligation has its corresponding right. Thus, an individual’s effort to meethidher obligations leads to the fulfillment of everyone’s rights. This does notmean that Islam forbids one from demanding hidher rights, even though thisdemand does pose a problem related to human nature: an individual wants his/herrights and also some part of another person’s rights. Therefore, one group’sdemand for its rights tends to encroach upon the rights of another group, whichcauses social friction and disorder. The institution of ihsan (benevolence) goesone step further: it exhorts individuals to forego their rights for the sake of others,which is considered an act of piety.This paper will study employer-employee relationships in the light of thethree institutions mentioned above. A framework for conducting employer-employeerelationships is formulated and is then used to determine, from theIslamic point of view, the proper wages. The findings of this paper show thatan economically efficient and equitable wage structure can evolve within thisframework and that such a wage structure would promote the parties’ mutualrelationships which, in turn, would lead to industrial peace.The body of the paper is organized as follows: a review of the existingliterature on the subject, the development of an Islamic framework for employer-employeerelationships, a discussion of the Islamic approach to wagecompensation, and some concluding remarks ...

The economics of escalation

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-140
Author(s):  
Fabio D’Orlando ◽  
Sharon Ricciotti
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Budget Constraint ◽  
Theoretical Treatment ◽  
Jel Codes ◽  
Innate Behavior ◽  
Hedonic Adaptation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Subjective Scale ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Positional Effects

Escalation is a key characteristic of many consumption behaviors that has not received theoretical attention. This paper aims to propose both a definition and a theoretical treatment of escalation in consumption. We define escalation as a subject’s attempt to obtain “more” or engage in consumption behaviors that are “more intense” on a measurable, quantitative or qualitative, objective or subjective, scale (more difficult ski slopes, stronger drugs, harder sex, better restaurants etc.), even if the subject preferred less intense consumption behaviors in the past. Further, this evolution in behavior also occurs if the budget constraint does not change. We will find endogenous and exogenous theoretical microfoundations for escalation in models of hedonic adaptation, desire for novelty, acquisition of consumption skills, rising aspirations, positional effects, and envy. However, we will also discuss the possibility that the tendency to escalate is a specific innate behavior inherent to human nature. Finally, we will propose a preliminary theoretical formalization of such behavior and indicate the possible implications of taking escalation into adequate consideration. JEL codes: B52, D11, D90, D91, I31

The Affinities Between J.-K. Huysmans and the “Rosicrucian” Stories of W. B. Yeats

PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 464-469
Author(s):  
Michael Fixler
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
The Self ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Group ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Guardian ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Devil

In march of 1890, after a preparatory experience with Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, W. B. Yeats joined the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn. Like Joris-Karl Huysmans, who at about this time became interested in the activities of the French counterpart of the Golden Dawn, “Le Grand Ordre Kabbalistique du Rose Croix,” Yeats's interests were largely aroused by the willingness of the members of the group to experiment with magical practices. Where Yeats, however, committed himself by oaths and rituals to a cult which pretended to be the guardian of ancient insights into the super-sensory life, Huysmans stood apart, first skeptical, then fascinated, and finally outraged. The eccentric MacGregor Mathers headed the London Rosicrucians, and he and his French wife, the sister of Henri Bergson, were acquainted with all the principal figures involved with the slightly older French order. The latter had been founded in 1888 by Sâr Joséphin Péladan and the self-styled nobleman Stanislas de Guaita. The French group existed on the shady fringe of clerical politics in the hostile rationalism of the early Third Republic, and it was in search of documentary material for a novel about this fantastic circle of clerical Royalists that Huysmans was first drawn to them. Like Saul who only sought lost asses, this quest led him, as he came to believe, to God's grace.Before he became a Catholic Huysmans was, in effect, something of a Manichean. As Yeats did, he sought experimental evidence to confirm the existence of opposing forces of good and evil, and when he had this evidence he rejected forcefully the Devil through whom he had found God. Yeats was more equivocal. The inversion of values in Huysmans' A rebours, and of ritual in his Là-bas never confounded or reconciled the opposition of good and evil and of false and true worship, as Yeats tried to do in his Rosicrucian stories of 1896. But then Huysmans was never so deeply involved as Yeats in constructing out of the farrago of late nineteenth-century occult beliefs a systematic basis for his life. The Rosicrucian Golden Dawn did provide the beginnings for such a systematic basis, and in his three stories of 1896, “The Tables of the Law,” “Rosa Alchemica,” and “The Adoration of the Magi,” Yeats draws on the beliefs and rituals of his cult. It seems to me that there are elements in the first two of these Rosicrucian stories which have curious affinities to the writings of Huysmans, and these become significant in the context of other relations between the two writers.

The argument from souls to God

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-305
Author(s):  
RICHARD SWINBURNE
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Good Argument ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
Universal Properties ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Enormous Number

AbstractHumans are pure mental substances, that is essentially souls, who have a rich mental life of sensations, thoughts, intentions, and other pure mental events, largely caused by and sometimes causing events in their brains and so in their bodies. God has reason to create humans because humans have a kind of goodness, the ability to choose between good and evil, which God himself does not have. The existence of these causal connections between mental events and brain events requires an enormous number of separate psychophysical laws. It is most improbable that there would be such laws if God had not made them. Each soul has a thisness; it is the particular soul it is quite independently of its mental properties and bodily connections. So no scientific law, concerned only with relations between substances in virtue of their universal properties, could explain why God created this soul rather than that possible soul, and connected it to this body. Yet a rational person often has to choose between equally good alternatives on non-rational grounds; and so there is nothing puzzling about God choosing to create this soul rather than that possible soul. Hence the existence of souls provides a good argument for the existence of God.

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