The Spiritual Exercises of John Rawls

In this article I interpret John Rawls’s concept of the original position as a spiritual exercise. In addition to the standard interpretation of the original position as an expository device to select principles of justice for the fundamental institutions of society, I argue that Rawls also envisages it as a “spiritual exercise”: a voluntary personal practice intended to bring about a transformation of the self. To make this argument, I draw on the work of Pierre Hadot, a philosopher and classicist, who introduced the idea of spiritual exercises as central to ancient and modern conceptions of philosophy. By reading Rawls alongside Hadot, this article portrays Rawls as a thinker deeply concerned with the question of how subjects can lead more just and fulfilling lives. It also proposes that the original position as a spiritual exercise can help defend liberalism as a social and political doctrine.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IN AN AFRICAN CONTEXT: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

An upset spiritual director just ended a retreat with a group of African priests because they could not observe strict silence. Similar situations elsewhere on the continent led a young African student to raise the question of the suitability of sixteenth-century Spiritual Exercises to modern Africans. This essay acknowledges the challenges facing spiritual directors to “accurately” apply the method of the Spiritual Exercises in a diverse and ever-evolving, noisy and busy world. From the concrete experience of this group of priests, it argues for the suitability of the Exercises to the African context based on the adaptability and flexibility inherent in Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercise and subsequent directories. The particular crisis between this director and his retreatants, however, also presents a unique opportunity for retreat directors to find creative ways to accommodate retreatants with specific needs, and to communicate the message of the Exercises in a way that is both accessible to and respectful of the African worldview. KEYWORDS: Retreat Director. Diocesan African Context. Blended Retreat. Confession and Narrativity.

Inculturation of Christian Pictures in the Republic of China

During the Chinese Christianity inculturation movement of the 1920–1930s in the Republic of China, many Christian pictures were produced and spread quite widely, including the icons “painted” (actually written as spiritual exercise through paintings) by teachers and students in Fu Jen Catholic University, the comic-strip book published by the Chinese Christian Painting Press of the Gospel, the pictures in the Kung Kao Po (a Catholic newspaper), and in the books published by Tou-se-we Painting House. On the basis of particular characteristics of these images, this essay attempts an artistic and theological analysis of the paintings, analyzing the painters’ effort to foster the inculturation of Christian pictures in China.

Putting the auto in the auto de fe

Buried in the miscellaneous writings of Capuchin abbess Sor María Ángela Astorch (1592-1665) is a curious spiritual exercise the author calls ‘teatro santo’. In it, Sor María, never herself investigated by the Inquisition, imagines herself as a priest being sentenced to death in an auto de fe. The exercise is practised in total solitude, but also requires props and costume. Sor María inhabits various identities and voices in her account, moving freely between genders and roles, as well as between her embodied identity and her imagined ones. This article argues that the ‘teatro santo’, while singular in its particulars, may give insight into how a female public reacted to the diverse genres of performance that characterize the Spanish Baroque. Sor María’s identification with multiple ‘characters’, and her creative self-insertion into the narrative, shows how early modern women could cultivate creative freedom within, and without disturbing, the most restrictive spaces.

Constantine Lascaris, his manuscripts and his ethical concerns

This article aims to examine Constantine Lascaris’s work on Aristoteles’ ethical corpus. We consider evidence from the textual witnesses of the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, the Magna Moralia, and some other minor ethical writings, which belonged to Lascaris, in order to reconstruct his working methods. We also explore Lascaris’ own statements about virtuous life; a life devoted to the service of the common good, to philosophy and to the study of texts. For him philosophy was a way of life, rather than simply a discourse. We look at the link between written culture and philosophical life and propose further research into how Byzantine and Renaissance scholars understood their own intellectual activities to be a special kind of spiritual exercise intended to promote moral improvement in both individuals and societies.