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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Philosophy of religion
The scope of interest and reflection on virtue and the virtues is
as wide and deep as the questions we can ask about what makes a
moral agent's life decent, or noble, or holy rather than cruel, or
base, or sinful; or about the conditions of human character and
circumstance that make for good relations between family members,
friends, workers, fellow citizens, and strangers, and the sorts of
conditions that do not. Clearly these questions will inevitably be
directed to more finely grained features of everyday life in
particular contexts. Virtue and the Moral Life: Theological and
Philosophical Perspectives takes up these questions. In its ten
timely and original chapters, it considers the specific importance
of virtue ethics, its public significance for shaping a society's
common good, the value of civic integrity, warfare and returning
soldiers' sense of enlarged moral responsibility, the care for and
agency of children in contemporary secular consumer society, and
other questions involving moral failure, humility, and forgiveness.
This work argues that philosophy, as multidiciplinary comparative
inquiry, is essential to the contemporary academic study of
religion.
If I am asked in the framework of Book 1, "Who are you?" I, in
answering, might say "I don't know who in the world I am."
Nevertheless there is a sense in which I always know what "I"
refers to and can never not know, even if I have become, e.g.,
amnesiac. Yet in Book 2, "Who are you?" has other senses of oneself
in mind than the non-sortal "myself". For example, it might be the
pragmatic context, as in a bureaucratic setting; but "Who are you?"
or "Who am I?" might be more anguished and be rendered by "What
sort of person are you?" or "What sort am I?" Such a question often
surfaces in the face of a "limit-situation", such as one's death or
in the wake of a shameful deed where we are compelled to find our
"centers", what we also will call "Existenz". "Existenz" here
refers to the center of the person. In the face of the
limit-situation one is called upon to act unconditionally in the
determination of oneself and one's being in the world. In this Book
2 we discuss chiefly one's normative personal-moral identity which
stands in contrast to the transcendental I where one's non-sortal
unique identity is given from the start. This moral identity
requires a unique self-determination and normative
self-constitution which may be thought of with the help of the
metaphor of "vocation". We will see that it has especial ties to
one's Existenz as well as to love. This Book 2 claims that the
moral-personal ideal sense of who one is is linked to the
transcendental who through a notion of entelechy. The person
strives to embody the I-ness that one both ineluctably is and
which, however, points to who one is not yet and who one ought to
be. The final two chapters tell a philosophical-theological likely
story of a basic theme of Plotinus: We must learn to honor
ourselves because of our honorable kinship and lineage "Yonder".
Thomas Aquinas (1224/6-1274) was first and foremost a Christian
theologian. Yet he was also one of the greatest philosophers of the
Middle Ages. Drawing on classical authors, and incorporating ideas
from Jewish and Arab sources, he came to offer a rounded and
lasting account of the origin of the universe and of the things to
be found within it, especially human beings. Aquinas wrote many
works, but his greatest achievement is undoubtedly the Summa
Theologiae. This presents his most mature thinking and is the best
introduction to his philosophical (and theological) ideas. Few
secondary books on Aquinas focus solely on the Summa, but the
present volume does just that. Including work by some of the best
Aquinas scholars of the last half decade, it provides a solid
introduction to one of the landmarks of western thinking.
This book studies the absolute reality of the Qur'an, which is
signified by the struggle of truth against falsehood in the
framework of monotheistic unity of knowledge and the unified
world-system induced by the consilience of knowledge. In such a
framework the absolute reality reveals itself not by religious
dogmatism. Rather, the methodology precisely comprises its
distinctive parts. These are namely the 'primal ontology' as the
foundational explained axiom of monotheistic unity; the 'secondary
ontologies' as explanatory replications of the law of unity in the
particulars of the world-system; 'epistemology' as the operational
model; and 'phenomenology' as the structural nature of events
induced by the monotheistic law, that is by knowledge emanating
from the law. The imminent methodology remains the unique
explanatory reference of all events that take place, advance, and
change in continuity across continuums of knowledge, space, and
time.
A guide to Bible understanding and motivator for research
This book is a consideration of major contemporary African
American and Jewish theological understandings of God, human
nature, moral evil, suffering, and ethics, utilizing the work of
James Cone and Emil Fackenheim. Specifically, it examines how
profound faith in a just God is sustained, and even strengthened,
in the face of particularly horrific and long-standing evil and
suffering in a community. The constructive portion of the book
explores theological possibilities by focusing on the concepts of
human freedom, resistance, and responsibility--all grounded in
divine gift--as an effective and meaningful response to oppression
and despair.
This book is about the study of Christian Philosophy through the
ancient, medieval and modern eras. The ancient era includes the
works of Greek and Roman thinkers. This is the most creative era.
The medieval era was heavily influenced by Christianity. The modern
era represents in most respects a break with thoughts dominated by
Christianity. Coupled with scientific investigation, it brought
forth many different subjects that are taught in the schools today.
In this book, one will learn about the divisions and social studies
of Christian Philosophy. This book teaches about the doctrines of
the Bible from a Christian and Philosophical viewpoint. Such topics
as Analytic Philosophy, Logic, Empiricism, Scholastic and others
are introduced. Theories of great men like Plato, Socrates,
Augustine, Aquinas, Kant and others are developed. There is even
the introduction of some great women philosophers: Fuller, Stanton,
etc. This book contains valuable information for research and
study. It will be of great benefit in the home, school or library.
It is a commonplace that while Asia is nondualistic, the West,
because of its uncritical reliance on Greek-derived intellectual
standards, is dualistic. Dualism is a deep-seated habit of thinking
and acting in all spheres of life through the prism of binary
opposites leads to paralyzing practical and theoretical
difficulties. Asia can provide no assistance for the foreseeable
future because the West finds Asian nondualism, especially that of
Mahayana Buddhism, too alien and nihilistic. On the other hand,
postmodern thought, which purports to deliver us from the dualisms
embedded in modernity, turns out to be merely a
pseudo-postmodernism. This book's novel idea is that the West
already contains within one of its more marginalized roots, that of
ancient Hebrew culture, a pre-philosophical form of nondualism
which makes possible a new form of nondualism, one to which the
West can subscribe. This new nondualism, inspired by Buddhism but
not identical to it, is an epistemological, ontological,
metaphysical, and praxical middle way both for the West and also
between East and West.>
Engaging recent developments within the bio-cultural study of
religion, Shults unveils the evolved cognitive and coalitional
mechanisms by which god-conceptions are engendered in minds and
nurtured in societies. He discovers and attempts to liberate a
radically atheist trajectory that has long been suppressed within
the discipline of theology.
Grief is a universal human response to death and loss. Mourning is
an equally universally observable practice that enables the
bereaved to express their grief and come to terms with the reality
of loss. Yet, despite their prevalence, there is no unified
understanding of the nature and meaning of grief and mourning. The
Meaning of Mourning: Perspectives on Death, Loss, and Grief brings
together fifteen essays from diverse disciplines addressing the
topics of death, grief, and mourning. The collection moves from
general questions concerning the putative badness of death and the
meaning of loss through the phenomenology and psychology of grief,
to personal and cultural aspects of mourning. Contributors examine
topics such as theodicy and grief, reproductive loss, mourning as a
form of recognition of value, the roots of grief in early
childhood, grief in COVID-times, hope, phenomenology of loss,
public commemoration and mourning rituals, mourning for a
devastated culture, the Necropolis of Glasgow, and the "art of
outliving." Edited by Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode, the volume provides
a survey of the rich topography of methodologies, problems,
approaches, and disciplines that are involved in the study of
issues surrounding loss and our responses to it and guides the
reader through a spectrum of perspectives, highlighting the
connections and discontinuities between them.
The author argues that there are conflicting traditions with regard
to the question of what is the moral standing of animals according
to Christianity. The dominant tradition maintains that animals are
primarily resources but there are alternative strands of Christian
thought that challenge this view.
There have been many too many attempts over the centuries to bring
science and religion into harmony. James A. Arieti and Patrick A.
Wilson survey and assess these various efforts, from Plato to
Aquinas to present-day philosophers and theologians. The Scientific
& The Divine examines the perennial issues that keep science
and religion at arm's length, clarify those issues, and fit them
into an historical framework. This book is ideal for use as a
textbook in any course that discusses the interplay between science
and faith. Arieti and Wilson do not push an agenda they take a
critical, analytical look at the theories that started when the
ancient Greeks realized the religious implications of scientific
discovery. The Scientific & The Divine shows the historical
continuity of both the central issues and the many potential
solutions, and demonstrates which of these theories comes closest
to saving the marriage between science and religion.
In The Relevance of Bernard Lonergan's Notion of Self-Appropriation
to a Mystical-Political Theology, Ian Bell takes on the issue of
the separation of the interior and exterior lives that has come to
dominate mystical theology over the years. The mystical life, he
claims, is necessarily involved in the establishment of social
structures and institutions that govern human living, and the work
of Bernard Lonergan on the human subject provides a means by which
the connection between the interior and exterior lives may be
established. Because human persons operate in a consistent pattern
regardless of a given moment's particularities, mystical experience
is no longer relegated to so-called spiritual matters, and the
insights of mystics may be applied to the Christian call to live as
agents of love. With this connection in place, mystical theology
and political theology come together in a theology that is both
mystical and political.
The last quarter century has seen a "turn to religion" in
Shakespeare studies as well as competing assertions by secular
critics that Shakespeare's plays reflect profound skepticism and
even dismissal of the truth claims of revealed religion. This
divide, though real, obscures the fact that Shakespeare often
embeds both readings within the same play. This book is the first
to propose an accommodation between religious and secular readings
of the plays. Benson argues that Shakespeare was neither a mere
debunker of religious orthodoxies nor their unquestioning champion.
Religious inquiry in his plays is capacious enough to explore
religious orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, everything from radical belief
and the need to tolerate religious dissent to the possibility of
God's nonexistence. Shakespeare's willingness to explore all
aspects of religious and secular life, often simultaneously, is a
mark of his tremendous intellectual range. Taking the heterodox as
his focus, Benson examines five figures and ideas on the margins of
the post-Reformation English church: nonconforming puritans such as
Malvolio as well as physical revenants-the walking dead-whom
Shakespeare alludes to and features so tantalizingly in Hamlet.
Benson applies what Keats called Shakespeare's "negative
capability"-his ability to treat both sides of an issue equally and
without prejudice-to show that Shakespeare considers possible
worlds where God is intimately involved in the lives of persons
and, in the very same play, a world in which God may not even
exist. Benson demonstrates both that the range of Shakespeare's
investigation of religious questions is more daring than has
previously been thought, and that the distinction between the
sacred and the profane, between the orthodox and the unorthodox, is
one that Shakespeare continually engages.
The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion provides a
comprehensive overview of the academic study of religion. Written
by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one
chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first
section addresses five major conceptual aspects of research on
religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis,
interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent
turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers
eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a
discussion of the ways societies and religions, or religious
organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of
resources. Other chapters in this section consider law, the media,
nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five
reviews important developments, distinctions, and arguments for
each of the selected topics. The study of religion addresses
religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven
historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many
disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is
an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile
of this volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the
history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the
Handbook references at least two different religions to provide
fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This
authoritative collection will advance the state of the discipline
and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.
Whether or not Jesus rose bodily from the dead remains perhaps the
most critical and contentious issue in Christianity. Until now,
argument has centred upon the veracity of explicit New Testament
accounts of the events following Jesus's crucifixion, often ending
in deadlock. In Richard Swinburne's approach, though, ascertaining
the probable truth of the Resurrection requires a much broader
approach to the nature of God and to the life and teaching of
Jesus. The Resurrection can only have occurred if God intervened in
history to raise to life a man dead for 36 hours. It is therefore
crucial not only to weigh the evidence of natural theology for the
existence of a God who has some reason so to intervene, but also to
discover whether the life and teaching of Jesus show him to be
uniquely the kind of person whom God would have raised Swinburne
argues that God has reason to interfere in history by becoming
incarnate, and that it is highly improbable that we would find the
evidence we do for the life and teaching of Jesus, as well as the
evidence from witnesses to his empty tomb and later appearances, if
Jesus was not God incarnate and did not rise from the dead.
Thomas Aquinas (1224/6-1274) was first and foremost a Christian
theologian. Yet he was also one of the greatest philosophers of the
Middle Ages. Drawing on classical authors, and incorporating ideas
from Jewish and Arab sources, he came to offer a rounded and
lasting account of the origin of the universe and of the things to
be found within it, especially human beings. Aquinas wrote many
works, but his greatest achievement is undoubtedly the Summa
Theologiae. This presents his most mature thinking and is the best
introduction to his philosophical (and theological) ideas. Few
secondary books on Aquinas focus solely on the Summa, but the
present volume does just that. Including work by some of the best
Aquinas scholars of the last half decade, it provides a solid
introduction to one of the landmarks of western thinking.
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