Catholic philosophical anthropologists have defended views of the human person on which we are irreducible to anything non-personal. For example, it is not the case that we are nothing but matter, ...souls, or parts of society. But many Catholic anthropologies have overlooked ways in which we are irreducible and so have not given an adequate account of the uniqueness of each human person. This book presents a philosophical portrait of human persons that depicts each way in which we are irreducible, with the goal of guiding the reader to perceive, wonder at, and love all the unique features of human persons. It builds this portrait by showing how claims from many strands of the Catholic tradition can be synthesized. These strands include Thomism, Scotism, phenomenology, personalism, nouvelle théologie, analytic philosophy, and Greek and Russian thought. The book focuses on how these traditions’ claims are grounded in experience and on how they help us to perceive irreducible features of persons. While many metaphysical claims about persons are defended, the picture of persons that ultimately emerges is one on which persons are best grasped not through abstract concepts but through aesthetic perception and love, as unique kinds of beauty. This book also explores irreducible features of our subjectivity, senses, intellect, freedom, and affections, and of our souls, bodies, and activities. It includes discussions of divine simplicity and causality, and of the nature of angels, matter, organisms, and artifacts, all of which must be understood to fully grasp our irreducibility. In showing how to synthesize various traditions’ claims, the book also offers new solutions to a number of debates in Catholic philosophy. These include debates over natural law, the natural desire to see God, the separated soul, integralism and personalism, idealist and realist phenomenology, and scholastic accounts of the act of existence.
This book explores one of the great questions of our time: How can we preserve our sense of what it means to be a person while at the same time accepting what science tells us to be true-namely, that ...human nature is continuous with the rest of nature? What, in other words, does it mean to be a person in a world of things? Alan Mittleman shows how the Jewish tradition provides rich ways of understanding human nature and personhood that preserve human dignity and distinction in a world of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, biotechnology, and pervasive scientism. These ancient resources can speak to Jewish, non-Jewish, and secular readers alike.
Science may tell us what we are, Mittleman says, but it cannot tell us who we are, how we should live, or why we matter. Traditional Jewish thought, in open-minded dialogue with contemporary scientific perspectives, can help us answer these questions. Mittleman shows how, using sources ranging across the Jewish tradition, from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud to more than a millennium of Jewish philosophy. Among the many subjects the book addresses are sexuality, birth and death, violence and evil, moral agency, and politics and economics. Throughout, Mittleman demonstrates how Jewish tradition brings new perspectives to-and challenges many current assumptions about-these central aspects of human nature.
A study of human nature in Jewish thought and an original contribution to Jewish philosophy, this is a book for anyone interested in what it means to be human in a scientific age.
Ratzinger’s early work Introduction to Christianity presents an attempt at rational understanding of what theology considers to be crucial for Christianity and what should be thought over in the ...context of the (then) new challenges. The open character of the book can be understood in light of the fact that anthropological discourse was already well established in post-Council theology. For Ratzinger, this seems to be connected with a necessity to outline clear contours for Christianity. The book is one of the author’s significant works with a wide impact, and which also represents Ratzinger’s way of thinking in its relation to philosophical thought. The title of this contribution is also its point: Ratzinger’s book offers a certain interpretation of Christianity and provides at the same time a sort of defence of Christianity against a never-ending chain of interpretations. It is just that which should be subjected to interpretation.
In this paper, I argue that autism places an important restraint upon the use of relationality in theological anthropology. This argument proceeds by outlining how the appropriation of dialectic ...personalism, which initiated ‘the relational turn’ in twentieth century theological anthropology, has struggled to escape the capacity or property‐based focus on individual subjects. As such, this relational account remains discriminatory against those who do not or cannot enact a particular kind of relationality, as some models of autism suggest. Moreover, attention to interpersonal relationships as a key human capacity within twentieth century theological anthropology closely parallels and may even have informed the development of autism within psychology as, in part, a social impairment. The devastating collision of these two intellectual trajectories is made apparent in explicit references by contemporary theologians to autism as a condition that prevents some humans from bearing the image of God, developing fully into persons, or receiving God’s grace by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
An impressively learned and beautifully illustrated review of medieval ideas about Paradise Did Adam and Eve need to eat in Eden in order to live? If so, did human beings urinate and defecate in ...paradise? And since people had no need for clothing, transportation, or food, what purpose did animals serve? Would carnivorous animals have preyed on other creatures? These were but a few of the questions that plagued medieval scholars for whom the idea of Eden proved an endless source of contemplation. As theologians attempted to reconcile their own experiences with the realities of the prelapsarian paradise, they crafted complex answers that included explanations of God's interaction with creation, the existence of death, and man's dominion over nature.In From Eden to Eternity, Alastair Minnis examines accounts of the origins of the human body and soul to illustrate the ways in which the schoolmen thought their way back to Eden to discover fundamental truths about humanity. He demonstrates how theologians sought certainty in matters of orthodox Christian thought and also engaged in speculation about matters that, they freely admitted, were not susceptible to firm proof. Moreover, From Eden to Eternity argues that the preoccupation with paradise belonged not only to the schools but to society as a whole, and it traces how lay writers and artists also attempted to interpret the origins of human society. Eden transcended human understanding, yet it afforded an extraordinary amount of creative space to late medieval theologians, painters, and poets as they tried to understand the place that God had deemed worthy of the creature made in His image.
Am Beginn des neuen Jahrhunderts 1900 ertönte der Ruf »Los von Rom!« von allen Enden Österreich-Ungarns: Slowenen, Kroaten, Deutsch-Österreicher, Tschechen, Ruthenen – sie alle schienen dezidiert ...anti-katholische Ressentiments zu entwickeln und anfällig zu sein für nationalistische Agitation zum Übertritt in ein vermeintlich »besseres« Bekenntnis. Diese Studie untersucht die Hintergründe einzelner Los-von-Rom-Konfikte am Beispiel der drei südslawischen Los-von-Rom Bewegungen Ricmanje, Podraga und Santovo und ordnet sie in breitere Spannungsfelder ein.
In this contribution an interdisciplinary contribution from Theology on the unfolding relationship between humanity and technology, is considered. In order to contribute with validity to these ...academic and societal reflections, two moves are required on the part of Theology. Both the external communicability of the in-house concept within Theology of "anthropology" and the internal coherence within Theology disciplines of the term "imago Dei", have to be improved. On both these matters, Theology has been remiss, for different reasons. In the rising post-secular intellectual climate, Theology is sure to be heard more influentially outside of its recently more limited circles. For this reason it is important that these two moves be effected.
Emerging over the past ten years from a set of post-structuralist theoretical lineages, non-representational theories are having a major impact within Human Geography. Non-representational ...theorisation and research has opened up new sets of problematics around the body, practice and performativity and inspired new ways of doing and writing human geography that aim to engage with the taking-place of everyday life.
Drawing together a range of innovative contributions from leading writers, this is the first book to provide an extensive and in-depth overview of non-representational theories and human geography. The work addresses the core themes of this still-developing field, demonstrates the implications of non-representational theories for many aspects of human geographic thought and practice, and highlights areas of emergent critical debate. The collection is structured around four thematic sections - Life, Representation, Ethics and Politics - which explore the varied relations between non-representational theories and contemporary human geography.
In The Sufi Doctrine of Man, Richard Todd examines the life and thought of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (13th century C.E.), Ibn 'Arabī's chief disciple and a key figure in the development of Sufi ...metaphysics.
The issue of reincarnation has factually been laid to rest in Christian theology at the end of Greco-Roman Antiquity. Not so in the cultural histories of European countries, where is revived ...continuously, most forcefully from the 18th century in onwards, as in Germany. This requires a new look at the idea, and at practices of ‘past-life regression’ that are widespread, from a dogmatic and pastoral perspective. Recent academic publications on the issue, reflecting different attitudes to it in theology, are therefore presented and discussed here, with further considerations added. The link of this issue to opinions about the post-mortal state of the soul, are thus included. In critique of ‘whole-death’ positions, in recent Protestantism and Catholicism, the Vatican’s renewed affirmation of a living soul in the post-mortal state, and the call of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, to review the rejection of reincarnation, are picked up for this presentation, that argues to connect these two.
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