The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism

The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism PDF Author: Stephen P. Weldon
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421438585
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
Significantly, the book shows why special attention to American liberal religiosity remains critical to a clear understanding of the scientific spirit in American culture.

The God Argument

The God Argument PDF Author: A. C. Grayling
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408837439
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The first book to deal with all the arguments against religion and, equally important, to put forward an alternative - humanism

Ignatian Humanism

Ignatian Humanism PDF Author: Ronald Modras
Publisher: Loyola Press
ISBN: 0829429867
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
"Ignatian Humanism puts into perspective our contemporary search for a spirituality that responds both to our search for meaning and desire for God." -John W. Padberg, S.J., director, Institute of Jesuit Sources "Modras integrates fascinating history, contemporary theology, and inspiring spirituality with consistent focus on central issues for our day." -Joann Wolski Conn, associate professor of religious studies, Neumann College "A stunning book! Modras has profiled a number of Jesuit thinkers and activists as role models for our time-revitalizing humanism as a model for moderns." -Leonard Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and inter-religious dialogue, Temple University Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, is one of a mere handful of individuals who has permanently changed the way we understand God. In this vividly written and meticulously researched book, Ronald Modras shows how Ignatian spirituality retains extraordinary vigor and relevance nearly five centuries after Loyola's death. At its heart, Ignatian spirituality is a humanism that defends human rights, prizes learning from other cultures, seeks common ground between science and religion, struggles for justice, and honors a God who is actively at work in creation. The towering achievements of the Jesuits are made tangible by Modras's vivid portraits of Ignatius and five of his successors: Matteo Ricci, the first Westerner at the court of the Chinese emperor; Friederich Spee, who defended women accused of witchcraft; Karl Rahner, the greatest Catholic theologian of the twentieth century; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the scientist-mystic; and Pedro Arrupe, the charismatic leader of the Jesuits in the years following Vatican II.

What Are We Doing Here?

What Are We Doing Here? PDF Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717788
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”

Christian Science on Trial

Christian Science on Trial PDF Author: Rennie B. Schoepflin
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801877679
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
In Christian Science on Trial, historian Rennie B. Schoepflin shows how Christian Science healing became a viable alternative to medicine at the end of the nineteenth century. Christian Scientists did not simply evangelize for their religious beliefs; they engaged in a healing business that offered a therapeutic alternative to many patients for whom medicine had proven unsatisfactory. Tracing the evolution of Christian Science during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Christian Science on Trial illuminates the movement's struggle for existence against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities. Physicians exhibited an anxiety and tenacity to trivialize and control Christian Scientists which indicates a lack of confidence among the turn-of-the-century medical profession about who controlled American health care. The limited authority of the medical community becomes even clearer through Schoepflin's examination of the pitched battles fought by physicians and Christian Scientists in America's courtrooms and legislative halls over the legality of Christian Science healing. While the issues of medical licensing, the meaning of medical practice, and the supposed right of Americans to therapeutic choice dominated early debates, later confrontations saw the legal issues shift to matters of contagious disease, public safety, and children's rights. Throughout, Christian Scientists revealed their ambiguous status as medical practitioners and religious healers. The 1920s witnessed an unsteady truce between American medicine and Christian Science. The ambivalence of many Americans about the practice of religious healing persisted, however. In Christian Science on Trial we gain a helpful historical context for understanding late–twentieth-century public debates over children's rights, parental responsibility, and the authority of modern medicine.

Humanism as the Next Step

Humanism as the Next Step PDF Author: Lloyd And Mary Morain
Publisher: Franklin Classics
ISBN: 9780343170981
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought

An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought PDF Author: Stefanos Geroulanos
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804774242
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
French philosophy changed dramatically in the second quarter of the twentieth century. In the wake of World War I and, later, the Nazi and Soviet disasters, major philosophers such as Kojève, Levinas, Heidegger, Koyré, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Hyppolite argued that man could no longer fill the void left by the "death of God" without also calling up the worst in human history and denigrating the dignity of the human subject. In response, they contributed to a new belief that man should no longer be viewed as the basis for existence, thought, and ethics; rather, human nature became dependent on other concepts and structures, including Being, language, thought, and culture. This argument, which was to be paramount for existentialism and structuralism, came to dominate postwar thought. This intellectual history of these developments argues that at their heart lay a new atheism that rejected humanism as insufficient and ultimately violent.

Imperfect Garden

Imperfect Garden PDF Author: Tzvetan Todorov
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824907
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self. Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity. Placing the history of ideas at the service of a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live.

Helping the Good Shepherd

Helping the Good Shepherd PDF Author: Susan E. Myers-Shirk
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801895170
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
This history of Protestant pastoral counseling in America examines the role of pastoral counselors in the construction and articulation of a liberal moral sensibility. Analyzing the relationship between religion and science in the twentieth century, Susan E. Myers-Shirk locates this sensibility in the counselors’ intellectual engagement with the psychological sciences. Informed by the principles of psychology and psychoanalysis, pastoral counselors sought a middle ground between science and Christianity in advising anxious parishioners who sought their help for personal problems such as troubled children, violent spouses, and alcohol and drug abuse. Myers-Shirk finds that gender relations account in part for the great divide between the liberal and conservative moral sensibilities in pastoral counseling. She demonstrates that, as some pastoral counselors began to advocate women’s equality, conservative Christian counselors emerged, denouncing more liberal pastoral counselors and secular psychologists for disregarding biblical teachings. From there, the two sides diverged dramatically. Helping the Good Shepherd will appeal to scholars of American religious history, the history of psychology, gender studies, and American history. For those practicing and teaching pastoral counseling, it offers historical insights into the field.

The Historical Mind

The Historical Mind PDF Author: Justin D. Garrison
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438478437
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
America is increasingly defined not only by routine disregard for its fundamental laws, but also by the decadent character of its political leaders and citizens—widespread consumerism and self-indulgent behavior, cultural hedonism and anarchy, the coarsening of moral and political discourse, and a reckless interventionism in international relations. In The Historical Mind, various scholars argue that America's problems are rooted in its people's refusal to heed the lessons of historical experience and to adopt "constitutional" checks or self-imposed restraints on their cultural, moral, and political lives. Drawing inspiration from the humanism of Irving Babbitt and Claes G. Ryn, the contributors offer a timely and provocative assessment of the American present and contend that only a humanistic order guided by the wisdom of historical consciousness has genuine promise for facilitating fresh thinking about the renewal of American culture, morality, and politics.