Religious coping and spiritual struggles were qualitatively analyzed in 15 semi-structured interviews with Norwegian Hodgkin’s disease survivors. We asked, How is religious coping expressed in 15 Norwegian Hodgkin’s disease survivors? The analyses were theory-driven, using religious coping and spiritual struggles theories as explorative tools. Especially we focused on coping processes, coping dynamics, coping styles, and coping activities. The analyses show that religiousness functioned as a positive factor in coping with cancer in 14 of the 15 participants, equally distributed as conservational (...) and transformational coping. The combination of the belief in a good, present God, eventually positive divine power, accessible through prayer, and religious support from people around the participants, were the most prominent activities in the religious coping processes. The religious coping had a character of being collaborative for almost all of the participants. Many participants had severe spiritual struggles. For many of the participants, it was difficult not only to be sick, but also to be a survivor. Theories on religious coping and spiritual struggles were useful and adaptable to a Norwegian sample regarding the main dynamics in the religious coping and spiritual struggles processes. The analyses detected a few different religious coping activities in this Norwegian sample compared to those identified in American samples, with the importance of meeting God in nature as the most significant difference. (shrink)

Meaning in life has become an important topic in empirical research in the psychology of religion. Although it has been studied and found applicable in many different contexts, research on meaning in life and sources of meaning in African countries is scarce. This study qualitatively investigates understandings and experiences of meaning in life and sources of meaning among urban and village dwellers with different educational backgrounds in Zambia. Seven focus group interviews (total N = 52) were conducted and analysed, drawing (...) on Schnell’s model of meaning in life and sources of meaning. The results indicate that the concept of meaning in life is relevant to both urban and village dwellers in Zambia. Meaning experiences and sources of meaning are associated with certain life domains: relationships; religion; education and work; leisure activities; and health and survival. Each life domain includes several fundamental sources of meaning, which can be related to Schnell’s four dimensions of sources of meaning: self-transcendence, self-actualisation, order and well-being and relatedness. The results are discussed in light of extant studies on meaning and cultural characteristics in Africa. (shrink)

Research has shown that addressing and integrating the existential dimension in treatment settings reduce symptoms like anxiety, depression and substance abuse. Healthcare chaplains are key personnel in this practice. A nationwide, cross-sectional survey influenced by a mixed-methods approach was used to examine the attitudes, practices, understanding and perceptions of mental health professionals, including healthcare chaplains, regarding the value of addressing the existential dimension in treatment programmes. The existential group practice was led by the healthcare chaplains as an integrated part of (...) specialist mental health services. A positive and open attitude towards addressing the existential dimension was identified among the informants. Despite this, a small gap between attitude and practice was reported. Existential, religious and spiritual concerns are reported as part of the existential dimension and as relevant topics to be discussed in specialist mental health services. The findings indicate that the existential group practice could have a positive influence on the co-leaders’ competence to address existential, religious and spiritual concerns; however, this should be further investigated. (shrink)

The final work of a distinguished physicist, this remarkable volume examines the emotive significance of time, the time order of mechanics, the time direction of thermodynamics and microstatistics, the time direction of macrostatistics, and the time of quantum physics. Coherent discussions include accounts of analytic methods of scientific philosophy in the investigation of probability, quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, and causality. "[Reichenbach’s] best by a good deal."—Physics Today. 1971 ed.

Observation and conceptual interpretation constitute the two major ways through which human beings engage the world. _The World Observed/The World Conceived _presents an innovative analysis of the nature and role of observation and conceptualization. While these two actions are often treated as separate, Hans Radder shows that they are inherently interconnected-that materially realized observational processes are always conceptually interpreted and that the meaning of concepts depends on the way they structure observational processes and abstract from them. He examines the (...) role of human action and conceptualization in realizing observational processes and develops a detailed theory of the relationship between observation, abstraction, and the meaning of concepts. This book provides a critical analysis of the work of various other philosophers and their accounts of scientific and ordinary-life observation and conceptualization. Radder discusses the formation and nature of concepts and demonstrates how concepts structure the phenomenal world. He then introduces and defines the notions of extensible concepts, abstraction and nonlocal meanings and explores the philosophical implications of his theory. _The World Observed/The World Conceived_ offers fresh insights in practices of observation and conceptualization, that will prove useful to many areas of scholarly study including ontology, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, science studies, and cognitive science. (shrink)

The paper proposes a unified analysis of the natural language connectives 'if', 'if … might', 'even if' (all of them with indicative and subjunctive mood), 'because' and 'though'. They are all interpreted as instances of universal (pro)conditionals, unconditionals, or counterconditionals. The paper imports the notion of relevance into the meaning of conditionals, viewing conditionals as close in meaning to explanations and statements about causal relations. The antecedent of a conditional is interpreted as being relevant for its consequent, thus avoiding the (...) general inference from A and B to 'If A, B'. The analysis is based on different variants of the Ramsey test (among them the 'Strong Ramsey Test') together with a fragment of the belief revision theory of Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson. (shrink)

Public and intellectual debates have long struggled with the concept of values and the difficulties of defining them. With _The Genesis of Values,_ renowned theorist Hans Joas explores the nature of these difficulties in relation to some of the leading figures of twentieth-century philosophy and social theory: Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Max Scheler, John Dewey, Georg Simmel, Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas. Joas traces how these thinkers came to terms with the idea of values, and then extends beyond them (...) with his own comprehensive theory. Values, Joas suggests, arise in experiences in self-formation and self-transcendence. Only by appreciating the creative nature of human action can we understand how our values arise. (shrink)

erster Teilband. Grundlegung -- zweiter Teilband. Tragweite und Aktualität einer Zukunftsethik.

The first English translation of Hans Reichenbach's lucid doctoral thesis sheds new light on how Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was understood in some quarters at the time. The source of several themes in his still influential The Direction of Time, the thesis shows Reichenbach's early focus on the interdependence of physics, probability, and epistemology.

This lucid and accessible dictionary presents technical terms that Wittgenstein introduced into philosophical debate or transformed substantially, and also topics to which he made a substantial contribution. Hans-Johann Glock places Wittgenstein's ideas in their historical context, and indicates their impact on his contemporaries as well as their relevance to current debates. The entries delineate Wittgenstein's lines of argument on particular issues, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and shed light on fundamental exegetical controversies. The dictionary entries are prefaced by a (...) ‘Sketch of an Intellectual Biography’, which links the basic themes of the early and later philosophy and describes the general development of Wittgenstein's thinking. Extensive textual references, a detailed index and an annotated bibliography will facilitate further study. Authoritative, comprehensive and clear, the volume will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in Wittgenstein – his life, work or influence. Each Blackwell Philosopher Dictionary presents the life and work of an individual philosopher in a scholarly but accessible manner. Entries cover key ideas and thoughts, as well as the main themes of the philosopher's works. A comprehensive biographical sketch is also included. (shrink)

This collection of original essays by preeminent interpreters of continental philosophy explores the question of whether Western thought and culture have been dominated by a vision-centered paradigm of knowledge, ethics, and power. It focuses on the character of vision in modern philosophy and on arguments for and against the view that contemporary life and thought are distinctively "ocularcentric." The authors examine these ideas in the context of the history of philosophy and consider the character of visual discourse in the writings (...) of Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Benjamin, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Habermas. With essays on television, the visual arts, and feminism, the book will interest readers in cultural studies, gender studies, and art history as well as philosophers. (shrink)

The rich conceptual and experiential relays between music and philosophy—echoes of what Theodor W. Adorno once called _Klangfiguren_, or "sound figures"—resonate with heightened intensity during the period of modernity that extends from early German Idealism to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. This volume traces the political, historical, and philosophical trajectories of a specifically German tradition in which thinkers take recourse to music, both as an aesthetic practice and as the object of their speculative work. The contributors examine the (...) texts of such highly influential writers and thinkers as Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch, Mann, Adorno, and Lukács in relation to individual composers including Beethoven, Wagner, Schönberg, and Eisler. Their explorations of the complexities that arise in conceptualizing music as a mode of representation and philosophy as a mode of aesthetic practice thematize the ways in which the fields of music and philosophy are altered when either attempts to express itself in terms defined by the other. Contributors: Albrecht Betz, Lydia Goehr, Beatrice Hanssen, Jost Hermand, David Farrell Krell, Ludger Lütkehaus, Margaret Moore, Rebekah Pryor Paré, Gerhard Richter, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Samuel Weber. (shrink)

Chronology of Einstein's mistakes -- I will resign the game -- A lovely time in Berne -- And yet it moves -- If I have seen farther -- A storm broke loose in my mind -- Motions of inanimate, small, suspended bodies -- What is the light quantum? -- The argument is jolly and beguiling -- Suddenly I had an idea -- The theory is of incomparable beauty -- The world is a madhouse -- Does God play dice? -- The (...) graveyard of disappointed hopes -- Post-mortem. (shrink)

The book also sheds new light on many important allegories by showing how modern translations often conceal the wit and humor of the Chinese original.

Kelsen's 'Pure theory of law' was first presented in his fundamental work Hauptprobleme des Staatsrechtlehre (1911) and continued in both editions of Reine Rechtslehre (1934, 1958). Historically, it has a certain relation to John Austin's 'analytical jurisprudence', although Kelsen became acquainted with Austin's work for the first time in 1940. The 'pure theory of law' is a formal-logical analysis of law, considered as a system of norms, based philosophically on the strict distinction between 'is' and 'ought'. It is a normative (...) and positive doctrine, opposed both to positivism, showing the limitations of the positivistic approach, the whole legal order. His positivism is a formal analysis of the legal norm, of its elements and of the architecture of the legal order. Kelsen's concentration on the form of law recognizes the legitimacy of sociological investigations and the study of values in reference both to the contents and the making of law. Equally, his philosophical relativism of values is entirely compatible with his strong stand for democracy and the ideals of western culture. German text. (shrink)

The aim of what I propose to call “existential aesthetics” is to investigate the various ways in which art and certain kinds of aesthetic practice or aesthetic experience can be of existential importance to people. Section I provides a definition of existential aesthetics, while Section II delineates this emerging field from cognate areas of research. Sections III and IV explore various subcategories and examples of existential aesthetics. Section V seeks to identify important avenues for future research and Section VI presents (...) some concluding thoughts about the potential of existential aesthetics and why philosophers should be encouraged to fulfill this potential. (shrink)

This is a unique volume by a unique scientist, which combines conceptual, formal, and engineering approaches in a way that is rarely seen. Its core is the relation between ways of learning and knowing on the one hand and different modes of time on the other. Partial Boolean logic and the associated notion of complementarity are used to express this relation, and mathematical tools of fundamental physics are used to formalize it. Along the way many central philosophical problems are touched (...) and addressed, above all the mind-body problem. Completed only shortly before the death of the author, the text has been edited and annotated by the author's close collaborator Harald Atmanspacher. (shrink)