This article illustrates the practical usefulness of transdisciplinary work for practical theology by showing how input from an occupational therapist informed my understanding and interpretation of the story of Hannetjie, who had been sexually abused as a child. This forms part of a narrative practical theological research project into the spirituality of female adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Transdisciplinary work is useful to practical theologians, as it opens possibilities for learning about matters pastors have to face, but may not (...) have knowledge about. A short retelling of Hannetjie’s story is given to provide information about the context of the research. Next, the transdisciplinary process that was followed is mentioned, and the questions that the transdisciplinary team had to respond to are discussed. Following that, I focus more specifically on the occupational therapist’s answers, and the knowledge gained from her contribution, as an example of how a co-researcher from a divergent discipline can inform a theological study. In this case, knowledge was shared about sensory integration and how the brain processes traumatic stimuli, such as sexual abuse. Lastly, the interrelationship between Hannetjie’s body stories, mind stories and spirit stories is discussed to show how the learning received from occupational therapy affected my thinking about Hannetjie’s stories and the relationships between them. Thus, it is concluded that transdisciplinary work has great value for practical theology, especially in the pastor’s daily work with people who are struggling with difficult stories, because we cannot listen to people’s spirit stories in isolation. They are inextricably intertwined with all our stories about ourselves. (shrink)

Explores significant interpretations of the human spirit in Western culture, with sources ranging from the Hebrew Bible and the apostle Paul to the theologians Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin and the natural philosopher and physician William Harvey"--Provided by publisher.

Scholars have generally agreed that correlative thinking represents a defining feature of traditional Chinese thought, and their discussions on this enduring mode of thinking have led to a better understanding of the Chinese intellectual and cultural tradition. Although scholars have seldom looked into the causes of the formation of early Chinese correlative thought, some of their discussions have provided inspiration for further investigation.A number of scholars have indicated that the concept of resonance was a fundamental factor in Chinese correlative thinking. (...) For example, both Hellmut Wilhelm and Joseph Needham asserted that, in correlative thinking, order, pattern, and symbolic correlation or.. (shrink)

AbstractOrganizations receive multiple benefits when their members act ethically. Of interest in this study is if the actors receive benefits as well, especially as individuals look to work to fulfill psychological and social needs in addition to economic ones. Specifically, we highlight a series of ongoing ethical practices embodied in professional moral courage and their relationship to actor’s work meaningfulness and life well-being. Drawing on self-determination theory and affective events theory, we explore how exercising professional moral courage in one’s work (...) leads to positive work and life outcomes. Data from 106 administrative staff of non-profit organizations demonstrates the positive benefits of adopting ethical practices at work. Specifically, professional moral courage is found to be significantly related to both work meaningfulness and individual eudaimonic life well-being. Our findings note positive benefits for individuals who incorporate professional moral courage into their daily lives and provide support for organizations seeking to encourage it from their employees; benefits for organizations and employees go beyond just the gains from ethical behavior into other positive psychological processes. Implications for future work that considers both the psychological and normative approaches to meaningful work are discussed. (shrink)

Wittgenstein on the Human Spirit provides a new understanding of Wittgenstein’s discourse as an insightful philosophy of culture, pursued through self-reflection. It offers an edifying perspective on the conceptual underpinnings of culture as a shared expressive spiritual form of life. The ideas investigated in it are highly relevant for discussions in philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, and cultural studies. The book embraces three studies: The Spirit of Jews, The Spirits of Culture and Civilization, and The Common Spirit of (...) Human Beings. The first discusses Wittgenstein's remarks about Jews, focusing on their place within his philosophical thinking, self-reflection, and European discourse about culture and Jews. It shows how overcoming the anti-Semitic attitude implicit in them set off the major change in his philosophy. The second discusses Wittgenstein’s reflections on the “deterioration of culture” in the modern period, showing how they are related to his remarks about following rules. The third discusses Wittgenstein’s insights regarding the symbolic nature of myth, magic and religion. It suggests that modern human beings and those of ancient cultures possess a common expressive spiritual nature. This enables us to understand expressive practices in other cultures without interpretation. Nonetheless religious belief during the modern period is problematic. (shrink)

Little attention has been given to the integral relationship between character strengths and spirituality (the search for or communing with the sacred to derive meaning and purpose). The science of character strengths has surged in recent years with hundreds of studies, yet with minimal attention to spirituality or the literature therein. At the same time, the science of spirituality has steadily unfolded over the last few decades and has offered only occasional attention to select strengths of character (e.g., humility, love, (...) forgiveness) or the universal typology of the VIA Classification of character strengths and virtues. In this exploration, we argue that there is a robust synergy of these sciences and practices revealing that spirituality is vitally concerned with promoting character strengths. At the same time, character strengths can enhance and deepen spiritual practices, rituals, and experiences. We elaborate on how character strengths and spirituality come together in the context of the psycho-spiritual journey toward wholeness. By wholeness, we are referring to a way of being in the world, which involves a life-affirming view of oneself and the world, a capacity to see and approach life with breadth and depth and the ability to organize the life journey into a cohesive whole. We further discuss six levels by which spirituality can be integrated within the VIA Classification, including a meta-perspective in which wholeness represents a meta-strength or superordinate virtue. We frame two pathways of integration: the grounding path, in which character strengths offer tangibility and thereby deepen and enhance spirituality, and the sanctification path, in which spirituality elevates character strengths. Finally, we turn to research-based practices and examine how character strengths might facilitate and contribute to spiritual practices and, conversely, how spirituality might enhance character strength practices. Such multifaceted integration offers insight and wisdom to both areas of study and opens up new directions for psychospiritual research and practices to deepen and broaden our understanding of what it means to be human. (shrink)

Understanding the human spirit, the thinking, motivating, feeling aspect of a person, need not entail supernatural reference in any more than a boundary sense. Methodological naturalism accounts for many putatively supernatural experiences in terms of naturalistic and scientific research. Fairy tales have natural functions, naturalistic accounts of miracles can have moral and spiritual power, and neuropsychological research can have value in understanding experiences of ghosts, apparitions, and presences. Even beliefs in personal immortality, at odds with current neurobiology, may (...) serve a range of psychological functions and may raise more moral questions than they answer. Naturalistic accounts can make spiritual explorations possible where supernatural answers provide epistemic barriers. (shrink)

Expanded from the Chief Rabbi of South Africa's doctoral thesis, Defending the Human Spirit explores the Torah's legal system compared to Western law.

A far-reaching account of what is meant by the human spirit, and its relevance to the worldwide efforts being made to meet the challenges that define this historical moment. Notions of identity, grounded in socially constructed conceptualizations of race, gender, class, and nationality continue to pose serious threats to our collective future. At the same time, everything that had once been associated with the human spirit is often understood today only in terms of neurobiology and cognitive (...) science. Yet if the twenty-first century is to be any different from the century just ended, the protection and development of the human spirit will have to emerge as an appropriate focus for judging the moral legitimacy of human acts, social policy, or cultural or religious practices. In a Bahá'í-inspired approach to these issues, the unique perspectives contained in the Bahá'í writings are explored alongside the rich diversity of other philosophical, epistemic, and moral traditions that have contributed to our understanding of the nature and needs of the human spirit over the ages. (shrink)

The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 63, Issue 253, Page 842-843, October 2013.

In this paper, the spirit of human was discovered to be a kind of system to process information which is obedient to the life’s oriented. It emanates from body but surpasses body, they can work together harmoniously, and grow up jointly. Just like the hardware and the software of the computer, our physical body corresponds to the hardware, our spirit corresponds to the software. This software system is far from nothing, it has specific structure system and runningmechanism, (...) it exists in the form of information, and its function is obvious. (shrink)

Este artigo argumenta que Fichte, nas primeiras formulações de seu projeto filosófico, apreende a tarefa da filosofia não tanto como uma Crítica da Razão, mas antes como um Autoconhecimento do Espírito, trazendo assim a noção de Espírito para o centro da discussão filosófica. Exploramos o que Fichte entende por Espírito e argumentamos que essa noção, ainda que ela não seja usada de modo consistente ao longo de sua obra, cobre um espaço conceitual fundamental do projeto filosófico fichtiano. O argumento será (...) estruturado como uma exploração de cada uma das dimensões desse espaço, a saber: o Espírito como auto-‑relação; o Espírito como imaginação produtiva; e o Espírito como o resultado do processo de aprendizado fundado nos impulsos humanos. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001713200; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 872-887.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 887.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

This chapter contains section titled: Arithmetic, Geometry, Logic, and the Science of All Possible Sciences Phenomenological Philosophy and the Foundation of the Sciences The Crisis of the Modern Sciences Conclusion.

"This book is a sorely needed corrective. Animal Spirits is an important--maybe even a decisive--contribution at a difficult juncture in macroeconomic theory.

In this article, we review the psychology of hero development and hero worship. We propose that heroes and hero narratives fulfill important cognitive and emotional needs, including the need for wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth. We propose a framework called the heroic leadership dynamic to explain how need-based heroism shifts over time, from our initial attraction to heroes to later retention or repudiation of heroes. Central to the HLD is idea that hero narratives fulfill both epistemic and energizing functions. (...) Hero stories provide epistemic benefits by providing scripts for prosocial action, by revealing fundamental truths about human existence, by unpacking life paradoxes, and by cultivating emotional intelligence. To energize us, heroes promote moral elevation, heal psychic wounds, inspire psychological growth, and exude charisma. We discuss the implications of our framework for theory and research on heroism, leadership processes, and positive psychology. (shrink)

In this article, we review the psychology of hero development and hero worship. We propose that heroes and hero narratives fulfill important cognitive and emotional needs, including the need for wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth. We propose a framework called the heroic leadership dynamic to explain how need-based heroism shifts over time, from our initial attraction to heroes to later retention or repudiation of heroes. Central to the HLD is idea that hero narratives fulfill both epistemic and energizing functions. (...) Hero stories provide epistemic benefits by providing scripts for prosocial action, by revealing fundamental truths about human existence, by unpacking life paradoxes, and by cultivating emotional intelligence. To energize us, heroes promote moral elevation, heal psychic wounds, inspire psychological growth, and exude charisma. We discuss the implications of our framework for theory and research on heroism, leadership processes, and positive psychology. (shrink)

Modern neurotechnologies are rapidly infringing on conventional notions of human dignity and they are challenging what it means to be human. This article is a survey analysis of the future of the digital age, reflecting primarily on the effects of neurotechnology that violate universal human rights to dignity, self-determination, and privacy. In particular, this article focuses on neuromarketing to critically assess potentially negative social ramifications of under-regulated neurotechnological application. Possible solutions are critically evaluated, including the human (...) rights claim to the ‘right to mental privacy’ and the suggestion of a new human right based on spiritual jurisdiction, where the human psyche is a legal space in a substantive legal setting. (shrink)

Standard philosophical discussions of theory-ladeness assume that observational evidence consists of perceptual outputs (or reports of such outputs) that are sentential or propositional in structure. Theory-ladeness is conceptualized as having to do with logical or semantical relationships between such outputs or reports and background theories held by observers. Using the recent debate between Fodor and Churchland as a point of departure, we propose an alternative picture in which much of what serves as evidence in science is not perceptual outputs or (...) reports of such outputs and is not sentential in structure. (shrink)

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is typically read as a work that either rehabilitates the metaphysical tradition or argues for a new form of idealism centred on social normativity. In the following, I show that neither approach suffices. Not only does the metaphysical reading ignore how the Phenomenology demonstrates that human rationality can never adequately capture ultimate reality because ultimate reality itself has a moment of brute facticity that resists explanation, which prevents us from taking it as a logically (...) self-contained, self-justifying metaphysical zone traditionally known as ‘substance,’ but it also ignores how the Phenomenology equally demonstrates that human rationality creates a historically self-unfolding universe of meaning that is, because it displays a rational systematicity and consistency unlike anything else in the world, the closest thing we have to substance, but which, given its freedom, is more correctly called ‘subject.’ Consequently, while the non-metaphysical reading rightly recognizes that the Phenomenology develops a radically innovative account of intersubjectivity, it neglects how the social theory that it develops comes fully equipped with various metaphysical commitments concerning nature, spirit, and the relationship between them without which this theory would be unintelligible. (shrink)

This work represents Murray Bookchin's riposte to the antihumanism, mysticism and antirationalism which are influencing many people's attitudes to environmental problems. Bookchin offers a critique of, among others, social Darwinists, deep ecologists, new agers, technophobes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard.

Developing a boundary-crossing ethics by paying attention to our stories, myths, and moral intuition.

Along the way, she calls upon us to recognize the mysteries that lie at the heart of our lives and the metaphysical reality that gives meaning to life.The ...

In _Church-going, Going, Gone!_ Michael Horan argues that although the Christian Church in Britain may be in terminal decline, that is not to be equated with a national decline in spiritual values. Most if not all people have some level of awareness of what he calls the 'Other-than-oneself', even though they have rejected, or never accepted, the Church’s now outdated teaching._ Church-going, Going, Gone!_ is concerned less with teaching than with learning. The book provides atheists, agnostics and believers-in-exile, as well (...) as those who have given little thought to belief, with a framework for collaborating as learners, working toward equality, peace and reconciliation, and dedicated to unselfish and imaginative social action. A new movement of the human spirit is beginning. (shrink)

This book suggests that religion, in its usual sense, can be replaced by something better, that the human spirit or subjectivity can be the subject of scientific study and that lack of purpose or design in the universe is not a handicap but a positive opportunity for intelligent beings to make of the universe and its contents what they reasonably can. The book breaks new ground in suggesting a radical alternative to religion. It offers a scientific and humanist (...) alternative to religion which appeals to people’s critical faculties rather than emotions or intuitions. It also challenges current views of causation and the principle of sufficient reason by stressing the subjectivity of our reasoning powers and clarifying these in relation to an independent external reality. It develops and elaborates a notion of the˜noosphere™ within a theoretical system, this enables the notion to assume a scientific importance which it currently lacks because it is treated as an isolated, eccentric and rather mystical idea. (shrink)