Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age

Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age
Author: Edward F. Findlay
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791488063

In 1977 the sixty-nine-year-old Czech philosopher Jan Patočka died from a brain hemorrhage following a series of interrogations by the Czechoslovak secret police. A student of Husserl and Heidegger, he had been arrested, along with young playwright Václav Havel, for publicly opposing the hypocrisy of the Czechoslovak Communist regime. Patočka had dedicated himself as a philosopher to laying the groundwork of what he termed a "life in truth." This book analyzes Patočka's philosophy and political thought and illuminates the synthesis in his work of Socratic philosophy and its injunction to "care for the soul." In bridging the gap, not only between Husserl and Heidegger, but also between postmodern and ancient philosophy, Patočka presents a model of democratic politics that is ethical without being metaphysical, and transcendental without being foundational.

Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk

Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk
Author: Cody J. Sanders
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2020-05-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1793606102

While garnering the attention of professionals across disciplines, from medicine to public health to psychology, and frequently covered as a topic of public concern in the news media, the elevated occurrence of suicide attempts among LGBTQ persons has received little attention within the literature of theology and religious studies. This book fills that lacuna by addressing the role that religious, spiritual, and theological narratives play in shaping the souls of queer folk. Taking a narrative approach to qualitative interview material from LGBTQ individuals who survived their suicide attempts, Cody J. Sanders argues that theological narratives can operate violently upon the souls of LGBTQ people in ways that make life precarious and, at time, seem unlivable. The book critically addresses the violence of theological narratives upon queer souls, filling a crucial void in scholarship concerning the role of religion—specifically Christianity—in LGBTQ suicide. Ultimately, the author draws upon the interview material to move readers toward constructive methods of contributing to the resistance and resilience of queer souls in relation to soul violence, asking how we can intervene with practices of care in order to cultivate livability of life for queer people.

The Soul Care Birthright

The Soul Care Birthright
Author: C. Guy Robinson
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2024-06-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

As the postmodern world confronts a mental health crisis, therapy services providers and advocates are rising to the challenge, providing treatment, raising awareness, and reducing the stigma around seeking help. Their important contributions, however, need the collaborative leadership of the church because the crisis is not just psychological but psychospiritual. The church exists to minister in this psychospiritual leadership capacity, but, in an increasingly secular age, how can the church serve at the intersection of faith and behavioral science without compromising its orthodoxy and institutional identity? The Soul Care Birthright outlines how church leaders can reclaim their role as healers, applying insights from evidence-based psychology while embracing a theology of mental health that acknowledges the teachings of Jesus Christ. Drawing upon his background in mental health education and theological studies, Dr. C. Guy Robinson reveals a path to reconciling both disciplines in a way that best serves those who so desperately need soul care.

Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding

Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding
Author: Kwok-Ying Lau
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2016-09-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319447645

This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging.

Confronting Totalitarian Minds: Jan Patočka on Politics and Dissidence

Confronting Totalitarian Minds: Jan Patočka on Politics and Dissidence
Author: Aspen E. Brinton
Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 8024645378

The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka not only witnessed some of the most turbulent politics of twentieth-century Central Europe, but shaped his philosophy in response to that tumult. One of the last students of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he inspired Václav Havel and other dissidents who confronted the Communist regime before 1989, as well as being actively involved in authoring and enacting Charter 77. He died in 1977 from medical complications resulting from interrogations of the secret police. Confronting Totalitarian Minds examines his legacy along with several contemporary applications of his ideas about dissidence, solidarity, and the human being’s existential confrontation with unjust politics. Expanding the current possibilities of comparative political theory, the author puts Patocka’s ideas about dissidence, citizen mobilization, and civic responsibility into conversation with notable world historical figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other contemporary activists. In adding a fresh voice to contemporary conversations on transcending injustice, Confronting Totalitarian Minds seeks to educate a wider audience about this philosopher’s continued relevance to political dissidents across the world.

The New Demons

The New Demons
Author: Simona Forti
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2014-11-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0804792984

The Italian philosopher and author of Totalitarianism “rescues the concept of evil as an element necessary for guidance in political reflection” (Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review). As long as we care about suffering in the world, says political philosopher Simona Forti, we are compelled to inquire into the question of evil. But is the concept of evil still useful in a postmodern landscape where absolute values have been leveled and relativized by a historicist perspective? Given our current unwillingness to judge others, what signposts remain to guide our ethical behavior? Surveying the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western philosophical debates on evil, Forti concludes that it is time to leave behind what she calls “the Dostoevsky paradigm”: the dualistic vision of an omnipotent monster pitted against absolute, helpless victims. No longer capable of grasping the normalization of evil in today’s world—whose structures of power have been transformed—this paradigm has exhausted its explanatory force. In its place, Forti offers a different genealogy of the relationship between evil and power, one that finally calls into question power’s recurrent link to transgression. At the center of contemporary evil she posits the passive attitude towards rule-following, the need for normalcy, and the desire for obedience nurtured by our contemporary mass democracies. In our times, she contends, evil must be explored in tandem with our stubborn desire to stay alive at all costs as much as with our deep need for recognition: the new modern absolutes. A courageous book, The New Demons extends an original, inspiring call to ethical living in a biopolitical age.

Christendom and European Identity

Christendom and European Identity
Author: Mary Anne Perkins
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2015-02-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110914611

This book critically explores the idea of Europe since the French Revolution from the perspective of intellectual history. It traces the dominant and recurring theme of Europe-as-Christendom in discourse concerning the relationship of religion, politics and society, in historiography and hermeneutics, and in theories and constructions of identity and ‘otherness’. It examines the evolution of a grand narrative by which European elites have sought to define European and national identity. This narrative, the author argues, maintains the existence of common historical and intellectual roots, common values, culture and religion. The book explores its powerful legacy in the positive creation of a sense of European unity, the ways in which it has been exploited for ideological purposes, and its impact on non-Christian communities within Europe.

The Political Thought of Václav Havel

The Political Thought of Václav Havel
Author: Daniel Brennan
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2016-10-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004332197

The book considers Václav Havel’s body of writing as a cohesive whole offering a consistent political philosophy. This bold claim is backed up through a close examination of Havel’s plays, letters, essays and aphorisms. The political philosophy that a close reading of Havel reveals is a liberal one. However, Havel is not the run-of the-mill liberal having influences from the field of phenomenology, Masaryk, Husserl, Levinas Patočka and Heidegger which give him a nuanced view of the self. Havel sees the self as something always being formed. Hence for Havel man has an ability to ‘shake’ his current state and invite transcendence into his life. This agonistic process reveals our responsibility and liberates the self from forces which coerce behaviour.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy
Author: Ludger Hagedorn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317410025

Religion, War and the Crisis of Modernity: A Special Issue Dedicated to the Philosophy of Jan Patočka The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. Contributors: Ivan Chvatík, Nicolas de Warren, James Dodd, Eddo Evink, Ludger Hagedorn, Jean-Luc Marion, Claire Perryman-Holt, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Michael Staudigl, Christian Sternad , and Ľubica Učník.