Die Ethik des Seins oder Was für ein Mensch sollte zum Objekt der Ethik, Philosophie und der Theologie werden?
This is a research about ethics and philosophy, that valorifies the ideas of Saint Thomas d'Aquino.
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This is a research about ethics and philosophy, that valorifies the ideas of Saint Thomas d'Aquino.
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This essay contains additional comments on my previous book, The Monstrosity of Christ (2011). Here, I am following the main didactic line according to which anyone who wants to fight for emancipation should not be afraid to examine all aspects of religious life. The current story fits perfectly the materialist procedure of the immanent self-undermining of a religious edifice – the claim that god is evil or stupid can be much more unsettling than the claim that there is no god since the first claim destroys the very notion of divinity. Christ demands of each of his followers that they become necrophagic fetishists; Christians who justify their ludicrous anti-Semitism by characterizing Jewish people as ‘Christ-killers’ should keep this in mind: the Jews may have killed God, but the Christians ate him.
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Leszek Kołakowski draws attention to the fact that rationalism as a philosophical method and definitive certainty as the aim are mutually irreconcilable. Each rationalist philosophy must leave a margin for uncertainty, lest it transforms into dull dogmatism. This observation of the Polish thinker becomes a source of inspiration for Hans Albert. In his work “Science and the Search for Truth”, he agrees with Kołakowski that goals of philosophical endeavours need redefining and puts forward his own metaphilosophical proposal, which specifies what philosophy can and should achieve in the framework of critical realism. The author examines and evaluates Albert’s proposal, referring to another view of the nature and role of philosophy as the assessment criterion—the one presented by José Ortega y Gasset in his study “En torno à Galileo” [“About Galileo”] and other writings.
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On the scent of historical and anthropological constants of religion and technology many are inclined to believe that technology, together with natural sciences, was absent, even persecuted, while over all dominated religion. Even thou this was, historically seen, partly the case, it shouldn't be excuse for any kind of attacking of some particular religious faith in contemporary world for ecological crisis and for danger of human starvation. While sometimes in the past the religion was trying to replace, in terms of authority, the role of technology and natural sciences, during last four centuries a lot of people thought that religion might or even should be replaced with technology and natural sciences. However, this article inherits two general understandings. First, humans are essentially cultural beings and religion is essential part of the culture. Every historical attempt to reduce religion to self-projection (Feuerbach), to opium for the people (Marx), to great illusion (Freud), and to death of God (Nietzsche), practically hasn't succeeded. On the contrary, the religion is today more vital than ever before regardless the exact meaning of that assertion, in terms of what kind of religious phenomena prevail in today' s world. This vitality does not depend exclusively on the duration of revealed religions, such as Christianity, and their institutions, but also depends on the destructiveness of the effects of modern technology allied with natural sciences. The humanity needs salvation and that salvation won't come from technology! Furthermore, humans are essentially laborious - technical - beings. There is no doubt that the formation of the culture dues exclusively to spiritual and material activities of man, as we can see it from the prehistoric primitive shaping to the modem Internet and interventions into molecular level. According to these two general understandings, the author seeks way how to prevent the continuation of an old hostilities between religion and the technology (natural sciences!). It is clear today that neither religion can replace technology and natural sciences nor these last can replace religion. But the question remains what technology really means? According to M. Heidegger, the question of technology remains open until it is understood in terms of its traditional, e.g. anthropological and instrumental meaning. What we need is to rethink the true meaning of technology from itself. The technology has its essence and this essence is not to be investigated from traditional point of view but from its very being the technology as such. Instead of this fact there is one solid point where religion can meet technology. This point is called ethics. Is it everything ethical what is technically achievable remains as a fundamental issue in dealing with technological matters. Furthermore, there is the need for methodological reflection upon philosophical and ethical meaning of modern technology. The religion is too general and undetermined notion. Because of it, the author considers the possibility of academic theology to enter in an interdisciplinary dialogue with modem technology.
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Human interests to Religion and Metaphysics are well explained by the desire of the people to answer to fundamental and eternal questions as “what is the sense of life” and “what is the purpose of life”. These questions have accompanied them from the beginning of conscious life. Many intellectuals, scientists and writers of former USSR and democratic Russia have brought essential contributions, opened new directions and finally have enriched with new concepts, ideas, ideologies and systems the worldwide Philosophy and Religion. A possible answer is the Creation allowing to Divinity to transcend in common life. Soul as Spiritual reflection of Divinity tends to perfection, reiterating in every generation the transcendence to God. At first sight there are no meeting points between Transcendence and Cosmism because the last notion has its beginning in the progress of Science. The evolution of modern Sciences, philosophical concepts and Religion gradually demonstrates correlated aspects which must be discovered in the future.
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In science, generally, the idea of research captures apriori the authority of the human being on the investigated reality. Researchers’ presumption of superiority in relation to what search is always clear and incontrovertible. Theological science and Theology researchers cannot benefit and cannot claim that presumption. If however they do, then we no longer talk about Theology, but about philosophical religion. In this study we will investigate the issue of God’s transcendence as objective argument of His existence. Given that we will not talk about chemical substances or about literary analysis, our research is enriched or impoverished not by the scientific competence that we have, but by the availability of God’s Being and our willingness to make of this study a scientific expression and a scientific experience of a dialogical meeting between us and God. When there are no common approaches to Theology and Philosophy, approaches based on our ability to intuit and determine the reality that surrounds us, we will evoke, as honest as possible, the reality of the scientific dialogue between us and God, a dialogue necessary in such a study. We hope that, based on the three chapters of this research, our thesis “Transcendence as Objective Argument of the Existence of the Personal God”, will convince both scientifically and in terms of the dialogue with God.
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On the occasion of the conference on Transcendence and Immanence - a topic building on the dialogue between philosophy and theology in the modern and post-modern time -, among the produced subjects, a discussion was held on the role played in respect with this dialogue by the inter-war famous philosophers, such as Lucian Blaga and Dumitru Stăniloaie. Below, we will present the issue of Transcendence according the philosopher-poet Lucian Blaga’s vision; his vision is structured into a Trilogy in his work: The Trilogy of Knowledge - The Dogmatic Aeon, The Luciferic Knowledge, The Transcendental Censorship - The Trilogy of the Culture - Horizon and Style; The Mioritic Space; The Genesis of the Metaphor and The Meaning of Culture - and The Trilogy of Values - Science and Creation; Magic Thinking and Religion; Art and Value. In these trilogies, the philosopher - poet elaborates, from an original metaphysical point of view, on the dimension of the knowledge of Transcendence - which he would define in in The Horizon of Mystery and Revelation. His vision will be addressed in a new theory of knowledge, which the philosopher-poet Lucian Blaga would distinguish as paradisiac knowledge and Lucifer knowledge, within a new Metaphysics that would allow access to Transcendence and to the wonders beyond. Postulating the existence of certain faculties of Conscience, his Metaphysics would become, according to the Theory of Transcendence, a must for the human spirit; a proof for his approach would be the great philosophical systems of the world, from the antique to the modern.
More...„He came to his own (eis ta idia, in propria), and his own (hoi idioi, sui) received him not” (Jn1:11)
The article deals with the theme of the Logos` immanence in the creation. The first part includes a scientific perspective while the second, a theological one. The first evidence that the universe has a beginning dates back to the 20s of last century. Most scientists believed until then that the universe was stationary and had always existed; there are references to the big bang, string theory, M theory. The second part encompasses a perspective on the theme of the rational nature of the world which constitutes a firm foundation for dialogue between Theology and science. The logoi have a particularizing or a unifing function, and the complete unity of the logoi is realized through and by the Logos, the Word of God. The essential difference between paradigms and logoi is that the latter belong to the temporal level and to the empirical world, while the former preexist synthetically into God.The uncreated divine energies are the logoi in the action of creating and supporting of the beings.
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Elizabeth Cullinan’s short story “Life After Death” depicts a day in the life of a young New Yorker, Constance, walking along Lexington Avenue, attending the evening Mass at a Dominican church and visiting the Catholic college where she worked part time to pick up her paycheck. Though the woman is involved with the married Francis Hughes and confronted with the burden of the past and of intricate family dynamics, her voice, which is “the Cullinan narrative voice has become that of one of those skeptical granddaughters grown into a reasonably assured and independent adulthood [...] balanced between then and now, the ethnic and the worldly, and better able to judge self and others because of the doubleness” (Fanning qtd. in Bayor and Meagher 528). Thus, the paper will discuss the manner in which Elizabeth Cullinan maps, in her story, the oscillation of Irish Americans between the ethnic drive and a cosmopolitan individuality gained in New York, with a focus on the value of the duality of consciousness and spirituality, which facilitates enriching and clarifying answers to identity dilemmas.
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Scientists who approach questions related to faith and Godhood from their supposedly wholly objective angles routinely reach totally different conclusions. Therefore, a new approach using the most objective tool possible, that of pure mathematics, is attempted. The validity of using some mathematics in this context is briefly examined. Mathematical analysis leads to a number of counter-intuitive outcomes, such as the mathematical necessity of some measure of evil in a godlike universe, the mathematical illegitimacy of prescriptive religions, and more. This article is adapted from the forthcoming book ‘God and the Mathematics of Infinity: What Irreducible Mathematics Says About Godhood’.
More...Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
For among most contemporaries, the concept of Eros seems to have nothing to do with Christianity. Sifting through the psychoanalysis of sexual fantasy, theologically it says nothing. Our study gives reasons showing that for theologians since the dawn of the Christian era, Eros-love plays a fundamental role.. The connotations of this concept, however, are different from those of today, when its sensory meaning is more restricted to sexuality. Greek theologians of the first centuries after Christ, taught the concept of Plato enshrined as a unifying enthusiasm, the attraction of inferior to superior states, as “hungry and thirsty” for something continuously higher, developing, and enriching the connotation. The work of Dionysius ((Pseudo) Areopagite, the Idea of Good, leads us step by step up the ascent of the erotically chaste, and is identified with the One-God, who is the very source of love. Consequently, Eros-love originates from God, Eros- love being not only an ascending but firstly a descending love, which calls for a reciprocal communion.
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In this short paper I will argue that theology, or at least Platonist theology can be done with the scientific method, but that, perhaps paradoxically at first sight, this does not prevent the role of religion, nor the necessity of a dialog between science and theology (making it in part into a dialog internal to science) or between science and religion, seen as possible applied theology. It is important to keep in mind that science, well understood, has at the start something common with (some) religion, which is a humility and modesty attitude. Science is born from the doubt, lives with the doubt, and never abandon the doubting attitude in any of its possible conclusion. We just don’t know, in science, and can only make our beliefs/ assumptions/theories as much precise as possible so that we make higher the possibility of refuting them, so that we can abandon them or improve them. Theology, once made with the scientific attitude is no exception, and (re)making theology into a science, consists in reintroducing genuine doubts in the heart. Only bad faith can fear reasons. Only bad reasons can fear faith. When fundamental science forget this, it becomes a kind of pseudo-religion.
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The famous Galilean question was to become the paradigm of the conflict between Nature and Scripture, science and faith, free research of natural reason and authority of the ecclesiastical institution, obscurantism of the medieval period and scientific progress which would illuminate the modern age. It is well known that the stereotype of the pure conflict between scientific thought and religious dogma for long dominated the interpretation of the most profound essence of the Middle Ages, as an obscurantist age in the grip of the universalist political and religious authorities. This image of the Middle Ages was greatly corroborated by the Humanist writers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment historiography. This contribution purports to analyse late–medieval science from a holistic methodology based on history of science and philosophy of science, to obtain a big picture in front to Scientific Revolution and to show the cultural roots of the different images of the universe.
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The belief that God actively acts in the world has been fundamental to orthodox Christian theology throughout the history of Christianity. Since the rise of modern science, however, this traditional understanding of God’s actions has attracted more and more critique. Firstly, it has been argued God cannot act in the world without violating the allegedly all-encompassing laws of nature, and, consequently, because the laws of nature cannot presumably ever be broken, it is considered totally impossible for God to influence the physical world in any way. Secondly, it is claimed that even if breaking the laws of nature was not, in theory, impossible, it would still be, in practice, impossible for an immaterial entity such as God to influence the material world. In this article, I argue that the first objection, i.e., that God cannot act in the world, holds partly true. I maintain that God cannot act without interfering with the processes of nature (although some recent attempts of building noninterventionist theories of God’ actions have been made). Nevertheless, I do not see how God’s intervention would constitute a problem for modern physics, as has often been proposed. Moreover, the second claim, i.e., that immaterial entities cannot affect material entities, is not based on evidence but on an unfounded assumption that because we do not know the mechanism of causation between immaterial and material entities, this causation is not possible.
More...as it is understood by theology and genetics
This paper is trying to put together two different researches, from theology and from genetics, about a general and undetermined topic, death. It is undetermined because no one can say something demonstrable and unequivocal about it, since no person alive can cross over the edge of life and come back from the domain of death with information about it. But we can discuss nevertheless things that are obvious and possible to be reasonably inferred about death even by livings. In this regard Theology will provide the mainline of what is to be known as death for religion in general, while Genetics will try to come with its research to sustain or contradict the general premise: death is not an ontological behavior of living matter, but an imposed attribute after the sin occurred into the world.
More...A christian and bioethic approach
Abortion, the cruel reality of the contemporary mankind, bites with no mercy our life and lacerates the humanity face, relativizing life’s ultimate value. We fight for the animal’s lives and rights, but we kill our children in womb. We are confused and living up to the rules imposed by us, and we fail, because we do not see the „Light of the world” (John 8,12) - Jesus Christ, losing sight of the reference frame – the divinity. We have declared God dead [1], the fountain of life , and we put ourselves in His place. We lost indiscriminatingly the values of “as Gods” ( Genesis 3,5) and “as God’s image” (Genesis 1, 27) drifting on the gradient of big fails, as big as God we have chased but never listened. So, that, from the survival outlook and lacking of love in our life, the fight for survival targets against the somebody ‘s else life, and no illustration is more eloquent and tragic as the mothers, families and society’s fight against the procreation generally, and particularly against the unborn child.
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Is there a way without conquests and wars to be found in the relationship of theology and science? This relation is analyzed from the perspective of the concept of frontier in order to establish the conditions for a possible dialogue. Paradoxically, the frontier unites and divides at the same time. On the one hand, the frontier marks the differences, on the other hand it appears as a crossing, a passageway. The frontier is an in-between, a huge space in which the two sides are called together to explain each other, and in order to create a passage between the two sides. The methodological framework of analysis is the approach of analytical theology to distinctions in language and significance. As a frame of reference, the possibility conditions for a philosophical dialogue between phenomenology and analytical philosophy have been considered.
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The first Christians were Jews, belonging to Jewish culture, which is an integral part of Semitic culture. The first Muslims belonged to Arab culture, also an integral part of Semitic culture. The introduction of a religion to a culture is known as inculturation. If the two Abrahamic faiths of Christianity and Islam are wholly equated with a single culture, they betray their essence, lose their universality, and cease to be universal religions open in essence to every culture.
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The Apostle Paul does not engage in a critical dialogue with the doctrinal position of the particular schools of Greek philosophy, but with their version crafted for the needs of life (social, moral, spiritual). By necessity, he must sometimes touch upon more theoretical questions if he wants to convince the Greek listeners to his (sic. God’s) cause. So he tries to speak their language, which does not mean that everything that was said so far is accepted by him. The key to understanding the scope of Paul’s agreement with Greek philosophical expression may be, among others, the word “foolishness”. On the one hand (Greek) foolishness is the cross, and on the other hand (Paul’s) foolishness is philosophy. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Col 2:8). The central issue for Christianity – the crucifixion of God-Man – is, in the Greek viewpoint, contrary to the rational order of things, i.e. something that cannot be of practical, let alone theoretical significance, although it is obvious that people today, as in the past, were guided by views far from rationality (especially philosophical). The reaction of the Athenian listeners to the words of St. Paul’s statement about the resurrection was natural and self-evident; they could not otherwise respond, as it was beyond their rationality and it was a kind of contradiction. Among others, the Apostle wanted to reach such people with the Good News. He could do it in the Greek way, for which of course he had no tools, and there was no time for that, but he could also act in an apostolic way: to sow this truth to the hearers and to wait for God’s growth. But first it was necessary to remove from the way the obstacles which directly contradicted the Gospel, and therefore he speaks of more than the foolishness of philosophy, as he calls it vile deception. There is no point in dealing with foolishness, but great fraud must be reckoned with and combated. So it is not the whole (Greek) philosophy that is foolish, but that part of it which cannot exceed the present rationality, which accepts delusion, but is blinded by the radiance of truth. Often, perhaps too often, a man resembles an eagle pretending to be a hen. The same rationality in later centuries, and especially in modern times, will take on different faces, although it will usually be a severe face to the face of faith.
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This essay explores the development of Simone Weil's conception of obedience across religious, political, and ethical contexts. By bringing together these strands of Weil's thought, it aims to illuminate some important connections in her treatment of obedience throughout these diverse topics. The author argues that Weil's political treatment of obedience is deeply influenced by ideas in Christian thought, and that this account is situated within an understanding of obedience in the natural world which is itself ethically loaded. Hence it is suggested that Weil's account of obedience has something to offer philosophy today: namely, a conception of obedience which recognises the practical and ethical need for obeying others, but which is distinct from the mere submission to power.
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