Showing papers on "Meaning of life published in 1996"
Book•
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: Baruss argues persuasively that our knowledge is limited by the interpretations of experiences provided by the society around us as discussed by the authors, which can account for neither the nature of matter nor anomalous phenomena, such as near-death experiences.
Abstract: What is the meaning of life? Where does everything come from? Why is anything? In Authentic Knowing, Imants Baruss shows us how we might transform ourselves so that we can come closer to answering these existential questions. Baruss argues persuasively that our knowledge is limited by the interpretations of experiences provided by the society around us. These include the materialistic explanations belonging to a traditional scientific worldview, which can account for neither the nature of matter nor anomalous phenomena, such as near-death experiences. However, authenticity, the effort to act on the basis of one's own understanding, can form the basis for answers to existential and scientific questions. Authentic Knowing is an accessible and humane presentation of our most basic concerns and draws on a wide variety of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and theoretical physics. Enhanced with the author's own varied experiences and copious references for those who seek to read further, this book will appeal to and challenge scientists, psychologists, and all those who have ever asked about the meaning of life.
18 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: Singer argues that separating nature and the life of spirit not only precludes an understanding of how consciousness, awareness of value, and the pursuit of ideal possibilities originate in nature but also masks the discovery of how experience can be meaningful and a source of happiness as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Philosophical thinking has traditionally decreed that the human condition is split into two realms of being: nature and the spirit - the one physical and psychological; the other an inherently transcendent dimension that exceeds the natural. The author of this work finds the distinction unacceptable. The final book in Singer's "Meaning of Life Trilogy", argues that separating nature and the life of spirit not only precludes an understanding of how consciousness, awareness of value, and the pursuit of ideal possibilities originate in nature but also masks the discovery of how experience can be meaningful and a source of happiness. Studying the interaction between nature and spirit, the author examines the ways in which we may resolve our sense of being divided and thereby overcome the suffering in life. He speculates about concepts of happiness, play, acceptance of mere existence, and the need to live in unity with nature. The book suggests that the accord between nature and spirit, and between happiness, and love, arises from an art of life that employs the same principles of imagination and idealization as those that exist in all artistic creativity. Living the good life is an art, Singer writes, and like art in general it seeks the harmonization of meaning with consumatory happiness. It is through the meaning created by imagination and idealization, he says, that happiness and the love of life become available to us. Therein lie the aesthetic bases of ethics and religion.
8 citations
TL;DR: This article developed an indigenous Asian Christology by interpreting the meaning of Jesus' message and life from the Buddhist perspective, especially from its doctrine and ideal of bodhisattvahood as developed in Mahayana Buddhist tradition.
Abstract: To believe and affirm that God is love and that human beings are not like "orphans" lost in the vast, meaningless universe but are under the care of a loving God constitutes the core of Christian faith. Yet it is by no means easy to do so, for there seems to be more hatred than love in the world, more injustice and violence than justice and peace, and in the eyes of modern science the world appears to be nothing more than blind congeries of restless particles. Despite this, however, what enables Christians to have the courage to affirm the moral meaning of life is none other than the truth revealed through Jesus Christ concerning human life and the world. Christians believe that, in Jesus Christ, the mystery of the ultimate reality of the world and the ultimate meaning of life was decisively revealed. Rather than relying on abstract philosophical speculation, they base their understanding of the ultimate reality and its relationship with human beings on a concrete historical being, Jesus. It is for this reason that Christology-which is thinking about the mystery of Jesus' person and the significance he has for human salvation-is of decisive importance in Christian theology. What I attempt here is to develop an indigenous Asian Christology by interpreting the meaning of Jesus' message and life from the Buddhist perspective, especially from its doctrine and ideal of bodhisattvahood as developed in Mahayana Buddhist tradition. I try to show that the power that made Jesus what he was and the power that makes a bodhisattva a bodhisattva are ultimately the same and that the only way for humans to be authentic human beings in Buddhism and Christianity is through the power of cosmic love.
4 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: As America's leading advocate of wellness, Dr. Ardell urges physicians and health promoters to spend less energy promoting fitness, nutrition, and stress management, and a lot more effort encouraging people to ponder the meaning and purpose of their lives.
Abstract: Is it possible that your fitness level, the quality of your diet, your sense of humour, your capacity for modifying stress, your ability to fashion and sustain a satisfying and healthful lifestyle are all connected to a deeper psychological variable? Dr. Ardell says, 'Yes! Without question!' As America's leading advocate of wellness, Dr. Ardell urges physicians and health promoters to spend less energy promoting fitness, nutrition, and stress management, and a lot more effort encouraging people to ponder the meaning and purpose of their lives.He provides specific tips from 100 of America's top health and wellness leaders for discovering and enjoying meaning and purpose at work and elsewhere; valuable check lists and assessments for addressing 'spirituality' without religion, dogmas, or creeds; and examples of activities that can nurture an environment in which people are comfortable exploring their ideas, concerns, feelings, and impressions. Once you realise that there is no meaning of life you can begin to create, invent, and discover exciting purposes that give your work, life, and play its own special meaning. He'll also help you to organise an approach or mindset for doing just that!
4 citations
Book•
31 Dec 1996
TL;DR: For example, the authors in this paper examine the way in which these ideals are culturally pluriform and subject to empirical change in religious and cultural communities and traditions, and what do these concepts mean for social scientists? Do they use them in the same way as religious believers and theologians do?
Abstract: The rapid cultural changes which are so characteristic for our time, have had a far reaching effect not only on the universal human research for happiness, well-being and a meaningful existence in our world, but also on the way in which these concepts are understood and misunderstood in contemporary culture. For religious believers their faith determines the ideals of happiness, well-being and meaningfulness which they strive to attain in their lives. But are these ideals timelessly the same for all time and for all people or are they too subject to historical change and cultural variation ? Social scientists examine the way in which these ideals are culturally pluriform and subject to empirical change in religious and cultural communities and traditions. But what do these concepts mean for social scientists ? Do they use them in the same way as religious believers and theologians do ? In December 1992, the Center for Theological Exploration Inc. sponsored its fourth (and final) Consultation on Science and Religion at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. For that occasion a distinguished international group of theologians and social scientists were invited to discuss these issues. Most of the contributions to this volume were originally presented as papers at that consultation.
3 citations
Book•
01 Oct 1996
TL;DR: The authors examines belief systems and why people have turned their backs on God and explains why people do not believe that God exists and why they do not want to believe in the existence of a God.
Abstract: Christian faith is a keyhole through which one may glimpse the meaning of life and death However this keyhole is not reliable if it is not supported by valid reasons to believe that God exists This work examines belief systems and why people have turned their backs on God
3 citations
TL;DR: The fundamental message of Jewish thought in Levinas' version can be summarized by the following quote: It ties the meaning of all experiences to the ethical relation among humans; it appears to the personal responsibility of man, who, thereby, knows himself irreplaceable to realize a human society in which humans treat one another as humans.
Abstract: The fundamental message of Jewish thought in Levinas' version can be summarized by the following quote: It ties the meaning of all experiences to the ethical relation among humans; it appears to the personal responsibility of man, who, thereby, knows himself irreplaceable to realize a human society in which humans treat one another as humans. This realization of the just society is ipso facto an elevation of man to the society with God. This society is human happiness itself and the meaning of life. Therefore, to say that the meaning of the real must be understood in function of ethics, is to say that the universe is sacred. But it is sacred in an ethical sense. Ethics is an optics of the divine. No relation to God is more right or more immediate.
3 citations
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the World Phenomenology Institute - A Word of Appreciation Inaugural Study: Through World to Life The Awakening of Consciousness in the Ontopoietic Differentiation of Life and the Unity of Apperception - A Discussion with Edmund Husserl A-T Tymieniecka Part I: The Constructive Scanning of Life: The Spread and Horizons of chronos and kairos Die Zeitstruktur und das Absolute: Polaritat in der Lyrik Paul Celan's E Syristova Husser
Abstract: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the World Phenomenology Institute - A Word of Appreciation Inaugural Study: Through World to Life The Awakening of Consciousness in the Ontopoietic Differentiation of Life and the Unity of Apperception - A Discussion with Edmund Husserl A-T Tymieniecka Part I: The Constructive Scanning of Life: The Spread and Horizons of chronos and kairos Die Zeitstruktur und das Absolute: Polaritat in der Lyrik Paul Celan's E Syristova Husserl and Camus: In Search of Time Accomplished M Bielawka Time and Creativity MA Cecilia The Temporal kairos and the Non-Becoming of Eternity: Opposition or Encounter? F Bosio Temporality, Selfhood and Creative Intentionality: Mead's Phenomenological Synthesis SB Rosenthal Contemporary Perspectives and the Functioning of Trace PL Bourgeois, SB Rosenthal Part II: The Individualising Dynamisms of Passions and the Tying of Communal Order The Body as Expression of Life R Sweeney The Phenomenon of Death: Elements for a Poetics of Origins G Bucher The Destructive Passions of Life and the Soul: An Interdisciplinary View A Polis Perceived Risk, Knowledge, and the Lifeworld D Vernberg, J Murphy History, Intersubjectivity and Lebenswelt A Rizzacasa From Transcendental Logic to the Phenomenology of the Life-World S Glynn Solipsism, Intersubjectivity and Lebenswelt A Zvie Bar-On Homo oeconomicus Revisited: The Epistemological Crisis of Political Economy P Trupia Conceiving Conflict Competition - Gripped by a World Picture: C Darwin, DH Lawrence and FA von Hayek JJ Venter Part III: TheLife-Struggle for the Light of the Spirit The Other as Patient L Sundararajan A Critical Approach to the Problem of Existential vs Psychoanalytically Diagnosed Anxiety B Callieri Clean Language: A Linguistic-Experiential Phenomenology IR Owen The Phenomenological Presuppositions of Psychiatry and the Meaning of Life L Grunberg Una palabra en favor de las personas excepcionales M Jarquin Marin The Meta-Theory of Consciousness and Psychiatric Practice V Borodulin, A Vasiliev Tagore, Freud and Jung on Artistic Creativity: A Psycho-Phenomenological Study S Ray Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Ontology in Psychiatry F Barison, S del Monaco Carucci Part IV: The Deep Springs of Mundanity in Human Co-Existence: Moral Sense, Empathy, Solidarity, Communication, Intersubjective Grounding Language, Lifeworld and (Inter)subjectivity WL van der Merwe From Empathy to Solidarity: Intersubjective Connections According to Edith Stein A Ales Bello From Communion to Communication: A Study of Merleau-Ponty's Mexican Lectures S Matsuba Tymieniecka's Conception of 'The Moral Sense' in the Life of the Human Person MP Migon Intersubjectivity and Love: In Search of the Other A Luse Intersubjectivity and Communication -- A Phenomenological Account P Vandevelde Das Entwerfen in der Auffassung von Schutz und Heidegger, und Ricoeur's Synthesis von Hermeneutik und Dialektik J Cibulka Du mondain a l'ontologique dans l'intersubjectivite J Sivak Part V: The Life of the Spirit in its Historicity J-L Vives: De l'humanisme a l'anthropologie dans l'Espagne des 'trois cultures' M Sanc
2 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors traced the Jewish-Christian understanding from its biblical roots through its Greek, early, and medieval Christian history, and the fully wise person is one who grasps the centrality of and lives out the two great commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition, love of God and love of neighbor as one's self.
Abstract: In this essay the Jewish-Christian understanding is traced from its biblical roots through its Greek, early, and medieval Christian history. Wisdom is understood as a kind of knowledge that leads one to understand the ultimate meaning of life and provides the skills to live out that meaning. It comes from experience, study, and reflection and is a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge; it should lead one to become ever more completely authentically human. The fully wise person is one who grasps the centrality of and lives out the two great commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition, love of God and love of neighbor as one's self. Yeshua is the foundational model who draws the Christian onward in this endless task. Today this model of wisdom includes a lived-out recognition that freedom and equality are at the core of being human, as well as the newly discovered consequent possibility of resolving unendingly the problems of humanity-which will also be uncovered unendingly.
1 citations
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: The newly-arisen therapy matters can no longer be delimited from the conceptual, methodological and axiological ones, so that one has to accept that, with psychiatry, scientific knowledge needs to resort to "philosophical presuppositions and value choices" as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Our living conditions have determined that psychiatry is to open its gates wide towards the refreshing atmosphere of philosophical thinking. The newly-arisen therapy matters can no longer be delimited from the conceptual, methodological and axiological ones, so that — as already remarked by Brune Callieri in a recent study on relinquishing the pos-itivistic myth of the “remarks devoid of theoretical load” in present psychopathology — one has to accept that, with psychiatry, scientific knowledge needs to resort to “philosophical presuppositions and value choices”.1
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: The newly-arisen therapy matters can no longer be delimited from the conceptual, methodological and axiological ones, so that one has to accept that, with psychiatry, scientific knowledge needs to resort to "philosophical presuppositions and value choices".
Abstract: Our living conditions have determined that psychiatry is to open its gates wide towards the refreshing atmosphere of philosophical thinking. The newly-arisen therapy matters can no longer be delimited from the conceptual, methodological and axiological ones, so that — as already remarked by Brune Callieri in a recent study on relinquishing the pos-itivistic myth of the “remarks devoid of theoretical load” in present psychopathology — one has to accept that, with psychiatry, scientific knowledge needs to resort to “philosophical presuppositions and value choices”.1