Wonder, Silence, and Human Flourishing


Book Description

This book explores how a sense of wonder and the musicality of silence can be a rehumanizing force in education, health and welfare, countering overly anthropocentric and instrumental worldviews. Wonder--in an aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual sense--brings human beings in resonance with the world again.




The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies provides the first authoritative overview of methodology in this growing field. Against the background of the pandemic and other global challenges, spirituality is expanding as an agreed term with which to discuss the efforts people make to be fully present to deeper, invisible dimensions of their personal identity and external reality, but until now there have been few resources exploring the different methodological approaches researchers take. This book explores the primary methodologies emerging: First Person, Second Person, and Third Person, and provides a systematisation of spirituality research in applied contexts for the first time. Comprising 33 chapters by a team of international contributors, the book is divided into seven parts: Foundations Approaches to Contemplative Research Contemplative Research in Education Contemplative Research in Work and Leadership Contemplative Research in Science, Health, and Healing Contemplative Research in Social Sciences Contemplative Research and the Way Forward The Handbook provides readers, practitioners, and policymakers with methods and approaches which can facilitate a spiritual and contemplative stance in research activities. It is an essential resource for researchers and students of Religion, Spirituality, and Research Methods.




Culture, Spirituality and Religious Literacy in Healthcare


Book Description

Elaborating with the concepts of culture and religious literacy, this volume examines theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of the practice and study of religion and non-religion, culture, spirituality and worldviews within healthcare. In modern multi-cultural and multi-religious societies, a host of new issues have arisen concerning culture, religion and spirituality within healthcare, especially when people face serious and life-limiting illness. Healthcare professionals are faced with challenges addressing and handling patients’ cultural expressions of religiosity, spirituality and existential concerns. The variety needs to be met without essentializing the concepts of culture and religion, and with an ability to include the non-religious as well as new types of spiritualities. This collection reflects on the tension between cultural, religious and spiritual dimensions of care in a secularized healthcare institution and describes implications of this tension for healthcare professionals and patients. The book engages with an ongoing scholarly discussion about religious literacy in healthcare, and contributes perspectives, experiences and empirical examples from the Nordic countries, especially Sweden. It gives suggestions for practical application of research to healthcare practice, highlighting challenges and ideas for how to integrate religious, non-religious, and spiritual dimensions in care. This is an important contribution to the literature on religious literacy and provides a vital reference for students, scholars and healthcare professionals with an interest in the complex relationship between culture, spirituality, and religion in healthcare. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.




The Music of Theology


Book Description

This book reconceives theology as a musical endeavour in critical tension with language, space and silence. An Overture first moves us from music to religion, and then from theology back to music – a circularity that, drawing upon history, sociology, phenomenology, and philosophy, disclaims any theology of music and instead pursues the music in theology. The chapters that follow explore the three central themes by way of theory, music and myth: Adorno, Benjamin and Deleuze (language), Derrida, Rosa and Nancy (space), Schelling/Hegel, Homer and Cage (silence). In overdubbing each other, these chapters work towards theology as a sonorous rhythm between loss and freedom. A Coda provides three brief musical examples – Thomas Tallis, György Ligeti, and Evan Parker – as manifestations of this rhythm, to show in summary how music becomes the very pulse of theology, and theology the very intuition of music. The authors offer an interdisciplinary engagement addressing fundamental questions of the self and the other, of humanity and the divine, in a deconstruction of modern culture and of its bias towards the eye over the ear. The book harmonizes three scholarly voices who attempt to find where the resonance of our Western conceptions and practice, musically and theologically, might resound anew as a more expansive music of theology.




Philosophy in Philosophical Counseling


Book Description

"This book discusses the philosophical questions asked by counselees and the philosophical dilemmas faced by counselors in philosophical counseling. It illustrates the role of tacit philosophical assumptions in the creation and resolution of problems, as well as the contribution of philosophical dialogue in overcoming presuppositions"--




Philosophical Praxis


Book Description

Philosophical Praxis, launched by the author in 1981, ushers in a new academic philosophy as an alternative to current therapeutic practices, offering unique insights into the compelling origin and development of a renaissance of philosophy.




Balanced Wonder


Book Description

In Balanced Wonder: Experiential Sources of Imagination, Virtue, and Human Flourishing, Jan B. W. Pedersen digs deep into the alluring topic of wonder and argues in a scholarly yet accessible way that the experience of wonder, when balanced, serves as a strong contributor to human flourishing. Along the way, Pedersen describes seven properties of wonder and shows how wonder it is distinct from other altered states, including awe, horror, the sublime, curiosity, amazement, admiration, and astonishment. Examining the contribution of both emotion and imagination in the experience of wonder--—filtered through the Neo-Aristotelian work of philosophers Douglas Rasmussen, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum--—Pedersen also makes it clear that wonder may contribute to human flourishing in various ways, such as the widening of perception, extension of moral scope or sensitivity, a wondrous afterglow, openness, humility, an imaginative attitude, reverence, and gratitude. Importantly, for wonder to act as a strong contributor to human flourishing one needs to wonder at the right thing, in the right amount, in at the right time, in the right way, and for the right purpose.




Radical Hospitality - space for human flourishing in a complex world


Book Description

Geoff Boyce offers an exploration of one of the urgent challenges of our time, how are we all going to get along together despite our differences? He develops an insight by Henri Nouwen, 'the creation of free space for the other', applying this concept to the personal, interpersonal and organisational. He draws on personal insights and experiences, and the contributions of scholars and public figures.




On Human Flourishing


Book Description

Great literature is more often praised for compelling depictions of conflict and tragedy than for moving portrayals of happiness and well-being. This collection of verse brings together poems of felicity, capturing what it means to be well in the fullest sense. Presented in 14 thematic sections, these works offer inspiring readings on wisdom, self-love, ecstasy, growth, righteousness, love and lust, inspiration, oneness with nature, hope, irreverence, awe, the delights of the senses, gratitude and compassion, relation to the sacred, justice, and unity. At times elegant, at others blunt, these poems reflect on what it means to live a rich, fulfilling life.




Theology and Literature after Postmodernity


Book Description

This volume deploys theology in a reconstructive approach to contemporary literary criticism, to validate and exemplify theological readings of literary texts as a creative exercise. It engages in a dialogue with interdisciplinary approaches to literature in which theology is alert and responsive to the challenges following postmodernism and postmodern literary criticism. It demonstrates the scope and explanatory power of theological readings across various texts and literary genres. Theology and Literature after Postmodernity explores a reconstructive approach to reading and literary study in the university setting, with contributions from interdisciplinary scholars worldwide.