The Spirit of American Liberal Theology

The Spirit of American Liberal Theology
Author: Gary Dorrien
Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corp
Total Pages: 661
Release: 2023-09-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1646983300

The Spirit of American Liberal Theology is an interpretation of the entire U.S. American tradition of liberal theology. A highly condensed and far-more-accessible summary of Gary Dorrien’s three-volume trilogy, The Making of American Liberal Theology (Westminster John Knox Press 2001, 2003, and 2006), Dorrien here presses the argument that the most abundant, diverse, and persistent tradition of liberal theology is the one that blossomed in the United States and is still refashioning itself. While discussions of English and German liberalism persist, new material includes expanded treatment of the Black social gospel, the Universalists, developments into early 2020s, and a robust expression of the author’s post-Hegelian liberal-liberationist perspective.

Know Thyself

Know Thyself
Author: Thomas O. Buford
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739146181

Know Thyself: An Essay in Social Personalism proposes that social Personalism can best provide for self-knowledge. In the West, self-knowledge has been sought within the framework of two dominant intellectual traditions, order and the emerging self. On the one hand, ancient and medieval philosophers living in an orderly hierarchical society, governed by honor and shame, and bolstered by the metaphysics of being and rationalism, believed persons gain self-knowledge through uniting with the ground of their being; once united they would understand what they are, what they are to be, and what they are to do. On the other hand, Renaissance and modern thinkers such as Pico della Mirandola, Copernicus, Descartes, Locke, and Kant shattered the great achievement of the high middle ages and bequeathed to posterity an emerging self in a splintered world. Continuing their search for self-knowledge, the moderns found themselves faced with the dualism of the emerging self of the Renaissance and the natural world as understood by modern scientists. New problems spun out of this dualism, including the mind-body problem; the other minds problem; free will and determinism; the nature and possibility of social relationships; values, moral norms and their relationship to the natural and social worlds; and the relationships between science and religion. Finding self-knowledge among these splinters without a guiding orientation has proven difficult. Even though luminaries such as Spinoza, Berkeley, and Hegel attempted to bring order to the sundered elements, their attempts proved unsatisfactory. We contend that neither order nor the emerging self can adequately provide for self-knowledge. Since those culturally embodied "master narratives" lead us to an impasse, we turn to social Personalism. Self-knowledge developed in this book shows how persons in relation to the Personal learn who they are, what they are to become, and what they must do to achieve that goal. It also shows that the achievement of self-knowledge is supported by a natural, social, and cultural environment rooted in trust. In this humane and timely discussion, Thomas O. Buford offers a personalist understanding of self-knowledge that avoids the impersonalisms that erode the dignity of persons and their moral life which characterize modern life.

Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers

Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
Author: John R. Shook
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 2759
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1843710374

The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers includes both academic and non-academic philosophers, anda large number of female and minority thinkers whose work has been neglected. It includes those intellectualsinvolved in the development of psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology, politicalscience, and several other fields, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy in thelate nineteenth century.Each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, abibliography of writings, and suggestions for further reading. While all the major post-Civil War philosophers arepresent, the most valuable feature of this dictionary is its coverage of a huge range of less well-known writers,including hundreds of presently obscure thinkers. In many cases, the Dictionary of Modern AmericanPhilosophers offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be anindispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of modern American thought.

Trust, Our Second Nature

Trust, Our Second Nature
Author: Thomas O. Buford
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2009-01-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739132334

The thesis of this book is that only a social personalism and no form of impersonalism can adequately account for the solidarity and stability of what we individuals share with all other members of our society, our second nature. In the ancient world the discussion of society, at least since Plato and Aristotle, began with the social nature of individuals as found in families and proceeded to topics such as the formation and the well ordering of societies according to eternal principles grasped by reason. Since the beginning of the modern world, at least since Hobbes and Locke, the discussion of society began with the relation of persons and society and then moved on to other topics, usually political and legal ones. The central problem was to find the basis on which individuals formed societies and how they could do so. Buford's question is with a more basic issue: 'What do individuals and society share in common?' or what philosophers since Cicero have called our second nature, and how to best understand its unity and stability. The crisis of our culture in the erosion of both solidarity and stability pointedly manifests itself in our second nature. There the culture in which we live is felt, lived, and shared. Buford asks how we can lay bare our second nature, revealing the extent of the crisis. Our second nature is the form of social actions of persons in triadic relations, and Buford argues that it is there that we find that trust unifies a society and provides the basis for the institutions that stabilize it.

Persons, Institutions, and Trust

Persons, Institutions, and Trust
Author: James McLachlan
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1622732790

The papers presented in this volume honor Thomas O. Buford. Buford is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Furman University where he taught for more than forty years. Several of the papers in this volume are from former students. But Professor Buford is also a pre-eminent voice of fourth generation Personalism, and Boston Personalism in particular. Personalism is a school of philosophical and theological thought which holds that the ideas of “person” and “personality” are indispensable to an adequate understanding of all metaphysical and epistemological problems, as well as are keys to an adequate theory of ethical and political human interaction. Most personalists assert that personality is an irreducible fact found in all existence, as well as in all interpretation of the meaning of existence and the truth about experience. Anything that seems to exist impersonally, such as inanimate matter, nevertheless can exist and have meaning only as related to some personal being. The Boston Personalist tradition was inaugurated by Borden Parker Bowne and continued by Edgar S. Brightman, Peter Bertocci, John Lavely, Carol Robb, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Personalism Revisited

Personalism Revisited
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004496092

This book presents selected addresses presented before the Personalist Discussion Group meetings held in conjunction with the annual meetings of The American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. It includes the central ideas of American Personalistic Idealism developed during the twentieth century, its major criticisms, and recent developments by philosophers who are either Personalistic Idealists or sympathetic to the position.

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America
Author: John R. Shook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 1105
Release: 2016-02-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472570561

For scholars working on almost any aspect of American thought, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia to Philosophers in America presents an indispensable reference work. Selecting over 700 figures from the Dictionary of Early American Philosophers and the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, this condensed edition includes key contributors to philosophical thought. From 1600 to the present day, entries cover psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology and political science, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy. Clear and accessible, each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, a bibliography of writings and suggestions for further reading. Featuring a new preface by the editor and a comprehensive introduction, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia to Philosophers in America includes 30 new entries on twenty-first century thinkers including Martha Nussbaum and Patricia Churchland. With in-depth overviews of Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Noah Porter, Frederick Rauch, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, this is an invaluable one-stop research volume to understanding leading figures in American thought and the development of American intellectual history.

Fits, Trances, and Visions

Fits, Trances, and Visions
Author: Ann Taves
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691212724

Fits, trances, visions, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, possession. Believers have long viewed these and similar involuntary experiences as religious--as manifestations of God, the spirits, or the Christ within. Skeptics, on the other hand, have understood them as symptoms of physical disease, mental disorder, group dynamics, or other natural causes. In this sweeping work of religious and psychological history, Ann Taves explores the myriad ways in which believers and detractors interpreted these complex experiences in Anglo-American culture between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Taves divides the book into three sections. In the first, ranging from 1740 to 1820, she examines the debate over trances, visions, and other involuntary experiences against the politically charged backdrop of Anglo-American evangelicalism, established churches, Enlightenment thought, and a legacy of religious warfare. In the second part, covering 1820 to 1890, she highlights the interplay between popular psychology--particularly the ideas of "animal magnetism" and mesmerism--and movements in popular religion: the disestablishment of churches, the decline of Calvinist orthodoxy, the expansion of Methodism, and the birth of new religious movements. In the third section, Taves traces the emergence of professional psychology between 1890 and 1910 and explores the implications of new ideas about the subconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, and dissociation for the understanding of religious experience. Throughout, Taves follows evolving debates about whether fits, trances, and visions are natural (and therefore not religious) or supernatural (and therefore religious). She pays particular attention to a third interpretation, proposed by such "mediators" as William James, according to which these experiences are natural and religious. Taves shows that ordinary people as well as educated elites debated the meaning of these experiences and reveals the importance of interactions between popular and elite culture in accounting for how people experienced religion and explained experience. Combining rich detail with clear and rigorous argument, this is a major contribution to our understanding of Protestant revivalism and the historical interplay between religion and psychology.

God, Reason and Religions

God, Reason and Religions
Author: Eugene Thomas Long
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401104174

The first issue of the International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion appeared in the Spring, 1970. This collection of essays is presented in cele bration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the journal. Contributors to the volume are to be counted among today's leading philosophers of religion. They represent different approaches to the philosophical consideration of religion and their published work is helping shape discussions of the philos ophy of religion as we approach the beginning of the twenty-first century. Considered by some to be terminal at mid-century, the philosophy of reli gion has undergone a renaissance during the second half of the century. And the journal may be said to provide some of the explanation for this develop ment. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Edgar Henderson, Robert Leet Patterson and Henry Sprinkle, founders of the journal. Without their vision and determination it would not have come into existence.