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21. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Oskar Gruenwald The Quest for Meaning and Redemption (Editorial)
22. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Hugh Williams Confronting the Modern Problematic: Kenneth Schmitz’s Christian Philosophy
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The modern problematic, defined by Kenneth Schmitz, is a widespread acceptance of God’s absence in the culture of the technologically advanced Western societies. Schmitz clearly has been deeply influenced by Karol Wojtyla’s work as both philosopher and religious leader. Pope John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio is notable for its courage in advocating the serious pursuit of truth guided at least in part by the philosophy of being. This essay draws on certain important contrasts in Schmitz’s subsequent meditations upon the transcendental of beauty and its implications for communication and postmodern culture with its emphasis on the human subject. The purpose is to reflect on the special significance of this important contrast, shift, and development that occurs in these aspects of Schmitz’s own philosophy within the tradition of the philosophy of being that has been given renewed definition and importance for our challenging times in John Paul II’s encyclical on faith and reason.
23. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
John P. Hittinger The Springs of Religious Freedom: Conscience and the Search for Truth
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John Paul II frames the issue of disenchantment and re-enchantment in terms of “alienation” and “participation”--various works of human power recoil upon the person and inhibit full human development and participation. The neglect and distortion of human rights is one such form of alienation indicating the deeper issue concerning human flourishing. John Paul encourages a radical questioning about human progress so as to better understand the threats that accompany bureaucratic increase in power. Aspects of cultural and human development offer a challenge to mankind to overcome alienation and to participate in community and social love. Through an appeal to the Spirit, and the search for truth, goodness, and beauty, John Paul seeks to open up a lived path to God by way of the person’s transcendence.
24. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Steven J. Meyer A Theocentric Vision of Culture in John Paul II
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This essay explores John Paul II’s intellectual legacy as a champion for a theocentric view of culture that emphasizes the human person and human dignity in quest for human self-realization in a community that seeks the transcendence of God. His theopocentric vision for culture is defined in the context of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. John Paul’s theological anthropology is grounded in personalism, communion, dialogue, and freedom. When God is eclipsed from human activity, particularly via the “shadow” of secularism, it engenders the crisis of culture. John Paul’s articulation of dialogue emphasizes inculturation and evangelization. His Trinitarian and social encyclicals reflect a theocentric and anthropocentric vision for culture, while his Polish and literary background show his thoughts on culture not as teachings but as integrated into his life experience. The essay concludes with reflections on Mary and the challenge of dialogue in a multicultural world.
25. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Mary Christine Ugobi-Onyemere, IHM John Paul II in the Light of Thomas Aquinas: Personalism, Mercy and the Quest for Holistic Existence
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In the quest to understand the meaning of existence, the human being is torn between many choices, exposed to individualism of all forms, especially atheistic perspectives. John Paul II’s personalism in the light of Thomas Aquinas’ personalistic notion of mercy suggests an alternative of meaningful living, co-existence, and holistic transcendence. John Paul’s search for the basis on which individual and social rights may grow and enhance human dignity demonstrate the ontological human worth. Following Aquinas’ model, John Paul shows that human dignity takes precedence over all options and needs preservation. Similarly, Aquinas’ classification of the human person as “rational subsistent” portrays this dignity in “effective mercy” that allows one to thrive in all kinds of existential vicissitudes. This essay explores John Paul’s personalist notion of mercy reflecting Aquinas’ model in the contemporary milieu in view of holistic existence.
26. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Rose Mary Hayden Lemmons Modes of Re-Enchantment: John Paul II and Familial Love
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This essay uses the philosophy and theology of John Paul II to argue that re-enchanting the world requires various modes depending on whether religious beliefs are deemed false or irrelevant. The former requires re-enchantment through theistic philosophy. The latter requires re-enchantment through other-centered love as exemplified by relationships in God-centered families. Familial love–whether natural, Christian or ecclesial–plays a crucial role in facilitating a familial relationship with God best exemplified in Christianity. Although having a relationship with God does not necessitate Christianity, re-enchantment does, since statistics and dialectics show that only Christianity enables most of its believers to hold that such a relationship is possible. This relationship with God is what ultimately re-enchants the world.
27. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
James V. Schall, S.J. On Philosophy and Enchantment
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Philosophy is the work of reason as it seeks to know the truth of what is. Philosophy begins in intuition and ends in argued conclusions. But we can know reality only after its own manner. The inner lives of human beings can only be known by their being told to us, revealed to us. All of reality bears its own fascination if we know how to see it. What life is about is seeing it, then on seeing it, living with it, or perhaps not seeing, to live without what we should have seen. Only individuals who think and who can see relationships between things can be charmed by them. They alone can see in real things intimations of more than they can grasp by themselves. The “enchanted” world was a world in which, everywhere we looked, we found traces, footprints of the divine or at least of story, intelligence, and order. Enchantment and intelligence support each other, both are needed for a knowledge of the whole.
28. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Adrian J. Reimers The Christian Personalism of John Paul II
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The thesis of this essay is that Karol Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II develops a rich understanding of the concept of person and of human personhood not by redefining “person” but by availing himself of the traditional definition offered by Boëthius who viewed the person as an individual substance of a rational nature. Objections to this definition are overcome by Wojtyla’s deep understanding of the spiritual characteristics of reason and will. The person acquires from these faculties one’s distinctive characteristics of freedom and creativity, which are manifest and fulfilled in one’s capacity for love. Thus it is that although the person exists as a material substance in the world of physical things, one’s personal existence is constituted by relationships with other persons.
29. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Charles Scriven Grace and Good: A Kierkegaardian Response to Secular Humanism
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How does the question of grace--its reality or not--affect self-understanding and moral aspiration? Søren Kierkegaard believed that conviction of grace, or of divine kindness at the heart of things, is crucial for human flourishing. This notion serves as a lever for critical reflection on perspectives concerning the secular turn Charles Taylor and others describe. The essay contrasts Kierkegaard’s thought with Iris Murdoch, Philip Kitcher, and co-authors Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Each of the secular perspectives, it turns out, maps onto a different one of three “stages” of human development that precede Kierkegaard’s highest, or Christian, form of existence. This provides an angle for assessing secularism as reflected in three contrasting accounts. Kierkegaard’s elaboration of the Christian ideal, and the shortfalls he saw in earlier stages, become the basis for a “justification” of grace as a premise for the well-lived life.
30. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 1/2
Stanislaw Grygiel Spiritual Discernment in a Secular Age
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This essay explores the predicament of a secular age marked by atheism and calculative reason. In a time that has been cut loose from eternity, the politics of calculation and of force separate words from the events and things to which they belong. The confusion that arises permits the masters of empty words to rule everything with impunity. Through the recollection of truth, which reveals itself in a moment that cannot be grasped, Beauty continually invites man to change his life. The false prophets, negating this recollection of truth, create a new world that rejects God and is, thus, confined to its own immanence. Symbolic thought and, therefore, poetic thought, is prohibited in this world and, because of this, one cannot pose the question about the meaning of human life. Entrusting ourselves to the Beauty of the living God and the discernment of spirits are indispensable for bringing justice to ourselves and to the world.
31. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
Oskar Gruenwald The Postmodern Challenge: In Search of Normative Standards
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The thesis of this essay is that the central postmodern challenge is to recover stable, objective normative standards that presuppose cultural renewal and liberal arts education building on the classical paideia of educating the whole person. Humans possess an innate moral sense that requires nurturing and developing to encompass both résumé and eulogy virtues as proposed by David Brooks’ The Road to Character. Wisdom-seeking traditions aim at self-mastery, but need tempering by neo-Kantian epistemological modesty to eschew utopias in their quest for transcendence, recalling the Augustinian conception of humanity’s fallen nature, the need for community, the aspiration for good works in the City of Man, and the soul’s yearning for redemption and salvation in the City of God. The essay concludes with the “Angel Initiative” as an example of practical wisdom that reflects Brooks’ humility code, the wisdom-seeking traditions’ emphasis on the Way, and Christianity’s promise as “a religion of second chances.”
32. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
Michael E. Meagher The U.S. Presidential Campaign, 2016: A Historic Realignment?
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This essay explores the 2016 election using 1964 for comparison. The central theme is that 1964 set the context for subsequent presidential elections. Issues and public policy revolved around the standards set by the 1964 converting election. Both race and religion played a role in the 1964 converting election that redefined the Democratic Party as the liberal political party for the nation, and the Republican as its conservative counterpart. This established a political regime that endures until the present day, but its endurance has had deleterious consequences for the discussion of new proposals. Change happens slowly and piecemeal. Both parties maintain high levels of spending as politics has been reduced to administration, a technocracy rather than representative democracy. The resulting pressures and frustrations manifest themselves with increasing frequency in the political system. The tumultuous 2016 campaign is the latest manifestation of this dissatisfaction among voters. Given the peculiarities of 2016, are we on the verge of a historic realignment, one that may set a similar standard for a generation?
33. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
D. Eric Schansberg Social Problems, Public Policy, the Church and the Common Good
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From professional pundits to casual observers, there are deep concerns about the state of American society and profound doubts about its future. Political cynicism is ascendant--and yet, the desire for politicians to “do something” remains. What role can public policy have in addressing the largest social problems and their causes? And beyond public policy, what are the potentially effective means in terms of social institutions, including the Church? Although public policy offers some promise, its usefulness is generally exaggerated. Its costs are typically subtle and often ignored. Knowledge of consequences and tradeoffs is insufficient, and the motives of political agents are less than pure. And many dilemmas, by their nature, cannot be ably addressed by politics and policy. In contrast, a resurgence in civil society--particularly the Church--holds more promise. Even in a time of potential “exile,” the Church is called to pursue the holistic welfare of society and enhance the common good.
34. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
Columbus Ogbujah Rediscovering Family Values: A Key to Sustainable Freedom in an Era of Globalization
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In the past few decades, a lot has changed in the world. There is now a global dimension to every societal value. Globalization has unlocked the local and national perceptions to a broader outlook of an interconnected and interdependent world. People are mingling in the world like never before. But these come with new challenges, new social regulations and controls that require adoption of new values, all of which foist on people competing and often incompatible demands between work and family, and have led to the erosion of pivotal values that hitherto bonded families together. Today, marriages are few, divorces are many, and the number of children born to unmarried, single parents has skyrocketed, with shocking social consequences. This essay unravels the apparent chaos in marital and family ethics arising from an unhindered freedom of choice in a globalized era, and proposes a rediscovery of sound traditional family values as a solution.
35. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
Brian G. Byrd, John Paul Loucky Toyohiko Kagawa and Reinhold Niebuhr: The Church and Cooperatives
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Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese evangelist and social activist, preached and practiced cooperatives as integral to the nature and mission of the Christian church. Using pulpit, podium, and pen, Kagawa blended a call for heart conversion with a call to establish Christian cooperatives. When Kagawa stumped America promoting this vision in 1936, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr expressed reservations. Unlike Kagawa, Niebuhr saw cooperatives as no panacea, though lending his support to an experimental cooperative in the U.S. that was doomed to fail. Kagawa faced opposition from within the church, but shared the podium with Billy Graham during the young evangelist’s Tokyo crusade in 1956. This essay draws from Kagawa’s vision and Niebuhr’s critique insights for the church today: the need for visions without illusions, the difficulty of linking church and cooperatives, and the value of reforming the church’s approach to mission through reflection and a deeper analysis of the human condition.
36. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
Arthur Pontynen Culture and Knowledge of Reality: Restoring the Liberal and Fine Arts
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This essay addresses the problem of the decline of interest in the Liberal and Fine Arts, and the humanities, East and West, accompanied by a reductionist understanding of reality and life. That reductionism results in a trivialization and brutalization of culture. The essay considers three prominent modes of understanding: Scientism, Relationalism, and Wisdom-seeking. A scientistic relationalism is anti-intellectual and anti-cultural. In contrast, a Wisdom-seeking relationalism affirms human dignity, and is grounded in a qualitative ontology necessary to an intellectual and moral life. The historical turning-point in the West in which the intellectual and practical pursuit of Wisdom was replaced by a scientistic relationalism is personified by the contrasts between St. Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard.
37. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
Daniel W. Hollis III Pontynen on Knowledge and Truth: A Response
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This essay is in response to Arthur Pontynen’s dissection of the ills of Western culture and campaign to revitalize the liberal and fine arts. It endeavors to critically examine Pontynen’s causal basis for the crisis and to elevate and elucidate his sub-level spiritual dimension of the issues, raising it to a central emphasis. For many a serious scholar, criticism of a norm comes sometimes too easily, while constructive criticism with a solution-oriented approach is more daunting. Most readers are likely to agree with Pontynen that our social and intellectual structures in the West, from the perspective of the twenty-first century looking back across history, seem to have failed culture and civilization in the pursuit of truth and wisdom. It is incumbent upon all, especially Christian scholars, to seek redress of the prevailing imbalance favoring a cynical and nihilistic conclusion that nothing has meaning and that humanity is doomed to random chaos.
38. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/2
J. Scott Lee Cultural Institutions, Theatre and Humanistic Liberal Education: Reconsidering “Art” in Liberal Arts Education
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The purported crisis and opportunity in liberal education may be approached via a reconsideration of the arts in liberal arts education. The advantage of such a view is that proponents of humanistic liberal education could speak in their own terms, while incorporating in a systematic way studies of ancient and modern liberal arts, addressing public questions of the value and substance of a liberal education. A plausible issue for consideration is whether the “arts” can address a crisis, its purported causes and solutions, and the key role the humanities may have in building a renewed liberal arts education. At stake in the classroom is the realization of the possibilities, the intellectual freedom, which humans make for themselves in artistic making. This freedom differs from, but is complementary to, political freedom, the loadstone of standard liberal education defenses, because it is based in innovations and inventions of the arts and sciences, not in constitutions or politics of democracy.
39. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/2
Oskar Gruenwald God, Nature and Freedom (Editorial)
40. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/2
William R. Clough God’s Dice: Bayesian Probability and Providence
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The Reverend Thomas Bayes has recently become best known for his mathematical Theorem, but Bayes’ vocation, and primary identity, was that of minister. Bayes’ writings include a tract on divine benevolence and an essay on the philosophy of calculus as well as what has come to be known as Bayes’ Theorem. Two and a half centuries ago, Bayes affirmed both the Providence of God and the probabilistic nature of reality. This essay explores some implications of Bayes’ Theorem in light of his theology. The central thesis is that it is fruitful to make the connection between Bayes’ mathematical theory of probability, its implications when extended in time, and his view of God as the continuous in-breaking of the good tending to the benefit of all creation. In so doing, Bayes suggests ways to shed light on current theological and philosophical discussions, including theodicy, religion and science, and chance and Providence.