Page 1. The Theological Politics of Plato and Isaiah: A Debate Rejoined P. Travis Kroeker / McMas... more Page 1. The Theological Politics of Plato and Isaiah: A Debate Rejoined P. Travis Kroeker / McMaster University ... Socrates neither possesses wisdom nor a perfect soul but rather loveswisdom and the good-this is the meaning of true philia-sophon. ...
Page 1. CHAPTER 28 Recent Continental Philosophers P. Travis Kroeker Where is the one who is wise... more Page 1. CHAPTER 28 Recent Continental Philosophers P. Travis Kroeker Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? But God ...
Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, Apr 1, 1997
In an attempt to help plot the territory of the role of spirituality in occupational therapy, thi... more In an attempt to help plot the territory of the role of spirituality in occupational therapy, this paper examines the understanding of the mind-body-spirit paradigm in modern secular culture in order to examine critically its spiritual assumptions. It also suggests that occupational therapists might continue to explore the meaning of spirituality in a secular, pluralist culture through open dialogue that considers the spiritual meaning and aims of clinical practice with reference to particular religious traditions and symbols.
Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, 2015
In an Easter op-ed in the New York Times, Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at ... more In an Easter op-ed in the New York Times, Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, compares the Christian hope of the resurrection and Prometheus the Titan, who stole fire from the gods and gave it as a gift to human beings.1 In Aeschylus’s version, not only is Prometheus thus responsible for the gift to humans of “technology” (all the arts of progressive human civilization), he is also responsible for a second, more “spiritual” gift: “I stopped mortals from foreseeing doom,” says Prometheus, “I sowed in them blind hopes.” According to Critchley, the apostle Paul inadvertently confirms this second Promethean gift in asserting that the Christian hope in resurrection is precisely a blind hope: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” (Rom 8:24; cf. Heb 11:1). The problem, Critchley implies, is that when blind hope of a spiritual kind is tied to civilizational arts and especially political ideals, we are in danger of being deluded by the most blatant and painful forms of unreality that prolong human bondage and suffering. In this regard, of course, Critchley is in agreement with Nietzsche’s scathing critique of Paul’s spiritual causality, which he considers to be “completely out of touch with reality.”2 The belief in resurrection puts
I recently taught a graduate seminar on Leviathan, with the two primary texts being Hobbes’s poli... more I recently taught a graduate seminar on Leviathan, with the two primary texts being Hobbes’s political philosophical classic and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The Ignatius Critical Edition of Melville’s classic includes three essays in “Contemporary Criticism,” which begins with Robert Alexander’s “Apocalyptic Readings of Moby Dick: What Ishmael Returns to Tell Us” and ends with Stephen Zelnick’s “Moby Dick: The Republic at Sea.”1 Alexander’s apocalyptic reading opposes the dominant view (at least since Lawrence Thompson’s 1952 Melville’s Quarrel with God) that Moby Dick is an ultimately despairing nihilistic novel. He argues that Ishmael in the end bears witness, Jonahand Job-like, to an apocalypse of divine mystery in nature, in a spirit of humility that saves him from the “degraded view of both the human person and nature that entered Christianity in the Reformation” (669). What is unveiled is a prophetic return to the “medieval sacramental world view” of Dante’s Commedia that may save modernity from its impersonal, disembodied, and disenchanted Calvinist iron cage. So far, so Weberian—except for, you know, the salvation part. Salvation will come from medieval Catholicism. How apocalyptic is that?? The third essay by Stephen Zelnick on “The Republic at Sea” develops a political reading of Moby Dick informed by the always-handy old-world study by Toqueville, Democracy in America, who, “dismayed by political and cultural turbulence in Europe, travelled to America to study its brave experiment in democracy” (691), where, unfortunately, Alexis was mostly
Page 1. The Theological Politics of Plato and Isaiah: A Debate Rejoined P. Travis Kroeker / McMas... more Page 1. The Theological Politics of Plato and Isaiah: A Debate Rejoined P. Travis Kroeker / McMaster University ... Socrates neither possesses wisdom nor a perfect soul but rather loveswisdom and the good-this is the meaning of true philia-sophon. ...
Page 1. CHAPTER 28 Recent Continental Philosophers P. Travis Kroeker Where is the one who is wise... more Page 1. CHAPTER 28 Recent Continental Philosophers P. Travis Kroeker Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? But God ...
Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, Apr 1, 1997
In an attempt to help plot the territory of the role of spirituality in occupational therapy, thi... more In an attempt to help plot the territory of the role of spirituality in occupational therapy, this paper examines the understanding of the mind-body-spirit paradigm in modern secular culture in order to examine critically its spiritual assumptions. It also suggests that occupational therapists might continue to explore the meaning of spirituality in a secular, pluralist culture through open dialogue that considers the spiritual meaning and aims of clinical practice with reference to particular religious traditions and symbols.
Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, 2015
In an Easter op-ed in the New York Times, Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at ... more In an Easter op-ed in the New York Times, Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, compares the Christian hope of the resurrection and Prometheus the Titan, who stole fire from the gods and gave it as a gift to human beings.1 In Aeschylus’s version, not only is Prometheus thus responsible for the gift to humans of “technology” (all the arts of progressive human civilization), he is also responsible for a second, more “spiritual” gift: “I stopped mortals from foreseeing doom,” says Prometheus, “I sowed in them blind hopes.” According to Critchley, the apostle Paul inadvertently confirms this second Promethean gift in asserting that the Christian hope in resurrection is precisely a blind hope: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” (Rom 8:24; cf. Heb 11:1). The problem, Critchley implies, is that when blind hope of a spiritual kind is tied to civilizational arts and especially political ideals, we are in danger of being deluded by the most blatant and painful forms of unreality that prolong human bondage and suffering. In this regard, of course, Critchley is in agreement with Nietzsche’s scathing critique of Paul’s spiritual causality, which he considers to be “completely out of touch with reality.”2 The belief in resurrection puts
I recently taught a graduate seminar on Leviathan, with the two primary texts being Hobbes’s poli... more I recently taught a graduate seminar on Leviathan, with the two primary texts being Hobbes’s political philosophical classic and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The Ignatius Critical Edition of Melville’s classic includes three essays in “Contemporary Criticism,” which begins with Robert Alexander’s “Apocalyptic Readings of Moby Dick: What Ishmael Returns to Tell Us” and ends with Stephen Zelnick’s “Moby Dick: The Republic at Sea.”1 Alexander’s apocalyptic reading opposes the dominant view (at least since Lawrence Thompson’s 1952 Melville’s Quarrel with God) that Moby Dick is an ultimately despairing nihilistic novel. He argues that Ishmael in the end bears witness, Jonahand Job-like, to an apocalypse of divine mystery in nature, in a spirit of humility that saves him from the “degraded view of both the human person and nature that entered Christianity in the Reformation” (669). What is unveiled is a prophetic return to the “medieval sacramental world view” of Dante’s Commedia that may save modernity from its impersonal, disembodied, and disenchanted Calvinist iron cage. So far, so Weberian—except for, you know, the salvation part. Salvation will come from medieval Catholicism. How apocalyptic is that?? The third essay by Stephen Zelnick on “The Republic at Sea” develops a political reading of Moby Dick informed by the always-handy old-world study by Toqueville, Democracy in America, who, “dismayed by political and cultural turbulence in Europe, travelled to America to study its brave experiment in democracy” (691), where, unfortunately, Alexis was mostly
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