Studies in Humanism and Atheism: The Quest for Orientation

Jung, Matthias

In the human quest for orientation vis-à-vis personal life and comprehensive reality the worldviews of religionists and humanists offer different answers, and science also plays a crucial role. Yet it is the ordinary, embodied experience of meaningful engagement with reality in which all these cultural activities are rooted.

Human beings have to relate themselves to the entirety of their lives to achieve orientation. This relation involves a non-methodical, meaningful experience that exhibits the crucial features for understanding worldviews: it comprises cognition, volition, and emotion, is embodied, action-oriented, and expressive. From this starting-point, religious and secular worldviews articulate what is experienced as ultimately meaningful. Yet the plurality and one-sidedness of these life stances necessitates critical engagement for which philosophy provides indispensable means. In the end, some worldviews can be ruled out, but we are still left with a plurality of genuine options for orientation.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2019-08-09

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9783030214913

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-21492-0

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 230