Trent Pomplun
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195377866
- eISBN:
- 9780199869466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377866.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
This chapter begins in 1715 as Ippolito Desideri and his traveling companion Manoel Freyre make their way across the great deserts of Western Tibet in the company of a mixed Mongol‐Tibetan caravan. ...
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This chapter begins in 1715 as Ippolito Desideri and his traveling companion Manoel Freyre make their way across the great deserts of Western Tibet in the company of a mixed Mongol‐Tibetan caravan. It introduces readers to Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits, and their religious institutions and devotes special attention to the Jesuits' own emphasis on images and image‐production in iconography, in literature, and in meditation. It also provides the historical context necessary to understand Desideri's own fantasies about Tibet and Tibetans.Less
This chapter begins in 1715 as Ippolito Desideri and his traveling companion Manoel Freyre make their way across the great deserts of Western Tibet in the company of a mixed Mongol‐Tibetan caravan. It introduces readers to Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits, and their religious institutions and devotes special attention to the Jesuits' own emphasis on images and image‐production in iconography, in literature, and in meditation. It also provides the historical context necessary to understand Desideri's own fantasies about Tibet and Tibetans.
Philip Endean
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198270287
- eISBN:
- 9780191683961
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198270287.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Karl Rahner SJ, (1904–84), perhaps the most influential figure in 20th-century Roman Catholic theology, believed that the most significant influence on his work was Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual ...
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Karl Rahner SJ, (1904–84), perhaps the most influential figure in 20th-century Roman Catholic theology, believed that the most significant influence on his work was Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. This book casts significant new light on Rahner's achievement by presenting it against the background of the rediscovery of Ignatian spirituality in the middle decades of the 20th century. It offers a fresh and contemporary theological interpretation of Ignatian retreat-giving, illuminating the creative new departures this ministry has taken in the last thirty years, as well as contributing to the lively current debate regarding the relationship between spirituality and speculative theology.Less
Karl Rahner SJ, (1904–84), perhaps the most influential figure in 20th-century Roman Catholic theology, believed that the most significant influence on his work was Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. This book casts significant new light on Rahner's achievement by presenting it against the background of the rediscovery of Ignatian spirituality in the middle decades of the 20th century. It offers a fresh and contemporary theological interpretation of Ignatian retreat-giving, illuminating the creative new departures this ministry has taken in the last thirty years, as well as contributing to the lively current debate regarding the relationship between spirituality and speculative theology.
Anna Sun
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691155579
- eISBN:
- 9781400846085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691155579.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This chapter offers a new conceptual framework for addressing the empirical question of who the Confucians are in China. It suggests a three-tier definition that considers Confucian religious ritual ...
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This chapter offers a new conceptual framework for addressing the empirical question of who the Confucians are in China. It suggests a three-tier definition that considers Confucian religious ritual practice along with ancestral worship, as well as Confucian spiritual exercise and social rituals. First, Confucianism is seen as one of the major world religions today, both in the popular imagination and in academic work. Second, the definition of religion is produced by a consensus between communities of practitioners and scholars, and it is a historical product rather than an ahistorical, normative concept. Finally, because of the nonstatic nature of both the definition of religion and the ideas associated with Confucianism, it is entirely plausible for Confucianism to be understood as a religion by both practitioners and scholars in a given social and historical context.Less
This chapter offers a new conceptual framework for addressing the empirical question of who the Confucians are in China. It suggests a three-tier definition that considers Confucian religious ritual practice along with ancestral worship, as well as Confucian spiritual exercise and social rituals. First, Confucianism is seen as one of the major world religions today, both in the popular imagination and in academic work. Second, the definition of religion is produced by a consensus between communities of practitioners and scholars, and it is a historical product rather than an ahistorical, normative concept. Finally, because of the nonstatic nature of both the definition of religion and the ideas associated with Confucianism, it is entirely plausible for Confucianism to be understood as a religion by both practitioners and scholars in a given social and historical context.
Maria Antonaccio
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199855575
- eISBN:
- 9780199933198
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199855575.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Iris Murdoch’s philosophy has long attracted readers searching for a morally serious yet humane perspective on human life. Her eloquent call for “a theology which can continue without God” has been ...
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Iris Murdoch’s philosophy has long attracted readers searching for a morally serious yet humane perspective on human life. Her eloquent call for “a theology which can continue without God” has been especially attractive to those who find that they can live neither with religion nor without it. By developing a form of thinking that is neither exclusively secular nor traditionally religious, Murdoch sought to recapture the existential or spiritual import of philosophy. Long before the current wave of interest in spiritual exercises, she approached philosophy not only as an academic discourse, but as a practice whose aim is the transformation of perception and consciousness. As she put it, a moral philosophy should be capable of being “inhabited”; that is, it should be “a philosophy one could live by.” In A Philosophy to Live By, Maria Antonaccio argues that Murdoch’s thought embodies an ascetic model of philosophy for contemporary life. Extending and complementing the argument of her earlier monograph, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch, this new work establishes Murdoch’s continuing relevance by engaging her thought with a variety of contemporary thinkers and debates in ethics, from a perspective informed by Murdoch’s philosophy as a whole. Among the prominent philosophers engaged here are Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Stephen Mulhall, John Rawls, Pierre Hadot, and Michel Foucault, and theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas, David Tracy, William Schweiker, and others. These engagements represent a sustained effort to think with Murdoch, yet also beyond her, by enlisting the resources of her thought to explore wider debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics, and in doing so, to illuminate the distinctive patterns and tropes of her philosophical style.Less
Iris Murdoch’s philosophy has long attracted readers searching for a morally serious yet humane perspective on human life. Her eloquent call for “a theology which can continue without God” has been especially attractive to those who find that they can live neither with religion nor without it. By developing a form of thinking that is neither exclusively secular nor traditionally religious, Murdoch sought to recapture the existential or spiritual import of philosophy. Long before the current wave of interest in spiritual exercises, she approached philosophy not only as an academic discourse, but as a practice whose aim is the transformation of perception and consciousness. As she put it, a moral philosophy should be capable of being “inhabited”; that is, it should be “a philosophy one could live by.” In A Philosophy to Live By, Maria Antonaccio argues that Murdoch’s thought embodies an ascetic model of philosophy for contemporary life. Extending and complementing the argument of her earlier monograph, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch, this new work establishes Murdoch’s continuing relevance by engaging her thought with a variety of contemporary thinkers and debates in ethics, from a perspective informed by Murdoch’s philosophy as a whole. Among the prominent philosophers engaged here are Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Stephen Mulhall, John Rawls, Pierre Hadot, and Michel Foucault, and theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas, David Tracy, William Schweiker, and others. These engagements represent a sustained effort to think with Murdoch, yet also beyond her, by enlisting the resources of her thought to explore wider debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics, and in doing so, to illuminate the distinctive patterns and tropes of her philosophical style.
Aviad Kleinberg
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231174701
- eISBN:
- 9780231540247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231174701.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Where outraged iconoclasts and horrified philosophers are told that seeing is believing.
Where outraged iconoclasts and horrified philosophers are told that seeing is believing.
Maria Antonaccio
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199855575
- eISBN:
- 9780199933198
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199855575.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter situates Murdoch’s thought amidst recent efforts to retrieve the forms and practices of ancient philosophy. Thanks in large part to the work of Hadot, there has been renewed interest in ...
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This chapter situates Murdoch’s thought amidst recent efforts to retrieve the forms and practices of ancient philosophy. Thanks in large part to the work of Hadot, there has been renewed interest in the ancient idea of spiritual exercises, prompting a fundamental rethinking of philosophy as a therapy of the soul or a practical discipline of self-formation. Murdoch argued explicitly for such a conception of philosophy and saw its significance for a rapprochement between philosophy and religion or theology. This chapter develops what I call a “reflexive” model of askesis from the resources of Murdoch’s thought, and compares it with alternative models of askesis advanced by thinkers such as Hadot, Nussbaum, and Foucault.Less
This chapter situates Murdoch’s thought amidst recent efforts to retrieve the forms and practices of ancient philosophy. Thanks in large part to the work of Hadot, there has been renewed interest in the ancient idea of spiritual exercises, prompting a fundamental rethinking of philosophy as a therapy of the soul or a practical discipline of self-formation. Murdoch argued explicitly for such a conception of philosophy and saw its significance for a rapprochement between philosophy and religion or theology. This chapter develops what I call a “reflexive” model of askesis from the resources of Murdoch’s thought, and compares it with alternative models of askesis advanced by thinkers such as Hadot, Nussbaum, and Foucault.
Joshua Landy
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195188561
- eISBN:
- 9780199949458
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195188561.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book offers a new rationale for the place of literary reading in the well-lived life. While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real ...
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This book offers a new rationale for the place of literary reading in the well-lived life. While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training-grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them we stand not to become more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquillity of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice. Their demands are high, but the reward they promise is nothing short of a more richly lived life.Less
This book offers a new rationale for the place of literary reading in the well-lived life. While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training-grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them we stand not to become more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquillity of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice. Their demands are high, but the reward they promise is nothing short of a more richly lived life.
Stephen C. Angle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195385144
- eISBN:
- 9780199869756
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385144.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
One recent trend in contemporary philosophy is thinking about the significance of the ancient practices that Pierre Hadot has labeled “spiritual exercises.” Just as philosophy was a “way of life” for ...
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One recent trend in contemporary philosophy is thinking about the significance of the ancient practices that Pierre Hadot has labeled “spiritual exercises.” Just as philosophy was a “way of life” for ancient Western thinkers, so was Neo-Confucianism about much more than theories. This chapter explores Neo-Confucian teachings about the practice of ethical development from two perspectives. First, it considers the stages that an individual can go through on the way toward sagehood, including both “lesser learning,” with its central role for ritual, and “greater learning.” Brief attention is paid to relations between Neo-Confucian understanding of stages and those of contemporary psychologists studying moral development like Martin Hoffman and Lawrence Kohlberg. Second, it discusses the particular practices that were recommended by Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, and others. Among the practices the chapter examines, it puts particular focus on those related to “attention,” and especially on the central practice of “reverence.”Less
One recent trend in contemporary philosophy is thinking about the significance of the ancient practices that Pierre Hadot has labeled “spiritual exercises.” Just as philosophy was a “way of life” for ancient Western thinkers, so was Neo-Confucianism about much more than theories. This chapter explores Neo-Confucian teachings about the practice of ethical development from two perspectives. First, it considers the stages that an individual can go through on the way toward sagehood, including both “lesser learning,” with its central role for ritual, and “greater learning.” Brief attention is paid to relations between Neo-Confucian understanding of stages and those of contemporary psychologists studying moral development like Martin Hoffman and Lawrence Kohlberg. Second, it discusses the particular practices that were recommended by Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, and others. Among the practices the chapter examines, it puts particular focus on those related to “attention,” and especially on the central practice of “reverence.”
J. Michelle Molina
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275652
- eISBN:
- 9780520955042
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275652.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter discusses some of the “tools” that facilitated the spread of the Spiritual Exercises, laying out the trends that began in Europe and continued, with slight variations, in New Spain. We ...
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This chapter discusses some of the “tools” that facilitated the spread of the Spiritual Exercises, laying out the trends that began in Europe and continued, with slight variations, in New Spain. We look at the development of the retreat house, dedicated to making the Spiritual Exercises available to both religious and laity. We also open some of the devotional literature that aimed to expand the reach of the Exercises by translating them into a method that could be practiced alone and in the home. Finally, we move to appreciate the inquisitorial take on the fine line between proper Ignatian spirituality and “Lutheran” heresy. In so doing, we gain a greater appreciation not only of the facts and artifacts pertaining to the Exercises but also of the sometimes tragic “remains” in a case that was intended as a cautionary tale.Less
This chapter discusses some of the “tools” that facilitated the spread of the Spiritual Exercises, laying out the trends that began in Europe and continued, with slight variations, in New Spain. We look at the development of the retreat house, dedicated to making the Spiritual Exercises available to both religious and laity. We also open some of the devotional literature that aimed to expand the reach of the Exercises by translating them into a method that could be practiced alone and in the home. Finally, we move to appreciate the inquisitorial take on the fine line between proper Ignatian spirituality and “Lutheran” heresy. In so doing, we gain a greater appreciation not only of the facts and artifacts pertaining to the Exercises but also of the sometimes tragic “remains” in a case that was intended as a cautionary tale.
Anne Sweeney
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074189
- eISBN:
- 9781781701195
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074189.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter considers the influence of Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises on Southwell. It first discusses Southwell's religious training, which made him aware of the presence of the angelic, and ...
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This chapter considers the influence of Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises on Southwell. It first discusses Southwell's religious training, which made him aware of the presence of the angelic, and allowed him to express it accordingly in his poetry. The chapter shows that it is the encouragement to express and study personal feeling that makes Exercises useful to an examination of the creation in English poetry of a new psychological realism and emotional integrity. It then considers the core experience of Exercises and stresses that Ignatius presented an understanding of the psychological processes involved in self-analysis.Less
This chapter considers the influence of Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises on Southwell. It first discusses Southwell's religious training, which made him aware of the presence of the angelic, and allowed him to express it accordingly in his poetry. The chapter shows that it is the encouragement to express and study personal feeling that makes Exercises useful to an examination of the creation in English poetry of a new psychological realism and emotional integrity. It then considers the core experience of Exercises and stresses that Ignatius presented an understanding of the psychological processes involved in self-analysis.
Maria Antonaccio
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199855575
- eISBN:
- 9780199933198
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199855575.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter sets the stage for the inquiry pursued in this book. It begins by reviewing the changing fortunes of Murdoch’s reputation in the period following her death in 1999 and considers the ...
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This chapter sets the stage for the inquiry pursued in this book. It begins by reviewing the changing fortunes of Murdoch’s reputation in the period following her death in 1999 and considers the effects of the biographies and memoirs on the recent critical reception of her work. The chapter then goes on to explain the purposes of the present volume, noting both the continuities and the discontinuities with my earlier monograph, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch. The central claim of this chapter (and the book as a whole) is that Murdoch’s philosophy makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary thought by developing a form of thinking that is neither exclusively secular nor traditionally religious. This mode of thinking is best captured by describing Murdoch’s philosophy as a reappropriation of ancient forms of askesis or spiritual exercises for contemporary life.Less
This chapter sets the stage for the inquiry pursued in this book. It begins by reviewing the changing fortunes of Murdoch’s reputation in the period following her death in 1999 and considers the effects of the biographies and memoirs on the recent critical reception of her work. The chapter then goes on to explain the purposes of the present volume, noting both the continuities and the discontinuities with my earlier monograph, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch. The central claim of this chapter (and the book as a whole) is that Murdoch’s philosophy makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary thought by developing a form of thinking that is neither exclusively secular nor traditionally religious. This mode of thinking is best captured by describing Murdoch’s philosophy as a reappropriation of ancient forms of askesis or spiritual exercises for contemporary life.
J. Michelle Molina
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275652
- eISBN:
- 9780520955042
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275652.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Drawing on the connections between the history of Western subjectivity and early modern European colonialism, this book explores how the idea of “self” emerged in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ...
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Drawing on the connections between the history of Western subjectivity and early modern European colonialism, this book explores how the idea of “self” emerged in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mexico as a consequence of the Jesuit encounter. Specifically, I focus on the core of Jesuit spirituality, their Spiritual Exercises—an adaptable, step-by-step program for renewal and salvation, adapted from the monastic practices of St. Ignatius to serve a new, worldly Catholicism. The Exercises advocated a rigorous method for self-examination and reflection that would ultimately contribute to a new understanding of “religion” as something private and personal, overturning long-held concepts of personhood, time, space, and social reality. Like their European contemporaries, colonial inhabitants of the New World did not think their way into modern selves; rather, that shift was the by-product of embodied intersubjective relationships, involving not only talking and writing but mimicking, crying, praying, and self-flagellating. What’s more, Jesuit self-reform became linked to a colonialist vision of a triumphant, worldwide Christianity. This book brings to light a trans-Atlantic network of shared devotional practices, thereby collapsing a long-standing, over-inflated sense of cultural distance between Europe and New Spain. My aim is an intellectual history grounded in the study of person-to-person interactions to answer the question: How did the so-called Western self become a disembodied self? Short answer: it was through embodied processes that humans came to experience themselves as split into mind and body. Despite the self-congratulatory role assigned to “consciousness” in the Western intellectual tradition, early moderns did not think themselves into thinking selves. Rather, “the self” was forged from embodied efforts to transcend self. To complicate matters, this was not a solo enterprise: Catholic spiritual-healing practices in the early modern era relied upon intersubjective relationships between spiritual director and subject. Furthermore, despite a discourse that situates self as interior, the actual fuel for continued self-transformation required an object-cum-subject: someone else to transform. Constant questions throughout the book: Why does the effort to know and transcend self require so many others? What can we learn about the inherent intersubjectivity of techniques of the self in the process?Less
Drawing on the connections between the history of Western subjectivity and early modern European colonialism, this book explores how the idea of “self” emerged in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mexico as a consequence of the Jesuit encounter. Specifically, I focus on the core of Jesuit spirituality, their Spiritual Exercises—an adaptable, step-by-step program for renewal and salvation, adapted from the monastic practices of St. Ignatius to serve a new, worldly Catholicism. The Exercises advocated a rigorous method for self-examination and reflection that would ultimately contribute to a new understanding of “religion” as something private and personal, overturning long-held concepts of personhood, time, space, and social reality. Like their European contemporaries, colonial inhabitants of the New World did not think their way into modern selves; rather, that shift was the by-product of embodied intersubjective relationships, involving not only talking and writing but mimicking, crying, praying, and self-flagellating. What’s more, Jesuit self-reform became linked to a colonialist vision of a triumphant, worldwide Christianity. This book brings to light a trans-Atlantic network of shared devotional practices, thereby collapsing a long-standing, over-inflated sense of cultural distance between Europe and New Spain. My aim is an intellectual history grounded in the study of person-to-person interactions to answer the question: How did the so-called Western self become a disembodied self? Short answer: it was through embodied processes that humans came to experience themselves as split into mind and body. Despite the self-congratulatory role assigned to “consciousness” in the Western intellectual tradition, early moderns did not think themselves into thinking selves. Rather, “the self” was forged from embodied efforts to transcend self. To complicate matters, this was not a solo enterprise: Catholic spiritual-healing practices in the early modern era relied upon intersubjective relationships between spiritual director and subject. Furthermore, despite a discourse that situates self as interior, the actual fuel for continued self-transformation required an object-cum-subject: someone else to transform. Constant questions throughout the book: Why does the effort to know and transcend self require so many others? What can we learn about the inherent intersubjectivity of techniques of the self in the process?
J. Michelle Molina
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275652
- eISBN:
- 9780520955042
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275652.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter introduces the Spiritual Exercises as a meditative retreat aimed at overcoming oneself. The Exercises drew upon Hellenistic and Christian monastic precedent, yet were differently ...
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This chapter introduces the Spiritual Exercises as a meditative retreat aimed at overcoming oneself. The Exercises drew upon Hellenistic and Christian monastic precedent, yet were differently configured by Ignatius of Loyola and his new order of male religious, the Society of Jesus, for the new global age. The chapter highlights the key irony, namely, that one must learn to forge and know a self before this same self can be overcome. I argue for the importance of situating Latin America in the history of the formation of Western subjectivities. I also show how we can approach the problem of subject-formation from both a Foucauldian and a phenomenological standpoint, contending that embodiment can be a useful, if challenging, paradigm for historians of religion.Less
This chapter introduces the Spiritual Exercises as a meditative retreat aimed at overcoming oneself. The Exercises drew upon Hellenistic and Christian monastic precedent, yet were differently configured by Ignatius of Loyola and his new order of male religious, the Society of Jesus, for the new global age. The chapter highlights the key irony, namely, that one must learn to forge and know a self before this same self can be overcome. I argue for the importance of situating Latin America in the history of the formation of Western subjectivities. I also show how we can approach the problem of subject-formation from both a Foucauldian and a phenomenological standpoint, contending that embodiment can be a useful, if challenging, paradigm for historians of religion.
Moshe Sluhovsky
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226472850
- eISBN:
- 9780226473048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226473048.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
General confession was a practice of recalling, ordering, and telling one's entire life to a spiritual director. Unlike sacramental confession, general confession was not a sacrament and it could be ...
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General confession was a practice of recalling, ordering, and telling one's entire life to a spiritual director. Unlike sacramental confession, general confession was not a sacrament and it could be reported to a mother superior as well as to a priest. In promoting general confession, religious orders in late medieval and early modern Europe enhanced techniques of life-telling and life-writing among believers. These believers were almost always people of the church. The practice later became obligatory among some religious orders, and was included in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. Following him, it became a standard technique of making sense of one's life.Less
General confession was a practice of recalling, ordering, and telling one's entire life to a spiritual director. Unlike sacramental confession, general confession was not a sacrament and it could be reported to a mother superior as well as to a priest. In promoting general confession, religious orders in late medieval and early modern Europe enhanced techniques of life-telling and life-writing among believers. These believers were almost always people of the church. The practice later became obligatory among some religious orders, and was included in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. Following him, it became a standard technique of making sense of one's life.
Thomas F. Van Laan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813035291
- eISBN:
- 9780813038483
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813035291.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter focuses on the meditative structure of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The chapter also discusses the Ignatian system demonstrated by Joyce thorough familiarity with the ...
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This chapter focuses on the meditative structure of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The chapter also discusses the Ignatian system demonstrated by Joyce thorough familiarity with the tradition of meditation derived from Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. The Ignatian spiritual exercises provide a coherent system of meditation for approximately one month of extremely intensive internal analysis. The structure of the Portrait thus follows the pattern of the Ignatian spiritual exercise such that the novel effects a kind of secularized spiritual exercise carrying its central figure through the progressive stages of memory, understanding, and will. The technical fusion of religious pattern with aesthetic discipline that went into the novel's ordering of random experience parallels Stephen's own fusion of Aquinas and Aristotle in his theory of art.Less
This chapter focuses on the meditative structure of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The chapter also discusses the Ignatian system demonstrated by Joyce thorough familiarity with the tradition of meditation derived from Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. The Ignatian spiritual exercises provide a coherent system of meditation for approximately one month of extremely intensive internal analysis. The structure of the Portrait thus follows the pattern of the Ignatian spiritual exercise such that the novel effects a kind of secularized spiritual exercise carrying its central figure through the progressive stages of memory, understanding, and will. The technical fusion of religious pattern with aesthetic discipline that went into the novel's ordering of random experience parallels Stephen's own fusion of Aquinas and Aristotle in his theory of art.
J. Michelle Molina
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275652
- eISBN:
- 9780520955042
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275652.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter discusses the letters of two nuns to their Jesuit confessor, Antonio Márquez. In understanding their anguished struggles to submit to a regimen of Ignatian spirituality, we revisit ...
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This chapter discusses the letters of two nuns to their Jesuit confessor, Antonio Márquez. In understanding their anguished struggles to submit to a regimen of Ignatian spirituality, we revisit earlier discussions of spiritual obedience, and I offer a critique of scholarship on women’s writing and female agency in Latin American historiography that has overlooked the dynamics of spiritual obedience that entailed an articulation of “self” as or through the desire to submit to a spiritual director. I move from the nuns’ spiritual discourse of the heart to show how the Exercises encouraged a heart-centered mobility that left a distinctive iconographic trail in its wake—the image of an anatomically correct carnal heart. The convergence of natural philosophy and spiritual practice grew out of the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises, which prompted the practitioner to contemplate God’s works in the natural world and take action in that world.Less
This chapter discusses the letters of two nuns to their Jesuit confessor, Antonio Márquez. In understanding their anguished struggles to submit to a regimen of Ignatian spirituality, we revisit earlier discussions of spiritual obedience, and I offer a critique of scholarship on women’s writing and female agency in Latin American historiography that has overlooked the dynamics of spiritual obedience that entailed an articulation of “self” as or through the desire to submit to a spiritual director. I move from the nuns’ spiritual discourse of the heart to show how the Exercises encouraged a heart-centered mobility that left a distinctive iconographic trail in its wake—the image of an anatomically correct carnal heart. The convergence of natural philosophy and spiritual practice grew out of the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises, which prompted the practitioner to contemplate God’s works in the natural world and take action in that world.
Avery Cardinal Dulles
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228621
- eISBN:
- 9780823236619
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823228621.003.0017
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter discusses the Ignatian tradition, looking at the Spiritual Exercises and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It comments on four themes from the Spiritual ...
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This chapter discusses the Ignatian tradition, looking at the Spiritual Exercises and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It comments on four themes from the Spiritual Exercises that have particularly inspired twentieth-century theologians: seeking God in all things, the immediacy of the soul to God, obedience to the hierarchical Church, and the call to glorify Christ the King by free and loving self-surrender into his hands. It illustrates each of these themes—the cosmic, the theistic, the ecclesial, and the Christological—from the writings of the theologians mentioned in the discussion. The chapter concludes that the Ignatian charism consists in the ability to combine the two tendencies without detriment to either. For Ignatius it was axiomatic that Christians are called to achieve authentic freedom by surrendering their limited freedom into the hands of Christ.Less
This chapter discusses the Ignatian tradition, looking at the Spiritual Exercises and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It comments on four themes from the Spiritual Exercises that have particularly inspired twentieth-century theologians: seeking God in all things, the immediacy of the soul to God, obedience to the hierarchical Church, and the call to glorify Christ the King by free and loving self-surrender into his hands. It illustrates each of these themes—the cosmic, the theistic, the ecclesial, and the Christological—from the writings of the theologians mentioned in the discussion. The chapter concludes that the Ignatian charism consists in the ability to combine the two tendencies without detriment to either. For Ignatius it was axiomatic that Christians are called to achieve authentic freedom by surrendering their limited freedom into the hands of Christ.
Anne Sweeney
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074189
- eISBN:
- 9781781701195
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074189.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter looks at the development of Southwell's writing during his early years in the Jesuit novitiate, revealing that Southwell's writing matured during his stay in Rome, and following some of ...
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This chapter looks at the development of Southwell's writing during his early years in the Jesuit novitiate, revealing that Southwell's writing matured during his stay in Rome, and following some of his activities there during the late 1570s. It was during this time when he tried – and failed – to enter the Jesuit novitiate. From here the discussion shifts to Southwell's early years in the novitiate, and studies his diary entries in order to determine the impact the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises had on him. This period also marked the beginning of Southwell's new poetic vision, and the chapter studies the effect flagellation (violence to the self) had on his poetry. It shows that most of Southwell's manuscript poetry in English features events from the Gospels, as well as elements of Catholic Mariology or sacramental belief, but also notes that some of his works appear to be bloodier and more visceral.Less
This chapter looks at the development of Southwell's writing during his early years in the Jesuit novitiate, revealing that Southwell's writing matured during his stay in Rome, and following some of his activities there during the late 1570s. It was during this time when he tried – and failed – to enter the Jesuit novitiate. From here the discussion shifts to Southwell's early years in the novitiate, and studies his diary entries in order to determine the impact the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises had on him. This period also marked the beginning of Southwell's new poetic vision, and the chapter studies the effect flagellation (violence to the self) had on his poetry. It shows that most of Southwell's manuscript poetry in English features events from the Gospels, as well as elements of Catholic Mariology or sacramental belief, but also notes that some of his works appear to be bloodier and more visceral.
Moshe Sluhovsky
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226472850
- eISBN:
- 9780226473048
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226473048.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Early Christian monastic spiritual practices of self-formation became increasingly popular in late medieval and early modern Catholicism. Now, for the first time in the history of Christian ...
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Early Christian monastic spiritual practices of self-formation became increasingly popular in late medieval and early modern Catholicism. Now, for the first time in the history of Christian spirituality, religious orders, first and foremost among them Franciscans and Jesuits, trained devout people, men and women, lay and religious, in practices of meditation, introspection, and subjectivization. Thousands, if not ten of thousands of lay people now acquired techniques of self examination that enabled them to pursue life goals and transform themselves. The book examines four of the major spiritual practices of the period, traces their history, diffusion, and the challenges they presented to clerical authority. Spiritual direction and general confession, two of the practices of self-formation discussed in the book, served as safety belts to guarantee that practitioners remained subjected to the teachings of the church. But spiritual exercises, general examination of conscience, and general confession supplied practitioners with techniques of self-construction and self -affirmation. Using insights from Michel Foucault's later work on practices of truth-telling and subjectivization, the book proposes the first systematic investigation of the complexity of subjectivization in early modern Catholicism as both a mechanism of self-formation and of subjugationLess
Early Christian monastic spiritual practices of self-formation became increasingly popular in late medieval and early modern Catholicism. Now, for the first time in the history of Christian spirituality, religious orders, first and foremost among them Franciscans and Jesuits, trained devout people, men and women, lay and religious, in practices of meditation, introspection, and subjectivization. Thousands, if not ten of thousands of lay people now acquired techniques of self examination that enabled them to pursue life goals and transform themselves. The book examines four of the major spiritual practices of the period, traces their history, diffusion, and the challenges they presented to clerical authority. Spiritual direction and general confession, two of the practices of self-formation discussed in the book, served as safety belts to guarantee that practitioners remained subjected to the teachings of the church. But spiritual exercises, general examination of conscience, and general confession supplied practitioners with techniques of self-construction and self -affirmation. Using insights from Michel Foucault's later work on practices of truth-telling and subjectivization, the book proposes the first systematic investigation of the complexity of subjectivization in early modern Catholicism as both a mechanism of self-formation and of subjugation
Donald Moore, S.J.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228119
- eISBN:
- 9780823236985
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823228119.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter discusses contemporary Jewish spirituality from an Ignatian perspective. It explains the influence of a March 1963 meeting in New York chaired by Abraham Joshua Heschel to the Second ...
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This chapter discusses contemporary Jewish spirituality from an Ignatian perspective. It explains the influence of a March 1963 meeting in New York chaired by Abraham Joshua Heschel to the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate. This dialogue was attended by Augustin Cardinal Bea, head of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and his assistant Monsignor Jan Willebrands. This chapter explains the relevance and similarity of Jewish spirituality expounded by Jewish writers Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.Less
This chapter discusses contemporary Jewish spirituality from an Ignatian perspective. It explains the influence of a March 1963 meeting in New York chaired by Abraham Joshua Heschel to the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate. This dialogue was attended by Augustin Cardinal Bea, head of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and his assistant Monsignor Jan Willebrands. This chapter explains the relevance and similarity of Jewish spirituality expounded by Jewish writers Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
