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Jesuit Phantasia

Trent Pomplun

in Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet

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. ... More

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

To Become a Confucian: A New Conceptual Framework

Anna Sun

in Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities

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 ... More

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

Invisible

Aviad Kleinberg

in The Sensual God: How the Senses Make the Almighty Senseless

Where outraged iconoclasts and horrified philosophers are told that seeing is believing.

The Return of Spiritual Exercises

Maria Antonaccio

in A Philosophy to Live By: Engaging Iris Murdoch

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 ... More

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

Learning to Look for Harmony

Stephen C. Angle

in Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy

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 ... More

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

Facts: Houses, Books, and Other Remains

J. Michelle Molina

in To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520-1767

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 ... More

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

Interpreting Philosophy Into Practical Life

Maria Antonaccio

in A Philosophy to Live By: Engaging Iris Murdoch

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 ... More

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

The Spiritual Exercises: the ‘inward eie’1

Anne Sweeney

in Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: Redrawing the English Lyric Landscape, 1586-95

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 ... More

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

Cinema as Spiritual Exercise: Tarkovsky and Hadot

Anne Eakin Moss

in ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

This chapter examines Tarkovsky’s cinema in relation to contemporary philosopher Pierre Hadot’s concept of spiritual exercises. As the chapter demonstrates, each of Tarkovsky’s films could be seen as ... More

This chapter examines Tarkovsky’s cinema in relation to contemporary philosopher Pierre Hadot’s concept of spiritual exercises. As the chapter demonstrates, each of Tarkovsky’s films could be seen as such spiritual exercises because of numerous parallels with Hadot’s theory: all his protagonists demand of themselves extreme forms of mental concentration, focused on goals that depart from the everyday and can only be seen as metaphysical, and all of them are quixotic seekers passionately involved in spiritually transcendent quests characterized by deep attention to the world around them. Furthermore, the author argues, the viewer’s experience could also serve as an example of Hadot’s idea of how spiritual exercises might be practiced via deepening and transforming habitual perception.Less

Introduction: “To Overcome Oneself”

J. Michelle Molina

in To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520-1767

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 ... More

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

The Meditative Structure of Joyce's Portrait

Thomas F. Van Laan

in Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies

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 ... More

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

General Confession

Moshe Sluhovsky

in Becoming a New Self: Practices of Belief in Early Modern Catholicism

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 ... More

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

A Heart-Shaped World

J. Michelle Molina

in To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520-1767

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 ... More

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

Rome: the discernment of angels

Anne Sweeney

in Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: Redrawing the English Lyric Landscape, 1586-95

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 ... More

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

The Ignatian Tradition and Contemporary Theology: April 10, 1997

Avery Cardinal Dulles

in Church and Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988-2007

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 ... More

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