According to Kant each person has an empirical character, which is ultimately grounded in one’s free choice. The popular Causal Laws interpretation of empirical character holds that it consists of the causal laws governing our psychology. I argue that this reading has difficulties explaining moral change, the ‘gradual reformation’ of our empirical character: Causal laws cannot change and hence cannot be gradually reformed. I propose an alternative Causal Powers interpretation of empirical character, where our empirical character consists of our (...) mind’s causal powers. The resulting picture of empirical character allows for moral change and Kantian weakness of will. (shrink)

In this article, we propose an alternative Foucauldian reading of Martin Luther’s thought and early Lutheranism. Michel Foucault did not mention the Reformation often, although he saw it as an amplification of pastoral power and the governing of people’s everyday lives. We aim to fill the gap in his analysis by outlining the disciplinary and biopolitical aspects in Luther and early Lutheranism. Therefore, we also contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the birth of biopolitics, which, we argue, predates Foucault’s (...) periodisation. Our approach to tackling these questions is three-pronged. First, we establish the context by highlighting a few Reformation-era examples of the conceptual opposite of biopower, namely, sovereign power. Second, we scrutinise the disciplinary aspects of early Lutheranism, underscoring the fact that disciplinary institutions appear to subject people to new models of behaviour. Third, we describe the biopolitical undercurrents in Luther’s thought and its early reception. We argue that the reformer’s views on issues such as marriage and poor relief appear to carry a biopolitical significance before the alleged birth of biopolitics. (shrink)

Andrews, Robert M A way of dealing with historical episodes, the consequences of which continue to challenge us, is to ask a counterfactual-a 'what if?' question. Martin Luther's life, his critique of the Catholic Church, his challenge to the social and political hegemony of European Catholicism, the resultant splintering of an ecclesial unity assumed by the medieval mind to be practically impenetrable, is one such historical episode. My counterfactual is as follows: What would have been the consequences to European Catholicism (...) had Luther not rebelled against the church? As this article will later discuss, Luther famously spent many hours in the confessional during his time as an Augustinian friar. Luther's superior, spiritual guide, and confessor, Johann von Staupitz -whose motto was 'I am yours, save me'-often assured Luther that his sins were forgiven, that Christ's work had been done, and that he consequently had no need to despair of the mercy of God. It was advice that Luther ultimately found unsatisfactory. 'I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners', Luther famously said in 1545, reflecting on his time as a monk, articulating a conscience that found solace only outside of Roman communion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century fuelled heated debates about the nature and perception of spirits appearing to people. According to Protestant theology, apparitions of spirits were not souls of the dead but either diabolical illusions, natural phenomena, or ‘mere fantasies’ of a deluded mind. Swiss church minister Louis Lavater (1527–1586) emphasized that particularly melancholic people were prone to devilish deceits and thus inclined to imagine ghosts and other spirits. This paper traces the close connection between early (...) modern concepts of melancholy, imagination, and discourses on ghosts in then-normative perspectives before contrasting theological ideals and legal arguments raised in a 1681 Basel trial featuring an allegedly melancholic woman implicated in necromancy. This paper argues that scholarly discussions about imagination and melancholy regarding ghosts in Post-Reformation Switzerland were less concerned with ontological questions about the reality of ghostly phenomena than with possible sinful interactions with ghost, which in turn mirrored ideas about diabolical temptation. (shrink)

Terence Irwin presents a historical and critical study of the development of moral philosophy over two thousand years, from ancient Greece to the Reformation. Starting with the seminal ideas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, he guides the reader through the centuries that follow, introducing each of the thinkers he discusses with generous quotations from their works. He offers not only careful interpretation but critical evaluation of what they have to offer philosophically. This is the first of three volumes which (...) will examine the history of ethics in the Socratic tradition, up to the late 20th century. (shrink)

_The purpose_ of this study is the reflection on ways of philosophical legitimation for the "Self-made-man" idea in the worldview of the Renaissance and Reformation. _Theoretical basis._ Historical, comparative, and hermeneutic methods became the basis for this. The study is based on the works of Nicholas of Cusa, G. Pico della Mirandola, N. Machiavelli, M. Montaigne, E. Roterodamus, M. Luther, J. Calvin together with modern researchers of this period. _Originality._ The analysis allows us to come to the conclusion that (...) casts doubt on the still widespread belief according to which the emergence of the "Self-made-man" idea is localized by the process of forming the American cultural code and the ideological heritage of Benjamin Franklin. It is highlighted that the formation of this idea is the result of a long process that originated in the ancient world and gains a special impetus in the Renaissance and Reformation. Precisely in the cultural context of the latter, the ancient intention to recognize the individual’s right to self-determination and self-government, which in the depths of Christian theology acquires only a potentially universal character, becomes not only acceptable but also, in the context of Protestantism worldview, the only admissible, in fact, individual’s obligatory life guidelines. _Conclusions._ Humanistic and reformation thoughts quite naturally led to further ideological legitimation of the person’s idea of who is creating oneself. This legitimation was during the complex interaction of numerous factors of culture in the Late Middle Ages, as well as ideas and intentions inherited from Antiquity. Key among them was the gradual formation of a new social order, in essence, indifferent to paternalistic rudiments, together with the ethics of Protestantism corresponding to it. The latter does not only legalize but, de facto, sacralizes the individual’s reorientation from hopes for the synergy of God’s grace and own free will in personal salvation, toward the self-reliance and personal efforts, awareness of personal responsibility for the own fate as key principles of the "Self-made-man" concept. (shrink)

Recently, an orthodox Russellian tenet has come under fire from within. In particular, some Russellians now argue that definite descriptions don’t semantically encode uniqueness. Instead, Reformed Russellians, as I call them, hold that definite descriptions are truth-theoretically identical to indefinite ones. On this approach, a definite description’s uniqueness reading becomes a matter of pragmatics, not semantics. These reforms, we’re told, provide both empirical and methodological benefits over and above the prevailing orthodoxy. As I argue, however, the Russellian Reformation contains (...) serious flaws. Indeed, it is Orthodox Russellianism that remains a superior choice, both empirically and conceptually. (shrink)

Focusing on the interaction of religion and politics, this is a comprehensive chronological survey of the political thought of post-Reformation Britain which examines the work of a wide range of thinkers.

The beginning of the English Reformation in the 1530s was foremost a process of subjecting the ‚Church in England‘ to the crown, which was fuelled by protestant motives, primarily, however, by a critique of the worldly powers of the church and the english canon law and church courts. This is shown in writings by the protestants Simon Fish and William Tyndale, and in texts of the common lawyer Christopher Saint German, who elaborated a theoretical justification for the subjection of (...) the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the common law. Their counterpart was Thomas More, who had written against Luther and the english protestants since 1523 and who defended the ecclesiastical heresy-jurisdiction against Saint German. The outcome, after Henry VIII was declared to be ‚Head of the Church of England‘ by parliament, was uncertainty as to where the supremacy over the church resided: in the crown alone, or in the sovereignty of the ‚King-in-Parliament‘ as advocated by Saint German. (shrink)

Athletes’ identity development upon retirement from elite sport was examined through a model of self-reformation that integrates and builds on the theoretical underpinnings of identity development and liminality, while advancing seven propositions and supporting conceptual conjectures using findings from research on athletes’ transition out of sport. As some elite athletes lose a salient athletic identity upon retiring from sport, they experience an identity crisis and enter the transition rites feeling in between their former athletic identity and future identity post-sport (...) life, during which a temporary identity moratorium status is needed for identity growth. Given the developmental challenges encountered in moratorium and psychosocial processes necessary to establish a new, fulfilling identity for life after elite sport, we identified key conditions, triggers, and processes that advance how a journey of identity growth paradox experienced during liminality serves as a catalyst toward identity achievement. Elite athletes must be encouraged to persevere in this challenging identity search and delay commitments for as long as it is necessary to achieve identity growth despite experiencing uncomfortable feelings of confusion, void, and ambiguity during the liminal phase. Reforming into an achieved identity for life after elite sport would corroborate the successful navigation of transition, as elite athletes evolved into a synthesized sense of self by cementing, through a negotiated adaptation pathway, constructed identity commitments that will provide new beginnings and meaningful directions to their life after elite sport. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the influence of Lutheran and Calvinist theology on the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the reconception and consequent curtailment of the power and role of language in philosophical thought. Prior to this influence, ethics is the basis for pre-Reformation philosophy, in that it entails a basic teleological conception of human nature upon which other branches of philosophical thought are based. Thus the primary objective of pre-Reformation philosophy is the justification (...) of humanity, the laying out of how humanity might become right, complete, balanced, and just. What allows humanity to achieve its own good by seeking out the good in nature is language and the ability to wield it. The conclusion drawn is that philosophy prior to the Reformation is the justification of humanity as language. (shrink)

Racial divisions, polarisation and tensions are on the rise in South Africa today. A democratic dream of a rainbow nation remains just a dream with racism continuing to raise its ugly head in the democratic South Africa, to the detriment of the rainbow dream of a united South Africa. This article seeks to probe whether South Africans should continue to sing the song of racial reconciliation in the light of the continued racial tensions and post-colonial and post-apartheid legacies and stereotypes (...) that continue to manifest in our private and public spaces. Based on an examination of the decoloniality project, Africanisation and Reformation, through literature study, the article calls for the decoloniality of faith in an effort to craft a vision for a non-racial society. This vision not only takes the importance of the redeeming memories of the 500 years of Reformation seriously, but also the notion of Africanisation and, in particular, the use of the African value systems in shaping and reconstructing a non-racial South Africa. This article taps into the resourcefulness of the Reformed faith in South Africa, as articulated in the theologies of Snyman, Tshaka and Botha, and applies them to South African discourses of decoloniality. (shrink)

Johann Heinrich Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology at the Calvinist academy of Heborn, was a man of many parts. A deputy to the famous Synod of Dort and greatest encyclopaedist of his age, he was also a pioneer of Calvinist millenarianism and a devoted student of astrology, alchemy, Lullism, and the works of Giordano Bruno. From the mainstream Reformed tradition, Alsted and his circle inherited the zeal for further reformation of church, state, and society; but with this they (...) blended hermetic dreams of a general reformation and the restoration of primordial perfection to the fallen human nature through Lullist and alchemical panaceas. However paradoxical from a strictly Calvinist standpoint, this loose synthesis helped prepare the programme of Alsted's greatest student, Jan Amos Cominius, and the following generation of central European universal reformers. Alsted's intellectual biography opens up unexpected perspectives on the reforming movements of the seventeenth century, and provides an invaluable introduction to many of the central ideas, individuals and institutions of this neglected era of central European intellectual history. (shrink)

While it cannot be denied that the 16th-century Reformation, which challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian moral practice in a just manner, indeed came with deep and lasting political changes, it remained a male-dominated discourse. The Reformation was arguably patriarchal and points to a patriarchal culture of subordination and oppression of women that prevailed then and is still pertinent in the church and all spheres of society today. The absence of Elmina and (...) the silenced yet loud voices and cries from the female dungeons below a Dutch Reformed Church in the upper levels of the castle in the retelling of the narrative of the Reformation leaves much to be desired and has a bearing on how black women perceive the Reformation 500 years later. The article thus problematises the Reformation through the heuristic eyes of Elmina Castle in Ghana as the genesis of the ‘dungeoning’ of black women justified by faith. The article argues that black women are reformers from the dungeons following the historical experience of reformation and the Reformed faith as racist and sexist, among other ills experienced by blacks in the Global South, with black women literally kept in the dungeons below a Reformed Church building as they were in Elmina with a biblical inscription, Psalm 138, on the threshold of its main door. This article thus points to irreconcilable contradictions maintained by the Reformed faith that continues to bury black women in the ‘dungeons’ even today. The enfleshment of black bodies in the dungeons of the Elmina Castle underneath a Reformed Church building is seen as the historical and heuristic starting point of engaging Reformed faith from a womanist perspective. (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council, taking into account the modern needs of mankind, called for the mutual tolerance of denominations, reforms and compromise in church traditions and practices. This was a response to the practical life of the Ukrainian church in the diaspora. For the Eastern Churches, the Council adopted a separate Decree "The Constitution for the Eastern Churches" 1, on the basis of which a conference of the UCP bishopric, led by the Supreme Archbishop Joseph Slipy, was convened on December (...) 14, 1966 in Rome. It discussed a number of issues, including the case of Divine Liturgy, the liturgical language, the introduction of the Ukrainian spoken language, some reductions in the Service of God, and the reformation of church singing. It was for this purpose that the dioceses established Liturgical Commissions, in particular at the Chicago Department in the United States, which included the musicologist, composer, and musical culture activist of the Diaspora Myron Fedorov. One of the tasks of the commission was to preserve the traditional self-made singing, so that he "did not disappear, but he lived and developed under different kinds: single-handed, double-voiced or in choral works, which most would be out of the richness and beauty of our rite". (shrink)

This chapter provides a synthesis of the ‘Reformation of Common Learning’, which progressively developed from Peter Ramus’s pedagogy in the mid-sixteenth century to the work of the Moravian Comenius in the mid-seventeenth. The essay stretches the traditional periodisation and disciplinary boundaries often applied to reformation studies. By implication, it calls into question the understanding of a seventeenth-century ‘post-reformation’ era, a point underscored by mid-seventeenth-century writers such as Milton who spoke of reform as a continuous process. The wider (...) intellectual currents that were contemporaneous to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theological developments become essential to understanding the reception of reformation. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 250-255, January 2022.

Christian theology and ethics are largely inadequate to confront the ecological crisis of today. They are in need of reformation. At the center of Christian faith, we shall not find a mandate to pollute, plunder, and prey on the rest of nature. Instead, we shall discover that the core affirmations endow all life with a moral significance that entails human responsibility toward the whole of nature.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.