Series: Studies in Theology and Religion (STAR), Am 15. April 1799 beendete Friedrich Schleiermacher seine "Reden über die Religion". Die rhetorisch und stilistisch sehr geschickt verfasste (und anonym veröffentlichte) Erstlingsschrift des später berühmten Predigers, Universitätsprofessors und Schriftstellers hat bis heute ihre Anziehungkraft behalten. Aus Anlass der Zweihundertjahrfeier hat die Niederländische Forschungsgesellschaft für Theologie und Religionswissenschaften (NOSTER) zusammen mit der Theologischen Fakultät Tilburg einen Studientag veranstaltet. Zwei Ziele wurden dabei verfolgt: erstens die Situierung der "Reden" in ihrer Entstehungszeit und in der (...) heutigen Zeit sowie zweitens die systematisch-theologische Vertiefung zentraler Themen der "Reden", Schleiermachers Verständnis der Religion in der 2. Rede und seine Christologie in der 5. Rede. Dieser Band enthält die Beiträge zu dieser Tagung und ein Protokoll der spannungsreichen Diskussion, verfasst von Nico Schreurs (Tilburg), das auf viele Forschungsergebnisse und Forschungsdesiderate hinweist. Die Beiträge stammen von Günter Meckenstock, Herausgeber der Kritischen Schleiermacherausgabe und renommierter Kenner der historischen Lage um 1800, Ad Willems, Übersetzer der "Reden" ins Niederländische, Christian Albrecht (Tübingen, jetzt Bochum) und Claus-Dieter Osthövener (Halle an der Saale). Inhalt Die Aufnahme der "Reden" in Schleiermachers Zeitgenossenschaft Günter Meckenstock Zur Aktualität von Schleiermachers "Reden" aus dem Jahre 1799: Ein kontextueller Deutungsversuch Ad Willems Die Ermöglichung von Korrelativität: Religion als "Anschauung und Gefühl" in Schleiermachers zweiter Rede Christian Albrecht Die Christologie der "Reden" Claus-Dieter Osthövener Religion als Ausdruck des gestimmten Gefühls: Schleiermachers. Sicht der religiösen Erfahrung in den "Reden" Wessel Stoker "... etwas ausser und über der Menschheit... " Schleiermachers Religionsbegriff in den "Reden". Postmodernismus avant la lettre? Dick Boer Die Präsenz Spinozas in Schleiermachers "Reden" Rinse Reeling Brouwer Von einer romantischen hin zu einer transzendental-philosophischen Bewusstseinstheorie Jacques Laurent Das Tilburger Symposium über Schleiermachers "Reden" Protokoll der Diskussion Nico Schreurs NAMENREGISTER. (shrink)

(1982). J. S. DREY EN F. SCHLEIERMACHER AAN HET BEGIN VAN DE FUNDAMENTELE THEOLOGIE OORSPRONGEN EN ONTWIKKELINGEN. Bijdragen: Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 251-288.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Fool Is a "Holy Fool"?Agneta Schreurs (bio)The editors asked me to write a short response to your commentaries. They asked me to do that as a set; therefore, I respond to your texts as a whole.First, I thank you for your comments. I appreciate very much that you took the time to read and reflect on my article. I am really very happy with your positive evaluation (...) of my article, particularly because my choice for this subject has much to do with my own biography. I have been raised by nonreligious parents and grandparents. My mother being a classical scholar and my father a scientist, I knew more about antiquity and chemistry than about the Bible, which in fact did not figure at all in my education. However, when I was forty years old, I took on theology at the University of Utrecht as an extra study in my free time, mainly because I felt embarrassed whenever my students or clients brought the subject up and I did not know the first thing about it. Right from the beginning I became absolutely excited about this study, not only about the broad range of fascinating subjects, but also because quite a number churches had merged the academic part of their seminaries with the theological faculty of the University of Utrecht into an academically very high-standard curriculum. Students and teachers were a mix of Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, Baptist, and several other denominations, in my time even a Jewish rabbi and a Winti (an indigenous religion in the former Dutch West Indies). Outsider as I was, this offered me a unique opportunity to become acquainted in a personal and natural way with their various faiths. Nevertheless, it took me three years before I realized what all those fascinating things had to do with my life and with my work! This realization was the reason why, after getting my master's degree in theology, I decided to choose a combination of philosophy of religion and psychology of religion for my doctoral dissertation and to change my group practice into work that explicitly dealt with the interconnections between spirituality and psychotherapy.I also want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on the larger contexts of my subject. From my biographical sketch, you can see that I agree with both of you in that it is high time that psychiatry and psychotherapy pay more attention to—and become more knowledgeable about—their religious patients' religion and spirituality. Not because I think the "talking cures" may have much in common with "faith healing" (in fact, I agree with Gibson [2000] that they have much more in common with the gentle craft of taking confession), but because it is unprofessional not to do so. When a person consults a priest or minister with regard to a religious problem, it often appears that there are also psychological problems involved. That is why theological curricula include pastoral psychology and clinical training courses. This is also true the other way round: psychological problems treated in psychotherapy and counseling may involve a patient's religious mindset. However [End Page 205], most psychotherapists are generally neither religious themselves nor trained in assessing and understanding the great variety of ways in which people may be religious and how these may be intertwined with the problems for which they have sought therapeutic help. In particular, they are mostly not trained in discovering how their patients' religiousness may be a cause of therapeutic failure or, alternatively, a source of support and as such a help toward therapeutic progress. In addition to such lack in information and training, and in contrast with most clergy, clients in therapy may easily have very different religious backgrounds. As a result of this professional situation, many psychotherapists feel uncomfortable in this area and unprofessionally tend to ignore, avoid, or reinterpret in psychological terms their patients' spiritual expressions.The point I tried to make is this: to successfully discover and assess how a patients' religiousness may be a cause of psychological problems or conversely, be a source of support and as such a help toward therapeutic progress, you need at least some basic... (shrink)

In October 2010, the German conservative ruling coalition and Free Democratic Party ) passed a law permitting the extension of contracts for Germany’s seventeen nuclear power plants. This policy amended a law passed in 2001 by a Social Democratic Party and Green Party majority to phase out nuclear energy by the early 2020s. The explosions in the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, however, resulted in a decision to speed up the phaseout of nuclear energy. The nuclear (...) meltdowns in Japan sent hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets. Angry voters made their disillusionment with the nuclear politics of the conservative government coalition clear in local elections. The federal government responded by setting up an Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply, which recommended an end to nuclear energy and a shift to a renewable energy-based economy. Within months of the Fukushima disaster, the government had permanently shut down eight of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants and issued a schedule for the phased shutdown of the remaining nine plants by 2022. In addition, the government reaffirmed its climate change plans, which call for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by around forty percent of 1990 levels by 2020 and eighty percent by 2050. Thus, out of a crisis, the German government is forging an opportunity to become a global leader in the promotion of new renewable energies, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. In Japan, the nuclear crisis has also weakened support for nuclear energy, but with a strong industrial coalition calling for its continued use, both for energy stability and in response to climate change, a complete nuclear phaseout is less certain, at least in the short term. (shrink)

Abstract:Cities are increasingly faced with the impact of shocks or stresses, and the built environment is forced to respond to these changes in a resilient way. Especially urban waterfronts are faced with constant social, spatial and economic transformation. Centuries ago developed as industrial land, the waterfronts of New York City have since gone through extensive transformation processes and have resulted in complex, hybrid, and sequenced urban areas with a large mix of social, spatial and economic activities and conditions. However, twenty-first-century (...) waterfront redevelopment seems to replace these areas with more homogeneous and ‘clean’ masterplans that answer to the pressing residential and recreational market, but forgo the social and economic complexity and do not anticipate future changes in the existing environment. This paper looks at how urban waterfronts respond to the inevitable changes of the future, and compares how new urban waterfront redevelopments function in comparison to the initial post-industrial complex waterfronts. The paper investigates the resilience of homogeneous compared to heterogeneous waterfronts, and raises the question if there should be an alternative approach of tackling post-industrial waterfronts, answering to their urgent need of redevelopment while simultaneously considering its modularity and complexity on spatial, social, environmental and economic level. (shrink)

This article offers a relational approach for understanding and dealing with a patient's spiritual concerns. Insight into the relational structure of a particular patient's spirituality may help to (1) analyze in what way psychological and spiritual factors are interconnected and in what way the patient's "spiritual relationship" influences his mental health problems either positively or negatively, and (2) identify the latent opportunities for therapeutic and spiritual healing that are present within their spiritually minded patients' own religious frame of reference.

The actuality of the topic of atonement is manifest. In the past two years some interesting books on this subject have been published in Dutch, English and German. Moreover, the second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz has dealt with the same topic. In this note the author reviews a few recent publications on atonement.

This article is about reconciliation, not only in the biblical and classical sense of the term, but also as an answer to tensions in our multicultural society. First the many meanings of the word reconciliation are explored. The core meaning is the restoration of a troubled relationship. In the first part of the article the interaction between God and his people resulting in reconciliation, as described in Holy Scripture, is picted and reviewed in the light of the divine priority in (...) biblical covenant and the autonomy of modern man. In the second part, an attempt is made to apply insights into biblical reconciliation to conflicts between people in modern, terror stricken society. Is it realistic to expect, that theological discussions on reconciliation can have a bearing on the solution of conflicts in our days? The terms substitute and mediator, that play an important role in classical theological reconciliation theories, are analyzed in view of their applicability in present-day conflicts. (shrink)

This article examines the efforts of the Obama administration and many other actors-ranging from non-governmental organizations, municipalities, and state governments to some Congressional representatives-to put the United States back on track towards international climate leadership. Efforts to shift policy direction, however, still face many hurdles. Over the course of the better part of a decade or more, climate skeptics and policy change opponents were able to seed doubt about the urgency of the issue in the public’s mind, establish new organizations (...) and strategies to fight against climate action, and institutionalize serious obstacles to meaningful policy change. (shrink)

This article reviews Kuitert’s most recent book. Kuitert is a Reformed Dutch theologian, who has written a series of controversial books on faith, Christian doctrine and Jesus Christ. His last book is on religion. This article is interested in the image of God in Kuitert’s book. Who is Kuitert’s God? In the first place, Kuitert spends much time analysing the indispensable and inexhaustible capacity of human religious imagination. He distinguishes between the merely human image of God: God as an enlarged (...) human being, and God as religious projection on the one hand and, on the other hand, the image of God which has its roots in “the other side” and which has priority over human imagination. In the second part of his book, Kuitert presents God as the power that can make and break. By this, he means God as the all invading creative power and God as fate. Apart from this image of God as Creator, Kuitert stresses the fact that God makes himself felt by his Word. This Word by which God appeals to the faithful is, according to Kuitert, not to be understood in a Barthian sense, nor in the sense which liberation theology understands, although God speaks his word and makes his appeal to the faithful through the needy people who cross their paths. The particularity of Kuitert’s image of God is, finally, illustrated by the investigation of his doctrine of reconciliation. Human responsibility and guilt and the appeal by the needy corresponds to a God of forgiveness and reconciliation. The article concludes with some general remarks by which the author makes it clear that to him, notwithstanding his critical demythologisation, Kuitert remains true to his protestant heritage. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the dialogue on spirituality in mental health care. Spirituality is still an uncomfortable theme in mental health care despite a burgeoning literature and research. We will introduce a conceptual model on spiritual and interpersonal relationships based on love in relatedness. The model will enable the therapist to assess the interconnectedness of spiritual and interpersonal relationships, to analyse positive or negative effects of spirituality on interpersonal functioning and vice versa, and to look (...) for possibilities for spiritual and therapeutic change. Based on the model, the next step is to reflect on the relationship between psychiatry and spirituality with a view to dialogue instead of unfruitful discussion and controversy. We will propose a dialogue about the alternative DSM-5™ model for personality disorders. Although preliminary, we will show the usefulness of such an interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

The G7 should address new, unprecedented and highly disruptive issues that characterize our complex world, rather than well-understood international problems that fit into existing categories. We argue that the G7 can do this by playing to its strengths – informality and like-mindedness in particular – in addressing emerging and transversal issues such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrencies.

How should physical entities be characterized? Physicalists, who have most to do with the notion, usually characterize the physical by reference to two components: 1. The physical entities are the entities treated by fundamental physics with the proviso that 2. Physical entities are not fundamentally mental (that is, do not individually possess or bestow mentality) Here I explore the extent to which the appeals to fundamental physics and to the NFM (“no fundamental mentality”) constraint are appropriate for characterizing the physical, (...) especially for purposes of formulating physicalism. Ultimately, I motivate and defend a version of an account incorporating both components: The physics-based NFM account: An entity existing at a world w is physical iff (i) it is treated, approximately accurately, by current or future (in the limit of inquiry, ideal) versions of fundamental physics at w, and (ii) it is not fundamentally mental (that is, does not individually either possess or bestow mentality). (shrink)

Theodore Sider has argued that while there are some philosophical debates about which there is no fact of the matter, debates in normative ethics are likely not among them. This essay investigates a possible counterexample: the debate about so-called dirty hands. The essay first surveys several cases where No-Fact-of-the-Matter (NFM) claims have been made. Taking its cue from these cases, it then outlines two strategies that factualists about some domain can take, as well as two non-factualist counter strategies. Next, it (...) shows how an NFM claim can be defended for the debate about dirty hands. Finally, it argues that this NFM claim is at least as, if not more, plausible for normative ethics as it is for the other instances where NFM claims have been made. (shrink)

Though there is yet no consensus on the right way to understand ‘physicalism’, most philosophers agree that, regardless of whatever else is required, physicalism cannot be true if there exists fundamental mentality. I will follow Jessica Wilson (Philosophical Studies 131:61–99, 2006) in calling this the 'No Fundamental Mentality' (NFM) constraint on physicalism. Unfortunately for those who wish to constrain physicalism in this way, NFM admits of a counterexample: an artificially intelligent quantum computer which employs quantum properties as part of its (...) cognitive operations. If one of these quantum properties serves a proper functional role in the artificial intelligence, then that property counts as a mental under the physicalism-friendly theory of mentality called “realizer functionalism”, which says that a lower-order property is mental if it satisfies an appropriate higher-order functional description. Further, if this quantum property is both fundamental and mental, then NFM must rule that it is not physical. Yet the existence of such an artificially intelligent quantum computer, which possesses mental properties solely in virtue of the functional roles those properties play, is surely consistent with the truth of physicalism. This ought to motivate NFM proponents to reformulate their view. (shrink)

The idea of there being “no fact of the matter” (NFM) features centrally in Quine’s indeterminacy theses. Yet there has been little discussion of how exactly Quine understands this idea. In this paper I identify, develop and then critically evaluate Quine’s conception of NFM. In Sects. 3–4 I consider a handful of intuitive semantic and ontological conceptions of NFM and argue that none is workable from within Quine’s philosophy. I conclude that the failure of each of these proposals is due (...) to the immanent status of truth and existence for Quine. In Sect. 5 I then present Quine’s official conception of NFM. Briefly, Quine’s idea is that there is NFM between two theories of translation iff those theories are physically equivalent. I develop this idea in detail. Finally, I raise two independent problems for this conception of NFM. In Sect. 6 I argue that Quine’s definition is too strong: given what he means by NFM, his arguments for indeterminacy—even granting all their premises and internal reasoning—simply cannot support his claim that there is NFM regarding translation; instead they establish a strictly weaker conclusion. In Sect. 7 I argue that Quine’s conception of NFM is in significant tension with his thesis of physicalism, and that he must give up one or the other. (shrink)

Is physicalism compatible with either panpsychism or so-called fundamental mentality ? Minimal physicalism, I contend, is compatible with both. We should therefore jettison the No Fundamental Mentality constraint, a proposed constraint on the definition of the physical, not to mention the false limits it places on physicalist theories of mind.