What would make it the right time for you to die, or the wrong one? In particular, could it be the right time for you to die even if your loved ones want to make the sacrifices needed to prolong your life, because that would cost them too dearly? The worry is that it would be selfish to permit these sacrifies, and wrong for that reason. I think it matters that the sacrifies would occur within a relationship of mutual (...) devotion, and I try to say how it matters. In particular, I argue against some fairly simple views of what constitutes impermissible selfishness in this context, and in favor of approaching such decisions in a different way. (shrink)

Carving Devotion in the Jain Caves at Ellora. By Lisa N. Owen. Brill’s Indological Library, vol. 41. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xiv + 224, 119 figures. $153.

L’attribution au jésuite Jean-Pierre Caussade, faite sans recherche suffisamment critique des sources, du célèbre Traité de l’abandon à la Providence divine est remise en cause par l’analyse sérieuse, socio-historique, sémantique et graphologique, de la tradition manuscrite ainsi que par d’autres documents d’archives, dont certains récemment découverts. Ce traité, composé directement sous forme de traité et non de recueil de lettres, semble l’œuvre d’une femme de Lorraine, laïque et cultivée, correspondante de Caussade, en lien avec les monastères de la Visitation. Héritier (...) de la tradition mystique, mais influencé par la philosophie des Lumières, cet ouvrage signale le déclin du modèle de spiritualité « dévote » qui avait cours en Europe au XVIIe siècle.The attribution of the famous Traité de l’abandon à la Providence divine which was made to the Jesuit, Jean-Pierre Caussade, without carrying on any sufficient critical research about the sources, is questioned through the serious, sociohistorical, semantic, graphological analysis of the manuscript tradition as well as the analysis of other documents, some of which have been recently discovered in the Records. This treaty, directly written as a treaty and not as a collection of letters, seems to be the work of a woman living in Lorrain, a laywoman of great culture, a correspondent of J.P. Caussade, linked with the Visitation monasteries. Bearing a legacy of the mystic tradition, but also influenced by the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, this work shows that the model of “devout” spirituality current in Europe in the XVIIth century is on the wane. (shrink)

Life is better at the beach--but you already knew that. Escape with a beach read focused on the beauty of God's seaside wonders. The stunning photography and devotions will take you right to the water's edge, where God's voice is often clearer than ever. Devotions from the Beach is a beautiful gift with: 100 devotions focused on the beach Gorgeous photography Life parallels with elements of the shore Messages of hope, comfort, strength, and rest This beautiful book gives you a (...) front-row seat to God's majestic creation. So breathe deeply and open your heart and soul to the One who shaped it all. Devotions from the Beach is the perfect gift for every beach lover, women who appreciate gentle reminders of days at the beach and the call of God's love, and anyone who finds peace standing beside the ocean. Other books in the Devotions from… series include Devotions from the Mountains, Devotions from the Lake, Devotions from the Front Porch, Devotions from the Kitchen Table, and Devotions from the Garden. (shrink)

Askese und Devotion: Das rituelle System der Terāpanth Śvetāmbara Jaina. 2 vols. By Peter Flügel. Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien, vol. 56. Dettelbach: J.H. Röll, 2018. Pp. 1227. €229.

It is tempting to think (1) that we may sometimes have hopelessly utopian duties and yet (2) that “ought” implies “can.” How might we square these apparently conflicting claims? A simple solution is to interpret hopelessly utopian duties as duties to "pursue" the achievement of manifestly unattainable outcomes (as opposed to duties to "achieve" the outcomes), thereby promising to vindicate the possibility of such duties in a way that is compatible with “ought” implies “can.” The main challenge for this simple (...) solution is to say what the relevant “duties to pursue” are supposed to involve. We survey several existing candidates (duties to try, duties to approximate, duties to do our part, and dynamic duties) and argue that none of them succeeds in delivering on the promise of the simple solution. We then propose a previously untheorized class of duties that we call "duties to devote ourselves" to achieving an outcome, and argue that such duties provide us with an interpretation of hopelessly utopian duties that is up to the task. (shrink)

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna lays out three paths of yoga as the means to achieve human perfection: the path of self-less action, the path of knowledge, and the path of devotion. In this paper I will argue for an interpretation of the Gita in which the path of devotion is the last step that leads to moksha. This is not to claim that bhakti yoga is more important than karma and jnana yoga, but rather that the latter two (...) are more elementary. In order to practice bhakti yoga, one must first have practiced karma and jnana yoga. All three forms of yoga are equally important—but there is a prioritized order in which they are to be practiced. On my reading, bhakti is more than having an intense feeling of love for God, because practicing devotion to God is an intellectual love of God that entails an intuitive understanding of the essence of things. My approach is to cross-examine the concept of human perfection as discussed in the Gita and Spinoza’s Ethics. Human perfection is characterized in both texts as a total liberation from being guided by things external to oneself other than one’s own nature. In other words, the aim of life is to liberate oneself by acquiring the right kind of knowledge. The freer one becomes and the more knowledge that one has, the more perfect one becomes. Thus, Spinoza’s idea of the “free man” resembles the self-realized agent in the Gita, because a human being becomes more “perfect” when he expresses God’s power to a greater degree. Bhakti yoga is the last step on the path to attain knowledge of God because in bhakti yoga, one employs the method of intuition to grasp God’s essence. As such, unlike karma and jnana yoga, the knowledge acquired in bhakti yoga is not empirical. In the Gita, rational devotion is a single act of both the mind and the heart, which, in turn, will lead to the practice of self-less actions. (shrink)

Most modern ethicists and ethics textbooks assert that religion holds little or no place in ethics, including fields of professional ethics like medical ethics. This assertion, of course, implicitly refers to ethical reasoning, but there is much more to the ethical life and the practice of ethics—especially professional ethics—than reasoning. It is no surprise that teachers of practical ethics, myself included, often focus on reasoning to the exclusion of other aspects of the ethical life. Especially for those with a philosophical (...) background, reasoning is the most patent and pedagogically controllable aspect of the ethical life—and the most easily testable. And whereas there may be powerful reasons for the limitation of religion in this aspect of ethics, there are other aspects of the ethical life in which recognition of religious belief may arguably be more relevant and possibly even necessary. I divide the ethical life into three areas—personal morality, interpersonal morality, and rational morality—each of which I explore in terms of its relationship to religion, normatively characterized by the qualities of devotion, diversity, and reasoning, respectively. (shrink)

Ever since the end of the Second World War, Rational Actor models have dominated strategic thinking at all levels of government policy and military planning. In the confrontation between states, and especially during the Cold War, these models were insightful and useful in anticipating a wide array of challenges and in stabilizing the world peace enough to prevent nuclear war. But now our society faces a whole new range of challenges from non-state actors who are committed to die in order (...) to kill and terrorize enough of our citizens to change the course of history. The darkest fear in the current struggle with terrorism is a nuclear bomb exploding in a major city. (shrink)

Catholics normally approach the Eucharist with great love and devotion. The paper looks at how, through the character, Papa, the reality of this love and devotion to the Eucharist is captured by the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie, in her novel, Purple Hibiscus . The novel reveals that while Papa, in various ways, shows great love and devotion to Christ in the Eucharist, his devotion remains inauthentic: it does not lead him to a love of this same (...) Christ in his neighbour. The work, therefore, underscores not only the nexus between theology and creative literature, but also, in a special way, the social implications of the Eucharist. (shrink)

In Death-Devoted Heart Roger Scruton argues that Tristan und Isolde has profound religious meaning. Blending philosophy, criticism and musicology, he shows the work is as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries. Scruton's analysis touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption.

In his Philosophy of Devotion, Paul Katsafanas argues that some of our deepest, most identity-defining commitments are marked by “dialectical invulnerability” – that is, they are recalcitrant in the face of reflection that reveals them to be unjustified. If Katsafanas is right about this, it appears to undermine an account of identification offered by Richard Moran, since for Moran such recalcitrance is a mark of the attitude’s alienation. In these comments, I attempt to show what I think is right (...) in Katsafanas’ account, while still defending the fundamental Moranian insight regarding the nature of identification and alienation. (shrink)

This volume introduces an original philosophy of Jewish religious thinking as devotional intelligence. It establishes the intellectual warrant of such thinking in light of two related principles: relativity v. intelligence—the metaphysical principle that knowing is of being—and the normative principle of sacral attunement.

One of the great themes of the Second Vatican Council was its emphasis on the Sacred Scriptures, especially bringing the Scriptures to the lay faithful. All the faithful are urged 'earnestly and especially' to enter this experience of knowing Jesus Christ by frequent devotional reading of the text and getting in touch with the sacred text itself. The church documents speak more about how the professional exegete should approach the Scriptures, but here is an invitation to reflect on the approach (...) of the lay faithful to the text. Pope Benedict XVI, focusing on this prayer-filled reading saw it expressed especially in 'lectio divina'. That is the focus of this article. (shrink)

"Devoted to the Truth" is a compilation of the most recent articles by renowned Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gülen, since 2016. The themes he covers are commitment to lofty ideals, self-reckoning, and hope.

When communal sharing relationships suddenly intensify, people experience an emotion that English speakers may label, depending on context, “moved,” “touched,” “heart-warming,” “nostalgia,” “patriotism,” or “rapture”. We call the emotion kama muta. Kama muta evokes adaptive motives to devote and commit to the CSRs that are fundamental to social life. It occurs in diverse contexts and appears to be pervasive across cultures and throughout history, while people experience it with reference to its cultural and contextual meanings. Cultures have evolved diverse practices, (...) institutions, roles, narratives, arts, and artifacts whose core function is to evoke kama muta. Kama muta mediates much of human sociality. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende analisar os cemitérios como espaço de múltiplas devoções, dentre elas as devoções marginais: as diversas formas com as quais as pessoas cultuam seus mortos, através de seus túmulos. As devoções que são manifestadas perante esses túmulos dentro dos cemitérios demonstram esta prática de fé, que se denomina de devoção marginal. Pessoas comuns que após a morte, ganham a veneração de fieis que lhe pedem a interseção junto ao sagrado, são cultuadas como milagreiras. Após o pedido realizado, o (...) devoto passa há ornamentar o tumulo do Milagreiro, com Flores, Velas, Ex votos em forma de agradecimento. O túmulo então se torna objeto de veneração e peregrinação. O artigo examina como esta devoção no cemitério do Bonfim, em Belo Horizonte, mais especificamente no túmulo da milagreira Irmã Benigna, auxilia os devotos nos momentos de suas angústias e aflições. Analisa-se como essa devoção se perpetua à margem da crença oficial. Palavras-chave : Morte. Enterramento. Túmulo. Devoção. Irmã Benigna.This article analyzes the cemeteries as a place of many devotions, devotions among them marginal. the various ways in which people worship their dead through their graves. The devotions that are manifested before these graves within the cemeteries demonstrate the practice of faith is called the marginal devotion. Ordinary people who are worshiped as a miracle worker. The article examines how this devotion in the cemetery of Bonfim in Belo Horizonte City, more specifically in the miraculous Num Benigna’s Tomb helps the devotees by the time their distress happene. It looks at how devotion is perpetuated the margin of the official belief. Keywords : Death. Burial. Grave. Devotion. Nun Benigna’s. (shrink)

According to the traditional Christian understanding, being devoted to God is partly constitutive of human welfare. I explicate this tradition view, in three stages. First, I sketch a general theory of well-being which I call ‘Platonic Personalist Perfectionism.’ Second, I show how being devoted to God is uniquely perfective. I discuss three different components of the posture of devotion: abnegation (surrender of one’s will to God), adoration (responding to God’s goodness with attention, love and praise), and existential dependence (receiving (...) one’s self-worth as an unmerited gift from God). All three components of devotion are perfective in a dual way: they are salvific (they remediate a great harm) and consummative (they confer a great benefit). Third, I respond to the objection that devotion involves subjugating oneself, and thus amounts to an all-things-considered harm, notwithstanding whatever benefits it confers. I argue that so long as one’s acts of abnegating, adoring, and existentially depending are acts of one’s own, then subjugation is not essential to devotion. However, devotion does diminish one if the object of one’s devotion is unsuitable. I argue that the only suitable object of devotion is the God of traditional theism. (shrink)

While Yoga (also called Bhakti, “devotion”) is a comprehensive philosophy, it is importantly an ancient and basic ethical theory, unique to South Asia (what is commonly called the Indian tradition). It is not a variant of virtue ethics, consequentialism and deontology, but is an additional kind of moral theory. And in its literary articulation, in dialog and story (such as the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads), it has a long history of criticizing teleological ethical theories, including – and especially – (...) consequentialism. It is a radically procedural ethical theory, does not require the Good to elucidate the Right, and provides a critical response to all three alternatives. -/- The main obstacle to understanding Yoga is methodological. It pertains to how we can understand philosophical options that we do not necessarily agree with, and which are novel relative to our background assumptions and beliefs. Without methodological clarity, we will be doomed to understand alternatives in terms of familiar options. Yoga's metaethics provides us the tools necessary to engage in this research. In addition, it also sets out a unique normative (ideal) ethical theory and a non-ideal practice that is now the foundation of decolonial practices of direct action. (shrink)

Devotion is associated with showing commitment to what individuals choose. But is perceived devotion influenced by how individuals react to what they did not choose? Two experiments (N = 1,000) indicate that rejecting alternatives is a key behavioral cue for assessing devotion. Study 1 documents the basic effect: individuals who reject alternatives were seen as more devoted than individuals who accept or are ambiguous toward alternatives. The result remained regardless of whether individuals self-identified with being devoted and (...) exerted effort toward their target of devotion. Rejecting alternatives predicted greater likelihood of being trusted and viewed as living a good life, mediated by perceived devotion. Study 2 examined whether people distinguish between different types of devotees who reject alternatives, in terms of the process (mindful vs. mindless) and nature (neutral vs. harmful to the self) of their choices. Individuals who engaged in harmful devotion were less likely to be perceived as devoted, trusted, or living a good life than individuals who did not. Individuals who mindlessly rejected alternatives were also evaluated more negatively than individuals who mindfully rejected alternatives. Altogether, these findings not only illuminate how rejecting alternatives inform our understanding of devotion but also reveal its broader impact on social evaluations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article investigates drawing as a form of devotional attention. Engaging with the work of María Lugones and examples from Josef Albers, Corita Kent, Franz Opalka, Georgia O’Keeffe, and William Kentridge, each section revolves around drawing in relation to embodied practices of being together with others. In addition to a personal account of memories and rituals of drawings, this article examines the degree to which drawing hones a pragmatic sense for fallibility, fluidity, and open-ended research, while arguing for drawing (...) as a form of commitment to community that challenges historical associations of creativity with individualistic or uninhibited freedom. (shrink)

Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava thinkers adapted rasa theory to a context of devotion to the god Kṛṣṇa. In doing so, bhayānaka-rasa, the aestheticized experience of horror, presents interesting complexities. This paper examines the conceptualizations of bhayānaka-rasa by four Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authors: Rūpa Gosvāmin, Jīva Gosvāmin, Kavi Karṇapūra, and Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa. Between them, they discuss three distinct modes of bhayānaka-rasa in a devotional context: a devotee’s fear after committing an offense against Kṛṣṇa, fear of some dreadful being who the devotee thinks might (...) hurt Kṛṣṇa, and fear of Kṛṣṇa’s display of his cosmic form. This paper also briefly examines the Rūpa’s explicit rejection of the fear felt by Kaṃsa as a case of devotional bhayānaka-rasa. A central concern for the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authors is whether fear, a typically unpleasant emotion, can attain the status of a rasa and how it is subordinated to more direct forms of devotion. This paper argues that these thinkers make an important contribution to reconceptualizing bhayānaka-rasa, particularly highlighting Jīva’s Gosvāmin’s argument that the real object of bhayānaka-rasa is not the person who serves as the source of fear, but is Kṛṣṇa, out of love for whom such fear is felt. (shrink)

Singing a Hindu Nation: Marathi Devotional Performance and Nationalism. By Anna C. Schultz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 231. $21.95.

Through the seasons, you are attentive to God's inherent timing and intended purpose at every stage and episode in life. Obstacles give way to opportunities and hindrances to heights, as you surrender to a life of completion with a realization that it is the journey that matters at the finish.

The evolutionary landscape that canalizes human thought and behavior into religious beliefs and practices includes naturally selected emotions, cognitive modules, and constraints on social interactions. Evolutionary by-products, including metacognitive awareness of death and possibilities for deception, further channel people into religious paths. Religion represents a community's costly commitment to a counterintuitive world of supernatural agents who manage people's existential anxieties. Religious devotion, though not an adaptation, informs all cultures and most people.

Why do some individuals willingly make extreme sacrifices for their group? Whitehouse argues that such willingness stems from a visceral feeling of oneness with the group – identity fusion – that emerges from intense, shared dysphoric experiences or from perceived close kinship with others. Although Whitehouse's argument makes a valuable contribution to understanding extreme sacrifice, factors independent of identity fusion, such as devotion to sacred values, can predict self-sacrifice.

A comparative fMRI study by Peeters et al. (2009) provided evidence that a specific sector of left inferior parietal lobule is devoted to tool use in humans, but not in monkeys. We propose that this area represents the neural substrate of the human capacity to understand tool use by using causal reasoning.

To be open-minded is to be willing to revise or entertain doubts about one’s beliefs. Commonly regarded as an intellectual virtue, and often too as a moral virtue, open-mindedness is a trait that is generally desirable for a person to have. However, in the major theistic traditions, absolute commitment to one’s religious beliefs is regarded as virtuous or ideal. But one cannot be completely resolved about an issue and at the same time be open to revising one’s beliefs about it. (...) It appears, then, that religious devotion is inconsistent with open-mindedness. The more religiously devout a person is, the more firmly she will hold to her convictions. And the stronger her belief commitments, the less open-minded she will be regarding these beliefs. So there appears to be a paradox here, where from the standpoint of religious devotion, it is virtuous to display an intellectual vice, namely closed-mindedness. I discuss this problem and explore some potential routes of escape from the paradox. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of meditation and devotionalism in the Radhasoami tradition of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, a tradition of reform that questions and transcends traditional Hinduism in many ways. In the following, we study several texts and ritual practices of the Radhasoami tradition, in the example of the elaborate meditation called surat śabda yoga (yoga of the sound of the inner current). Our goal is to explore the complex interactions between meditation and devotion. In addition, (...) we wish to address yogic, meditative and devotional embodied practices, such as the collective meditation during the satsaṅg. (shrink)

Inwardness and interiority are concepts that have a multifaceted currency within many areas of medieval studies. These fields include, but are not limited to, historical studies, theology and religious studies, literary studies, and art history. Studies on inwardness, interiority, and selfhood intersect with an interest in what has often been called “popular religion” and in devotional behavior, both clerical and lay, to produce an engagement, across many fields, with inward or private aspects of religious belief and practice. “Popular religion” has (...) sometimes been presented as generally distinct or separate from official, ecclesiastical, or institutional ritual, and, as such, it is associated with other concepts like “private devotion” and even “interior piety.” Unhelpful binary oppositions are implied by qualifying terms like “private” and “popular,” because those qualifiers invoke the unsaid “public” or “official” or “outward.” More recently, terms like “vernacular theology” and Frömmigkeitstheologie have been preferred for their attempt to break down the “high-low” implications of terms like “popular religion” and “private devotion.” Though these terms themselves are not without potential problems or implications, the consonance or dissonance between individual religiosity and official or corporate expressions of religious belief can, and should, be examined in a more subtle manner than has often been the case. Medieval religious devotion was not a universally or solely private activity that was in some way opposite to the public, structured religiosity of the church's liturgy. It has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years that liturgy and devotion should not be opposed in this way, as private versus public, free and expressionist versus structured and defined. That having been said, it is nevertheless the case that the kind of piety that we are accustomed to call “devotional,” or contemplative, or meditative, presupposes and requires a certain inwardness and self-awareness, even if such activity is carried out in the company of others, or even during liturgical services. (shrink)

Reason, Revelation, and Devotion argues that immersion in religious reading traditions and their associated spiritual practices significantly shapes our emotions, desires, intuitions, and volitional commitments; these in turn affect our construction and assessments of arguments for religious conclusions. But far from distorting the reasoning process, these emotions and volitional and cognitive dispositions can be essential for sound reasoning on religious and other value-laden subject matters. And so western philosophy must rethink its traditional antagonism toward rhetoric. The book concludes with (...) discussions of the implications of the earlier chapters for the relation between reason and revelation, and for the role that the concept of mystery should play in philosophy in general, and in the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology in particular. (shrink)

The political thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi has been increasingly used as a paradigmatic example of hybrid political thought that developed out of a cross-cultural dialogue of eastern and western influences. With a novel unpacking of this hybridity, this article focuses on the conceptual influences that Gandhi explicitly stressed in his autobiography and other writings, particularly the works of Leo Tolstoy and the Bhagavad Gītā. This new tracing of influence in the development of Gandhi’s thought alters the substantive thrust of (...) Gandhi’s thought away from more familiar quasi-liberal interpretations and towards a far more substantive bhakti or devotional understanding of politics. The analysis reveals a conception of politics that is not pragmatic in its use of non-violence, but instead points to a devotional focus on cultivating the self (ātman), ultimately dissolving the public/private distinction that many readings of Gandhi’s thought depend upon. (shrink)