Enlightened Spirituality

Immanuel Kant, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr

Roger Haight, Alfred Pach and Amanda Avila Kaminski

Past Light on Present Life: Theology, Ethics, and Spirituality

Pages: 160

Fordham University Press

This book can be opened with

Paperback / softback

ISBN: 9781531505738

Published: 24 September 2024

$9.95

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ISBN: 9781531505721

Published: 24 September 2024

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Description

This volume presents reflections on the nature of Christian spirituality in the light of Immanuel Kant’s work Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. It also contains two short comments on Kant’s work: Paul Tillich directly engages Kant’s moral philosophy, and Reinhold Niebuhr indirectly addresses him with his reflections on the role of conscience in religious experience. The whole volume rests on the constituent role that morality, and hence ethics, plays in a comprehensive understanding of Christian spirituality. Kant adds to that discussion by introducing the voice of the Enlightenment into the conversation. His work serves as a bridge between the spirituality displayed in the Medieval and Reformation periods and what may be called modern Western culture. Christians who are socialized into twenty-first century Western intellectual culture may be relatively unfamiliar with the cultures that spawned the characteristic accents of the spiritual languages that are learned in the churches today. When they move into the world of higher education, they will learn a whole series of ideas from science and critical modern thought that directly challenge the ordinary spiritual conceptions of church traditions. The critical discussion between intellectual culture and Christianity during the period of the Enlightenment was deep and serious, and it helps to explain how the churches in the West relate to present-day intellectual culture. Kant’s text on the metaphysics of morals presents in an exemplary way the deep questions that Christian spirituality faces today with almost laboratory precision. The two commentators neatly draw the conversation into contexts that are closer to life in the world of our time.

Praise

Listening to Christian spirituality carefully and liberatingly for the present is neither simple nor necessarily welcome in pluralistic and secular contexts. This series, intended for respectful existential, secular and pluralistic engagement, promotes a deep conversation about how Christian spiritual heritage matters today. Readers are invited into the art of interpretation with—and beyond—these influential texts and authors, into difficult and urgent questions about how we live well together in a world where no one single vision prevails, but where we help each other clarify what matters most, making a world with room for all spiritual paths promising justice. For the everyday quest to live well together in a world we must equally share, Christian tradition offers spiritual wisdom—and this series offers able guides in recovering that wisdom and suggesting how it can be practiced today.---Tom Beaudoin on the Past Light on Present Life: Theology, Ethics, and Spirituality series

Past Light on Present Life is a brilliantly dynamic series. It weaves together theological frameworks, ethical implications and spiritual mindsets in interpreting texts of numerous great personages in the history of Christian Spirituality. Importantly, in doing so it responds to searing questions of our current age. The genius of the series lies in the precise choices of the original texts at the heart of each concise volume, which provide the key for such pertinent interpretation. These volumes provide much needed fresh insight for experts in the field, as they also will prove invaluable for undergraduate teachers, graduate students, religious seekers and spiritual directors.---Julia D.E. Prinz on the Past Light on Present Life: Theology, Ethics, and Spirituality series

Contents

I—Introduction to the Authors and Texts | 1

II—The Texts | 19

Immanuel Kant on the Metaphysic of Morals:
An Edited Selection of Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals | 21

Paul Tillich on Morality and Religion:
“The Religious Dimension of the Moral Imperative” | 77

Reinhold Niebuhr on Conscience:
An Excerpt from The Nature and Destiny of Man | 91

III—Enlightened Spirituality in Post-Enlightenment Cultures | 103

Further Reading | 123

About the Series | 125

About the Editors | 131