The meaning of mind transcendency in a religious philosophy of man

✍ Scribed by G. Douglas Straton

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1973
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 768 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7047
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00138180

✦ Synopsis

Common to the idea, and the language, of man as "religious being" is the concept of his nature as "spirit", or "spiritual being." Among many ways the word "spirit" is used in discourse, there has been the way common to idealism, and to humanistic and religious philosophies in general. In humanistic idealism "spirit" has meant that height of man's thinking, rational, and emotional nature which perceives, understands, appreciates, and realizes or creates valueto employ Platonic terms for the moment, that activity of "soul" which has to do with Truth, Beauty, and the Good. Such usage of the term spirit is not necessarily concerned with the technical issues of mind-brain relationship, nor the question of the reality of God. Such usage is entirely generalized, "humanistic,", and of course, hallowed.

But moving beyond the commonplace, humanistic understanding of spirit, religious, idealist, and theistic philosophy has meant, more particularly and traditionally, that there is something distinctive or unique about man as "spirit" or "spiritual being": to speak of man's spirit is to point to a higher level, or a more comprehensive whole perhaps, of his being, more than, and not entirely subject to body; the real, intrinsic self, or person, transcendent to nature, and yet undoubtedly for its genesis dependent upon her; and finally, ultimately dependent on, or related to God, the Divine Spirit.

Disavowing the older style spiritual substance, transcendentalist (and simplistic) view of soul-spirit as more or tess passive, immaterial, timeless, by definition immortal, interior unit (e.g. the Vedanta Hindus, Plato, Descartes, Locke), a modern religious or spiritual philosophy of man may begin, however, with some form of "personalistic theory" of mind. Such outlook understands mind to be holistic, functioning process, a unity-amid-complexity, perhaps ultimately best described as telic-energy (e.g. Bowne,