Kenneth A. Bryson's Books

Persons and Immortality

By: Kenneth A. Bryson

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The religious belief in personal immortality depends on the evidence for the existence of God, an immaterial soul or mind, and human nature. We also need to support the view that God will always want to maintain relationships with us in the afterlife. So, immortality is a hard sell. The suffering of innocent victims suggests that the existence of a loving God is not self-evident. Furthermore, the soul's separation from the body at death raises the troublesome problem of personal identity. How can that be me in the afterlife without my body? The tradition from Plato to Descartes plants the seed of personal immortality in our rational nature. But the deconstruction of human nature suggests that our species is not special. Yet, the belief in immortality lingers. The first step in the reconstruction of personal immortality is found in systems theory, or belief that the whole individuates the part. This view suggests that we are the outcome of relationships rather than eternal natures entering into relationships. We are the product of relationships taking place at three basic levels. 1. In psyche where being human is the result of a tendency toward good and evil. 2. As social entities where the existence of other human beings individuates us. 3. In being's unconcealment where the intelligibility of things provides a foundation for epistemic life. Heidegger's view of the nothing or horizon surrounding being allows us to identify God as creator entering into personal relationships with us - a view supported by contemporary science. That will be me in the afterlife, if the relationships that individuate me in my pre-mortem state continue into my post-mortem existence. The reversal in being's unconcealment suggests that human death continues the cycle of personal existence.

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Page Count

229

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BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004506977

ISBN 13

9789004506978

The Curve of the Sacred

An Exploration of Human Spirituality

By: Constantin V. Ponomareff,Kenneth A. Bryson

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The Curve of the Sacred

An Exploration of Human Spirituality

By: Constantin V. Ponomareff,Kenneth A. Bryson

This interdisciplinary book examines the nature of spirituality and the role it plays in the search for meaning. Spirituality is a loving tendency towards the sacred. In a secular environment, the sacred is taken to be a power greater than self. In a religious environment, the Sacred refers to God, or Higher Power. The book examines the developments of the s/Sacred in great works of art and literature, as well as in medicine, theology, psychology, philosophy, and religion. Spirituality also functions as an unloving tendency towards disunity, or a force for evil. The first part of the book examines the ways of the spiritual as a force for good and evil. We have just witnessed one of the bloodiest centuries in human history. The experience of two World Wars leaves a legacy of brokenness: “Where Nossack’s reminiscences bore poetic, compassionate, and personal witness to the disaster, Eliot’s poetry reads more like a sacred and religious poem taking contemporary Western European civilization to task—much like the biblical prophets of old—for its spiritual bankruptcy.” Albert Einstein, Edvard Munch’s Madonna, and Carl Jung’s ‘unconscious’ touch the curve of the Sacred in more promising places. The second part examines how the search for meaning works. The distinction between being human and being a person plays a central role in the life of the spiritual; “...the spiritual is manifest in the activities taking place in the central self. The central self is the locus of all thoughts, feelings, acts of reason and judgment, conscious and unconscious processes alike. The central self is the place where social relationships and environmental relationships are processed. The essential feature of the central self is that it does not exist outside these processes.” The same spiritual energies that light up great works of art also light up our destructive side, only the associations’ change.

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Page Count

251

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BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9401203202

ISBN 13

9789401203203

The Uncrowned King

The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

By: Kenneth Whyte

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The Uncrowned King

The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

By: Kenneth Whyte

“I’ve been watching him, and I notice that when he wants cake, he wants cake; and he wants it now. And I notice that after a while he gets his cake.” –Senator George Hearst, on his son, William Randolph Hearst A lively, unexpected and impeccably researched piece of popular history, The Uncrowned King reveals how an unheralded young newspaperman from San Francisco walked into the media capital of the world and created the most successful daily of his time, pushing the medium to an unprecedented level of excitement and influence, and leading serious observers to wonder if newspapers might be “the greatest force in civilization,” more powerful even than kings and popes and presidents.

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Page Count

766

Publisher

Vintage Canada

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307372936

ISBN 13

9780307372932

Persons and Immortality

By: Kenneth A. Bryson,Ken Bryson

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Persons and Immortality

By: Kenneth A. Bryson,Ken Bryson

This book casts the argument for personal immortality into new light as the outcome of systems processes rather than human nature. Personal immortality is the output of becoming human rather than of being human. If this is the case, then God must be seen to enter into personal relationships with us: a view that current science supports."--Jacket.

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Page Count

236

Publisher

Rodopi

Published Date

ISBN 10

9042004851

ISBN 13

9789042004856

Book's by Kenneth A. Bryson

Persons and Immortality

Persons and Immortality

The Curve of the Sacred

The Curve of the Sacred

The Uncrowned King

The Uncrowned King

Persons and Immortality

Persons and Immortality

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