This paper presents the story of an isiXhosa traditional healer, Nomzi Hlathi, as told to the first author. Nomzi was asked about how she came to be an igqirha and the narrative focuses on those aspects of her life story that she understood as relevant to that developmental process. The material was obtained from a series of semi-structured interviews with Nomzi, with some collateral from her cousin, and synthesised into a chronological narrative presented in Nomzi’s own words. The aim of (...) the study was to examine her account of her unfolding experience within three hermeneutic frames. The first is the isiXhosa traditional account of what it is to become an igqirha, a process initiated by intwaso, an illness understood to be a call from the ancestors, and guided by messages from the ancestors in dreams and other symbolic communications. The second is the perspective of Western Clinical Psychology on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural disturbances that characterise intwaso. The third is the perspective of transpersonal psychology on the nature and development of shamanic healing gifts, as understood from observations of such practices in traditional societies across the world. As the narrative of Nomzi’s story is quite long, this paper presents her narrative as well as the methodology which gave rise to it. The interpretative review of the material from each of the three perspectives is presented in a second paper. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a piece of natural theology, whose pro tanto conclusion is the existence of god-the-artist, that is a lower case “g” god, a creator who creates for the sake of beauty, but who is not worthy of worship, a god who can be admired but should not be loved. I then consider some only partially successful responses to this dismal conclusion. Finally, I show to reconcile the idea of a god motivated by love of (...) class='Hi'>beauty with the religious tradition of an upper case “G” God, who is not merely to be worshiped but loves us and invites a loving response. (shrink)

In this article I address Schiller’s first response in his Kallias Briefe or Concerning the Beautiful, Letters to Gottfried Körner to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful in the first part of the Critique of Judgment. My main intention in the paper is to investigate Schiller’s emphasis on the notion of resistance (Widerstand) in his reading of Kant’s concept of beauty, and to ask how does this relate to Schiller’s own approach to aesthetics as an ethico-political realm. I am particularly (...) interested in the turn, in Schiller’s case, from Kant’s critique of aesthetics to the idea of aesthetics as critique. (shrink)

Many people today glorify wild nature. This attitude is diametrically opposed to the denigration of wild nature that was common in the seventeenth century. One of the most significant initiators of the modern revaluation of nature was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. I elucidate here Shaftesbury’s pivotal view of nature. I show how that view emerged as Shaftesbury’s solution to a problem he took to be of the deepest philosophical and personal importance: the problem of how worship (...) of God can be both transportingly emotional and entirely rational. In section 1 I sketch the denigration of wild nature in two of Shaftesbury’s predecessors: Burnet and Locke. I next turn to Shaftesbury’s problem, describing in section 2 the love of God he aspired to and in section 3 his commitment to rational religion. I then explain Shaftesbury’s solution, describing in section 4 his view of beauty in general and in section 5 his view of the beauty of nature. (shrink)

Aristotle considered moral beauty to be the telos of the human virtues. Displays of moral beauty have been shown to elicit the moral emotion of elevation and cause a desire to become a better person and to engage in prosocial behavior. Study 1 (N = 5380) shows engagement with moral beauty is related to several psychological constructs relevant to moral education, and structural models reveal that the story of engagement with moral beauty may be considered a (...) story of love and connectedness; it is uniquely predictive of caring for, being empathic of, loving, and valuing benevolence toward others. Study 2 (N = 542) demonstrates that the personality trait of engaging with moral beauty moderates susceptibility to elevation. These studies suggest that encouraging students to engage with moral beauty might increase their desire to become better persons and to do good. Convergent with other research showing that moral emotions motivate moral behavior, we suggest that moral education programs increase their focus on developing engagement with moral beauty. (shrink)

The moral commonly drawn from Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream is that there is no distinction between the subjectivity of the dreamer and the awake. It is, however, tenuous to incorporate this insight into an overall view of Zhuangzi, whether as a perspectival relativist, a mystic, or an anti-rationalist, just to name the more popular positions. The parable, despite its brevity and clarity, is difficult because the assertion about metaphysical distinction in the last two lines does not cohere with the preceding text (...) about knowledge. To cope with this problem, there are recent interpretations that advocate textual revision or adumbrate a non-skeptical Zhuangzi. In this article, I shall evaluate these strategies and explain the discrepancy in understanding the butterfly dream. Besides employing the concept of self-locating belief to account for the paradox of waking and not-knowing, I shall also argue for an epistemic grounding of the metaphysical distinction. (shrink)

The conception of disinterested pleasure is not only central to Kant’s theory of beauty but also highly influential in contemporary philosophical discourse about beauty. However, it remains unclear, what exactly disinterested pleasure is and what role it plays in experiences of beauty. This volume sheds new light on the conception of disinterested pleasure from the perspectives of both Kant scholarship and contemporary aesthetics. In the first part, the focus is on Kant’s theory of beauty as grounded (...) on the conception of disinterested pleasure. In the second part, disinterested pleasure is investigated in the light of contemporary debates on beauty. The third part is dedicated to the relation of theories of disinterested pleasure to the meta-aesthetical debate between realism and anti-realism. The volume clarifies the meaning, role, and implications of one of the most influential conceptions in traditional as well as contemporary approaches to beauty. (shrink)

In the Phaedrus Socrates explains the attraction to beauty in terms of love: “one who loves the beautiful is called a lover” . He further describes such attraction as the lover's recognition in the beloved of their belonging to the same god . This sense of belonging that defines love, says Socrates, stems from the search for a reflection of oneself, an echo that can also, however, imprison the viewer in absorbing self-reflection: “[h]e does not realize that he is (...) seeing himself in his lover as in a mirror”. (shrink)

The essay first succinctly points out shortcomings in previous interpretations of Plotinus’ notion of beauty. Beauty is to be connected primarily with Intellect, which is to be understood as a special unity in diversity. The section of the essay devoted to aesthetics is therefore preceded by a short analysis of Intellect’s unity and diversity. The hypothesis about the primary relation of beauty to the Intellect is then corroborated by a reading of Ennead V.8 and further developed. The (...) emphasis is on three basic aspects of beauty: its being a unity of a mixture whose character is shared by all ontological levels; its function of referring to what is above it; and its fundamental accessibility. Though Plotinus opposes the Stoic notion of beauty as symmetry and stresses beauty’s simplicity, it follows for him that beauty has the character of unitas multiplex, albeit a special one. (shrink)

The author explores the ethics of decision-making and confidentiality in donor insemination through the narrative of her experience having two children with a sperm donor who was later discovered to carry a gene for a serious heart disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Contrasting individualist and communitarian ethical models, she questions understandings of confidentiality that hamper the construction of a medical family tree, especially when prognosis and treatment depend on the larger familial profile of the disease. She also emphasises that for the patient (...) family the discovery of biological family through the lens of transmitted illness leads to a shift in family identity that goes beyond the purely medical. (shrink)