Thursday, January 19, 2017

Embodying ultimate concern

Interesting article touching on the themes of this forum: Nikkel, D. (2016). "Embodying Ultimate Concern." Bulletin of the North American Paul Tillich Society, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 7-13. An excerpt:

"Especially through the sense of our bodily integrity, the sense of being alive, produced by our background body feelings and the aesthetic and affective value of orientation to our environment, our embodiment evokes an intuitive sense of the goodness of life, a positive sense of the meaningfulness and sacredness of life, an at - home - ness in our skins and world, a feeling that we are in some sense 'meant to be here.' My 'ultimate' claim, if you will pardon the pun, is that this positive sense of bodily integrity and harmonious attunement to our environment entails and explains our sense of ultimate concern, rather than an immediate sense of the unconditional divine à la Tillich. In our postmodern age — or whatever age this is — this intuitive sense of the sacredness of life and why anything about our lives finally matters offers a plausible account of our ultimate concern, unlike Tillich’s mystical a priori" (12).

The "meant to be here" reminded me of this song:

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