Early Adolescents' Values About Their Pets

The essays of adolescent boys and girls (N = 354) explaining their decisions to save a pet in the event of a fire were examined by content analysis for the adolescents' underlying value orientations. Hedonistic utility, a moral value characteristic of the second of Kohlberg's (1976) moral development stages, was the primary value underlying adolescents' choices.     

Adolescents' self‐attributed moral emotions following a moral transgression: Relations with delinquency,confidence in moral judgment and age

The study investigates adolescents' self‐attributed moral emotions following a moral transgression by expanding research with children on the happy‐victimizer phenomenon. In a sample of 200 German adolescents from Grades 7, 9, 11, and 13 (M = 16.18 years, SD = 2.41), participants were confronted with various scenarios describing different moral rule violations and asked to judge the behaviour from a moral point of view. Subsequently, participants' strength of self‐evaluative emotional reactions was assessed as they were asked to imagine that they had committed the moral transgression by themselves. Results indicate that the intensity of self‐attributed moral emotions predicted adolescents' self‐reported delinquent behaviour even when social desirability response bias was controlled. Further, as adolescents' metacognitive understanding of moral beliefs developed, self‐attributed moral emotions and confidence in moral judgment became more closely associated. No general age‐related change in adolescents' self‐attributed moral emotions was found. Overall, the study provides evidence for a coordination process of moral judgment and moral emotion attributions that continues well beyond childhood and that corresponds with the more general notion of the formation of a moral self in adolescence.     

当代中国青少年理想的现状及影响因素研究

为考察当代中国青少年理想的现状及其影响因素,研究采用当代青少年理想调查问卷对全国12个省份的5000名青少年进行调研,结果发现当代中国青少年的理想水平较高,其中男生在身体理想方面的水平高于女生,在道德、人格、学业、生活和职业等理想方面的水平低于女生;初中生在道德、人格、生活和社会等理想方面的水平高于高中和大学低年级学生,在物质、身体、学业和职业等理想方面的水平低于大学低年级学生,而高中生的学业和职业理想的水平低于初中生和大学低年级学生。回归分析发现,父亲文化程度能够正向预测青少年的职业理想,母亲文化程度对青少年的生活理想有负向预测作用,家庭收入对青少年的物质、生活和身体理想有显著的正向预测作用。     

Moral self and moral emotion expectancies as predictors of anti- and prosocial behaviour in adolescence: A case for mediation?

Previous research has linked (im)moral behaviour with both moral emotion expectancies and the self-importance of moral values, indicating that these two factors influence moral decision making and action. Disentangling the relationship between moral emotion expectancies and self-importance of moral values as predictors of adolescents' anti- and prosocial behaviour was the primary goal of this research. Two hundred five participants (mean age = 14.83 years) completed a semi-structured interview assessing moral emotion expectancies in hypothetical situations and a written questionnaire measuring self-reported prosocial and antisocial behaviour and the self-importance of moral values. Moral emotion expectancies were found to mediate the relationship between the self-importance of moral values and self-reported levels of antisocial behaviour. When predicting levels of prosocial engagement, however, scores of moral value self-importance were the primary variable associated with prosocial behaviour whereas moral emotion expectancies were not involved in this relationship. In addition, a moderating effect of age was found when predicting antisocial behaviour by moral emotion expectancies. Overall, the study confirms and significantly extends previous research on the relationship between adolescents' moral self, moral emotion expectancies and anti- versus prosocial behaviour.     

Spiritual exercises and poetry: Pierre Hadot and Du Fu

This paper discusses poetry as a site of what Pierre Hadot calls “spiritual exercises,” with particular reference to China's greatest poet, Du Fu (712–70 C.E.). While Hadot's work has bridged gaps between (i) philosophy and religion and (ii) theory and practice, this paper suggests that spiritual exercises can also blur the modern separation between form and content. It argues for the possibility of poetry as philosophy; that is, philosophy in a less-recognized form. If poetry can be spiritual exercise and if spiritual exercise with its goal of self-transformation is the core of philosophy, then we may be able to treat poetry as one form of philosophy. The paper also demonstrates the relevance of Hadot's work for ancient Chinese and comparative philosophy more broadly.     

The Problem of Modernism and Critical Refusal: Bradley and Lamarque on Form/Content Unity

In this article I revisit A. C. Bradley's account of form/content unity through the lens of both Peter Kivy's and Peter Lamarque's recent work on Bradley's lecture “Poetry for Poetry's Sake.” I argue that Lamarque gives a superior account of Bradley's argument. However, Lamarque claims that form/content unity should be understood as an imposition applied by the reader to poetry. Working with the counterexample of modernist poetry, I throw doubt on both this claim and some associated presuppositions found in Lamarque's account. Modernist poetry appears to intermittently fail to exhibit form/content unity; its unique value also appears bound up with this intermittent failure. However—against the moderates, like Kivy and Kelly Dean Jolley, who this counterexample may seem to support—I claim Lamarque is nonetheless correct that form/content unity is intrinsic in response to poetic value. I argue form/content unity should be seen as a demand, which poems (like modernist poetry) can intentionally frustrate.     

Sickness in spoon river: Village health at the turn of the century

Edgar Lee Masters published numerous poems, plays, and novels between 1900 and 1942; most go unread, with the exception ofSpoon River Anthology, which is among the most popular works of American poetry of the twentieth century. This collection of poems tells of the lives of the inhabitants of a fictional American town—Spoon River, Illinois. Many of the poems consider sickness and health in the community, and the insight they offer into human responses to illness continues to be relevant today, contributing not only to the lasting popularity ofSpoon River Anthology, but also the literary value of the work.     

An Exploration of Moral Rebelliousness with Adolescents and Young Adults

The present pair of studies investigated the assessment, correlates, and evaluation of “moral rebels” who follow their own moral convictions despite social pressure to comply. In Study 1, self, peer, and teacher ratings of adolescents' tendencies to be a moral rebel were positively intercorrelated. In Study 2, young adults' tendencies to be a moral rebel were associated with relatively high self-esteem scores and relatively low willingness to engage in minor moral violations and need to belong scores. Both adolescents and young adults reported relatively favorable attitudes toward a morally rebellious peer, especially when they themselves had heightened ratings on this characteristic.     

Gratitude,Social Cognition,and Well-Being in Emerging Adolescents

The authors explored Canadian emerging adolescents' social and moral reasoning skills (empathy, theory of mind), and their perceptions of gratitude, self-competencies, and well-being (spiritual, emotional). As part of a larger five-year longitudinal study, the authors describe results of Year 2 (2016–2017) data from 46 ninth-grade students (33 girls; M_age?=?13.5?years, SD?=?5.436 years) from eight schools (Ontario, Canada). Students’ perceptions of gratitude, spirituality, self-compassion, competencies, and well-being were measured by self-report questionnaires. Significant positive correlations were found among adolescents’ perceptions of gratitude, self-competencies, and emotional and spiritual well-being. Differently valenced patterns of associations were found among students’ perceptions of gratitude (appreciation for others and sense of abundance), self-compassion, and existential well-being, and spiritual comfort, and omnipresence. Simple appreciation was the only aspect of gratitude to show significant positive relations with religious well-being. Significant positive correlations were found between gratitude (sense of abundance) and self-compassion, whereas significant negative correlations were found between self-compassion and empathy, theory of mind, existential well-being, and religious well-being. Implications for theory and educational applications are discussed.     

《伊川击壤集》与先天象数学

邵雍《伊川击壤集》中的哲理诗具有知识型架构,不仅关涉象数的推演,而且也有易学义理的申言。其中既包含对邵雍易图体系、“元会运世”说的诠释,也涉及《周易》卦象意义的阐发,非常常由卦象意义引发出对社会和人生的思考。邵雍的心性之咏显示了参透天人的恢宏心宇,观物之吟则表述了观物心得,充满了辩证思维特色。他以卦象入诗使诗歌的哲理意义得到深化,同时使玩易成为融哲学与艺术于一体的精神享受。     

Suffering and Spirituality in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

After a brief review of recent accounts of spirituality in its relation to medicine and psychotherapy, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is considered as a springboard to a more specific account of spirituality. While not conventionally religious, she is arguably among the most spiritual of poets inasmuch as her themes of God, love, beauty, and especially death and suffering all depend upon the jarring juxtaposition of embodied human experience and transcendent human significance. Her poems suggest a complex view of the ambiguous relation of suffering to human action and meaning. Psychotherapy is a spiritual process not because it necessarily involves supernatural beings or destinies, but because it represents the struggle between human will and aspiration on the one hand and acceptance of biological and other realities on the other.     

TO SEE GOD IN HIS BEAUTY: AVRAHAM CHALFI AND THE MYSTICAL QUEST FOR THE EVASIVE GOD

Avraham Chalfi's poetry contains some of the main themes of the mystical experience, namely, the attempt “to see God in his Beauty” and the quest to gain an intimate communion with the Divine.1 I am grateful to the poet Raquel Chalfi for sharing of her memories and insights to her uncle Avraham Chalfi's life and work. The discussions we had contributed to my appreciation of Chalfi's poetry and character. I would also like to thank Claire Rechnitzer for her help in the translations of Chalfi's poems and to Prof. Jonathan Garb, my graduate student Mr. Vadim Putzu and the anonymous readers for their insightful comments. Of course, I take full responsibility for all errors that remain. View all notes Uncovering the intertextual references and the repertoire of his allusions positions this poetry within the ever-evolving mystical-religious discussion. Chalfi's theology transforms the Jewish mystical tradition into a critical, at times even fierce, encounter with God and turns fundamental elements, such as ascent to the Pardes and the respective roles of the mystic and God, on their heads. Exploring Chalfi's mystical poems expands our awareness of the theological elements embedded in a variety of modern secular Hebrew poems and their contribution to the evolution and diversification of the canon of Jewish thought.     

OF EAGLES AND CROWS, LIONS AND OXEN: Blake and the Disruption of Ethics

Why focus on the work of William Blake in a journal dedicated to religious ethics? The question is neither trivial nor rhetorical. Blake's work is certainly not in anyone's canon of significant texts for the study of Christian or, more broadly, religious ethics. Yet Blake, however subversive his views, sought to lay out a Christian vision of the good, alternated between prophetic denunciations of the world's folly and harrowing laments over the wreck of the world's promise, and wrote poetry as if poetry might mend the world. Setting imagination against the calculations of reason and the comfort of custom, Blake's poems inspire questions about the relationship of ethics to prophecy, and open the possibility that ethics itself would be markedly enriched could it find a place for what Thomas J. J. Altizer has called Christian epic poetry.     

Leo Tolstoy the spiritual educator

This paper considers the often overlooked religious and educational works of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). After outlining Tolstoy's life, religious and educational views, it is argued that Tolstoy has much to offer spiritual educators today. In particular, it suggests Tolstoy's insistence on the absolute and eternal nature of spiritual and moral truths, coupled with a free and heuristic pedagogy, are key ingredients of an authentic spiritual education.     

Adolescents' willingness to help with peer victimisation in Taiwan: The role of individual and situation-specific characteristics

The purpose of this study is to evaluate adolescent bystanders' willingness to help and specific help responses as predicted by both individual characteristics (e.g., gender, empathy, victimisation experiences) and situation-specific characteristics (i.e., bystander's relationship with the victim and the presence of another bystander). The study used an experimental vignette method with a sample of Taiwanese adolescents. Participants included 730 seventh graders (49% girls, mean age 12.8 years) attending one middle school in a southern city in Taiwan. Results show that both individual characteristics (e.g., gender, empathy) and a situation-specific characteristic (i.e., the relationship a participant had with the victim) predicted adolescents' willingness to help. However, only individual characteristics predicted adolescents' specific help responses including telling the teacher, telling the bully to stop, and comforting the victims. Directions for future research and implications for interventions and prevention programs are discussed.     

Emotional maltreatment in adolescents' everyday lives: furthering sociolegal reforms and social service provisions

The article examines sociolegal responses to adolescent victimization, particularly responses to the emotional dimensions of their violent personal relationships. The investigation reveals how the legal system generally fails to recognize youth's emotional maltreatment. Responses tend to consider emotional maltreatment as subordinate and secondary to some legally prohibited sexual and physical assaults. Rather than casting emotional dimensions as ancillary to a narrowly delimited set of sexual and physical assaults, this article proposes that efforts to counter emotional maltreatment become the centerpiece of efforts to understand adolescents' violent relationships; that it become central in the design of policies aimed to foster adolescent development; and that no existing legal rules or policy considerations prevent further recognition of adolescents' legal right to protection from emotional maltreatment. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A PASSIONATE BUDDHIST LIFE

This paper addresses the ways that we can understand and transform our strong emotions and how this project contributes to moral and spiritual development. To this end, I choose to think with two Tibetan Buddhist thinkers, both of whom take up the question of how passionate emotions can fit into spiritual and moral life: the famous, playful yogin Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol (1781–1851) and the wandering, charismatic master Patrul Rinpoche (1808–1887). Shabkar's The Autobiography of Shabkar provides excellent examples of using one's own passionate emotions to connect to others and gain insight into the world. Patrul Rinpoche's The Words of My Perfect Teacher (kun bzang bla ma'i zhal lung) focuses on passionate empathy with the emotions of others. Drawing on these texts, I present a (distinctly Buddhist) conception of a passionate life and argue that passionate emotional experience is a central part of moral and spiritual development more broadly construed.     

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

The history of the stormy love affair between psychoanalysts and literature is explored, with an emphasis on their basic affinity and on the animosity created by analysts’ reductionistic tendencies. Past studies of the dynamics of Robert Frost's emotional world and poetry are reviewed in this context. Ogden's sensitive reading of Frost's poems is portrayed as an example of the potentially mutual egalitarian encounter allowed by newer trends in psychoanalytic theory.