自我观的新形式:有关自悯的研究论述

由于自尊并不能完全地预见个体心理健康的程度,许多研究者提出了新的构念。本文介绍了其中的努力之一,在吸收东方佛学思想的基础上,Neff于2003年提出了自悯这种新的自我观形式。文章介绍了自悯的成分,即自我友善、普遍人性感和正念以及相关的研究方法;然后,从早期经验、社会文化的角度讨论了自悯的影响来源;在心理功能方面,自悯能有效地帮助个体应对负性事件,增强积极的心理品质和力量,对人际知觉和互动也有重要影响。自悯的这些积极功能已经在临床上得到了运用。最后,对未来的研究方向进行了展望。     

文摘

中国佛教慈悲理念的特质及其现代意义 方立天在《文史哲》2004年第4期撰写文章,认为慈悲是佛教的核心理念之一,是佛教的重要伦理准则和理想价值观念,鲜明地体现了佛教的人文精神,构成佛教人道主义思想的重要形态。首先,佛教的慈悲理念是奠立在佛教世界观——缘起论的哲学基础上的。其次,佛教认为,慈从悲来,悲必为慈。慈与悲相辅相成,缺一不可。只有慈悲相连,才能产生“与乐祓苦”的践行和作用。大乘佛教强调慈悲是佛教的根本,以普度众生为自己的崇高职责和伟大理想。中国佛教极度推崇慈悲精神。第三,随着小乘佛教向大乘佛教发展,佛教越来…     

略述佛教慈悲观念在中国的开展

佛教的慈悲观、布施观与福田观智慧与慈悲是佛法的两大基本精神,佛陀在以佛眼之智洞彻诸法实相的同时,慈愍三界火宅众生,甚于父母念子。“以无尽大悲,矜哀三界,所以出兴于世,光阐道教,普令群萌,获真法利。”（《大无量寿经》）慈者,与一切众生乐;悲者,拔一切众...     

论佛教的慈悲观及其对生态环境的现实意义

论佛教的慈悲观及其对生态环境的现实意义肖雨慈悲是佛教的根本思想，也是它济世救人利物的一种奉献精神，还是关于生态环境的一种伦理道德。当前，它对解决人类面临的生态危机和促进人与社会、人与自然的协调发展，都具有不可估量的现实意义。所以，特加论之，且请方家指...     

慈善是佛教的本质属性和本质要求

何谓佛教慈善佛教慈善的慈指慈悲,即对他人痛苦感同身受,进而产生深切的同情。慈悲的极致是无缘大慈,是无对象分别、无条件、不求回报地给予众生以快乐、幸福。佛教慈善的善,是指能给予     

浅议佛教慈悲理念的现实意义——《普贤行愿品》的启示

<正>很多佛教的大师都异口同声地说慈悲心是人类和一切生命安乐幸福的源泉。例如:国学和禅宗大师耕耘先生说:"什么是幸福的能源?就是爱与慈悲"[1];星云法师说:"慈悲心是万物生生不息的源泉"[2];索达吉堪布说:"佛教的慈悲观,对现代人来说不可缺少。它虽不像很多时髦的东西那样吸人的眼球,但就如水和空气,淡得让人察觉不到它     

践行佛教精神 勇担扶贫重任

正扶危济困是佛教慈悲精神的体现,佛法中的缘起论、慈悲观、布施观和福田思想都为佛教积极参与扶贫工作提供了坚实的理论依据。扶贫可说是中国佛教的优良传统之一,佛法自汉代传入中国以来,扶贫的实践就一直没有中断过,因此,当代中国佛教更应该继承传统,积极应对当前扶贫工作面临的机遇与挑战,灵活创新,方便施救,切实履行佛法利益众生的精神。佛教以慈悲为本怀,以入世为方便,佛教徒践行佛法,就应当将慈悲的精神落实于     

斯奈德、梅西佛教生态整体主义思想研究

斯奈德自然社区观、梅西生态自我观,是欧美学界佛教生态整体主义思想的代表。斯奈德主张将佛教修行实践应用于社区生活,将自然万物纳入到社区当中,建立人与自然协调共生的社区;梅西从现代心理学及系统论阐释佛教自我观,将自我阐释为时刻与环境互动的开放的动态模式,将对本心的觉悟与参与世界的行动联系起来,与华严宗关于宇宙全息整体图景的觉悟联系起来。斯奈德、梅西佛教生态思想不仅在早期生态环保运动中影响显著,而且对之后佛教生态思想的演进具有深远的影响。     

佛教对苦难的认知——基于《慈悲地藏忏法》的考察

通过对《慈悲地藏忏法》内容的分析,梳理了其中关键仪节程序所体现的佛教对苦难的认识、应对的方法和达到的解脱效果,以呈现出一个较为完整的佛教苦难观。基于这样的梳理,发现《慈悲地藏忏法》所要解救的是所有六道众生的苦难,而不仅局限于消除地狱道众生苦难。因此,《慈悲地藏忏法》不仅可以用来超度亡魂,它也适合所有发心修行者礼拜。     

佛教生态观研究现状述评

学术界、佛教界十多年来关于佛教生态观的研究所做的主要工作是回应西方生态文化思潮的基本理念,从传统佛教经典、教义中挖掘、整理佛教生态观的相应内容,从佛教整体观、无我论、生命观、内在价值论、慈悲观、净土观、传统佛教生态伦理实践等方面大体勾勒出了佛教生态观的整体轮廓。不足之处是缺乏理论深度,未能把握佛教生态观区别于西方生态文化观念的理论特质,从佛教理论自身的观念出发建构具有佛教自身特质的生态理论体系。相比较而言,港台佛教界关于佛教生态观和环保实践的讨论更为深入。比较引人注目的是杨惠南关于建立人间佛教的深层生态学的主张、“心、境并建”的环保实践观念,以及杨惠南、林朝成等对佛教环保实践社会政治层面的关注等。其研究从大乘佛教理念出发,不仅是对当代佛教生态观和环保实践的批判,而且触及到传统佛教偏重心灵解脱,忽视外在环境建设的偏向,相对而言更深刻、更具有现实针对性。     

Jankélévitch and Gusdorf on Forgiveness of Oneself

In this article, I examine the issue of forgiveness of oneself by looking at the writings of two postwar French philosophers: Georges Gusdorf and Vladimir Jankélévitch. Gusdorf believes that forgiving oneself is necessary for being able to forgive others. On the other hand, Jankélévitch sees no possibility of forgiveness for oneself and for similar reasons is very suspicious of traditional views of the role accorded to repenting and penitence. In short, the main view that separates the thinkers is, quite literally, whether work on oneself—such as repentance and penitence—comes first before forgiveness, or whether repentance and penitence are the result of some prior gracious act, such as forgiveness. Somewhat ironically, their views, when all is said and done, may not really be all that far apart from each other, especially in light of how each views the nature of the self. In the end, the main factor dividing the two thinkers is metaphysical allegiances. Reflecting a tendency that is shown in most—if not all—of his early works, Gusdorf views the self more from the perspective of anthropology. Jankélévitch, like his mentor Henri Bergson, has faith in science and does not have a supernatural view of the human soul.     

Über Mentalisierung, Affektregulierung und die Entwicklung des Selbst

The author presents an overview of the work by the London research group around Peter Fonagy. This work combines two currently prominent research areas within developmental psychology—the theory of mind research and the attachment research—with psychoanalysis, and it outlines the stepwise acquisitation of the mentalization ability within a comprehensively planned design. The ability to understand oneself and others as entities with mental-emotional states and to deal meaningfully with one’s own inner life and that of others is seen as dependent on attachment experiences. The architecture of the theory is being reconstructed in six steps: After elucidating the mentalization concept (I), the affect-mirroring model (II) and the playing-with-reality-theory (III) are presented. Both segments of the theory constitute the central theoretical core and lead to a particular understanding of the features of the interactive and symbolic affect regulation which is presented in part IV. Particular aspects of the development of the self are then considered (V), and finally the implications of the presented issues with respect to the conceptualisation of such clinical phenomena as the projective identification. The author sees the original aspects of this approach in the fact that Fonagy et al. choose to write an interaction history as opposed to a maturation history favored by many cognitive psychologists in the era of the human genome project. The red thread pervading the discussion of divergent topics is the importance of interpersonal interaction to the development of thinking and emotional processes. The structure of (early) interpersonal relationships is considered as constitutive for normal and pathological variations of the ability to perceive oneself and others as thinking and feeling beings.     

Wittgenstein's New Way of Talking to Himself

A lack of consensus persists as to whom exactly the dialogues of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are between: Wittgenstein and an interlocutor? Or perhaps a variety of interlocutors, none of whom can be identified with Wittgenstein himself? I argue here that this lack of consensus is possibly due to an ambiguity in the ordinary concept of “talking to oneself,” and that a new concept of “talking to oneself” appropriate to Wittgenstein's dialogues is needed to properly understand them. Wittgenstein is talking to himself—but he is doing so in the way we talk to other people.     

What really matters

What really matters fundamentally in survival? That question—the one on which I focus—is not about what should matter or about metaphysics. Rather, it is a factual question the answer to which can be determined, if at all, only empirically. I argue that the answer to it is that in the case of many people it is not one’s own persistence, but continuing in ways that may involve one’s own cessation that really matters fundamentally in survival. Call this the surprising result. What are we to make of it? According to several philosophers, not much. I argue that these philosophers are wrong. What best explains the surprising result is that in the case of many people one’s special concern for oneself in the future is not fundamental, but derived. I explain what this means. Finally I explain why the task of explaining empirically what matters fundamentally in survival is in some ways more like a meditative quest than a traditional inquiry in western philosophy or social science and, as such, is best answered not by psychologists, but by philosophers.     

Gain–loss-frame in outcome-interdependence: does it influence equality or equity considerations?

Research suggests that framing outcomes as gains produces stronger concern for distributive justice than framing outcomes as losses. Unfortunately, however, this prior research manipulated own and other's outcomes only (and not own and other's input). Hence, it remained unclear whether framing affects concern with equality—everyone gets an equal share regardless whether one ‘deserves’ it or not—and/or equity—the share one gets is a function of the proportionality of one's own, and the other parties' inputs. The current experiment addressed this problem. Subjects (N = 94) read a scenario manipulating own and some co-workers' inputs, and subsequently rated satisfaction with pairs of outcomes providing themselves with more, equal or less outcomes than their co-worker. Outcomes to oneself exceeded expectation (gain-frame) or remained below it (loss-frame). Corroborating and expanding prior research, results showed that people are more concerned with both equality and equity when they have a gain- rather than loss-frame. In addition, results revealed evidence for a self-serving bias, in that people prefer equity or equality, depending on what serves best their own interests. It is concluded that frame affects the degree to which people are concerned about distributive justice.     

Critical Thinking is Epistemically Responsible

Michael Huemer ( 2005 ) argues that following the epistemic strategy of Critical Thinking—that is, thinking things through for oneself—leaves the agent epistemically either worse off or no better off than an alternative strategy of Credulity—that is, trusting the authorities. Therefore, Critical Thinking is not epistemically responsible. This article argues that Reasonable Credulity entails Critical Thinking, and since Reasonable Credulity is epistemically responsible, the Critical Thinking that it entails is epistemically responsible too.     

Reason,Religion, and Sexual Difference: Resources for a Feminist Philosophy of Religion in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Reading Hegel's 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion alongside his Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue that his vision for becoming a self‐conscious subject—or seeing (oneself as) “spirit”—requires taking responsibility for the insight that every act of reason expresses an experience of sexual difference. It entails working to bring into being communities whose conceptions of gender and the absolute realize this idea.     

Explaining the Relationship between Religiosity and Political Participation: The Mediating Roles of Transcendent Accountability and Religiopolitical Awareness

Prior research tends to find a positive relationship between religiosity and political participation. Explanations of this relationship have focused mostly on religiosity-generated organizational resources (e.g., civic skills), while paying less attention to psychological resources. We simultaneously examined different aspects of religiosity (belief, behavior, and belonging) and political participation (electoral and nonelectoral) in a structural equation model with two psychological resources as mediators: (1) “transcendent accountability”—seeing oneself as responsible to God or a higher power for one's impact on other people and the environment, and (2) “religiopolitical awareness”—perceiving the influence of one's religion and/or spirituality on one's political views and activities. Results from analyzing survey data from a US representative sample showed that transcendent accountability and religiopolitical awareness, whether together or awareness only, mediated positive relationships between religiosity (belief, private and public behaviors, and membership) and political participation (voting and other political activity), highlighting key psychological motivators of political participation.     

Miracles in Sport: Finding the ‘Ears to Hear’ and the ‘Eyes to See’

Paralympic Games (PG), involving people with disabilities (PWD), are a manifestation of excellence in sport. They show that athletics performed by PWD counts as genuine sport. They also support a wider meaning of the term ‘health,’ understood not just like a utopian state of perfection, but like the ability to realize oneself in the projects and activities of one’s own choosing. Notwithstanding these virtues, PG—in their current form—may paradoxycally reinforce social prejudice against PWD. This is due to the fact that PG and Olympic Games (OG) are now two distinct events. In this article, I argue that PG should be integrated in the OG, just like women’s and ‘minor’ sports, because the separation of PG and OG indicates a morally arbitrary separation between people with and without disabilities. I also propose to remove the word ‘Para-lympic’ because it stigmatizes the sport performed by PWD as an appendix of ‘normal’ sport. Athletes with disabilities deserve special attention because they have special needs; but they also deserve an arena where their excellence is offered to the public, and this arena should not be different from that of normal-bodied athletes.