The Rise of a Global God-Image? Spiritual internationalists, the international left and the idea of human progress

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 205-225

  Job, Sebastian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MODERNITY; POLITICS; RELIGION;

EID: 59049083546     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590802622623     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. T Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans EB Ashton, London: Routledge, 1973, pp 21, 300.
2. W Bello, 'The decline of American power: Implications for the Asia-Pacific', First EL 'Ted' Wheelwright Memorial Lecture, University of Sydney, 1 September 2008. See also Bello, 'The capitalist conjuncture: Over-accumulation, financial crises, and the retreat from globalisation', Third World Quarterly, 27 (8), 2006, pp 1345-1367.
3. D Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
4. The classic study on this archetype, which restricts itself to the last book of the New Testament and to doomsday cults inspired by that book, however, is EF Edinger, Archetype of the Apocalypse: A Jungian Study of the Book of Revelation, Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1999.
5. F Jameson, The Seeds of Time, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, p xii.
6. E Voegelin, Anamnesis, trans G Niemeyer, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978.
7. M Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982.
8. From my notes on the Network of Spiritual Progressives Founding Conference, University of California, Berkeley, 23 July 2005.
9. S Clairborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006; C Davis, J Milbak & S Zizek (eds), Theology and the Political: The New Debate, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005
10. R Bhaskar, From Science to Emancipation: Alienation and the Actuality of Enlightenment, New Dehli: Sage Publications, 2002
11. RS Gottlieb, Joining Hands: Politics and Religion Together for Social Change, Cambridge, MA: Westview Perseus Press, 2002
12. S Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household, trans C Evtukhov, Yale, CT: Yale University Press, 2000
13. A Kotler (ed), Engaged Buddhist Reader, Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996
14. H Wells, A Future for Socialism? Political Theology and the 'Triumph of Capitalism', Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996
15. G Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, trans C Inda and J Eagleson, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988
16. JH Cone & GS Wiltmore (eds), Black Theology: A Documentary History Vol II 1980-1992, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993
17. MP Aquino, Our Cry for Life: Feminist Theology from Latin America, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993
18. and A Shariati, Religion vs Religion, trans L Bakhtiar, Albuquerque, NM: ABJAC, 1988.
19. For an analysis of a national political scene (the USA) from the perspective of competing images of God, see M Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 2006.
20. Web and library searches show that the concept 'global God-image', whether 'progressive' or not, does not yet have any currency, at least in English. Only one article was found with the phrase 'global God image', and here the phrase, which occurs only once, has instead the merely negative sense of images of God which lack speci.city. See P Granqvist, CL Jungdahl & JR Dickie, 'God is nowhere, God is now here: attachment activation, security of attachment, and God's perceived closeness among 5-7-year-old children from religious and non-religious homes', Attachment & Human Development, 7 (4), 2005, p 58. The situation with the term 'spiritual internationalists' is only marginally better, with only two uses of the term found, and both of these referring to contexts no later than the mid-20th century.
21. CG Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, trans RFC Hull, London: Routledge & Kegan, 1959
22. EF Edinger, The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1996.
23. E Brient, The Immanence of the In.nite: Hans Blumenberg and the Threshold to Modernity, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002
24. L Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993
25. A Funkenstein, Theology and the Scienti.c Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986
26. A Koyré, From the Closed World to the In.nite Universe, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957.
27. DV Porpora, Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p 58.
28. For discussion, see D Martin, Reflections on Sociology and Theology Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997
29. and RA Segal, Religion and the Social Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation, Atlanta, GA.: Scholars Press, 1989.
30. R Pippin, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
31. P Norris & Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
32. D Westerlund (ed), Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence of Religion in Politics, London: Hurst & Company, 1996
33. and JK Hadden & A Shupe (eds), Prophetic Religion and Politics: Religion and the Political Order, New York: Paragon House, 1986.
34. PL Berger (ed), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Michigan: William B Eerdmans, 1999.
35. Some key integral and associated thinkers of the 20th century are Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), Jean Gebser (1905-73), Frithjof Schuon (1907-98) and Haridas Chaudhuri (1913-75). These journals draw particularly on the thought of contemporaries Ervin Laszlo and Ashok Gangadean, and are in.uenced by the ideas of Ken Wilber and Don Beck's version of 'Spiral Dynamics', a model of psychosocial and moral development primarily directed at corporate executives. See E Laszlo, Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2006
36. AK Gangadean, Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason, New York: Peter Lang, 1998
37. K Wilber, The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad, Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1997
38. and DE Beck & C Cowan, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996.
39. R Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
40. L Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1981.
41. See, for example, P Clayton & J Schaal (eds), Practicing Science, Living Faith: Interviews with Twelve Leading Scientists, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
42. World Wisdom Council, 'The Tokyo Declaration', Kosmos, V (2), 2006, p 60.
43. M Saionji, 'Raising our consciousness to create a new civilization', Kosmos, V (2), 2006, pp 42-43.
44. M Gorbachev, 'Towards a new civilization', Kosmos, V (2), 2006, pp 16-18.
45. R Brutoco, 'The global players: Governments, civil society and business', Kosmos, III (2), 2004, p 10
46. and N Perlas, 'Societal revolutions in the 21st century: Spirit or empire', Kosmos, III (2), 2004, pp 38-39.
47. AA Said, 'Moving towards a transnational consciousness', Spirituality & Reality, II (1), 2002, pp 6-7.
48. N Roof, 'Spirituality & reality: Thoughts on post 9/11', Spirituality & Reality, II (1), 2002, pp 12-13.
49. A Gangadean, 'Awakening global consciousness: Why it is vital for cultural sustainability', Kosmos, III (2), 2004, p 25.
50. G Hayashi, 'Perspectives from the readers of Kosmos', Kosmos, V (2), 2006, p 44.
51. C Wigglesworth, 'Spiritual intelligence: Why is it important?', Kosmos, V (2), 2006, pp 30-31, 44.
52. N Seifer & M Vieweg, 'Perspectives from the readers of Kosmos', Kosmos, III (2), 2004, p 44.
53. For critical discussion, see JW Cooper, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers-From Plato to the Present, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006.
54. See generally P Clayton & A Peacocke (eds), In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World, Michigan: William. B Eerdmans, 2004.
55. RM Wallace, Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
56. SM Kelly, Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung and the Path Towards Wholeness, New York: Paulist Press, 1993
57. IM Blanco, The Unconscious as In.nite Sets: An Essay in Bi-Logic, London: Duckworth, 1975.
58. The Kantian dimension of Jung is pressed home by Edward Edinger in The New God-Image. For a Heideggerian reading, see R Brooke, Jung and Phenomenology, London: Routledge, 1991.
59. For an attempt to bring Jung into conversation with Hegel, see Kelly, Individuation and the Absolute.
60. Some contemporary Freudians, following in the tracks of Wilfred Bion, and to a lesser extent of Jacques Lacan, Donald Winnicott and Ignacio Matte-Blanco, are beginning to take another look at the problematic of Ultimate Truth and Absolute Reality. See JS Grotstein, 'The numinous and immanent nature of the psychoanalytic Subject', Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1998, 43, pp 41-68
61. and M Eigen, The Psychoanalytic Mystic, Binghamton, NY: Esf Publishers, 1998.
62. Here I draw on RM Wallace, 'To the heart of our Western tradition: rediscovering the God of freedom', unpublished ms. My thanks to Bob Wallace for making this text available to me.
63. C Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans G Schwab, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.