The Shape of Theological Humanism
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global warming, species extinction, soil and land loss and deforestation. Sometimes the roots of this endangerment are found in the religions, espe-cially the biblical traditions and ideas about the human domination of the earth. Others find the root cause deep within Western conceptions of being
itself and the belief that somehow reality is a standing reserve for human use.is true of history as well. The many processes which allow human communi-ties to endure through time and to pass on their ways of life – language, (^10) But human life, in fact, is intertwined with the goods of locality. This
custom, social relations – are now endangered through global processes. The earth is precious and human communities are vulnerable. These are goodsvulnerabilities and forms of preciousness.. Our lives are marked by a capacity for empathy in the face of these natural
the space of life are often sensed in the homelessness people feel when their communities break down or are dislocated.also profound terror, in the face of the titanic forces of the natural world, This preciousness of the earth and vulnerability of human communities as (^11) The sense of natural beauty, but
disclose the locality of life. Not only pleasure and pain, but recognition and shame, guilt and innocence situate human beings in their world at the levels of feelings and moods about the range of goods that saturate life. The goods of locality of goods arises within feelings of participation and alienation amid
the various spaces (natural, social, historical) where human existence takes place. A norm for right action, then, is marked not only by universality, final-ity, and autonomy, but also locality. We must respect and enhance the various “spaces” where life takes place, happens. In addition to basic, social, and
reflective goods, we add natural goods, goods of place or locality. These goods have also found voice in the humanist imagination: the garden, the theatre, the school each denotes a space of human freedom.We have now isolated a range of types of goods found within inchoate
sensibilities and attunements to the vitality and vulnerability of life in its various dimensions, reaching from physical through social, natural to reflex-ive life. These diverse goods (basic, social, natural, reflective) also carry within them a felt demand or claim to obligation that we have summarized in terms
of formal tests or norms for right action: relations, and reflective acts of understanding. These goods and also the felt localitydemands of life have already appeared in this book in terms of the products arising within proper, developed attunements to finite being, social universality, finality, autonomy, and
of the humanistic imagination.fact. The nities often do not orient their lives by the demands of universality, finality, At this juncture in the argument we confront an obvious and painful goods of life can and do conflict, and persons as well as commu-