The Great Dialogue

from the Writer's Almanac [4/22] "It's the birthday of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (books by this author), born in Konigsberg, Prussia, in 1724. His father was a saddle maker. He studied theology, physics, mathematics, and philosophy at university, and worked for a time as a private tutor; he made very little money, but it gave him plenty of time for his own work. He lectured at the University of Konigsberg for 15 years, until he was eventually given a tenured position as professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. Though he enjoyed hearing travel stories, he never ventured more than 50 miles from his hometown, believing that travel was not necessary to solve the problems of philosophy. In his most influential work, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he argued against Empiricism, which held that the mind was a blank slate to be filled with observations of the physical world, and Rationalism, which held that it was possible to experience the world o

Sometime ago, Psychology--as a field--moved in the direction of including spirituality as an important dimension of peoples' lives, and away from the longstanding position that God [and religion] was an unimportant concept...Now there are trainings, books, college courses on addressing the spiritual concerns of clients in therapy. As I was attending one lecture on this subject It got me to reflecting on the Essentials concept...it would be foolish to reject out of hand "any good thing," such as the concept of energy meridians or recent scientific discoveries about how the  body [and brain] process pain signals, or the nuances of someone's culture and how it affects their viewpoint--that having been said, I propose that holding to a set of Essential beliefs and behaviors, while helping to define a spiritual position, should not be allowed to create an unassailable, Monolithic viewpoint...there is always diversity in religion [even within denominations]...this is probab