Man and Nature. A New Project on New Spirituality
Zbigniew Pasek
AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Culture Study and Philosophy, ul. Gramatyka 8a, 30-071 Kraków (Poland)
Agnieszka Dyczewska
Foundation Atena – Foundation for Research of Religious Minorities, ul. Wrocławska 60/1, 30-901 Kraków (Poland)
Abstract
This article is a prelude to a planned project aimed at researching new ways of understanding and redefining the concept of nature in the so-called New Spirituality movements. The authors begin from a theoretical context associated with the meaning, for religious studies, of the sacred – profane and culture – nature dichotomies, and show the changes religiousness undergoes. Today we see an increasing number of people turning away from traditional forms of religious cult with a simultaneously declared wish to develop their own spirituality. New spirituality is provisionally defined here as the worldly transgression of the human condition committed in the name of different values strongly associated with the physical (bodily) dimension of life and a holistic vision of the world. On the basis of examples, drawn mainly from publications based on the Deep Ecology trend, the authors discuss three aspects: (1) a new understanding of one’s own nature, (2) a new understanding of the nature of the world; and (3) new forms of activity for changes in awareness. In the dimensions under discussion, the process of recently locating the element of the sacred in the profane sphere and the resacralisation of nature clearly emerges. In the conclusions we also consider to what extent the formative new spirituality on the ecological trait can help to popularise the sustainable development idea within the framework of changing the religiousness of man at the start of the twenty-first century.
Keywords:
nature, New Spirituality, Deep Ecology, the sacred, sacrum, the profane, sustainable developmentReferences
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Authors
Zbigniew PasekAGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Culture Study and Philosophy, ul. Gramatyka 8a, 30-071 Kraków Poland
Authors
Agnieszka DyczewskaFoundation Atena – Foundation for Research of Religious Minorities, ul. Wrocławska 60/1, 30-901 Kraków Poland
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