1. Destiny of Man This much will, I think, have been proven firmly enough one day: that the universe were the work of an Infinite Understanding, and were designed according to an excellent plan. Just as it now flows from the design into reality through the almighty influence of divine power, and all powers are active and act on each other, like strings of a thousandvoiced instrument sounding to...

This paper will attempt to sketch a historical outline of ideas relating to revelation by tracing the development of a concept or topos which has preoccupied Western thinkers since antiquity and which became crucial during the Romantic period — the concept of the Daemon, and the general mode or sensibility referred to as the “Daemonic.” In Classical thought, the term “Daemonic” is associated wi...

Classical bourgeois political theory articulated the political revolution that established possessive individualism as the basis of legitimate government and the foundation of civil society. In this respect, it inaugurated the systematic investigation of the objective rules governing subjective human existence. The work of Thomas Hobbes and of John Locke, like classical political economy and mo...

A common finding across many cultures has been that religious people behave more prosocially than less (or non-) religious people. Numerous priming studies have demonstrated that the activation of religious concepts via implicit and explicit cues (e.g., 'God,' 'salvation,' among many others) increases prosociality in religious people. However, the factors underlying such findings are less clear...

November-December 2003 The title of the Institute of Medicine’s report on medical error, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, is derived from Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711): “To err is human; to forgive, divine” (l. 525).1 Given how familiar this proverb is in its entirety, it is striking that the IOM report itself contains no reference to forgiveness, divine or otherw...

The aim of this study is to investigate how divine worlds can be created, vitalized, and lived by people. Focusing not on cognition and operating through things but on bodily action with things, this paper examines the actuality of these actions, which occur prior to the cognitive articulation of the event and create novel experiences of the world. It reconsiders Alfred Gell’s theory of idolatr...