The Essentials of Spirituality | Felix Adler
Adler came to promote a philosophy which he termed Ethical Culture, an essentially Kantian moral philosophy which prized public work and the use of reason to develop ultimate ethical standards. He made use of the ideas from his religion, the philosophy of Kant & Ralph Waldo Emerson, mixed with certain socialistic ideas of his time. He believed that the concept of a personal god was unnecessary and that the human personality is the central force of religion, that different people's interpretations of religions were to be respected as religious things in themselves.
| Title | The Essentials of Spirituality |
| Author | Felix Adler |
| Publisher | James Pott & Co |
| Year | 1905 |
| Copyright | 1905, James Pott & Co |
| Amazon | The Essentials Of Spirituality |
I. The Essentials of Spirituality- The first essential is an awakening, a sense of the absence of spirituality, the realized need of giving to our lives a new and higher quality; first there must be the hunger before there can be the s...
- The Essentials of Spirituality. Part 2
- But perhaps some one may object that a standard by which personalities like Savonarola, Washington, Howard and Peabody fall short is probably set too high, and that in any case the erection of such a ...
- The Essentials of Spirituality. Part 3
- Some such analogy will help us understand the inner state of a spiritually-minded person. He thinks always of the ultimate end. In whatever he does or omits to do he asks himself, Will it advance me ...
- The Essentials of Spirituality. Part 4
- A second condition of the spiritual life has been expressed in the precept, reiterated in many religions, by many experts in things relating to the life of the soul: Live as if this hour were thy las...
- The Essentials of Spirituality. Part 5
- Finally, there is a third condition of the spiritual life which I would mention, and which comes nearer to the heart of the matter than anything that has yet been said. Learn to look upon any pains an...
- II. The Spiritual Attitude Toward One's Neighbor.
- Sunday, Nov. 27, 1904. Those whom we call our neighbors, our fellow-men, may stand to us in a threefold relation. Some possess gifts far greater than our own, and in point of development are our supe...
- The Spiritual Attitude Toward One's Neighbor. Part 2
- The positive belief in human worth on which is based the belief in human equality, so far as it has rooted itself in the world at all, we owe to religion, and more particularly to the Hebrew and Chris...
- The Spiritual Attitude Toward One's Neighbor. Part 3
- First, as to its meaning. It does not mean equality of gifts, or equality of mental energy, or equality in any of the traits that lead to successful careers. It means equality in the sense that each i...
- The Spiritual Attitude Toward One's Neighbor. Part 4
- The Jewish State in the time of Jesus was substantially an ecclesiastical aristocracy. The highest rank was occupied by the priests and their assessors, the Levites; after them, sometimes disputing th...
- III. The Spiritual Attitude Toward Oppressors
- Sunday, Dec. 4, 1904. The problem of our spiritual attitude toward positive badness, social and individual wrongdoing, cruelty and oppression, is far more difficult of solution than the problem of ou...
- The Spiritual Attitude Toward Oppressors. Part 2
- Furthermore, can we say that the sentence of the judge is proportioned to the heinousness of the deed? Is the murderer who in a fit of uncontrolled passion has taken a human lifeit may have bee...
- The Spiritual Attitude Toward Oppressors. Part 3
- And so we may pass on at once to the last and chief element in the process of the reclamation of the evildoer, namely, forgiveness. An angel's tongue, the wisdom and insight of the loftiest of the sa...
- The Spiritual Attitude Toward Oppressors. Part 4
- But the logical and inevitable conclusion of the thought I have developed to-day is, that we are bound to recognize the indefeasible worth latent even in the cruel exploiter and the merciless expropri...
- IV. The Two Souls In The Human Breast
- Sunday, Dec. 11, 1904. Painful and revolting associations are called up by the phraseleading the double life. To the aversion provoked by the evil itself, is added in such cases the disgust ...
- The Two Souls In The Human Breast. Part 2
- The cardinal thought I have in mind, which I believe will provide an escape from such intolerable moral dilemmas, can best be set forth by contrasting it with its diametrical opposite. This opposite i...
- The Two Souls In The Human Breast. Part 3
- But if the illusion is dispelled that the goodness or badness of an action as it appears to the eye is the measure of the virtuousness or viciousness of the agent; if the principle that governs the ac...
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