Sentences with phrase «mere human constructs»

The photograph of the earth taken from outer space reminded us that political boundaries, not visible from space, are mere human constructs.»

Not exact matches

«Listener to the Christian message, «2 occasional preacher, 3 dialoguer with biblical scholars, theologians, and specialists in the history of religions, 4 Ricoeur is above all a philosopher committed to constructing as comprehensive a theory as possible of the interpretation of texts.5 A thoroughly modern man (if not, indeed, a neo-Enlightenment figure) in his determination to think «within the autonomy of responsible thought, «6 Ricoeur finds it nonetheless consistent to maintain that reflection which seeks, beyond mere calculation, to «situate [us] better in being, «7 must arise from the mythical, narrative, prophetic, poetic, apocalyptic, and other sorts of texts in which human beings have avowed their encounter both with evil and with the gracious grounds of hope.

What he opposes most stridently in this book is not religious doubt itself or attempts to understand religion as a human construct or a biological phenomenon, but rather what he sees as a very artificial and incomplete view of human nature and its purpose: the very presumption that religion can be explained away as unnecessary and that such materialistic perspectives could be definitive or anywhere near ultimately satisfactory for beings who are obviously designed to crave so much more than mere birth, death, and extinction.

It is easy for filmmakers to chip away at the veneer of larger - than - life historical figures; it is far more difficult to acknowledge genius in a mere human and then construct a movie that attempts to capture both that genius and his or her humanity.

In the process, students will become autonomous human beings, not the mere creatures of their culture, and will develop capacities of critical judgment that will enable them to participate in creating - «constructing» - a better world.