1. Jung’s Answer to Job
- Author
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Garth Amundson
- Subjects
Phenomenology (philosophy) ,Collective unconscious ,Absolute (philosophy) ,Modernity ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Spirituality ,Sociology ,Human condition ,Spiritual crisis ,Object (philosophy) ,Epistemology ,media_common - Abstract
Jung’s (1958) Answer to Job is his contribution to the further unfolding of a new, culturally-relevant system of symbols of the divine, a highly personal, even prophetic response to what he calls the spiritual crisis of modernity. Throughout his life Jung sought to remedy this cultural malady by reintroducing ancient mythic perspectives on the human condition into the Western worldview, in ways that honor the demand of modern persons for symbols of the divine that withstand critical scrutiny; that is, that make sense by conforming to the phenomenology of collective modern consciousness. Jung pursued this agenda while also giving pride of place to another dimension of our sensibilities, that is, the fact that the satisfaction of a sensible viewpoint is rooted in its synergy with our aesthetic faculties, which are emotional and instinctive. These are our “irrational” or “supra-rational” desires for concretely felt—that is, sensate—experiences of reality that may yield an unbidden, vitalizing awareness of the transcendent. In all this Jung is cautious, insisting that the existence of a metaphysical object is not provable objectively. Rather, he seeks to forward a perspective on spirituality that embraces rather than ignores the vicissitudes of our habitation of an increasingly secular world. In Answer to Job, Jung uses the Biblical character Job’s harsh yet reasoned critique of Yahweh’s character to argue that modern Western religious faithful must critically reevaluate the qualities of the God imago that has been handed down to them by history, or risk falling into irrelevance. Specifically, Jung insists that we have yet to integrate the archetypal “dark,” daemonic aspect of the God imago into collective consciousness, such that this emerges, unmodified by awareness, into modernity as the pervasive blight of personal psychic anomie and dangerous mass movements. Elaborating upon Jung’s perception of our spiritual rootlessness, I extrapolate on the work of religious philosopher Rudolf Otto, which Jung liberally applied to outline his position in Answer to Job, as well as variations of phenomenological, pragmatic, social psychological, and eco-feminist views to argue for the centrality of our need for a redemptive relation to the Absolute that resonates with modern Western sensibilities.
- Published
- 2019
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