ADDITIONAL STUDY
This book is
designed to facilitate
self-knowledge by helping readers to understand what and
how they value. It is based
largely on the value theory or axiology of
Robert
S. Hartman, for whom our
values are the keys to our personalities and practices. The book
develops and examines three
ethico-religious stages along life's way--worldliness, ideology, and
saintliness--and the types of
religiosity associated with them. It emphasizes valuations--how
worldlings, ideologists, and saints
value, as well as values themselves--what
they value.
The heart of the
book consists of an analysis
of the above three personality types and how they are organized around
different values,
valuational styles, and life styles, all of which have a religious
expression, and all
of which are conspicuously
present in existing religious thought, literature, and practice. Ideological types
are organized primarily around
systemics (ideas, ideals, beliefs), worldly
types
around extrinsics (things, status, roles, activities), and saintly types
around
intrinsics (loving God and other individuals). The book applies
Robert S. Hartman's formal axiology (without the formalities!) and his
hierarchy of values and
valuations (intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic) to self-knowledge,
religion, and issues of personal spiritual
development. In simple application, this hierarchy of value says that
people are more valuable than things, and things are more
valuable than ideas of things, people, or anything. About such, we
desperately need to get our priorities straight!
Innumerable philosophical and religious thinkers
have
commended the quest for
self-knowledge as a
pre-requisite for moral and spiritual growth and
development. Many religious
thinkers from St. Bonaventure and Søren Kierkegaard to James W.
Fowler have explored a variety
of stages of ethico-religious growth
and development, but without an
adequate systematic axiological
frame of reference for understanding and ordering their subject matter.
The work of Robert S.
Hartman provides the missing and much needed valid systematic
frame of reference.
This
book also relates religion
and human values to psychology, especially evolutionary psychology,
sociobiology, attachment
theory, and the psychology of religion. Quotes and insights from
traditional Christian and Jewish
theologians (mainly Christian, since the author is most familiar with
these) are
integrated with process
theology, which says that God responds to the world, and the world to
God, in time or process.
With a knowledge of values and other insights
derived from
this book, readers should be
able to pick up almost any story with a plot, any theological or
devotional publication, or any study
in the psychology of religion, and be able almost immediately to
discern what is going on, to make
sense of it, and to assess its strengths and weaknesses. Hartman's
axiological frame of reference, purged of a few impurities, makes
literature, religion, religious
writers, studies in the psychology of religion, and all available
manifestations of religion, intelligible--as no
other systematic frame of
reference can.
(2) Robert S. Hartman, Freedom to Live: The Robert Hartman Story.-edited
by Arthur R. Ellis. Click on this title for information about how to
order this book from its publisher, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam
and New York.
This is Robert S. Hartman's autobiography. Instead of being "Born to die for Germany," as his schoolmaster drilled into his students, even as a boy Hartman insisted that he was "Born to Live"! After seeing what Hitler and his thugs were doing to Germany in the early 1930s, Hartman wondered why good people are so bad at organizing goodness while bad people are so good at organizing badness. Hartman tells the story of his escape from Nazi Germany using a false passport bearing the name of "Robert Hartman," which was not his original name. Thereafter, his lifelong quest was quest for the meaning of "good," which eventually led to his discovery of the science of axiology and his applications of formal axiology to the value of persons, religion, etc. In his chapter on "My Self and Religion," Hartman tells of his complex Jewish/Catholic/Lutheran upbringing, shows how to apply his formal theory of value to "elements of the Bible" including the "message of the parables."
(3) C. Stephen Byrum and Leland Kaiser, Spirit for Greatness: Spiritual Dimensions of Organizations and Their Leadership Littleton, Mass. (Tapestry Press, Ltd., 2004).
This is an easy to understand and excellent book that applies formal axiology to spirituality in the business world, especially to organizational leadership. If you think that spirituality (broadly but not narrowly conceived) has no place in a business organization, read this book and learn otherwise!
Get a price for and order this book from Steve Byrum at: byrum4@aol.com
We recommend the following books by theologians and spiritual-minded authors who have never studied axiology as such but who nevertheless represent the best of contemporary scholarship and get their value priorities right.
Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering the Life of Faith. (Harper: San Francisco, 2003).
Tony Campolo, Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Gide to Faith & Politics. (Regal: Ventura, CA, 2008).
Shirley C. Guthrie, Jr., Christian Doctrine, Revised Edition. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994).
Rufus Jones, Essential Writings, Edited by Kerry S. Walters. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001)
Harold Kushner, To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking. New York: Warner Books, 1994).
Michael Lerner, Spirit Matters. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2000).