Academic literature on the topic 'Menneskesyn'

On Grundtvig's View of ManBy William MichelsenIn this paper, read to the Annual Conference of the Grundtvig Society in January 1988, an answer is offered to the question: Did Grundtvig’s view of man remain unchanged from 1817 to his death? The answer is in the affirmative. The line of argument of the paper issues from Grundtvig’s essay “On Man in the World”, printed in the magazine “Danne-Virke” II, 1817, abstracting from it nine tenets, about which Grundtvig’s view remained the same, even after 1832, when he changed his attitude to the prevailing philosophy and theory of knowledge of the age, as far as he drew a distinction between faith and knowledge. As early as 1817 man is viewed both from a Christian and a non-Christian point of view. By virtue of his sensory organs man stands in a direct relationship with animals, and his historical development is a continuation of his separation from the animal kingdom. Nonetheless, man is created in God’s image, which means, that he is intended to develop towards increasing likeness with his Maker. And the archetypal likeness to God remains in man in spite of the Fall, which is confirmed both by the life of the individual and by history. As God is Truth, the Fall means a deviation from Truth provoked by Untruth, through which man is undone. Truth and Untruth are seen as spiritual verities to be found behind the physical reality of immediate perception and consequently behind life and death.What does Grundtvig mean by the word “spirit”? The essay offers two different answers to the question that are not in disagreement. In one place he says that the spirit consists of “mixed ideas perceived by the senses, but with a spiritual character,” that is they are exclusively manifest in the form of images. Elsewhere he holds that the Spirit is a living, forceful and active idea, which is solely perceived by consciousness, and consciousness is a product of man’s external and internal senses: feeling, vision and hearing. With the external senses we perceive the physical world and the physical part of ourselves. With the internal senses we become aware of the spiritual side to ourselves, our fellow-men and the world, in which we live.That man and the world were created, is to Grundtvig no matter of belief, but quite simply a question of recognition of reality: No man did create himself and even less the world in which we live. This epistemological realism is Grundtvig’s main proposition, which became clear to him in 1813 (as evidenced by the lecture ms. “On the Human Condition”). - Conversely the Fall presupposes the belief that man was created to become like God, and is consequently not his own master but under his Maker. That man should be able to work his own salvation when he has deviated from his divine purpose, is to Grundtvig quite plainly an impossibility.The only way in which man may be saved from complete annihilation is to Grundtvig by faith in the only human being who did not stray from his destiny to become like God. To choose this faith is to choose Truth rather than Untruth as one’s ideal, in one’s actions as well as in one’s external and internal perception of the world and oneself. But the heart of the matter is that man sees himself as an imperfect image of his Maker, a creature still far from having been fully developed.According to Grundtvig this view of man is only to be attained and developed through historical scholarship. There is no short-cut to this goal as for instance by way of a mystical experience, or what his contemporaries called a pure vision of Nature or an intellectual vision, even though this may be experienced in a fleeting moment. In this case one is deluded by illusions (“brilliant shades”). To make reason a starting-point for a view of man is also an error, since both the historical development and the development of the individual begin with feeling and ideation or imagination. The road to knowledge and understanding of man must, according to Grundtvig, be entirely different from the one followed sofar. It is understandable that Grundtvig holding such views was debarred from a university post, as they differed so much from contemporary thought. The definitive formulation of his view of man is, indeed, not to be found in the Danne-Virke of 1817, but in his introduction to “Mythology of the North” from 1832 where it is presented as the opposite of what his own day and posterity imagined a Christian view of man to be: “a divine experiment” with the aim of demonstrating how it was feasible for spirit and flesh to interpenetrate, in the process being clarified in a mutual consciousness, which Grundtvig called “divine”, because it is the superhuman Maker who intends to make an image of himself, but that “will require a thousand generations yet. ” According to Grundtvig, the main error of the view of man was that it made our descendants true copies of ourselves, consequently bringing evolution to a standstill.

The World Picture and the View of Man in Grundtvig’s Hymns.By Peter Balslev-ClausenThis lecture for the Degree in Divinity at the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen is a summary of the writer’s studies in the hymns, written by Grundtvig over the years from 1810 to 1872, with a view to determining the overall view of human life and Christianity that constitutes their background. The lecture discusses central concepts in these hymns, taking the point of departure in the word, i.e., speech as expressing the fact that man was created in God’s image. Hymn-singing is seen as man’s reply to God’s address, partly in the church service, partly in the daily prayers, as it is evidenced by the hymn "Congregation of God, Sing Secret Songs of Praise to Our Creator" (Guds menighed, syng for vor skaber i l.n (1847)). This hymn was composed during Grundtvig’s work on a collection of popular ballads, and is modelled on the ballad about hr. Villemand, who, by playing his harp, forces the merman of the river to give his bride back to him.The lecture concentrates on the Mosaic-Christian view of the world and of man, considered, consciously, by Grundtvig to be the contrast to the scientific picture of the world and idea of man of his own age. It is claimed that the new world-picture as Grundtvig saw it, made impossible any notion of a connection between God and man, heaven and earth, creation and consummation, and that without this connection man would lose his identity and his companionship with others. Grundtvig, accordingly, retained the Biblical calendar.Especially after meeting his second wife, Marie Toft, in 1845, and the breakthrough for congregational singing of his hymns in Vartov Church on Christmas Day the same year, Grundtvig came to think of the woman and the human heart as the essence of human nature, in contrast to the rationalistic concept of man, which Grundtvig regarded as a product of Antichrist.Grundtvig was aware that his picture of the world and his view of man was not acceptable to the majority, at least not in the academic world. But he considered it necessary to maintain it, both for the sake of the Mosaic-Christian way of thinking and the Christian faith.The first five years after the meeting with Marie Toft were a turbulent time of regeneration in Grundtvig’s personal life, as it is reflected for example in the hymn "The Clouds Are Turning Grey, and the Leaves Are Falling" (Skyerne gråner og løvet falder). The crisis resolved itself in a new sense of wholeness in life, which is expressed in the series of adaptations of older hymns which did not acquire their final form until the 1850s, such as "O, Christian Faith" (O Kristelighed), "The Sun Now Shines in All its Splendour" (I al sin glans nu stråler solen) and "The Lord Has Visited His People" (Herren, han har besøgt sit folk).Since even today Grundtvig’s hymns are used as existential expressions of the lives of the congregation, the question arises whether they can still be used when his presuppositions no longer apply. Precisely by his strangeness, Grundtvig insists that his reader and participant in the hymn-singing is entirely responsible for acquiring an existential experience of a hymn, on the basis of the assumptions that belong to each individual and are determined by the time he or she lives in.

The article discusses public attitudes to disabled people in view of recent developments within modern biotechnology, including the new technology called non-invasive prenatal diagnostics (NIPT) that makes it possible to test human fetuses for different genetic disorders. In the critical evaluation of this practice, feminist ethics is utilized. The article discusses the issue of human rights for disabled people and the specific challenges for disability ethics in this context, including the issue of “selective” abortion.