Foundation
With his humanistic background, once he was convinced of the spiritual explanation for the phenomena that he investigated between 1855 and 1856, Kardec began looking for a way to turn the survival of the human soul (and communication with it) into something useful for humankind, in the social and ethical fields. Moreover, he thought that religions were becoming unable to lead men to effective moral improvements, due to their failure as human institutions. Science, concomitantly, grew wider than ever, bringing numerous direct benefits to man. Both factors together contributed to an increasing disbelief in human spirituality at all levels of European societies. Kardec saw in it an undesirable social tendency that should be reverted by a new paradigm for understanding reality. Its main characteristics would be:
- Promoting the dialog between the three classical forms of knowledge (scientific, philosophical and religious) in order to achieve a deeper and wider comprehension of reality;
- Providing access to knowledge for all people, instead of the "Hermetic" way philosophical and scientific knowledge had been produced;
- Human relationship with the Spiritual without any institutional mediation. A natural spirituality would be enough and more appropriate for human realisation.
- Each individual is responsible for its own actions and moral/spiritual evolution is achieved through our inner transformation and charity.
Read more about this topic: History Of Spiritism
Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (20th century)
“But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.... God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.”
—Pierre Charron (1541–1603)