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:
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (19121989)
“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 (15411603)
“If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature.”
—John Locke (16321704)