Leap Of Faith Research Articles

A Phenomenology of Authenticity in Prison Life: Kierkegaard and the Paradox of Freedom

This paper examines the lived experiences of selected inmates, some of whom have been released from the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, Philippines, focusing on how incarceration has transformed their lives. Confronted with significant mental and emotional challenges, the inmates embraced a new life of faith amid the harsh realities of prison life. The researchers used the phenomenological method to collect narratives from these inmates and employ thematic analysis. The paper identifies underlying themes emerging from these narratives and, in its final section, reflects on them through the theoretical framework of existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's concepts of the paradoxical nature of despair and the three stages of life—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious—provide a lens for understanding the inmates' spiritual transformation through religious participation. By integrating these philosophical insights, the authors deepened the understanding of how prison experiences influence spiritual change. The inmates' journeys from despair to spiritual awakening illuminate the existential dynamics of human freedom, authenticity, and community, as articulated by Kierkegaard. Their narratives provide compelling evidence that even in a setting where freedom is ostensibly curtailed, individuals can achieve a profound sense of liberation by embracing their despair and taking a leap of faith.

A Leap of Faith? Elimination of Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation for Patients With Mantle Cell Lymphoma in First Remission

A Leap of Faith? Elimination of Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation for Patients With Mantle Cell Lymphoma in First Remission

Sørena Kierkegaarda pojęcie lęku

In Either/Or Søren Kierkegaard introduced the concept of absolute choice, and them in Fear and Trembling he wrote a lot about the leap of faith, nevertheless neither Judge Wilhelm nor Johannes de Silentio gave the motive that could have brought a particular man to make the choice of his own self in order to have an authentic life. For this reason – as Vigilius Haufniensis – Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Anxiety to answer the following questions: what prompts a man to choose himself? is it something that impels him “from the outside”? or maybe – some "internal" persecutory power? and what testifies to the man the possibility of making such a choice? Therefore, the purpose of this work is to analyze the Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety (in the context of his interpretation of the Fall of First Man) as the main condition and the explanation of the absolute choice.

Nothing and Infinity: Black Life’s Response to Ontological Terror

ABSTRACT This article explores the conclusion of Calvin Warren’s book Ontological Terror and the nihilistic suggestion for Black life to reject humanism. In the text’s final chapter, Warren unexpectedly references Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and reflects on Black life’s enduring spirit through an anti-Black world. This article’s analysis faithfully traces Warren’s nihilistic arguments against humanism and scaffolds them through his reference to Kierkegaard. Utilizing the methods of critical philosophy of race and Black existential philosophy, the first section contextualizes Ontological Terror’s main arguments, places Warren’s reference to Kierkegaard inside a longer Black existential lineage, and grafts Kierkegaard’s concept of the tragic hero onto Warren’s antihumanism. The second section offers a reconstruction of Warren’s ideas through Kierkegaard’s knight of infinite resignation and the leap of faith. This section stresses the importance of both endurance and spirit for Warren’s divestment from humanism. The third section puts Warren’s nihilism in conversation with the work of Black feminist philosophers to offer an alternative way to interpret divestment from humanism. The article concludes by engaging David Marriott’s and Frantz Fanon’s understanding of invention to help rethink the links between nihilism, future-oriented thinking, and Black endurance against anti-Blackness.

Making the leap: Negotiating resource acquisition

To suspend uncertainty, we can simply just choose to believe. A leap of faith - or the suspension of uncertainty - is the essence of trust, yet it remains a relatively unexplored phenomenon within the entrepreneurship literature. Trust reflects a willingness to bear risks, and as such, it is an underappreciated risk-bearing mechanism. Choosing to trust not only translates into the way entrepreneurs negotiate, but as we will see, also into the negotiated outcome. In the current study, we show that trust relates positively to negotiations, but we find that positional negotiations relate negatively to accomplishments, whereas collaborative negotiations relate positively. We study entrepreneurs who act as if those whom they are negotiating with are trustworthy, and we explore the effects of such leaps of faith on not only collaborative, but also positional negotiations, and their interaction effects. Using abductive reasoning, we unpack three related design principles.

FIGO 2023 endometrial staging: a leap of faith into the new “prognostic based’ rather than “anatomical based” staging—too fast too furious??

BackgroundIn 2023 FIGO revised the endometrial cancer staging system after 13 years. There is a lacuna of data regarding the performance and practicality of the revised 2023 FIGO staging schema for endometrial cancer from Low Middle-Income Countries (LMIC).ObjectiveTo estimate the shift of stage and adjuvant management of endometrial cancer based on the FIGO 2023 system compared to the FIGO 2009 system and assess the predictive potential of the FIGO 2023 system.Material and methodsA retrospective study was conducted from 1st January 2017 to 31st December 2022. All patients with endometrial cancer were staged according to the FIGO 2023 and FIGO 2009 staging system. Follow-up of patients was done to determine recurrence.ResultsA total of 152 patients were included. Aggressive histology was seen in 66 (45%) patients. Eighteen (11%) had subserosal involvement. Substantial LVSI was noted in 23 (15%) of patients. Twenty-four (47%) patients of FIGO 2009 Stage IA and 26 patients (63%) of FIGO 2009 Stage IB were upstaged. Eleven (50%) patients of FIGO 2009 Stage IIIA were down staged to IA3. Overall 23 patients (15%) had a shift of stage. Fifteen out of 152 patients (15%) would have had a possible risk stratification change which would imply 23 patients (15%) would have needed a more radical treatment. Molecular classification was done in 32 patients; however, only 2 patients could afford POLE testing. Kaplan–Meier curves showed significant PFS differences in FIGO 2009 Stage IB and Stage IIIA when restaged according to the FIGO 2023 system.ConclusionThe FIGO 2023 endometrial staging is a more robust prognosticator; however, the practicality of molecular classification in LMICs is still a distant dream.

Resolving to believe: Kierkegaard's direct doxastic voluntarism

AbstractAccording to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we believe only indirectly. This paper argues that Kierkegaard does in fact endorse a restricted, sophisticated, and plausible version of direct doxastic voluntarism. On Kierkegaard's view, when we take ourselves to be in an epistemically permissive situation, we have the ability to form outright beliefs (but not credences) at will in virtue of our ability to voluntarily 1) open or close inquiry and 2) determine our attitude towards epistemic risk.

“In such a dark period, the only light”: Patients’ motivations and strategies to seek care from an online health community during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study conducted in Italy about a peculiar online health community named #TERAPIADOMICILIARECOVID19 (#TDC19), which, since April 2020, has assisted people with COVID-19 with early-at-home therapy delivered by volunteer doctors, free of charge for patients. The aim of the paper was to analyse patients' motivations and strategies when negotiating risk in the context of this choice. Findings showed that patients' choices were the outcome of a process that forms an entangled ecology of care involving several dimensions, crossing micro, meso and macro levels: a) the process of knowledge-building by assessing mass-media, ascertaining the best protocol and recalling previous experiences with similar diseases; b) the experience of feeling abandoned by general practitioners (GPs) and healthcare institutions; c) the positive encounter with #TDC19's posts of gratitude written by people who were cured by #TDC19 doctors. In the end, patients' choice was not a leap of faith; they negotiated and balanced out the perceived risks associated with COVID-19 and with the possible available choices (GPs, do-it-yourself, #TDC19-doctors) based on a strategy that chiefly encompassed a blend of rational and in-between logics.

A leap of faith: building the trust in human biobanks

Background: Human biobanks are an essential resource for contemporary medical research, crucial in treating and preventing human diseases and improving health. Public trust in human biobanks is a vital social prerequisite for their continued operation and related research.Methods: Drawing on the “leap of faith” theory proposed by Georg Simmel and Guido Möllering, this paper first examines the relationship between public trust and human biobanks and the process through which such trust is established. Subsequently, based on the results of this analysis, targeted policy recommendations are put forward to consolidate or enhance public trust in human biobanks.Results: Public trust in human biobanks stems from certain “good reasons,” through which uncertainty and vulnerability are “suspended” by faith, leading to a leap toward the “land of expectations.” In this progress, the critical factors in building and enhancing public trust in human biobanks are the public’s propensity to trust, the inherent trustworthiness of human biobanks, and the security and interactivity of the trust environment.Conclusion: Public trust in human biobanks cannot be determined by any universal formula, as it is influenced by many factors, including intangible elements such as faith that defy empirical understanding. Nonetheless, public trust in human biobanks can be enhanced through measures such as fostering the public’s propensity to trust, enhancing the inherent trustworthiness of human biobanks, establishing structural safeguards for the trust environment through ethical norms, systems, and supervision, and promoting public participation.

Reclaiming Icons for a Post-Pandemic Christian Pedagogy

This article posits a way forward for church-based Christian Education following the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. Drawing on the writings of Kierkegaard, it is proposed that both a “leap of faith” and an “interruption” of linear learning might establish a more authentic way of relating to children's spirituality. Including examples from practice, the icon is visited as a pedagogical tool that inspires possibility and wrestles with fixed ideas to inspire new meanings for children today.

R. v. Bissonnette: Legal Principle or Leap of Faith?

Case comment on R v Bissonnette.

The Digital Divide and Futurist Imaginings of Zelle‐ous Resistors

The “digital divide” is widely acknowledged as exacerbating inequality by leaving some people on one side or the other of a knowledge divide without access to appropriate tools for the future and all the opportunities that digital technology promises. Attempts to understand this gap tend to focus on issues of trust, levels of financial education, and digital skills, mainly seeking to understand why some individuals and groups—who are mostly assumed to have minimal financial know-how and digital skills—do not trust either online financial institutions or exclusively app‐based finance. Considering the large investment in fintech solutions driven by these industries, and the practical features designed in part to make the user’s life easier and user experience more intuitive and reassuring, it is worth noting that such queries are inclined to conclude that these untapped users cannot imagine a digital future due to their own lack of digital skills and lack of exposure to tech. This article suggests that, for a portion of this population, many of whom are digital natives, this is not the case. instead, they can invest in understanding and adapting to technology and do so. Yet they are uncomfortable with the “instantaneousness” of some transactions because this doesn’t allow them enough time to address a problem or have recourse for anything unforeseeable. Furthermore, their interest in fintech’s inclusive platforms is foreshadowed by their vivid futurist understandings and imaginations. Indeed, they envision precisely the kind of digital significance that is often assumed that they do not. However, this article argues that the key difference is that many envision the future as a digital dystopia and are resisting what Lauren Berlant refers to as “cruel optimism.” These types of imaginings motivate many to resist the vulnerabilities that they believe can make them overly dependent on technology in ways that they believe can potentially place them at risk. This article focuses on the US multi‐bank‐owned Zelle payment system and its online and app‐based banking features as a case study to illustrate these points. It further argues that the inclusivity that online digital banking platforms aspiringly offer is often viewed by potential users not as a portal toward equality but rather as “a leap of faith” toward digital dependency and future vulnerability.

A leap of faith that echoes well? The value impact of Chinese firms starting up business overseas

We investigate the impact of greenfield outward foreign direct investment (GODI) by Chinese firms on their subsequent Tobin's Q. Our findings indicate that Chinese listed companies from 2003 to 2019 generally experience a significantly positive boost in perceived firm value (or growth prospects) when engaging in overseas business start-ups (i.e., with no foreign partners) when compared to their inactive peers. The positive GODI effect is more prominent among privately owned enterprises vs. state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Our mechanism tests indicate that lowered effective tax rates and reduced illiquidity due to conducting greenfield ODI serve as the value-enhancing channels. Possibly driven by political objectives, SOEs tend to prioritize developing and Belt-Road countries as the destination for their greenfield overseas endeavors.

A Leap of Faith with Dr. Guthrie Ramsey

A Leap of Faith with Dr. Guthrie Ramsey

The First Day of Peace by Todd Shuster

Reviewed by: The First Day of Peace by Todd Shuster Meg Cornell Shuster, Todd The First Day of Peace; written by Todd Shuster and Maya Soetoro-Ng; illus. by Tatiana Gardel. Candlewick, 2023 [32p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536207590 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad 4-7 yrs Two societies, one in the valleys and one in the mountains, are peaceful, diverse farming cultures that live sustainably off nearby water sources. However, climate disaster comes to the valley people, with drought drying up their lake; likewise, up in the mountains, the rivers recede. Each group turns to the other for relief from scarcity but then hoards their own resources; while the adults bicker, a long-distance friendship between a valley child and a mountain child begins. As the water returns to both areas, the two friends sew dolls of one another, grow up, and eventually [End Page 337] pass these dolls down to their own children as a reminder to future generations to hold close the people of the other society. When a litany of further climate disasters befalls the valley people, and the daughter of the mountain child encourages her community with an outstretched palm; “love catches on” and aid is provided to the valley people. While it is clear from the afterword the theme of bigotry is intended to be prominent, it is executed far less precisely than the subjects of climate change, resource scarcity, and community aid. The dreamlike atmosphere of focal characters in watercolor sometimes detracts from the dramatic tension of the story, flattening the action. Nevertheless, the natural tableaus suit the tale’s pacifistic mood, and the daughter of the mountain child’s benevolent gesture makes for a particularly striking scene, with swirling green foliage gently urging the reader’s eye to take a leap of faith from her hand over a verdant cliff. Pair at storytime with Yolen’s more energetic I Am the Storm (BCCB 11/20) to empower young readers through any stormy weather. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Trust is a Leap of Faith

Trust is a Leap of Faith

A leap of faith: overcoming doubt to do good when policy is absurd

ABSTRACT University institutional policy is poorly understood. While policy is required by law for universities to accept funding and is revered for articulating values, mitigating risk, and guiding practice, policy is frequently considered absurd and resisted in practice. This is the policy-practice divide. To gain a better understanding of this divide and the nature of the resistance, we asked policy actors to describe their experiences with policy development, implementation, enactment, and review. We asked: If policy is absurd, what is the nature of the relationship between policy and university management, and how do those who enact policy deal with this absurdity? We discovered that university management has an infinitely regressive self-fulfilling relationship with policy because they intentionally exclude the workforce from policy-making and see themselves as solely responsible for policy interpretation and implementation. However, when Kierkegaard’s concepts of absurdity, faith, hope, and doubt are applied to policy actors’ experiences, we see that resistance can be characterised positively as a ‘leap of faith’, where those who enact policy overcome their doubts and reinterpret it to achieve some semblance of good. This is an unintended consequence for managerialism, as deliberately creating a policy-practice divide solicits resistive ‘good’ practices from policy actors.

On the <i>New Dark Age</i> by James Bridle

This year AST published The New Dark Age the first ever translation into Russian of James Bridle, contemporary British writer, artist, and computer technology expert. Sprinkling a fascinating narrative with interesting and often frightening facts from various fields and references to philosophy, the author created a convincing and sobering picture of the world in which we live, not even suspecting its ever-growing complexity and inhumanity. Despite the modern trend on cultural literacy, Bridle focuses on our blindness and arrogance regarding pervasive technological systems. Bridle encourages his readers to engage in critical thinking, see the reality for what it is and embrace it in its overwhelming complexity and fragility. Questioning the linearity of progress, he posits that we might have already passed our peak knowledge. It means that ongoing calculations and the resulting additional data only make the world a less understandable place to live in. Instead of an elegant and working picture of the world, we are surrounded by darkness, pervasive chaos under the guise of calculated order. Bridle’s zeal to trace back the hard basis of cyber reality takes him on a journey from the electric cables in the depths of the ocean to the contrails-lined sky. Electricity, unpredictable weather and climate change, the first computers and secret inventions, the works of great mathematicians and stock market crashes, satellite maps, world aviation, Concordes and short-term turbulence, unsuccessful GPS journeys, computer games, social networks and entertainment videos on the Internet, scientific research errors caused by a variety of factors from measuring instrument deficiency to dubious publishing ethics in the modern scientific community, permafrost, history and time machine, biodiversity and plague... Technology is a black box and it clouds our vision. With more data available (and increasingly hard to digest) we are less apt to good decision-making and are likely to be taking a leap of faith in the dark of the black box of omnipresent technologies. Are we standing at the edge of an abyss? In this fascinating read, Bridle invites us to admit and possibly bridge the gap between our understanding of reality and the reality.

‘If you can’t beat them, join them’: utility, markets and the absent entrepreneur

Marketisation and competition within public schooling systems impact the work of principals in varying ways. Previous work on the marketisation of schooling and school autonomy has drawn attention to the ‘entrepreneurial principal’ as an effect of marketisation. In this paper we explore principals’ engagements with marketisation based on 21 interviews with public school principals across two Australian states. Using the work of Christiaens (2020), we highlight a difference between entrepreneurialism and utility-maximisation in marketised systems, evident in how principals engage with leadership within these systems. For most principals in our study, engagements with marketisation were entangled with different orientations toward utility maximisation. Evidence of genuine entrepreneurship was far more scarce. We argue that the need to ensure school survival in a saturated market gives rise to a performative veneer of entrepreneurialism that is largely absent of innovation and the ‘leap of faith’ that lies at the heart of true entrepreneurialism.

Art-science collaborations: Generators of new ideas and serendipitous events.

An increasing number of collaborative projects between artists and scientists raises the question regarding their value, particularly when considering the redirection of resources. Here we provide a personal account of our collaborative efforts, as an artist and a scientist. We propose that one of the most significant outcomes is something that cannot be planned for in advance: serendipitous events. Such events lead to fresh perspectives and imaginative ideas, the fairy dust underlying many great works of art and science. The unexpected nature of these desired outcomes requires from us a leap of faith on the one hand, and a deep trust in our 'partner in crime' on the other.