By Fr. Eugene Hemrick
Yeshua Institute Fellow
“A person’s or group’s fundamental perspective on life, including their beliefs, values and assumptions,” defines the meaning of worldview. A philosophy of life is yet another way to envision it.
Values, identities, reality, and science are core to a worldview. What principal values, for example, are necessary for insuring a safer, just world?
The Greeks espoused arete, virtue as a primary value for living together peacefully and maintaining a strong nation. Religion and having a connection with the gods were essential values for the Greeks and Romans as was Christianity, Islam and other religions for protecting their worlds.
Identity plays a crucial role in worldview. Take, for example, the role of identity in religion: to be a Catholic or Protestant. And then there is cultural identity: to be Hispanic, African American, Asian for example.
The role of science is also part of a worldview. Most view it as possessing impressive powers of making our world healthier and for making tremendous progress.
The realities of life and death, war and peace, hunger and poverty, as well as Mother Nature’s powers are just a few realities of everyday life that influence our life. Conceding these exist and influence our life is to live in reality and discover the peace of mind it causes.
A worldview is a cluster of points of view that creates a picture of how the world works. Once we understand its importance, responsibility for its progress needs to follow.
Immanuel Kant defines that responsibility in stating Sapere aude -- dare to think.
Becoming aware of our worldview dares us to think about its importance in understanding the influence of science, people’s identities, persuasions, and prejudices, and their influence on us.
It challenges us. Dare we just let the world turn or do we dare to think about what is turning it?
There is another worldview we tend to forget -- God’s worldview. Understanding God’s role in creating the world, the rules for making it blessed and the divine world we hope to enter. If we are to possess a complete worldview, both natural and supernatural ones must be included.
The German word for worldview is Weltanschauung.
Sometime years back the University of Berlin created studies in Weltanschauung as an essential part of its curricula. Today our learning institutes would do well to duplicate this and teach students Weltanschauung -- to learn that they live in a world both mundane and supernatural based on points of view; to dare them to think about worldviews influencing their idea of the world.