Project Details
Projekt
Mindfulness and resilience. Anthropological and conceptual clarifications of a productive two-way relationship
Applicant
Professor Dr. Jochen Sautermeister
Subject Area
Roman Catholic Theology
Term
from 2019 to 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 348851031
Mindfulness as well as resilience has become a key category to analyze the present in which the longing for a flourishing life and crisis resistance in the face of experiences of unstable lifestyles and alienation is condensed. Within the research unit ‘Resilience in Religion and Spirituality. Endurance and the Formation of Powerlessness, Fear and Anxiety’, this subproject investigates the relationship between resilience and mindfulness, which can be of importance for the enduring as well as the formation of crises. Mindfulness and resilience are multilayered and ambiguous categories. They oscillate between an analytic description, a normative orientation and a spiritually interpretable making sense of the relationship to oneself and to the world. Mindfulness can include academic approaches, therapeutically psychological as well spiritually practicing fields of practice, techniques and attitudes. Practices of mindfulness differ depending on context, ritual arrangement and their interpretation as therapeutic or spiritual practices, and they can be associated with a specific meaning. There is a juxtaposition of using practices of mindfulness functionally and a-functionally; they can further result in dysfunctional consequences. Therefore, the varying ideas, concepts, and practices of mindfulness need to be reflected critically. Furthermore, an immanent structure of meaning in respect to mindfulness as well as its broadly understood spiritual base of need to be examined. Based on a reflected understanding of mindfulness, the subproject will analyze mindfulness in its potential to be beneficial for resilience and explore the meaning of its spiritual dimension. From the perspective of theological ethics, anthropological and terminological clarifications will follow, based on a tripartite process of discourse analysis, in-depth material analysis, and systematic evaluation. After the anthropological and terminological clarification of mindfulness we will (1) examine the conceptual relationship between mindfulness and resilience; (2) whether the practice of mindfulness includes qualities which benefit resilience in an anthropologically ethical sense, and whether mindfulness can be conceptualized as an aspect of the ability to do identity work which includes being sensitive towards vulnerabilities and aware of crises. Step (3) is to analyze how mindfulness in the context of resilience as a practice of subjectification builds on presuppositions about the understanding of freedom as well as spiritually interpretable assumptions of meaning, which can then be submitted to criticism from the perspective of theological ethics. In cooperation with the other subprojects we will develop an understanding of resilience which is sensitive towards spirituality and includes hermeneutically conceptual and application-oriented reflections. The results of the subproject will further be discussed and tested together with the respective results of the other subprojects.
DFG Programme
Research Units
