1. Introduction: Orientation as a life-function
- Science and religion - a new perspective
- Humans and other organisms: From the environment to the world
- Do we need an articulated relation to comprehensive reality?
- Immanuel Kant and the idea of orientation - The incompleteness of objective reality and the primacy of meaning
- Linguistic animals: shared consciousness and the articulation of felt meaning
- The conceptual context: naturalism and humanism
2. Science vs. scientism: Is there such a thing as the scientific worldview?
- Science as a life-function
- The relative autonomy of science
- Unity and pluralism: the cognitive scope of science
- Science as a religion: what is bad about scientism
3. Varieties of naturalism and humanism
- Human values and naturalism
- The hidden agenda of modernity: Stephen Toulmin
- Middle-ground humanism
4. Rediscovering the importance of ordinary experience
- Holism
- Qualitative character
- Embodiment and transcendence
- Action-orientation
- Articulation and meaning
5. The unavoidability of worldviews
- Meaning in life and the emergence of worldviews
- Language is not (only) a tool: symbolic capacities as constitutive for worldviews
- The quest for sacredness
- Pluralism and contingency
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6. Worldviews and the limits of philosophy
- Reconsidering the role of philosophy
- Doing philosophy pragmatically
- Philosophy as internal criticism
- The limits of philosophy
7. Coda: Blocked roads and genuine options
- Beyond scientism and religious fundamentalism
- The secular state, worldview pluralism, and the problem of shared values
- The optional
About the Author: Matthias Jung is full professor of philosophy at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
