Worldviews: A Comprehensive Approach to Knowing Self and Others

This book investigates the concept of worldview, in its numerous aspects, and how worldviews impact, shape, and influence individuals, communities, societies, and cultures. It explores various worldviews—religious, spiritual, and secular—using a comprehensive approach to highlight their breadth, depth, and scope. John Valk argues that everyone has a worldview, and that worldview is often shaped and influenced by individual circumstances and situations. While worldviews have similar structures to one another, they vary in content, including differences in metanarratives, teachings, ethics, and more. In the course of explaining how worldviews respond to life’s ultimate and existential challenges, the book poses ontological questions to highlight various (world)views on the nature of being and the human, and epistemological questions pertaining to sources of knowledge and certainty. Inviting readers to reflect on their own worldviews as they explore the worldviews of others, Valk alsoreveals how certain universal worldview beliefs are interpreted in particular contexts.