This paper is an application of Max Weber’s thesis about the “elective affinity” between Protestant religious impulses and the rise of capitalism, and rationalization of benevolence. Exploring the history of organized philanthropy in the United States, using the life and work of John D. Rockefeller, the paper presents the power of the religious motive in Rockefeller’s commitment to philanthropy, especially towards support for scientific university based research in medicine. Presenting historical evidence, the paper argues against those who see (...) U.S. philanthropists as giving out of guilt or for selfish motivation, and those who critique philanthropic foundations as producers and reproducers of cultural hegemony. (shrink)

Accepting Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarratives” as its definition of postmodernism, and Derrida’s “openness to the other” as deconstruction’s contribution to it this essay distinguishes three species of postmodernism: minimal (we have no believable metanarratives), mainline (they are unavailable in principle), and polemical (“good riddance!”). It then argues that the religious impulse challenges all three of these contentions. Contra polemical postmodernism, metanarratives/worldviews are needed. Contra mainline postmodernism, reliable ones are possible. And contra minimal postmodernism, they already exist - in (...) the world’s great, enduring religious traditions. (shrink)

In recent decades, cognitive and behavioral scientists have learned a great deal about how people think and behave. On the most general level, there is a basic consensus that many judgments, including ethical judgments, are made by intuitive, even unconscious, impulses. This basic insight has opened the door to a wide variety of more particular studies that investigate how judgments are influenced by group identity, self-conception, emotions, perceptions of risk, and many other factors. When these forms of research engage ethical (...) issues, they are sometimes called empirical ethics. This essay argues that the field of religious ethics would benefit from a more robust engagement with empirical ethics than it has thus far undertaken. In doing so, it offers a brief account of how issues of moral psychology and moral anthropology have been treated in religious ethics, and it highlights ways that the scientific findings challenge some prevailing norms in religious ethics. It ends by suggesting avenues by which religious ethics research could productively engage empirical ethics. (shrink)

A look at history showed that theology always has to face contemporary demands in terms of its scientific character. At present, processes of pluralisation and secularisation challenge the existence of theology at universities not only against the background of religious studies, which are independent of the churches, but also, for example, in relation to innovative life sciences or cognitive sciences. In this context, an essential point to consider was that theology – like social systems in general and science in (...) particular – is characterised by an increasing differentiation. This differentiation of science implied an increasing specialisation of research, which could also be observed in the field of theology and its sub-disciplines. This article accordingly addressed the question of how, in the face of increasingly specialised research studies, the unity of theology can be justified beyond abstract and sweeping determinations. The present contribution suggested that in this respect a model of research designs developed in religious didactics might prove useful. This model of research design could essentially be understood as consisting of three research dimensions that define a research space, in which the research study on the didactics of religion can be located in the three-dimensional space by the research goal as a formatting factor. The three dimensions of this model, including the research goal, seemed to be broad enough to be tested in other sub-disciplines of theology as well to see whether their research can be more closely defined with them.Contribution: Accordingly, the contribution of this article was to raise the question, in view of an increasing specialisation of theological research, to what extent a model of research designs developed in the didactics of religion could be transferred to other sub-disciplines of theology. Should this succeed a new approach to justifying the unity of theology could become available, which is able to take into account the current differentiation of theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diasporic Impulses:Sikh Philosophy as an AssemblageArvind-Pal S. Mandair (bio)Let me begin this response by thanking the editors of Philosophy East and West for generously allowing space for this review forum on my recent book, Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (Bloomsbury, 2022), and thanking the reviewers Monika-Kirloskar Steinbach, Ananda Abeysekara, and Jeffery Long for their careful readings of this work. "Sikh Philosophy" names the modern academic (...) discourse that crystallized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a result of the encounter between modern Western philosophy and gurmat, a mode of thought-praxis deriving from and associated with Sikhi (lit. "the path of learning"), a spiritual-philosophical tradition hailing from India, which most readers may only have encountered through the modern knowledge system's categorization of it as the religion known as Sikhism. To avoid complicating the discussion, I will be referring interchangeably to gurmat and Sikh philosophy, even though they represent quite different entities. Gurmat represents a tradition of thought-praxis that goes back to Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhi, whereas Sikh philosophy is a modern formation that emerged from the encounter between gurmat and European thought, which is why I prefer to regard it as an assemblage. The book examines some of the key concepts of Sikh philosophy and how they inform its vision of life, what they tell us about the nature of reality, and whether it is possible to discern a distinct logic, epistemology, and ontology based on the principles of gurmat. In their reviews, Kirloskar-Steinbach, Abeysekara, and Long have provided critical readings and insightful questions, which I address below.Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach asks about the relationship between Sikh philosophy and Indian philosophy, noting that my book does not explicitly engage Indian philosophy. Specifically, she raises two questions: (1) whether Sikh philosophy should or potentially could be part of the broader field of Indian philosophy, and (2) whether I would be inclined to contribute to that field, particularly in light of recent efforts to diversify philosophical practices within Indian philosophy by scholars like Jonardon Ganeri in his Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (2017) and Purushottama Bilimoria and Amy Rayner in their History of Indian Philosophy (2018). My immediate response would be "yes," but with an important caveat. In that vein, I applaud Ganeri's and Bilimoria/Rayner's efforts to open up philosophical inquiry within Indian traditions and take them beyond darśanic framings that narrowly positioned different thought-practices of South Asia either within or [End Page 364] in relation to the Brahmanical/Vedic/Sanskritic paradigm. Ganeri's "multiperspectival" narrative about practices might well enable discussions about Sikh philosophy to flourish, given that the lexicon of gurmat (the teaching, logic, practice of the Guru) is replete with concepts that have cognate terms in the main Hindu philosophical schools including Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta; the Jain and Buddhist traditions; and perhaps most importantly, within the Islamic, especially Sufi, traditions. It is the seeming parity between cognate terms such as the Punjabi dharam (Skt. dharma), karam (Skt. karma), yoga, śabad (Skt. śabda), guru, hukam, and many more, which has given rise to the misperception that Sikh philosophy is a purely syncretic thought system parasitic on earlier Indic systems. A similar misperception might be that Sikhi is more primarily a mode of lived praxis or dharam than it is a philosophy (Bhogal 2018) and therefore has less to do with thought than with spiritual attainment. But this approach is far too narrow in that it opposes "philosophy"/"thought" to spiritual praxis without asking whether there might be a broader definition of thinking at play within Sikhi or gurmat. Such an approach fails to extricate itself from the legacy of imperial categorizations of Indic traditions as essentially religious and therefore unrelated to what is called "thinking." By doing so, it falls prey to another misconception many have, that the closest Indians have come to philosophical thought are the darśanic schools, not realizing that most Indian philosophers and thinkers were at the same time devotees and spiritual adepts who developed rigorous modes of discipline and practice.Having said this, I would premise any... (shrink)

A hallmark of Christian mysticism is negative theology, which refers to the school of thought that gives prominence to negation in reference to God. By denying the possibility to name God, negative theology cuts at the very root of our cognitive makeup--the human impulse to name and put things into categories--and thereby situates us "halfway between a 'no longer' and a 'not yet'" , a temporality in which "the past is negated, but...the present is not yet formulated" . The (...) affective corollary of this "no longer" and "not yet" state is the "dark night of the soul" that mystics are known to have bouts of. One particular variant of the "dark night of the soul" is awe, which will be the focus of this paper. My investigation starts with an introduction to the two primary themes of negative theology--negativity and self-reflexivity, followed by a critique of D. Keltner and J. Haidt's model of awe, which is compared with R. Otto's phenomenology of mysticism in general and religious awe in particular. In the concluding section, I examine the relevance of religious awe to contemporary life on the one hand, and to emotion research on the other. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 292-296 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions. Edited by Daniel L. Smith-Christopher. Cambridge, MA: Boston Research Center for the Twenty-first Century, 1998. 177 pp. This work raises the challenge of peacemaking to all religious traditions from within each of these traditions. Touching on primary (...) texts, personalities, theologies, histories, and practices Subverting Hatred is a sampling of the rich religious resources for nonviolence. The eight primary chapters cover Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, Hinduism, indigenous traditions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. There is a summary epilogue and each chapter has a bibliography. Subverting Hatred [End Page 292] ought to be read in religious study groups as well as in academic settings for the study of religion.Editor Daniel Smith-Christopher teaches theological studies and directs the Peace Studies program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles; he is also the author of The Religion of the Landless. In the introduction, Smith-Christopher sets out the intent of this collection. First, in the face of clear evidence that religious traditions "can be manipulated and used to justify all kinds of violence," it is vital to argue that religions are not inevitably "divisive and destructive" (p. 9). Second, the book presents the positive claim that it is "precisely the call to nonviolence that embodies one of the noblest values and sacred obligations of religion" (p. 10). Here, nonviolence means active peacemaking rather than merely refusal to engage in violence.It was exciting to see a chapter devoted to Jainism, and have it be the first of the book. The author, Christopher Chapple, is professor of theological studies and director of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University; among his publications is Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions. Rooted in the deep strand of nonviolence it shares with Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism powerfully advocates nonviolence. The earliest records of the religious impulse in the Indus Valley are also the earliest images most associated with nonviolence in these religious traditions. These cylinder seal impressions of figures seated in the yoga position surrounded by plants and animals can still evoke a sense of a calm and peace. Thus, in Indian traditions the connection of nonviolence to meditative practices is inseparable.Jainism has arguably made nonviolence a central teaching for all adherents to a greater extent than other traditions. The earliest text of the Jain tradition, the Acaranga Sutra (fourth or fifth century B.C.E.) makes this clear: "'All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure, unchangeable, eternal law." Further, the reason for this prohibition is also presented: the desire to harm arises from a false sense of self-interest, and violence ultimately comes back to harm us. Chapple then presents some striking historical examples of Jain scholarship and nonviolent action. In conclusion, though Jainism has focused upon individual spiritual liberation, Jains do not "disengage from worldly life" (p. 19), but act to promote violence reduction in society.The author of the next chapter, Christopher Queen, is at Harvard and is co-editor of Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia; his interest in the social dimensions of Buddhist nonviolence is reflected in this essay. He shows how the "Peace Wheel" of Buddhist nonviolence transforms the image of the wheel of the war chariot. As the Vedic tradition developed, it produced contrasts to the tradition of yogic nonviolence shared with Jainism. The sun-disk of Vishnu and chariot of Indra were associated with war, and their symbol was the chariot wheel. In contrast, Buddha turns the wheel "by peaceful means."Queen suggests that while much of the attention in the West has focused upon the "inner peace" offered by Buddhist meditation, it is vital that we see the social [End Page 293] setting of Buddhist practice. To understand the Four Noble Truths a person must begin with the proper social relationships as directed in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Contemporary Varieties of Religious Experience: James's Classic Study in Light of Resiliency, Temperament, and TraumaSami PihlströmLynn Bridgers Contemporary Varieties of Religious Experience: James's Classic Study in Light of Resiliency, Temperament, and Trauma. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. viii + 227 pp. Foreword by James W. Fowler.Scholars of pragmatism have for a long time insisted that William James—like most classical American philosophers—is "our contemporary", a thinker (...) highly relevant to our problems, not only to the problems of the past. Theologian and scholar of religious education Lynn Bridgers argues that James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, in particular, is not only an historically influential treatise on the psychology of religious experience but a work which continues to speak to us, offering crucial insights to what religious life amounts to a century later.James might have enjoyed Bridgers's personal way of opening the discussion. In the introduction, she refers to her own conversion, her "heartfelt [End Page 454] encounter with the Divine", her own "powerful religious experience" (2–3). It is in the context of her own religious life that she finds it rewarding to return to James's discussion of the types of religious temperament and to compare his classification to contemporary psychological accounts of religious experience, particularly in studies of resiliency and posttraumatic spirituality. This certainly is one way of emphasizing that James indeed is our contemporary and should not be neglected in attempts to understand the place of religion in human life today. Not only is a return to James important academically; Bridgers also recommends that religious institutions follow James in supporting a "more varied range of religious offerings in recognition of documented varieties in religious temperament and development" (7).Bridgers offers an interesting selection of evidence, "1902 to 2002", for the existence of the three basic categories of religious temperament James distinguishes in Lectures IV–XI of the Varieties,1 namely, the "healthy-minded" prophet (ch. 4), the "sick soul" leading a monastic life in order to find unification for her/his "divided self" (ch. 5), and the "mystic" experiencing a dramatic conversion (ch. 6), before going on to explore, in her concluding chapter 7, some theological analogies of these categories (viz., the prophetic theology of Irenaeus, the monastic tradition as established by Augustine, and the spontaneity of radical "spiritual innovators"). Before laying out this empirically rich—and somewhat confusing—material, Bridgers introduces, in the first three chapters, James's basic themes and methodology (ch. 1), his pluralism and experiential perspective, as articulated in the Varieties and the works leading up to it (ch. 2), and the comparison of his conversion typology to recent empirical studies by Jerome Kagan and others (ch. 3).The author's own method is largely Jamesian: she quotes at length from the sources she finds illuminating, just as James does in the Varieties. Philosophically, the crucial parts of the book are the ones in which she interprets James's method (and, hence, her own) as "phenomenological". Surveying "religious feelings and religious impulses", or the "developed subjective phenomena" finding their expression "in works of piety and autobiography", James "undertook what today we recognize as a phenomenological description of religious experience" (6).2 The phenomenological method, for him as well as for Bridgers, is above all "experiential" and focuses on "extremes in experience", especially on the fruits of those experiences (8).This phenomenological reading of James—of James's ways of reading the sources he uses in the Varieties—could have been defended in a more detailed manner, although James's "phenomenology" has already been emphasized by others, especially James Edie, to whom Bridgers refers (8–9, 12, 29).3 In this context, it is natural to compare James's method with the approach known as the phenomenology of religion, represented by Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade, among others. These thinkers are mentioned by Bridgers (9), but she prefers to connect James with the main figures of the [End Page 455] philosophical movement of phenomenology, especially its founder Edmund Husserl and further developers like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, plausibly arguing that James to some extent influenced these philosophers' method of describing experience directly "as it is... (shrink)

Andrew F. Smith argues that citizens of divided societies have three powerful incentives to engage in public deliberation_in free, open, and reasoned dialogue aimed at contributing to the establishment of well-developed laws. When contesting for political influence, or pursuing the enshrinement of one's convictions in law, deliberating publicly is a necessary condition for taking oneself to be a responsible moral, epistemic, and religious agent.

Introduction. N. A. Berdyaev’s many-sided philo- sophical interests and his indefatigability in creative activity contributed to the development of an original worldview system, in which eschatological ideas were the basic part. The authors consider the assessment of these ideas by the outstanding his- torian of Russian philosophy V.V. A. Berdyaev, the significance of which is enhanced due to the fact that it was given not only by a historian of thought, but also by the creator of his own and generally (...) complete philosophical system, based, like the philosophy of N. A. Berdyaev, on the ideological foundation of Orthodoxy. The purpose of the study. The authors attempt to identify the causes and motives for the discrepancy between N. A. Berdyaev’s eschatological ideas and the traditional Christian understanding of the “end of history”, which V. V. Zenkovsky strictly adhered to. Methods. As a general philosophical methodology, the authors use a personalistic approach, which was followed by both N. A. Berdyaev and V. V. Zenkovsky. The main premise of this approach is to affirm the free-creative activity of a person who, following his inner impulses is capable of changing the surrounding reality, both social and natural. The study also uses general scientific methods — analy- sis, synthesis, comparison, generalization. Scientific novelty of the research. The authors’ conclusions regarding the fact that N. A. Berdyaev did not overcome the evolutionist historiosophical paradigm, which has retained its significance in Russian metaphysics since the publication of the early works of V. S. Solovyov, the founder of this direction, have scientific novelty. Results. The eschatology of N. A. Berdyaev should be considered transitional from immanent (evolu- tionary) to transcendent, since elements of panthe- ism were preserved in it. V. V. Zenkovsky drew attention to this, noting that the entire religious world of N. A. Berdyaev bears the “fatal seal” of religious immanentism. Due to the inconsistency of his beliefs with the general worldview of Christian transcendentism, which never essentially brought the Creator and creation closer together, V.V. Zenkovsky avoided assessing N.A. Berdyaev as an Orthodox philosopher. (shrink)

Starting point of this article is a tension perceived in postsecular reassessments of religion between a new openness to religion’s meaning and importance and a negative motivation, due to religion’s violent presence. These negative conditions may hinder assessing religion in its fullness and specific character. Further reflection on the right attitude to study religion and a way out of this tension is given by analyzing Paul Ricoeur philosophical approach to religion in The Symbolism of Evil. A detailed investigation of Ricoeur’s (...) text is necessary to find out why he, as a philosopher, turns to religious language for reflecting on what he calls ‘the reality of evil’. The outcome of this study provides a critical perspective for discussing current reassessments of religion, as well as recent debates on the use of the concept of evil. This discussion will focus on the importance of approaching religion as dealing with fundamental existential questions, including when the topic of evil is concerned. Such a deliberate and positive approach to religion does not exclude criticism. A constructive approach to religion like Ricoeur’s seems necessary to really make sense of the ‘postsecular’ perspective as bridging the gap between religious and secular approaches. (shrink)

I hypothesize that people engage in religious practices, in part, because such practices activate the frontal lobes. Activation of the frontal lobes is both intrinsically rewarding and necessary for acquisition of many of the behaviors that religions seek to foster, including self‐responsibility, impulse and emotion modulation, empathy, moral insight, hope, and optimism. Although direct tests of the hypothesis are as yet nonexistent, there is reasonably strong circumstantial evidence (reviewed herein) for it. Recent brain‐imaging studies indicate greater anterior activation (...) values and increased blood flow to frontal sites during prayer and meditation. Regular prayer is positively correlated with better overall mental health. Religiosity is correlated with higher levels of self‐monitoring, empathy, and moral insight and other positive behaviors and negatively correlated with depression and impulsive and risky behaviors. Independent data show that self‐monitoring, empathy, hope, and moral insight are all selectively associated with intact frontal function, whereas depression, impulsiveness, and drug and alcohol abuse are associated selectively with frontal dysfunction. If religious practices do indeed preferentially activate and stimulate development of the frontal lobes, (a) religious practices should be considered as possible adjuncts for some patients in treatment for mental health disorders, and (b) the frontal lobes (rather than the temporal lobes) should be considered the major brain site that supports the core components of religious experience. (shrink)

Freedom is Schleiermacher's key ethical concept. Human life in general, however, is causally determined. Freedom is actualized only in the inner life, in feeling and imagination. Inner life, however, is the domain of religion, of consciousness of the infinite, and the source of free human fellowship. Thus freedom is tied to religion. This paper analyzes Schleiermacher's concept of religion and relates it to freedom in its connection with determinism. It attempts to demonstrate that religion is the foundation of the moral (...) life in a way that does not compromise the relative autonomy of morality, but rather makes moral life possible. (shrink)

The article by Oksana Horkusha “Interconfessional dialogue in modern Ukraine: impulses, conditions, purpose, subjects, levels of understanding” analyzes the motives, conditions, goals, subjects and levels of understanding of the interconfessional dialogue in contemporary Ukraine. Interconfessional dialogue cannot have a purpose in itself. Different confessions reach agreement only in the process of such dialogue, which are carried out by mutually viable actors who have a common goal, are in the same cultural-historical context, a definite problem, for the solution of which is (...) used by adequate dialogue platforms, methods and instruments. (shrink)

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the (...) formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, and American scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in and debate on the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher brings his own inclusive and liberatory purposes to bear in Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, including in several chapters in which he criticizes William James’s defense of religious belief in “The Will to Believe” and Varieties of Religious Experience, while affirming John Dewey’s emphasis on a “religious” orientation toward community and nature in A Common Faith. These chapters in Kitcher’swide-ranging and beautifully written book contain many insights and imaginative proposals for advancing a (...) “post-religion”secular humanism that he hopes may be able to stabilize the evolution and widen the effective reach of a deep and enduring human impulse toward altruism that he.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Religious Pluralism:Buddhist and Christian Perspectives1John D'Arcy MayThe question of how the concept of human rights—so crucially important for the implementation of justice in a rapidly globalizing world—relates to the plurality of cultures and religions has still not been solved. Controversies such as those over land rights in Aboriginal Australia and Asian values in Southeast Asia have shown this repeatedly. In such cases, discussion (...) eventually becomes focused on the universality of human rights, not just the global scope of the idea itself but the universal validity of catalogues of specific rights such as those contained in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948). There is something arbitrary and unsystematic about such charters, as is shown by the rather different emphases in the African and Islamic documents which were meant to correct the UN's lack of universality.2 But if, in attempting to explore this problem seriously, one appears to tamper with the principle of universality, one can easily be accused of diluting the ethical force of human rights by questioning their applicability to every human being without exception. Nothing could be further from my mind, so before explaining what I wish to do in this paper I shall first set out some presuppositions that I take to be axiomatic:1. Our starting point is the dignity of the human, the unique value of each individual human life as a world constituted by consciousness, an originating source of free acts, which is therefore an end in itself and must never be misused as a means to other people's ends.3 This principle is reflected in formulations such as dignitas humana in the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which goes back to the biblical doctrine of the creation of human beings in the image of God, or in the unique status of the human being in the Buddhist scale of existence, on which neither animals nor gods but only humans are in a position to grasp the reality of their situation and strive for definitive release from the chain of becoming; hence the severity of the prohibition on taking human life as the third of the four cardinal offences (pārājika).42. The concept of "human rights" is one way of acknowledging this unique moral status of human dignity, in that rights accrue to the individual person [End Page 51] simply by virtue of his or her being rational, autonomous, and free. To this extent human rights language belongs within the Western tradition of liberal discourse, which lies at the heart of Western democracies and was profoundly influenced by Christianity. Conceptions of what it is that makes the human uniquely valuable, however, are very differently constructed in different cultural and religious traditions.53. What rights language tries to express in the conceptual framework provided by European culture has universal validity, although it is otherwise expressed in other cultures, for example, in terms of "duty," "obedience," "taboo," and so on. Problematic as it is in the context of postmodern discourse, the sameness-in-difference of the human as the criterion for rights everywhere and without exception is a categorical imperative on which the effectiveness of human rights as an instrument of justice depends.4. Conceptions of universality, however, may themselves be culturally determined and usually arise in contexts of domination: what is taken to be universally valid is often somebody's particular version of the truth of things which by virtue of a claim to universality is then imposed on others as "the" truth. Such conceptions are necessarily generalizations, whereas the moral impulse arises in the face-to-face encounter with the alien, unexpected and unwanted "other," as Levinas has shown.5. Universality is thus not available a priori but remains implicit in the intersubjectivity of human interaction until it is realized through shared practice and the negotiation of meanings; this applies all the more to interactions between religions and across cultures.66. Rights language, though a powerful instrument for the implementation of justice, is thus incomplete unless its Western (and Christian) conceptual presuppositions are complemented by the metaphors, stories, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 140-144 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West. Edited by Douglas Allen. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997.xv + 184 pp. Inspired perhaps by both deconstructive and constructive impulses, this important collection of nine essays undertakes to challenge the notion, common in both Western and (...) Eastern philosophical and religious traditions, that there exists such a thing as an objective, ahistorical, universal "self." At the same time, the volume as a whole makes a case for the value of a notion of the self that takes account of its cultural and historical situatedness. Douglas Allen's introduction succinctly frames the central claim of this project: While an increasing number of scholars, both Eastern and Western, appreciate the importance of the dialectical relationship between self and culture, and the vital role culture plays in determining the nature of the self, notions of the self as unconditioned by culture, or of the self as influenced by cultural factors that are merely superficial, subjective, and illusory, continue to dominate the religious and philosophical thought of both West and East. Thus it is the aim of these essays to undermine the dominance of those notions, in particular by means of a comparative, [End Page 140] cross-cultural methodology that highlights the existence of differing views of the self, thereby calling into question the dominant monolithic understanding.The essays are divided into four sections. The first part, "Multiple Asian and Western Perspectives," contains two essays in which a number of different Asian views are considered, resulting in analyses that are broad rather than deep. Obviously this approach has its limitations: the observations about the various cultural understandings discussed in each of these essays tend to be somewhat lacking in complexity. However, both essays do a creditable job of presenting the cross-cultural resources available to critique the notion of an enduring, true, objective self, free of sociohistorical determinants.Douglas Allen's essay clearly articulates the somewhat narrow understanding of the self against which his and many of the other views contained in this collection are implicitly positioned, characterizing it as post-Cartesian: autonomous, rational, individual, skeptical, and foundational. In spite of frequent references to the dominance within Eastern thought of the notion of an ahistorical, culturally unconditioned self, and in spite of the richness of views on the eternally unchanging nature of the self to be found, for example, in various forms of Hinduism, it is clearly and explicitly a modern,Western view of the self against which Allen wants to argue. His basic claim, then, is that this modern Western view is itself historically and culturally determined and that, moreover, there are pressing philosophical and political reasons for challenging it. In contrast to this post-Cartesian self, Allen offers four alternative conceptions--the self of the Bhagavad Gita, determined by karma and social position; the "no-self" of Buddhism; the Marxist self, constituted by the economic conditions of production within which it finds itself; and the relational self of much modern Western feminist theory--suggesting that these understandings provide richer views of the self by virtue of taking account of the self's location in history and culture.The target of Alan Roland's essay is not the largely philosophical notion of selfhood considered by Allen, although clearly it builds on that notion. Rather, Roland takes up the self ofWestern psychoanalytic theory in order to ask whether, given the Western assumptions upon which it is based, psychoanalysis can be universally valid. He suggests, in the context of a critical reading of several major psychoanalytic studies of Asian cultures, that psychoanalysis in Asia can be found in three predominant guises, each limited in some important way: evolutionism, which posits the individualist self as the goal of psychological development, thereby dismissing the more relational selves of Asian cultures as developmentally inferior; universalism, which argues for a self that is essentially the same across cultural differences, imposing a single analytical standard on widely diverging... (shrink)

"Volkhard Knigge (Hg.): Jenseits der Erinnerung. Verbrechensgeschichte begreifen. Impulse für eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Nationalsozialismsus nach dem Ende der Zeitgenossenschaft, (unter Mitarbeit von Ulrike Löffler), Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2022, 428 S." published on 21 Jul 2023 by Brill.

The modern restorative justice movement, perhaps one of the most important social movements of our time, was born in a Christian home to Christian parents, specifically to Christian peace workers striving to put their faith into action in the public arena. The first major book on the subject was written primarily for a church audience and drew deeply on biblical themes and values. But as restorative justice has moved into the mainstream of criminological thought and policy, the significance of its (...) originating spiritual impulse has been minimized or denied, and subsequent theological scholarship has done little to probe the relevance of restorative perspectives for doctrine and discipleship. In this collection of essays, Christopher D. Marshall, a biblical scholar and restorative practitioner who has devoted his career to exploring the relationship between the two fields, considers how peacemaking Christians can honor the witness and authority of Scripture, including its apparently violence-endorsing strands, as they strive to join in God’s great work in Christ of “reconciling to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20). (shrink)

The present study intends to offer another perspective over the inter-religious dialogue emphasising the spiritual state of exomologesis as an essential means of accomplishing a better and real understanding of a participant in dialogue. It makes some short analysis of penitential confession as homologation with the Logos, of the prayer as inner dialogue or confession or exomologesis with the Logos and of the confessions as a literary style, which all engages the deep, spiritual dimensions of communion with the Logos (...) and finally analyses and exemplifies the ecstatic and existential spiritual dimensions of the exomologesis as an absolute form of standing in dialogue. CONTRIBUTION: The study offers the necessary spiritual understanding and impulse for a more efficient inter-confessional and inter-religious dialogue, promoting HTS Journal as a herald of this dialogue essential and indispensable for the life of the world. (shrink)

Aspiring to deal with the full complexity of the Catholic reformation, the May 2012 workshop in Bologna placed a particular focus on the reform of religious orders in the first half of the sixteenth century. While it is true that internal reform initiatives instigated by the Church or highly placed Church officials were important and should be considered, this, in my view, is an issue that should not only be addressed from a narrow institutional perspective. For this reason, the (...) Libellus ad Leonem X provides a good example of the reformist aspirations cutting across the Church in this particular period. However, it would be a mistake to assume that the reform impulse came solely from the Church. We should also.. (shrink)

This essay chronicles the development of Catholic health care in the United States during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The author points to the religious pluralism and the respect for that pluralism as well as to the evangelical drive for conversion evident in Catholic hospitals. This essay is a phenomenological study of this commitment to pluralism and the evangelical impulse within the contexts of health care.

The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysiäinen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then (...) goes on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysiäinen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others.theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysiäinen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology. (shrink)

Leszek Kolakowski discusses, in a highly original way, the arguments for and against the existence of God as they have been conducted through the ages. He examines the critiques of religious belief, from the Epicureans through Nietzsche to contemporary anthropological inquiry, the assumptions that underlie them, and the counter-arguments of such apologists as Descartes, Leibniz, and Pascal. His exploration of the philosophy of religion covers the historical discussions of the nature and existence of evil, the importance of the concepts (...) of failure and eternity to the religious impulse, the relationship between skepticism and mysticism, and the place of reason, understanding, and in models of religious thought. He examines why people, throughout known history, have cherished the idea of eternity and existence after death, and why this hope has been dependent on the worship of an eternal reality. He confronts the problems of meaning in religious language. (shrink)

The Radical Enlightenment has been much discussed and its original meaning somewhat distorted. In 1981 my concept of the storm that unleashed a new, transnational intellectual movement possessed a strong contextual and political element that I believed, and still believe, to be critically important. Idealist accounts of enlightened ideas that divorce them from politics leave out the lived quality of the new radicalism born in reaction to monarchical and clerical absolutism. Taking the religious impulse seriously and working to (...) defang it of bellicosity would require years of labor. First all the world’s religions had to be surveyed, see Picart’s seven folio volumes; and Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar had to both preach and live religion simply as true virtue; and finally Jefferson editing the Bible so as to get the irrational parts simply removed, thus making people more fit to grant a complete religious toleration. Throughout the century all these approaches to revealed religion may be legitimately described as radical. Each produced a different recommendation for its replacement. As I have now come to see, the pantheism I identified in 1981 would lead in many directions, among them lay the search to understand all human religiosity and to articulate a universal natural religion. (shrink)

Chapters 8, "On Religion and Ritual," and 9, "The Religious Dimensions of Role-Bearing Family Lives," of Against Individualism continue the discussion between Henry Rosemont and Huston Smith that began in Rationality and Religious Experience. The conversations concern the nature of religion, religious experience, and the object of that experience. Rosemont argues that there are certain "homoversals," behaviors that cannot be entirely accounted for by physical or cultural environments.1 Language learning and facial recognition are homoversals, as is what (...) Rosemont calls a "religious impulse … a subjective sense human beings appear to have about being in the presence of something larger than themselves, something that... (shrink)

The Spirit of the Laws —Montesquieu’s huge, complex, and enormously influential work—is considered one of the central texts of the Enlightenment, laying the foundation for the liberally democratic political regimes that were to embody its values. In his penetrating analysis, Thomas L. Pangle brilliantly argues that the inherently theological project of Enlightenment liberalism is made more clearly—and more consequentially— in Spirit than in any other work. _ In a probing and careful reading, Pangle shows how Montesquieu believed that rationalism, through (...) the influence of liberal institutions and the spread of commercial culture, would secularize human affairs. At the same time, Pangle uncovers Montesquieu’s views about the origins of humanity’s religious impulse and his confidence that political and economic security would make people less likely to sacrifice worldly well-being for otherworldly hopes. With the interest in the theological aspects of political theory and practice showing no signs of diminishing, this book is a timely and insightful contribution to one of the key achievements of Enlightenment thought. (shrink)

Leszek Kolakowski discusses, in a highly original way, the arguments for and against the existence of God as they have been conducted through the ages. He examines the critiques of religious belief, from the Epicureans through Nietzsche to contemporary anthropological inquiry, the assumptions that underlie them, and the counter-arguments of such apologists as Descartes, Leibniz, and Pascal. His exploration of the philosophy of religion covers the historical discussions of the nature and existence of evil, the importance of the concepts (...) of failure and eternity to the religious impulse, the relationship between skepticism and mysticism, and the place of reason, understanding, and in models of religious thought. He examines why people, throughout known history, have cherished the idea of eternity and existence after death, and why this hope has been dependent on the worship of an eternal reality. He confronts the problems of meaning in religious language. (shrink)

Religious studies’ collective advocacy on behalf of diversity and inclusion stands in poignant contrast to its persisting exclusionary ethos (within most quarters of the field) concerning questions of method. A legacy of prohibitions in religious studies about who can study religions and about how they must proceed when doing so has tended to curb innovation. Born of protectionism or special pleading or outright religious impulses, such prohibitions have skewed the field in favor of the idiosyncratic over the (...) recurrent, of the idiographic over the systematic, and of the interpretive over the explanatory. My long-standing interest in the promise of the cognitive sciences for studying religion has been, in part, to redress those imbalances. Redressing imbalances, however, does not involve dismissing the idiosyncratic, the idiographic, or the interpretive, but only suggests, first, that they are not the whole story and, second, that greater attention to the recurrent, the systematic, and the explanatory will enrich – not eliminate – our understandings and our inquiries. The first of those two propositions follows from the second. My aim in this paper is to substantiate that second proposition. Keywords: cognitive science of religion, explanatory pluralism, interpretive exclusivism, empirical findings. (shrink)

This is the first full-length English translation of Benjamin Constant's massive study of humanity's religious forms and development, published in five volumes between 1824 and 1831. Constant (1767-1830) regarded On Religion, worked on over the course of many years, as perhaps his most important philosophical work. He called it "the only interest, the only consolation of my life," and "the book that I was destined by nature to write." While the recent revival of interest in Constant's thought has been (...) welcome and fruitful, it has been incomplete, tending to leave out of account his writings on religion. In this connection, On Religion is essential reading and of interest for many reasons. As an analysis of humanity's religious experience, the work is notable for its methodology. Unlike previous writers with dogmatic commitments, whether theological or philosophical, Constant aimed to work with well-established facts and to relate religious forms to their historical contexts and civilizational developments. In this way, he was a precursor of the scientific study of religion. This objectivity, however, was not tantamount to moral-political neutrality. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, he wanted partisans of the new order to recognize that the religious impulse was natural to the human heart: to extirpate religion was therefore a fool's errand and worse. Likewise, he instructed religious reactionaries that history had left them behind: now the natural state of the religious sentiment was an unfettered "spirituality" left free to find new forms of expression. His counsel to contemporaries has proven prescient concerning subsequent religious developments in democratic and totalitarian societies. In his day, Constant was a consistent liberal, a life-long advocate of representative government, as well as of the central liberal arrangement concerning religion: separation of church and state. But On Religion demonstrates that principled liberalism can turn a sympathetic as well as analytic eye toward religion and, in an unbegrudging way, find an important place for it in free society. There are signs that this is a lesson that contemporary liberalism would do well to relearn. Peter Paul Seaton Jr. teaches philosophy at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore. His scholarly interests focus on the intersection of religion, politics, and philosophy. He has translated a number of works in French thought, especially political philosophy. These include works by Pierre Manent, Democracy without Nations? and Modern Liberty and Its Discontents (with Daniel J. Mahoney), Chantal Delsol, Unjust Justice, and Rémi Brague, On the God of the Christians and The Legitimacy of the Human. (shrink)

The first chapter reveals the international aspect of the synergy of religion and politics in the digital age. The author analyzed the specifics of various manifestations of religious beliefs in the environment against the backdrop of extreme events associated with revolutions and the COVID-2019 pandemic. Digital platforms serve as regulators of the religious impulse, which can both stabilize the social situation and transfer it to a state of bifurcation. The author paid considerable attention to the study of (...) the impact of the digitalization of religion on young people. We are exploring the problem of how religious digital practices today find broad support from the international community, how they manifest themselves at the everyday level, and cause the formation of new traditions and rituals based on online myth-making. (shrink)

The article considers how Richard Rorty's writings on religion dovetail with his views on the philosophical significance of hope. It begins with a reconstruction of the central features of Rorty's philosophy of religion, including its critique of theism and its attempt to rehabilitate religion within a pragmatist philosophical framework. It then presents some criticisms of Rorty's proposal. It is argued first that Rorty's "redescription" of the fulfilment of the religious impulse is so radical that it is hard to (...) see what remains of its specifically religious content. This casts doubt on Rorty's claim to have made pragmatism and religion compatible. The article then offers an analysis of Rorty's key notion of "unjustifiable hope". Different senses of unjustifiable hope are distinguished, in the course of which a tension between the "romantic" and "utilitarian" aspects of Rorty's pragmatist philosophy of religion comes into view. (shrink)

The task of this paper is to reconstruct Bertrand Russell project for religion without God and dogma. Russell made two attempts in this direction, first in the essay “Free Man’s Worship” (1903), and then, in theoretical form, in the paper “The Essence of Religion” (1912). Russell’s explorations of religious impulses run in parallel with his work on technical philosophy. According to Russell from 1903–12, religion is an important part of human pursuits. However, whereas the ordinary man believes in God, (...) the freeman embraces a religion without fear and dogma. He strives for a union with the universe achieved in contemplation made from many perspectives through “impartiality of vision”. For this reason freemen renounce the Self and the Will. Russell abandoned his project for religion without God mainly because of Wittgenstein’s criticism. In his later writings he continued to criticize the religion of the ordinary man, without to further develop a positive philosophy of religion, though. (shrink)

Bill Frederick’s work calls on business ethicists to consider religion as well as nature. Because there are naturally wired religious impulses in human beings and because of the fairness of including normative approaches meaningful for business people, Frederick suggests that the “R” in CSR4 should represent religion. This article takes up the theme in terms of the emerging field of naturalist theology, particularly (although embryonically) as stated by theologian Paul Tillich. Doing so creates (a) connections between “God as Life” (...) and nature and (b) linkages of the notions of symbol, culture, and transcendence. In addition to avoiding the socalled “naturalistic fallacy,” this integration can foster ethical business behavior. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper has three contrasting sections. The first starts with a description of the academic context that has led researchers like Stewart Kauffmann to introduce "God" into respectable discourse. It then goes on to juxtapose his schema with similar others that his work does not reference. It is proposed that, since humanity is the cutting edge-for good and evil-of emanation/revolution, it is human development that we must focus on. This, in turn cannot properly be discussed without reference to (...) first person descriptions and their contrast with third person descriptions. Likewise the role of those contrasting accounts within and outside the academy, which is currently under threat, must be referred to. -/- -/- Accordingly, the second section begins with the delineation of subjectivity suggested by current neuroscience. It is argued that the cluster sampling of EEG will yield significantly more meaningful results than other competing methods. -/- This paper makes the admittedly radical contention that it may be intellectually responsible to engage in forms of thought and practice that engage the whole of life in a manner heretofore addressed by “religions”. Such forms of life cannot responsibly emerge from an insight into the nature of physical reality, which is the province of the academy. Rather, these forms emerge from consideration of the human psychophysical unity as it engages with a succession of different contexts and attempts to reflect on and refine its responses to them. -/- The nature of the academy early in the 21st century is a confounding factor. The corporate pressure to attenuate academic freedom is real, as is the fact that academic freedom in liberal democracies would immediately migrate to other, initially unfunded structures in civil society with the internet offering myriad opportunities for dissemination and immediate critique of ideas. Orthogonal to this is the attempt to specify and refine one's psychological life, the bane of academic psychology from 19th century German research onwards. It is argued that academic psychology has an asymptote at this point; better to distinguish between the “academy' and the “real world” in a way that best does justice to both, and allows the layperson participate in a genuine attempt to seek knowledge by providing him with a veridical cosmology and psychology, than risk a new absurdity rivaling ontological behaviourism. Many salient facts about human psychology can be discovered by oneself in the “real world”, if only because the imperatives there will always be more compelling, try as we might. -/- -/- Finally, a synthetic narrative is proposed, one in which the evolutionary ethos of the first section is interrelated with the signs of the second section. This final section may yet be read independently of its predecessors. Kauffman’s imperative “reinventing the sacred” indicates something is awry in our conceptual and political systems; it is argued that historically authentic religious movements have preserved something they considered divine, and done so on the margins of society. In fact, this marginalization may be the essence of the religious impulse. (shrink)

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla illuminates why “political theology” remains relevant today, in a world we might have assumed was thoroughly secularized. Lilla suggests that political theology is the norm, and that Christianity inadvertently gave birth to an exception. But the exception—liberal theology, or a separation of church and state that would give full play to religious impulses—was doomed. Religious impulses were not satisfied by mere moral sentiment, as offered by Rousseau and Kant; and Hegel opened the (...) door to messianism—and eventually to Hitler—by bringing a philosophical version of redemption into liberal theology. (shrink)

English summary: The name Friedrich Nietzsche became important in the reception history of theology mainly due to his criticism of religion. In this study, Tabea Knura takes theological as well as pedagogical reception approaches and subsequently conceptualises impulses for an unprecedented debate with Nietzsche about religious education. She shows that the philosopher's critical analysis encourages looking critically at religious education, and that his reflections constantly initiate new construction processes, pointing to an affirmative and simultaneously epistemological attitude reflected in (...) religious education's mission. Questioning religious development processes therefore gives impetus to a cognitive-critical interpretation of reality that religious education must be based on. German description: Der Name Friedrich Nietzsche hat in der theologischen Rezeptionsgeschichte vor allem aufgrund seiner religionskritischen Ausserungen Bedeutung erlangt. Tabea Knura greift in dieser Studie theologische wie auch padagogische Rezeptionsansatze auf und konzipiert in der Folge Impulse fur eine bisher noch nicht erfolgte religionspadagogische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Philosophen. Sie zeigt, dass Nietzsches kritisches Denken dazu anregt, religiose Bildungsprozesse kritisch in den Blick zu nehmen. Seine religions- und bildungskritischen Uberlegungen initiieren immer neue Konstruktionsprozesse. Dies zeugt von einer affirmativen und zugleich erkenntniskritischen Haltung, die im religionspadagogischen Bildungsauftrag reflektiert wird. Religiose Entwicklungsprozesse zu hinterfragen wird so zum Impuls einer erkenntniskritischen Wirklichkeitsdeutung, die Fundament religioser Bildung sein muss. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the heuristic value of the concept of ethics of complexity, chaos, and contingency by applying its framework to the analysis of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Everyday human moral choices are outcomes of a moral impulse, and such an impulse is grounded in moral competence shaped by moral literacy. This literacy is constructed on the basis of a body of knowledge of culture, social context, environment, and the universe. It also includes the knowledge of religions (...) and religious and secular ethical codes. I also distinguish between the social and cultural aspects of ethical systems. Both societies and cultures provide resources and constraints for the development of literacy and competence. An intentionally developed multifaith and multidisciplinary coalition may help us move away from various forms of social speciation and toward sociological mindfulness. This could help us remake the world into one that has more courage to care. (shrink)

Two impulses dominated northern and central Italy in the late thirteenth century. One was the striving of cities for self-sufficiency and increased power. The other was the papal thrust toward political as well as religious overlordship. Often policies of the papacy and certain cities were linked by memories and fears of imperial interference. Ptolemy of Lucca's histories reflected his keen awareness of this situation. His more theoretical political works, the Determinatio compendiosa and the continuation of Aquinas's De regimine principum, (...) did more: they furnished remarkably supple and sophisticated ideological justifications of the views of municipal patriots and ecclesiastical zealots, and included as well stinging attacks on imperial claims in Italy. On the civic level Ptolemy was a republican, both on grounds of Italian pride and an early acquaintance with Aristotle's Politics. As N. Rubinstein remarks, “Ptolemy of Lucca's re-appraisal of the Politics constitutes the most vigorous formulation Italian communal theory had yet received by the beginning of the fourteenth century.” Ptolemy, in fact, was the first Italian republican who could justify his position in a theoretically competent way. But on the wider ecclesiastical level he was a vigorous monarchist. His Determinatio was an early and influential exposition of high papalist views, and although written about 1278, it has been called “the key to the whole vast ecclesio-political polemic of the fourteenth century.” Even by the middle of that century its arguments still seemed so contemporary that a new and extended version of it was prepared in 1342. (shrink)

Poverty is a complex subject in traditional African cultures. It is the lack of provision to satisfy the basic human needs of the population. The prosperity gospel as part of Pentecostal Christianity, with origins in the United States of America, presents itself as a new model for poverty eradication. Pentecostal Christianity and the proliferation of Pentecostal churches in Africa, many of whom are adherents of prosperity theology over a period of more than three decades, have not translated to a more (...) prosperous continent, and sub-Saharan Africa is still notably one of the poorest regions of the world. Poverty is a concept with many dimensions that attempts to ascertain the varying degrees of deprivation experienced by populations, individually or collectively. However, certain subjective and sometimes arbitrary interpretations of biblical texts on prosperity as the basis for prosperity theology have encouraged capitalist impulses that often supplant the pursuit of spiritual advantages, leading instead to an increase in crimes including robbery, financial fraud, kidnapping, ritual killings and many other social vices. This article examines the different perspectives of the prosperity gospel, the biblical sources and interpretations used as well as its interpretation of poverty. It shows how prosperity theology, with its own interpretation of poverty, erodes the valuable indigenous resources available to fight poverty within African religious communities, which emphasise community, positive family attachments, social support networks, moral values and accountability, and it examines the implications this has for socio-economic development in Africa. Contribution: This article challenges the theology of prosperity that characterises Pentecostal Christianity and is pervasive in Africa. It contributes to the discourse on how the challenges of poverty require the more community-centred approaches that traditional African values offer as against the self-centredness and greed promoted by the prosperity theology. (shrink)

ArgumentMedieval authors adopted a range of postures when writing about the role of reason in matters of faith. At one extreme, the phrase “natural theology” was used, largely pejoratively, to connote something clearly inferior to revealed theology. At the other end, there was also a long tradition of what one might term “the impulse to natural theology,” manifested perhaps most notably in the embrace of Nature by certain twelfth-century authors associated with the school of Chartres. Only in the fifteenth (...) century does one find authors using natural reason to investigate religious truths who also employ the term “natural theology,” now in a positive light, for their activities. Among such thinkers, astrology and eschatology frequently played an important role. In that respect, the writings of fourteenth-century Bolognese jurist John of Legnano offer an important example of the place of astrological, prophetic, and apocalyptic material in late medieval natural theology. In his 1375 treatise De adventu Christi, Legnano demonstrated that ancient poets, pagan seers such as the Sibyls, and non-Christian astrologers had all predicted, like Old Testament prophets, the virgin birth of Christ. For Legnano, not simply was Creation part of God's revelation, but, equally importantly, the very categories of reason and revelation blur in a way that points toward the works of Renaissance humanists and lays a foundation for a model of natural vaticination that showed reason's capability to reach fundamental religious truths. (shrink)

Originally published in 1959, The Faith of a Heretic is the most personal statement of the beliefs of Nietzsche biographer and translator Walter Kaufmann. A first-rate philosopher in his own right, Kaufmann here provides the fullest account of his views on religion. Although he considered himself a heretic, he was not immune to the wellsprings and impulses from which religion originates, declaring it among the most vital and radical expressions of the human mind. Beginning with an autobiographical prologue that traces (...) his evolution from religious believer to "heretic," the book touches on theology, organized religion, morality, suffering, and death—all examined from the perspective of a "quest for honesty." Kaufmann also subjects philosophy's faith in truth, reason, and absolute morality to the same heretical treatment. The resulting exploration of the faiths of a nonbeliever in a secular age is as fresh and challenging as when it was first published. In a new foreword, Stanley Corngold vividly describes the intellectual and biographical milieu of Kaufmann’s provocative book. (shrink)

This is a major new study of Kant's ethics that will transform the way students and scholars approach the subject in future. Allen Wood argues that Kant's ethical vision is grounded in the idea of the dignity of the rational nature of every human being. Undergoing both natural competitiveness and social antagonism the human species, according to Kant, develops the rational capacity to struggle against its impulses towards a human community in which the ends of all are to harmonize and (...) coincide. The distinctive features of the book are twofold. First, it focuses for the first time on the central role played in Kant's ethical theory by the value of rational nature as an end itself. Second, it shows the importance of Kant's systematic theory of human nature and history, and its implications for the structure, formulation, and application of Kant's moral principles. This comprehensive study will be of critical importance to students of moral philosophy, the history of ideas, political theory, and religious studies. (shrink)

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio‐economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti‐traditional attitude, which had an anti‐rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands (...) there was no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used.Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well‐known book: The right use of‐world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments. (shrink)