Based on the concept of community, Kant's conception of religion may be connected, on my view, to the question of which mental attitude is suitable for the collective life of human society. It is possible to imagine a successful community, even if such a community does not exist in the empirical world, and to be oriented toward this ideal without ever being able to realize it. According to Kant, human moral self-understanding is developed by human reason, and this explains the (...) structural similarity between the secular republic and the Kingdom of God under the specific conditions of the enlightened consciousness of a person who thinks for herself. Thus the anthropological "fact": the self-understanding of the human being characterised by his faculty of reason. (shrink)

Science and Religious Anthropology explores the convergence of the biological sciences, human sciences, and humanities around a spiritually evocative, naturalistic vision of human life. The disciplinary contributions are at different levels of complexity, from evolution of brains to existential longings, and from embodied sociality to ecosystem habitat. The resulting interpretation of the human condition supports some aspects of traditional theological thinking in the world's religious traditions while seriously challenging other aspects. Wesley Wildman draws out these (...) implications for philosophical and religious anthropology and argues that the modern secular interpretation of humanity is most compatible with a religious form of naturalistic humanism.This book resists the reduction of meaning and value questions while taking scientific theories about human life with full seriousness. It argues for a religious interpretation of human beings as bodily creatures emerging within a natural environment that permits engagement with the valuational potentials of reality. This engagement promotes socially borne spiritual quests to realize and harmonize values in everything human beings do, from the forging of cultures to the crafting of personal convictions. (shrink)

In the context of changing paradigms of human thinking, secularization of social consciousness, scientific and technological and information revolution, social and environmental cataclysms, Christian preaching seeks to answer the "challenge of time", seeking and offering man such spiritual foundations of life that will help him to "find himself" in the changing in the modern world.

The essence of religion was once widely thought to be a unique form of experience that could not be explained in neurological, psychological, or sociological terms. In recent decades scholars have questioned the privileging of the idea of religious experience in the study of religion, an approach that effectively isolated the study of religion from the social and natural sciences. Religious Experience Reconsidered lays out a framework for research into religious phenomena that reclaims experience as a central (...) concept while bridging the divide between religious studies and the sciences. Ann Taves shifts the focus from "religious experience," conceived as a fixed and stable thing, to an examination of the processes by which people attribute meaning to their experiences. She proposes a new approach that unites the study of religion with fields as diverse as neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to better understand how these processes are incorporated into the broader cultural formations we think of as religious or spiritual. Taves addresses a series of key questions: how can we set up studies without obscuring contestations over meaning and value? What is the relationship between experience and consciousness? How can research into consciousness help us access and interpret the experiences of others? Why do people individually or collectively explain their experiences in religious terms? How can we set up studies that allow us to compare experiences across times and cultures? Religious Experience Reconsidered demonstrates how methods from the sciences can be combined with those from the humanities to advance a naturalistic understanding of the experiences that people deem religious. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Religious Background of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN IT IS AN EXCEEDINGLY GREAT PLEASURE tO participate in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of the Journal of the Historyof Philosophy.The editor, Professor Makkreel, offered me the opportunity to discuss the rationale for my present research, which I hope has some relevance for future research in the history of philosophy. At a symposium at the American Philosophical Association meeting in (...) Washington in December x985, I argued for taking the historyof philosophy seriously, that is, understanding thinkers and ideas in their actual historical contexts, instead of detaching them into some ahistorical ethereal realm. I argued that one could not make sense of a philosopher's thought detached from his time and circumstances. His ideas could not be understood unless one took account of the language, the usages, the issues and the concerns of the thinker and his time. The all too frequent "reconstruction" of philosophers ' thoughts sees them instead as logical machines, simply moving from clearly stated premises to their logical consequences. As many of us have sought to show, this often grossly distorts what Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz and others might have actually thought, and misses much of what they were probably thinking about. I should like to carry this theme further by examining the need to take seriously the religious aspect of philosophizing. I will center on the intellectual scene of the seventeenth century, which I am currently working on though I believe many of the same points could be made about any period in the history of philosophy. Among historians of science there is an ongoing debate about whether the history of the subject should be studied internally or externally. The [:35] 36 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY internalists examine a set of ideas presented by scientist A, and trace their use or development by scientist B. The study that results is primarily the tracing of the course of a set of ideas through a time period. Background data about the scientists, their problems, and their place in society are regarded as of little relevance. The externalists insist that one cannot understand why various questions became important, why various individuals tried to solve them, why they used certain kinds of possible solutions instead of others, etc., unless one knows the external conditions of the time. This has spawned a lot of interesting research into the way scientific studies went on, who supported them, who did them, how they got accepted, and so on. The sociology and even anthropology of science is now a thriving research area, yielding many amazing studies about the scientific world and how it functioned. In so doing, scholars have not just examined the great successful scientists, the Keplers, Galileos, Harveys, and Newtons, but also the small fry, the mediocre, the poor scientists, and even the incompetent ones. They have examined why wrong-headed theories were supported, and accepted, while evidence supporting other theories was readily available. Their concern with the actual course of scientific development as an ongoing part of intellectual history is vital to understanding the scientific world of today, which plays such an overwhelming role in our society. So, some people study the education of the good, the mediocre, the bad scientists; their relative social statuses, incomes, and so on. The religious concerns are, of course, an obvious part of the story from Copernicus to Kepler to Newton to Darwin to Freud to Einstein. The scientists were involved in an ongoing religious world that influenced the role of science. The above named scientists had their religious or irreligious views that were involved with their scientific concerns. And, as we know too well, the impact of their work on religion has been of great importance to the broader intellectual world, and the impact of religion on the acceptance of their science has been and is part of the ongoing intellectual world. This interest amongst historians of science in the sociology, psychology, and anthropology of science has hardly rubbed off on the historians of philosophy. Most of the leading scholars of the last few decades in this work are hardly known and rarely cited in studies in the history of philosophy. We... (shrink)

Religious Evolution and the Axial Age describes and explains the evolution of religion over the past ten millennia. It shows that an overall evolutionary sequence can be observed, running from the spirit and shaman dominated religions of small-scale societies, to the archaic religions of the ancient civilizations, and then to the salvation religions of the Axial Age. Stephen K. Sanderson draws on ideas from new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, history, and sociology. (...) He argues that religion is a biological adaptation that evolved in order to solve a number of human problems, especially those concerned with existential anxiety and ontological insecurity. Much of the focus of the book is on the Axial Age, the period in the second half of the first millennium BCE that marked the greatest religious transformation in world history. The book demonstrates that, as a result of massive increases in the scale and scope of war and large-scale urbanization, the problems of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity became particularly acute. These changes evoked new religious needs, especially for salvation and release from suffering. As a result entirely new religions-Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism-arose to help people cope with the demands of the new historical era. (shrink)

This book sets out some of the latest scientific findings around the evolutionary development of religion and faith and then explores their theological implications. This unique combination of perspectives raises fascinating questions about the characteristics that are considered integral for a flourishing social and religious life and allows us to start to ask where in the evolutionary record they first show up in a distinctly human manner. The book builds a case for connecting theology and evolutionary anthropology using (...) both historical and contemporary sources of knowledge to try and understand the origins of wisdom, humility, and grace in 'deep time'. In the section on wisdom, the book examines the origins of complex decision-making in humans through the archaeological record, recent discoveries in evolutionary anthropology, and the philosophical richness of semiotics. The book then moves to an exploration of the origin of characteristics integral to the social life of small-scale communities, which then points in an indirect way to the disposition of humility. Finally, it investigates the theological dimensions of grace and considers how artefacts left behind in the material record by our human ancestors, and the perspective they reflect, might inform contemporary concepts of grace. This is a cutting-edge volume that refuses to commit the errors of either too easy a synthesis or too facile a separation between science and religion. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of religious studies and theology - especially those who interact with scientific fields - as well as academics working in anthropology of religion. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper is aimed at studying the specificity of anthropological problematics in pragmatism from the perspective of its ability to be the source of analytic philosophy evolution in the socio-humanitarian direction. Theoretical basis of the research is determined by the works of the representatives of classical pragmatism, neopragmatism, post-pragmatism and analytic pragmatism. Their works give a clear understanding of the important place of anthropological searches in the theory of pragmatism. Originality. On the basis of the analysis of logical, epistemological (...) and metaphysical ideas formulated by representatives of pragmatism, it is proved that pragmatic methodology is anthropocentric. It is established that the ideological and social foundations of pragmatism can be determined as pluralistic ones due to the attention to the human person. It is revealed that theoretical and methodological searches of pragmatism can be effective in the formation of the socio-humanitarian concepts in analytic philosophy through the specification of strategies for the cognition of human existence in such terms as experience or self and the development of practical ways to justify the truth of knowledge. Conclusions. Pragmatists criticized impersonal, formal thinking, which cannot be an effective means of cognition. Thinking has a social basis and is entirely personal. Justifying its dependence on the socio-cultural sphere and the internal intentions of the subject, it is possible to develop an effective logical theory that operates symbols not only at the syntactic or semantic level but also takes into account the pragmatic aspect of language. Anthropological problematics is also important in the theory of knowledge, the core of which is the notion of pragmatic belief, which enables truth and religious beliefs, since the foundation of the theory of truth is determined by the principle of humanism, and the truth is interpreted as a value orientation. Knowing the external world, we find in it the similarity with us – that’s why the metaphysical foundations of being, according to pragmatism, are personified, and the methodology is defined in anthropomorphic terms. Applying it, the study of human existence is specified in the analysis of psychological and socio-cultural dimensions of such concepts as experience or self. Attempts to comprehend the nature of human existence in pragmatism are empirically grounded. Appealing to science, methodological pluralism, the search for socio-cultural background for thinking and suitable linguistic forms of expression of human experience are the achievements of pragmatism, which are the basis for the socio-humanitarian redescription of analytic methodology. (shrink)

This special focus issue brings to the Journal of Religious Ethics fresh considerations of moral anthropology as practiced by four emergent voices within the field. Each of these essays, in varying ways, seeks not only to advance an understanding of ethics in a particular time, place, and context, but to draw our attention to shared aspects of the human condition: its discontinuities and fractures, its practices of perception and attention, its interplays of emotion, intuition, and reason, and (...) its thoroughly intersubjective nature. To learn something of Thai Buddhist life-worlds, contemporary Russian modes of being, or the experience of immorality in today's China, each essay argues in turn, is to gain new insight into ourselves. (shrink)

Purpose. The main purpose of this paper is to consider the methodological peculiarities in the formation and interpretation of war and peace, in the context of the spiritual rethinking by humanity and the nature of social phenomena, among which a special place is occupied by the political and legal phenomena of the modern world. This involves solving the following tasks: firstly, to reveal the meaning of modern approaches in understanding the features of religious fundamentalism, and, secondly, to reconstruct the (...) dynamics of transformations in representations of war and peace, in the context of the spiritual practices of the present. Theoretical basis. The author's analysis is based on the systematic reconstruction of modern theoretical models of understanding religious fundamentalism and its connection with the subject of modern anthropological research. The resulted fact that the taxonomy of different types of religious fundamentalism includes more political, legal and economic markers does not provide an answer to the question of what the qualitative influence of the fundamentalist ideas is on the spiritual component of a person's life. Appealing to the problem of religious fundamentalism, in the context of rethinking the phenomena of war and peace, is associated with the actualization of these phenomena in the communicational, media and ideological spheres. That is why, in the context of this analysis, we take into account the main modern approaches in the provisions of religious traditions. These articulate the problems of threat to the global world in the context of actualization and return of the religious factor into the everyday life of a person, including through politics. Originality. The author proves that when analyzing the religious aspect in the reinterpretation of ideas about war and peace, it is necessary to consider, as a doctrinal component, certain types of religious belief doctrines, as well as the individual psychological peculiarities of man. These peculiarities, which are manifested in different types of beliefs, can be verified by the clues in the analysis of religious practices, which represent the meaningful components of the religious doctrine. Conclusions. The reasons for forming ideas about war and peace in theistic religions are a number of provisions related to the nature of the world and of man. They are the result of the manifestation of the act of the Supernatural Essence. In the tradition of rethinking the vocation of man in the context of fundamentalist discourse, these ideas acquire the status of spiritually determined and politically achievable goals. These are conceived in connection with the establishment of the Divine Plan, and they overcome the gap between the material world and the ideal world order. (shrink)

SUMMARYA discussion of Western notions of ‘sacrifice’ can benefit from descriptions of non-Western understandings of ‘sacrifice’, in the sense that non-Western understandings of ‘sacrifice’ introduce aspects and dimensions into the debate that may not have been fully taken into account so far. In order to find out whether the Indian case confirms Western scholarly theories of religious sacrifice, ideas and practices regarding sacrifice in the Mahābhārata epic and in the Bhagavadgītā will be confronted with several of these theories, (...) in particular some current in cultural anthropology and religious studies which focus on gift exchange, self-sacrifice or violence. A conjectural conclusion as to why human beings sacrifice in general will be drawn at the very end of this essay in comparative religion. (shrink)

Bruno Latour’s long term project is to compare the felicity and infelicity conditions of the different values dearest to the heart of those who have ‘never been modern’. According to him, this is the only way to develop an anthropology of the Moderns. After his work on science, on technology and, more recently, on law, this book explores the truth conditions of religious speech acts.Even though there is no question that religion is one of the values that has (...) been intensely cherished in the course of history, it’s also clear that it has become immensely difficult to tune in to its highly specific mode of enunciation. Every effort to speak in the right key sounds awkward, reactionary, pious or simply empty. Hence the necessity of devising a way of writing that brings to the fore this elusive form of speech to render it audible again. In this highly original book, the author offers a completely different tack on the endless ‘science and religion’ conflict by protecting them both from the confusion with the notion of information. Like The Making of Law, this book is one more attempt at developing this ‘inquiry on modes of existence’ that provides an alternative definition of society. (Publisher's abstract). (shrink)

Although much has been written about the so-called political, ethical and religious turns in the thinking of Jacques Derrida, few have noticed that his late writings were marked by what we could tentatively call a “zoological turn.” This is surprising given that in The Animal That Therefore I Am Derrida clearly stated that the question as to what distinguishes the human from the animal has for him always been the most important question of philosophy. This essay will attempt to (...) offer a preliminary exploration of this still largely uncharted aspect of Derrida’s thought. Starting from a brief overview of Derrida’s most important writings on the question of the animal, it will be argued that his decision to write an entire book on this issue was largely motivated by his eagerness to settle a discussion with one of his pupils, the French theorist of technology Bernard Stiegler. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The study aims to define and comprehend the phenomenon of freedom as an anthropological problem in the Christian philosophical heritage of A. Augustine and H. Skovoroda. The objectives of the study are: a) to identify the main aspects of the problem of freedom in the Christian philosophy of Augustine; b) to clarify the essence and specificity of understanding of freedom in the philosophical anthropology of H. Skovoroda; c) to compare the peculiarities of the statement of the problem (...) of freedom by Augustine and Skovoroda. _Theoretical basis._ The achievement of the purpose is based on theoretical-methodological, historical-philosophical and comparative analysis of the content of the concept of freedom within the philosophical views of A. Augustine and H. Skovoroda. Also, the analysis of the original sources of the thinkers has allowed to formulate the theoretical and practical significance of their ideas in this field and their importance for the further development of world philosophy. _Originality._ It has been confirmed that in the religious philosophy of Augustine, freedom appears on an immanent-spiritual plane and is a phenomenon manifested as a person’s ability of self-determination in his actions. Augustine explains freedom by raising the question of free will, evil, salvation, predestination and divine grace. It is substantiated that the analysis of the problem of freedom in the philosophy of H. Skovoroda presupposes an understanding of the main components of his philosophical and anthropological theory: ontological (the doctrine of "two natures" and "three worlds"); gnoseological (the concept of self-knowledge); ethical (the problem of happiness, good, etc.). It is determined that human freedom in the work of both philosophers is defined in conceptual and semantic aspects as a moral and ethical choice between good and evil. It is established that both Augustine and Skovoroda emphasize the discovery by man of the moral, spiritual law and life in accordance with its norms – this is a kind of idea of positive freedom ("freedom for"), and the call to escape from the world of evil is the idea of negative freedom ("freedom from"). _Conclusions._ Thus, we continued the historical-philosophical study of the peculiarities of the understanding of the concept of human freedom in Ukrainian philosophical thought, which is manifested by comparing it with the theoretical heritage of world philosophy, with the spiritual and philosophical experience of the past. The ideological kinship of the concepts of freedom of Aurelius Augustine and Hryhorii Skovoroda is obvious. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evaluation of Implicit AnthropologiesJochen Fahrenberg (bio) and Marcus Cheetham (bio)Keywordsmind-body, philosophical assumptions, human natureThe three commentaries and the reviewer’s notes contain valuable reflections and expand on number of important points. There is general agreement that surprisingly little is known about psychologists’, psychotherapists’, clinicians’, and other professionals’ philosophical assumptions about human nature. It is conceivable that these implicit anthropologies represent a potential source of bias in research and practice (...) and that further research is therefore justified.Doctor Walach emphasizes the pluralism of world views, which is evident in the questionnaire response patterns. The findings contradict the assumption that monism, immanence, and a scientific worldview are predominant preconceptions. Instead, psychology students mostly favor ontological or methodological dualism, and con-firm that they have spiritual beliefs or indeed some belief in paranormal phenomena. From this, Dr. Walach extends his thought-provoking perspective to folk psychology, as opposed to mainstream psychology, and reflects on the influence of individual beliefs on scientific culture. It is especially from this perspective that the investigation of certain key concepts and belief systems should be given every encouragement.Doctors Wells and Rackley were particularly interested in the implicit anthropologies of clinicians. They are inclined to attribute individual differences in understanding and interaction with patients to “psychological” traits or to momentary experience rather than to philosophical beliefs. The latter view was supported by the majority of students in our investigation. With respect to psychotherapists and clinicians, our article contained only a short reference to the interviews conducted by Wider. The majority of the forty-two professionals taking part in this pilot study assumed that there may be such differential biases in their fields, but they conceded that the momentary clinical condition and pragmatic necessities would often override such biases. An empirical investigation to differentiate psychological, pragmatic–clinical, and philosophical factors and the associated bias would be an ambitious project; very careful interviews and perhaps participant observation would be necessary. But before undertaking such a study, further descriptive studies and the development of testable hypotheses are required.Doctor Brendel referred to the intricacies of the mind–body problem. We agree that many of the recent philosophical writings show nonreductive physicalism to be among the highly favored conceptions. (We do not know whether this discourse represents the majority opinion of philosophers, psychologists, clinicians, or even neuroscientists.) [End Page 213] The inclusion of this specific conception in the multiple-choice item list would require the inclusion of a specific vocabulary and some definitions that are controversial, even among the proponents of nonreductive physicalism. We decided to restrict the wide spectrum of concepts to five categories. Doctor Brendel goes on to voice explicit support for the conceptualization proposed by Horgan, who recommended a pragmatic approach and the use of double vocabularies. He suggests that context-related features in a given instance would suffice for selecting the most appropriate explanation. It is, however, conceivable that close examination of the decision process would reveal criteria containing or stemming from philosophical assumptions.Doctor Walach makes reference to the complementarity principle, which has a certain intellectual appeal when cross-category relationships are considered, and is not restricted to the domain of physics. Compared with a double-language dualism, the complementarity principle postulates that both frames of reference are fundamentally different in categories, exhaustive within their specific explanation scheme, but are essentially incomplete if, for example, brain and consciousness are viewed as a whole.Pertinent methodological aspects were already addressed in the article and endnote. However, the appropriateness of a questionnaire with which to assess philosophical standpoints will continue to be met with concern and require careful consideration. It is clear that there is no other practical method for gathering in a population like first-year students of psychology representative data about ontological beliefs, religious attitudes, or assumptions on human nature.Doctors Wells and Rackley noted discrepancies in the response to two items relating to spiritual existence after death and the cessation of consciousness with biological death. The two statements seem to be contradictory and the observed inconsistencies point to possible misunderstandings, response tendencies, context-dependent effects, or other shortcomings well-known in research using personality questionnaires. However, the assumed postmortal existence... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY: A REVIEW DISCUSSION [I]t seems to me that Schema 18 [preparatory draft for the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World] needs to rest on a deeper realization of the urgent problems posed by technology.... (The Constitution on Mass Media seems to have been totally innocent of any such awareness.) For one thing, the whole massive complex of technology, which (...) reaches into every aspect of social life today, implies a huge organization of which no one is really in control, and which dictates its own solutions irrespective of human needs or even reason.... I am not of course saying that technology is "bad," and that progress is something to be feared. But I am saying that behind the cloak of specious myths about technology and progress, there seems to be at work a vast uncontrolled power which is leading man where he does not want to go... and in which the Church... ought to be somewhat more aware of the intervention of the "principalities and powers" of which St. Paul speaks. -Thomas Merton, Letter to Bernard Haring (December ~6, 1964) l WHEN A DRAFT of the United States Roman Catholic bishops' proposed pastoral letter on human values was circulated to philos·ophy teachers at Catholic colleges in 1975, one respondent took the occasion to suggest that what was needed was not another geneml restatement of " human values " or a piecemeal analysis of specific issues (unemployment, artificial contraception, abortion, nuclear weapons, etc.) but something intermediate-work toward the development of an ethics of technology.2 Unbeknown i The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, selected and edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985), pp. 383-384. 2 The pastoral subsequently appeared as To Live in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral Reflection on the Moral Life (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, November 1976). 146 TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY 147 to himself, he had voiced a concern similar to that expressed by Thomas Merton a decade earlier. With the publication another decade later of Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technology,3 the proceedings of a workshop for Catholic bishops by the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center (then in St. Louis, now in Boston) there is evidence that this need is being increasingly recognized. Working from cmss-disciplinary analyses of two commonly un-associaited issues-nuclear energy and reproductive technologies (i.e., the ostensibly positive correlates 0£ nuclear weapons and artificial contraception)-Technological Powers and the Person seeks to formulaite general guidelines for the engagement with modern technology. Two specific technologies are rightly seen as related aspects of a global phenomenon, and philosophical anthropology is properly proposed as the foundation for ethical principles. Although aspects of this assessment may well be criticized, the general approach-a.s well as this particular workshop and the form of its final proceedingsdeserve commendation. 'Vhat follows, then, are some comments on format and substantive content aimed at furthering such a project. 1. The workshop itself (which was held in Dallas, Texas) was opened on the evening of January 31, 1983, with a keynote address by Christopher Derrick, a Catholic layman from England who has written on moral and religious issues of cuLture s Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P., Donald G. McCarthy, Edward J. Bayer, S.T.D., Michael P. McDonough, S.T.D., and Larry D. Lossing, eds., Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technologies (St. Louis, MO: Pope John Center, 1983). Pp. xiii, 500. This is the third in a series. Previous proceedings are New Technologies of Birth and Death (196 pages, from a 1980 workshop) and Human Sexuality and Personhood (254 pages, from a 1981 workshop), both published by the Pope John Center; as the titles and pages alone indicate, neither has the scope of the present volume. 148 CARL MITCHAl\1 and eoology.4 Together with a general overview of the workshop by the senior editor, Derrick's address constitutes part ooo of the proceedings. His fundamental question concerns whether there might not be an "inordinate attachment to temporal good... (shrink)

This volume approaches the issue of ambient sound through the ethnographic exploration of different cultural contexts including Italy, India, Egypt, France, Ethiopia, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, and Japan. It examines social, religious, and aesthetic conceptions of sound environments, what types of action or agency are attributed to them, and what bodies of knowledge exist concerning them. Contributors shed new light on these sensory environments by focusing not only on their form and internal dynamics, but also on their wider social and (...) cultural environment. The multimedia documents of this volume may be consulted at the address: milson.fr/routledge_media. (shrink)

Contextualising the seemingly esoteric and exotic aspects of Tibetan Buddhist culture within the everyday, embodied and sensual sphere of religious praxis, this book centres on the social and religious lives of deceased Tibetan Buddhist lamas. It explores how posterior forms - corpses, relics, reincarnations and hagiographical representations - extend a lama's trajectory of lives and manipulate biological imperatives of birth, aging and death. The book looks closely at previously unexamined figures whose history is relevant to a better (...) understanding of how Tibetan culture navigates its own understanding of reincarnation, the veneration of relics, and different social roles of different types of practitioners. It analyses both the minutiae of everyday interrelations between lamas and their devotees, specifically noted in ritual performances and the enactment of lived tradition, as well as the sacred hagiographical conventions that underpin local knowledge. A phenomenology of Tibetan Buddhist life, the book provides an ethnography and insight of the embodiment of Tibetan Buddhism in everyday life. This unusual approach offers a valuable and a genuine new perspective on Tibetan Buddhist culture, and is of interest to researchers in the fields of social/cultural anthropology, religious, Buddhist and Tibetan studies. (shrink)

Nous tenons généralement pour acquis et même évident que les êtres humains ont une supériorité sur les autres espèces et sur la nature en général. Ne sommes-nous pas appelés à "dominer la nature" et, par l'intelligence et l'esprit d'entreprise, à en tirer le meilleur pour le bénéfice de tous? Or, cette exception humaine est aujourd'hui de plus en plus vivement contestée, surtout à l'égard des animaux, mais aussi par la mise en cause de la domination de la nature dont on (...) mesure les effets catastrophiques pour notre avenir commun. Cette contestation n'est pas une question purement académique. Elle a des répercussions considérables sur le statut de l'homme et sur son rapport au monde. Ce livre prend la mesure des conséquences de ces critiques, mais veut surtout défendre la thèse d'une exception de l'humanité en développant une anthropologie de la vulnérabilité humaine qui, loin des rationalismes ambitieux, donne à l'espèce humaine sa juste place, admet sa fragilité et fonde aussi le respect qu'on lui doit. Il récuse tout autant le mythe d'une société prétendument "postmortelle" qui, en réalité, relève des mêmes illusions que les thèses sur la fin de l'exception humaine. (shrink)

English summary: Ideas of man and concepts of the body are closely linked, and are a key factor in defining anthropological theories and problems. In addition, they are closely connected to the social structure of each cultural region, which itself has a continuous influence on human actions and attitudes, but which at the same time is also the result of human actions and attitudes. Scholars from various disciplines used this as their basis to explore the subject in their own cultural (...) field, each of them taking the perspective of their own methodological approach. The studies incorporate both, text and image sources. It is the authors' common goal to provide a precise description of specific anthropological developments which are dependent on time and culture and to include a discussion of basic issues of the conditio humana. German description: Menschenbilder und Korperkonzepte gehoren eng zusammen und bestimmen massgeblich anthropologische Lehren und Fragestellungen. Sie sind zudem eng mit der Sozialstruktur des jeweiligen Kulturraums verflochten, wobei dieselbe zwar ununterbrochen konditionierenden Einfluss auf menschliche Handlungen und Haltungen hat, sie aber zugleich auch das Ergebnis menschlicher Handlungen und Haltungen ist. Auf diesen Grundlagen haben sich Wissenschaftler unterschiedlicher Disziplinen zusammengefunden, um aus der Perspektive ihres jeweiligen methodischen Ansatzes dem Thema in ihrem jeweiligen Kulturbereich nachzugehen. Dabei werden Textquellen ebenso in die Untersuchungen mit einbezogen wie Bildquellen. Gemeinsames Ziel ist, zeit- und kulturgebundene Spezialentwicklungen prazise zu profilieren und Grundfragen der conditio humana in den Blick zu nehmen. (shrink)

Purpose of this article is to study the phenomenon of desire in Ancient Chinese and ancient Indian society, to reveal a material basis for the appearance and formation of the specific ethical attitude towards desire in the philosophical reflection of ancient thinkers. To fulfil this purpose, we should study and analyse methodology of desire studies in philosophical and psychological literature, analyse the ethical attitude towards desire in religious and philosophical texts of Chinese and Indian thinkers, understand social and economic (...) basis of such an ethical attitude, that is to establish material basis of desire as the specific form of psychic activity and to recreate the logic of its development. Theoretical basis. Culturological and economic studies of orientalists and dialectical logic. Originality. The paper presents the analysis of the perspectives and drawbacks of different approaches in desire studies. Research of ethical attitude towards the desire in Ancient China and India allowed us to recreate the logic of social relations and the level of productive forces in that society. The ideological foundation of conservation and recreation of power and property relations was found in the religious doctrine of suppression of individual desires. The connection between desire formation and division of labour and its preservation in the religious, political and legal forms of social consciousness was shown. Methodological perspectives of dialectical logic were defined in the study of logical and historical coincidence in the further development of the phenomenon and the notion of desire. Conclusions. Analysis of modern philosophical and psychological literature has revealed methodological drawbacks in desire studies, as they are focused on studying desire’s notion, its representation or separate aspects of desire in individual psyche disregarding its inner logic and material basis of its becoming. Studies of the ethical attitude towards desire in Eastern culture have shown the consensus in desire suppression of individuals and similarities between Ancient Chinese and Indian cultures. There is shown significance and material basis of the transcendental law suppressing the desires even of the higher classes of the oriental society. The methodological approach stated in this article can be applied for further desire studies of Ancient Greece culture, Christian ethics and modern society. (shrink)

The article examines the situation of the presence of virtual voices in modern reality. The voices of virtual assistants model a new relationship between voice and face, with anonymity and depersonalization being a priority. The closeness of the face from the voice peculiar to virtual assistants, the detachment of the voice from the facial "accompaniment", the fundamental possibility of the existence of a voice without a face — all this gives the voice as an anthropological and cultural phenomenon of modernity (...) fundamentally new parameters. Digital "logic" implies a departure from the human logos, which can be clearly seen in the example of the problem of "gender" of artificial assistants. Special attention is paid to the problem of correlation of voice and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence as an organizational form of cognition acquires a voice, merges with a voice, becomes a voice. The universal scale of the claims of virtual voices requires theological reflection, because the religious experience of "working" with voices, represented in a wide range of world religions, is able to offer a unique interpretation of the role of the voice in modern times. Internet voices can be called into the liturgical space, where they will be asked to sound in new registers and keys. Digital religion appears as a new liturgical reality, a new common cause. It is significant that the non-spiritual technogenic environment can only offer emptiness — the emptiness of digital dehumanization. Digital-humanitarian unity can be built on the adoption of a spiritual foundation, based on the conclusion of a "pact" on cooperation between the spiritual experience of mankind and cyber-information perspectives. (shrink)

The ethnology of religion is a relatively young field of religious studies that emerged as a result of an interdisciplinary study of ethnicity and religion. It is she who studies the great variety of aspects of the interaction and combination of these social phenomena, although, as is well known, religion and ethnicity are the object of attention of various branches of science - religious studies, ethnology, anthropology, ethnography, cultural studies, history, etc. Each of them in their (...) context analyzes their essence, functionality, history, even some specific aspect of their interaction. The emergence of the ethnology of religion as a separate sphere of religious science due to the need for a holistic approach to the study of a complex system of relations "religion-ethnos" in all their diversity of forms, types, types. The synthetics of social phenomena that have arisen as a result of the interaction of ethnicities and religions have prompted to life at first comprehensive studies of these phenomena, and later - a synthesis of the sciences that studied them. The latter is a testimony to the further development of human knowledge, a necessary step towards an in-depth understanding of the relationship between ethnic and religious. These social phenomena throughout history are so closely intertwined that during certain periods of social life significantly influenced the tendencies and directions of the world historical process, determined the character of the formation of its laws. (shrink)

This book focuses on how 'cult rhetoric' affects our perceptions of new religious movements (NRMs). 'Cult' Rhetoric in the 21st Century explores contemporary understandings of the term 'cult' by bringing together a range of scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, and religious studies. The book provides a renewed discussion of 'new religious movements', whilst also considering recent approaches toward a nuanced study of contemporary religion. Topics explored include online religions, political 'cults', 'apostate' testimony and (...) the current 'othered' position of the study of minority religions. (shrink)

SummaryThe problem of converting the Amerindian world to Catholicism was given a radically new solution, both at a theoretical and a missionary level, by the Jesuit Acosta: since American societies were of a completely different nature to Mediterranean ones, the preaching of the Gospel, too, had to be different from the classical approach. He gave a new definition to both preaching and American societies, especially the latter's religion and social organisation. Acosta's approach to American sauvagerie was pioneering; he conceptualised ideas (...) that had never been thought of before. There existed societies which were neither barbarous nor political (like the empires of Incan Peru and Aztec Mexico), which nonetheless had social organisation. With regard to their religious life, Acosta maintained that cult and belief without faith was not a sign of atheism, but of an early form of religion. These two reassessments gave rise to a new image of the savage society, which attained enormous success, even outside the missionary world. Fitting the theological structure into the secularised theories of radical enlightenment, both Locke and Hume had recourse to the ethnologic aspects which Acosta had set out. (shrink)

Treize spécialistes dans diverses disciplines - histoire, théologie, philosophie, sociologie, économie, musicologie, linguistique, esthétique... - considèrent, sous l'angle des différentes sciences humaines, la manière dont les vivants se représentent la mort, ainsi que les comportements des vivants vis-à-vis des défunts. Cette mise en questions de la mort, où les auteurs réfléchissent sur notre devoir de vivants de borner le monde des morts, comporte deux grandes parties : l'une centrée sur le religieux (Bible, Coran, bouddhisme, le recul de l'Église catholique et (...) les rituels malgaches de retournement des morts, ou la question du suicide assisté...), l'autre plus profane avec des travaux sur la mort en république laïque et une étude économique sur le marché de la mort en France, puis un développement important sur la mort dans l'art (le cas de Gunther von Hagens, plastineur allemand dont les œuvres d'art sont des cadavres, le Dies Irae, la mort en bandes dessinées, ou encore la mort vue par Brassens, Brel et Ferré). (shrink)

What are the primary characteristics that define what it means to be human? And what happens to those characteristics in the face of technology past, present, and future? The three essays in Image, by leading philosophers of religion Mark Taylor, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Thomas Carlson, play at this intersection of the human and the technological, building out from Heidegger's notion that humans master the world by picturing or representing the real.Taylor's essay traces a history of capitalism, dwelling on the lack (...) of humility, particularly in the face of our own mortality, that is the persistent failure of humans, before turning to art as a possible way to bring us back to earth and recover humility before it is too late. Rubenstein zeroes in on the delusions of imaginative conquest associated with space travel. Through a genealogy of the modern "view from space" from the iconic Earth rise photo of 1968 up to the new privatized American space race, Rubenstein provides an analysis of the perils of the one-world and the false unity it projects. In his essay, Carlson takes as his starting point the surveillance capitalism of facial recognition technology. He dives deep into Heidegger to meditate on the elimination of individuals through totalizing gestures and the relationship between such elimination and our encounters with mortality. Each of these essays, in its own way, reflects on the nature of imagination, the character of technological vision in contemporary culture, and the implications of these for the kinds of sociality and love that condition our human experience. (shrink)

Glava 1. Bazovye poni︠a︡tii︠a︡ i metodologii︠a︡ transgumanisticheskoĭ religioznoĭ init︠s︡iativy -- Glava 2. Organizat︠s︡ionnyĭ urovenʹ transgumanisticheskogo dvizhenii︠a︡ -- Glava 3. Avtorskie proekty -- Glava 4. Nauchnye proekty transgumanistov -- Glava 5. Religioznye analogi konfessii︠a︡m i uchenii︠a︡m v transgumanizme.

In 1968, the Harvard criteria equated irreversible coma and apnea with human death and later, the Uniform Determination of Death Act was enacted permitting organ procurement from heart-beating donors. Since then, clinical studies have defined a spectrum of states of impaired consciousness in human beings: coma, akinetic mutism, minimally conscious state, vegetative state and brain death. In this article, we argue against the validity of the Harvard criteria for equating brain death with human death. Brain death does not disrupt somatic (...) integrative unity and coordinated biological functioning of a living organism. Neurological criteria of human death fail to determine the precise moment of an organism’s death when death is established by circulatory criterion in other states of impaired consciousness for organ procurement with non-heart-beating donation protocols. The criterion of circulatory arrest 75 s to 5 min is too short for irreversible cessation of whole brain functions and respiration controlled by the brain stem. Brain -based criteria for determining death with a beating heart exclude relevant anthropologic, psychosocial, cultural, and religious aspects of death and dying in society. Clinical guidelines for determining brain death are not consistently validated by the presence of irreversible brain stem ischemic injury or necrosis on autopsy; therefore, they do not completely exclude reversible loss of integrated neurological functions in donors. The questionable reliability and varying compliance with these guidelines among institutions amplify the risk of determining reversible states of impaired consciousness as irreversible brain death. The scientific uncertainty of defining and determining states of impaired consciousness including brain death have been neither disclosed to the general public nor broadly debated by the medical community or by legal and religious scholars. Heart-beating or non-heart-beating organ procurement from patients with impaired consciousness is de facto a concealed practice of physician-assisted death, and therefore, violates both criminal law and the central tenet of medicine not to do harm to patients. Society must decide if physician-assisted death is permissible and desirable to resolve the conflict about procuring organs from patients with impaired consciousness within the context of the perceived need to enhance the supply of transplantable organs. (shrink)

We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs—that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings (...) that guide make-believe play. -/- Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief—which he terms religious “credence”—is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance. -/- It is hardly controversial to suggest that religion has a social function, but Religion as Make-Believe breaks new ground by theorizing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Once we recognize that our minds process factual and religious beliefs in fundamentally different ways, we can gain deeper understanding of the complex individual and group psychology of religious faith. [Abstract writing credit: book editor Andrew Kinney, HUP]. (shrink)

This book explores 'efficacious intimacy' as an embodied concept of worldmaking, and a framework for studying belief practices in religious and political domains. The study of how beliefs make and manifest power through their sociality and materiality can reveal who, or what, is considered effective in a particular socio-cultural context. The chapters feature case studies drawn from diverse religious and political contexts in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and explore practices ranging from ingesting sacred water to resisting injustice. (...) In doing so, the authors analyze emotions and affects, and how they influence dynamics of proximity and distance. Taking an innovative approach to the topic of intimacy, the book offers a fascinating examination of how life-worlds are constructed by material practices. It will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, religion, and material culture. (shrink)

Religion: material dynamics is a lively resource for thinking about religious materiality and the material study of religion. Deconstructing and reconstructing religion as material categories, social formations, and mobile circulations, the book explores the making, ordering, and circulating of religious things. Split into three sections, Part One revitalizes basic categories--animism and sacred, space and time--by situating them in their material production and testing their analytical viability. Part Two examines religious formations as configurations of power that operate in (...) material cultures and cultural economies and are most clearly shown in the power relations of colonialism and imperialism. Part Three explores the material dynamics of circulation through case studies of religious mobility, change, and diffusion as intimate as the body and as vast as the oceans. Each chapter offers insightful orientations and surprising possibilities for studying material religion. Exploring the material dynamics of religion from poetics to politics, David Chidester provides an entry into the study of material religion that will be welcomed by students and specialists in religious studies, anthropology, and history."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This volume attempts to show why ontology matters for a proper grasp of issues in bioethics. -/- Contemporary discussions on bioethics often focus on seeking solutions for a wide range of issues that revolve around persons. The issues in question are multi-layered, involving such diverse aspects as the metaphysical/ontological, personal, medical, moral, legal, cultural, social, political, religious, and environmental. In navigating through such a complex web of issues, it has been said that the central problems philosophers and bioethicists (...) face are ethical in nature. In this regard, biomedical sciences and technological breakthroughs take a leading role in terms of shaping the sorts of questions that give rise to ethical problems. For example, is it ethical to keep terminally ill patients alive on dialysis machines or artificial ventilators? Is it ethical to take someone’s vital organs upon death and transplant them into another person’s body without any prior consent from a deceased person? Reproductive techniques also raise complicated ethical issues involving in vitro fertilization, contraceptives, prenatal testing, abortions, and genetic enhancements. Moreover, biomedical issues raise ethical problems in regards to research on human subjects, stem cell research, and enhancement biotechnology. The beginning and end of life issues bring up their own complicated ethical conundrums involving, among other things, terminating life support and euthanasia. -/- This book approaches such complex bioethical questions by engaging in ground-level debates about the ontology of persons. This is a non-negotiable first step in taking steps forward in seeking a plausible solution(s) for the complex ethical problems in bioethics. Although the contributors in this book advance their arguments in their own ways, they all agree on one crucial methodological point: the importance of taking the ontology of persons for bioethics seriously. This is the spirit that brings the contributors of this book together as they seek to build their case(s) concerning the nature of persons. (shrink)

This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across religious studies and the environmental humanities advances a lively discussion on materialism in its many forms. While there is little agreement on what 'materialism' means, it is evident that there is a resurgence in thinking about matter in more animated and active ways. The volume explores how debates concerning the new materialisms impinge on religious traditions and the extent to which religions, with their material culture and beliefs in (...) the Divine within the material, can make a creative contribution to debates about ecological materialisms. Spanning a broad range of themes, including politics, architecture, hermeneutics, literature, and religion, the book brings together a series of discussions on materialism in the context of diverse methodologies and approaches. The volume investigates a range of issues including space and place, hierarchy and relationality, the relationship between nature and society, human and other agencies, and worldviews and cultural values. Drawing on literary and critical theory, and queer, philosophical, theological and social theoretical approaches, this ground-breaking book will make an important contribution to the environmental humanities. It will be a key read for postgraduate students, researchers and scholars in religious studies, cultural anthropology, literary studies, philosophy and environmental studies. (shrink)

El presente artículo rastrea el pensamiento antropológico de Miguel de Unamuno, descubriendo su esencia en el aspecto religioso. El desarrollo de este argumento permite explicitar la formación intelectual de Unamuno, destacando la relación de su pensamiento con tres de los filósofos que más le influyeron: Agustín, Pascal y Kierkegaard. El estudio de las relaciones entre ellos permite, a su vez, volver a poner la cuestión sobre Dios como un problema filosófico siempre actual. This article presents anthropological thought of Miguel de (...) Unamuno. The religious aspect expresses the essence of the Spanish writer's thought. In the development of his mind three important authors have influenced Western philosophy: St. Augustine, Pascal and Kierkegaard. This paper studies the relationships between them and with them again proposes the question of God as a philosophical problem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Purity and Pollution: Resisting the Rehabilitation of a VirtueAmy Mullin“Purity” is a term used infrequently in contemporary academic literature. A survey of periodical indexes for the past ten years shows that references to purity occur predominantly in metallurgy. Purity is an increasingly important topic in anthropology, religious studies, and history, but it is a decidedly rare concern in philosophy. In my most recent search I found three (...) references.Yet “purity” was once a recurrent term in the philosophical tradition ranging from Plato through Augustine and Kant to Kierkegaard. Today when we encounter the many references to purity in the history of philosophy we too often filter them out. We assume either that “pure” is a generic term for good, or, in what seems a more knowing and sophisticated response, we read “pure” as a code term for chastity or sexual morality, the elimination, suppression or control of sexual desire. In both cases purity is written off either as a generic or as an old fashioned and rather embarrassing virtue. Hence it seems there is little reason for contemporary philosophical investigation into the rhetorical use of the language of purity and pollution.Three assumptions account for the lack of contemporary philosophical interest in the topic. First, it is assumed that purity is no longer a concern in twentieth-century philosophy. Second, purity in historical discourse is considered to be limited to a prudish or downright misogynist hostility to sex. Third and finally, it is assumed that the work historians and anthropologists have done recently into connections between purity beliefs and practices and social cohesion is irrelevant for philosophy. This is because purity in philosophy is supposed to be a resolutely individualist virtue, having little or nothing to do with unified and coherent communities.There are elements of truth to all three beliefs, but they also contain important distortions of the truth. As regards the first assumption, purity remains a concern in contemporary aesthetics, where it often means roughly something like a priori and apolitical; but I am interested in whether the concern with purity has survived in philosophies with ethical implications. [End Page 509] Here it is my contention that authenticity is the twentieth-century descendant of the virtue of purity.Second, there is much more to the rhetoric and practices of purity than concern with the sexual dimension of life, though this is a key aspect of most, and the beliefs and practices are often misogynist. There have been numerous anthropological documentations of ways in which purity beliefs, particularly an emphasis on sexual purity, are used to control women. Santi Rozario’s work, for instance, makes this point in her analysis of contemporary Bengali village life. 1 The connection between the language of purity and the practice of female circumcision, which I will not discuss in this paper, is in itself evidence enough of connections between purity beliefs and practices harmful to women. 2 However, I hope to show that there is more to purity than misogyny. Purity most basically is about order, both social and personal. 3My response to the second assumption, that purity masks an obsession with sexual control, indicates the source of my disagreement with the third, the contention that purity in philosophy is exclusively an individual virtue. Communal beliefs and practices associated with the language of purity and pollution are relevant to the philosophical treatment of purity because of the presence in both the practices and the philosophies of an interplay between social and personal order. As a result I believe an understanding of the dynamics of beliefs about purity in social practice can inform a philosophical concern with purity.First I investigate shifts in beliefs and practices concerning purity and pollution. I will concentrate on three models: ancient Greek (from the eighth to the third century BC), biblical to Talmudic Judaism (from the third century BC to the third century AD), and early Christian (from the first to the fifth century AD). These represent three traditions which have played a very significant role in shaping western civilization, theology, and philosophy. 4 They were also frequently interrelated in this period, as Christian and Jewish Platonists writing in Greek attest and of course as... (shrink)

The article proposes the consideration of Skovoroda’s philosophical heritage in the complex contexts of the European philosophical thought in its historical dimension. This complexity was caused through the secular tendency of the Enlightenment ideology with its explanation patterns for human being and social life. The mediological method developed of R. Debray and A. Koschorke is used for analyzing of Skovoroda’s attitudes towards the Enlightenment innovations in cultural and political life. The contemporary narratives of the First, the Second and the Third (...) Enlightenment are applied as pattern for explanation of Skovoroda’s attitude towards the secular trends in the culture and education caused of the Enlightenment ideology. Skovoroda is balancing on the edge of the First and Second Enlightenment: as a philosopher of freedom he makes human responsible for his way of life, but as philosopher of morality he defended the idea of God using the neo-platonic approach. The resurrection of Epicureanism in the Age of Enlightenment was a theoretical challenge for Skovoroda with resonance reactions because his ethical views were based on Epicurus concept of necessity as regulative principle for successful life which can be got without any effort. The religious anthropology developed of Skovoroda is considering in its anthropological-technical aspect. The central ideas of the First Enlightenment — omnipotence of education, disenchanting of religion and project of a new human are rethinking by Skovoroda from the perspective of his religious anthropology with imperatives of self-knowing and making distinction between visual and invisible thereby the way to the eternal truth is possible only possible by the new hermeneutic of the Bible. The semantics and heuristic metaphors in Skovoroda’s works are analyzed, which have a resonance effect with Protestantism and Freema sons ideas, some of which are actualized today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 433-436 [Access article in PDF] Sarah Iles Johnston. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. xxi + 329 pp. Cloth, $40.00. This book, which focuses on ancient Greek beliefs about how the dead interact with the living, is an important addition to the study of Greek religion. The subject (...) has become unusually popular in recent years, and when Johnston wrote in her preface that "scholars of our generation... have paid the topic little attention" (xi), she had no way of knowing that two other books on the topic were being published nearly simultaneously with her own. Fortunately, there is so much to say about ancient beliefs concerning ghosts that the three studies do not overlap much. Antonio Stramaglia's Res inauditae, incredulae: Storie di fantasmi nel mondo greco-latino (Bari 1999) and D. Felton's Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (Austin 1999) take broad views, examining both Greek and Roman ghost stories from literary and folkloric points of view, respectively. Johnston's book focuses only on the Greek dead, and does so in more detail and with more attention to the religious aspects of the living-dead interaction than either of the other books. She uses models developed by cultural anthropology to examine how Greek ideas about the dead changed over time in response to changing social conditions, including contacts with other cultures and the development of the polis.Johnston divides her study into three major parts. Part 1, "A Short History of the Dead in Ancient Greece," covers several aspects of the Greek view of the dead in the archaic and classical periods. First we have a brief chronological overview of the dead in Greek society from the Homeric poems to the fifth century B.C. The information is unfortunately rather scattered and uneven, and Johnston gives much of it simply as introductory material for later parts of her book: "This is a topic that I take up in depth in another chapter" (10); "As we shall see in chapter 6" (18); "This... is analyzed in depth in chapter 3" (19). This brief survey might best have been included in an introduction (there is only a short prologue), since it does not stand well on its own here and does not accomplish much overall other than to provide us with several very general conclusions: that the Greeks, like many other peoples, believed that the unburied or prematurely dead were angry with the living and could harm them; that the dead could be called up by the living to serve them; that other than this, the dead are not particularly active, at least in early Greek belief.Part 1 also includes information concerning rituals to the dead and the role of the goe\s. For this discussion Johnston takes a topical rather than chronological approach to the problem of what the Greeks believed about the dead versus what they did about the dead; "participants need not have believed in a ritual to go through its motions" (37). Johnston briefly describes the nature of rituals for and against the dead, distinguishing funerals and festivals that expressed affection from defensive rituals and festivals held out of fear, to avert the wrath of the dead. One particularly interesting section deals with the relatively recent finds of [End Page 433] the Selinuntine lex sacra, the Cyrenean inscriptions, and the rituals for the dead described thereon: both contain detailed descriptions of real aversion rituals involving the appeasement of ancestral spirits. Johnston is careful to remind the reader of the fragmentary nature of this particular evidence and at times sounds overly defensive or cautious: "although the evidence is too scant for us to be certain" (58); "its brevity makes it impossible for us to be sure" (62). Much of Johnston's argument is therefore highly hypothetical but nonetheless interesting and provocative. She concludes that the dead began to be perceived as a bigger source of problems in the late... (shrink)

The project : naturalist, theistic, and religious approaches to natural law -- Neo-Aristotelian naturalist ontology and anthropology and element 3) -- NAVE element 2) Anthropology and 3) the wish for wellbeing and its ingredients -- Element 4) Principles, precepts, and virtues -- Element 5) of NAVE -the method of determination in moral reasoning -- Physicalism is not proven -- Bringing back God and religion -- Select applications : organisational agency and ethics : states, churches, corporations -- Applying (...) natural law to violence : the NAVE and DGE positions -- Global poverty : the moral obligations of persons, organisations, and states to relieve poverty -- Natural law applications : sexuality and marriage -- Concepts of justice, benevolence and agape -- Justice and Satygraha/Agape Caritas : the rationality of unconditional non-violence (Ahisma). (shrink)

The computer has increasingly become the principal model for the mind, which means our most basic experience of ""reality"" is as mediated through a screen, or stored in a cloud. As a result, we are losing a sense of the concrete and imposing presence of the real, and the fundamental claim it makes on us, a claim that Iris Murdoch once described as the essence of love. In response to this postmodern predicament, the present book aims to draw on the (...) classical philosophical tradition in order to articulate a robust philosophical anthropology, and a new appreciation of the importance of the ""transcendental properties"" of being: beauty, goodness, and truth. The book begins with a reflection on the importance of metaphysics in our contemporary setting, and then presents the human person's relation to the world under the signs of the transcendentals: beauty is the gracious invitation into reality, goodness is the self-gift of freedom in response to this invitation, and truth is the consummation of our relation to the real in knowledge. The book culminates in an argument for why love is ultimately a matter of being, and why metaphysical reason in indispensable in faith. ""Philosopher D. C. Schindler defies the dragon of modernity, whose dominant thought patterns induce a life- and culture-threatening loss of reality and self. He offers life-giving proposals regarding love, being, and the transcendentals to restore us profoundly to the world and to ourselves as humans. Buy the book--you may divest yourself of others. Digest it, and revel in your already-involvement with a responsive reality--an involvement of intimate encounter and communion; a reality that is love, fraught with beauty, goodness, and truth."" --Esther Lightcap Meek, Geneva College ""Love and the Postmodern Predicament is a treasure trove of philosophical riches. Schindler does not merely indicate the need to return to metaphysics to wrestle successfully with what he carefully and accurately describes as our postmodern predicament, but in fact leads us out of that predicament. His profound and original reflections on love, grounded in the transcendental properties of being, are a radical refashioning of traditional metaphysical principles."" --Jonathan J. Sanford, University of Dallas ""In this rewarding little text, Schindler accomplishes something too rare among works of philosophy: he accommodates a wide audience and yet deftly draws the reader into deep metaphysical waters, into a consideration of some of the most profound and perennial philosophical concerns. Throughout, the timeliness of his reflections on love, beauty, God, and the good remains in clear view. This is a highly recommended work by an author of capacious intellect and generous spirit."" --Lee M. Cole, Hillsdale College D. C. Schindler is Associate Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at The John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Perfection of Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel between the Ancients and the Moderns (2013). (shrink)

Die Frage nach Sinn ist eine bleibend existentielle Frage des Menschen. Sie wird dringend aktuell in einer Zeit zunehmender Säkularisierung und Multioptionalität. Eine Theologie, die die Gesellschft prägen will, muss hierzu eine Antwort aus der Mitte des christlichen Glaubens geben können. Stefan Laurs stellt sich dieser Herausforderung. In Auseinandersetzung mit Charles Taylor und Walter Kasper analysiert er den neuzeitlichen Säkularisierungsprozess und widmet sich insbesondere der damit verbundenen Frage des Menschen nach Sinn und Erfüllung. Dabei wird ersichtlich, dass die Sinnfrage aus (...) theologischer Perspektive in der Gottesfrage zur Darstellung kommt. Nur in Gott, der Liebe ist, findet der Mensch den universalen Sinn un die Erfüllung seines Lebens. (shrink)