Las mujeres desafiaron la condición de "inferiores", "incapaces" o "dependientes" a que las destinaba su esencia femenina. Eligieron la literatura, la ciencia y la filosofía para expresarse. Incluso, en los períodos más adversos por la censura pública, algunas de ellas teorizaron en diarios íntimos o epístolas. Muchas veces se les prohibió el uso de la palabra y de la pluma, o simplemente fueron asesinadas por proseguir sus investigaciones. Durante largos períodos, no les fue permitido firmar con nombre propio sus textos, (...) para no deshonrar a sus familias, figurando su obra como de "autor anónimo". Superada la etapa de anonimato forzado, la mayoría firmaba con su inicial y su apellido paterno o marital, o un seudónimo masculino, desdibujándose así su autoría. Lo cierto es que la mayoría de las filósofas tuvo que esperar hasta el siglo XX para que sus obras fueran rescatadas del anonimato. Las mujeres llevaron a cabo un debate interesante respecto de la no-sexuación del alma. Desde la Antigüedad, la mayoría de los filósofos varones sostuvo una concepción dualista del ser humano, es decir, en términos de cuerpo y alma unidos pero separados o separables. Ellos sostuvieron que la carne o cuerpo material limitaba al alma o la razón. Y como los cuerpos de las mujeres sufren procesos que no controlan -menstruación, embarazo, lactancia-no alcanzan la perfección, son materia imperfecta, haciéndolas esto más débiles, fofas y frágiles. Sin embargo, ellas siempre entendieron al "alma" o "razón" como a-sexuada y al "cuerpo" como portador de las marcas del sexo, de la raza u otras. Es decir, que un mismo argumento les valió para desmontar la jerarquización de los sexos y de las razas impuesto al pensamiento a lo largo de los siglos. Por esto, para conocer las ideas, la obra y los aportes de estas mujeres, Ellas lo pensaron antes. Filósofas excluidas de la memoria reúne una selección de veintidós filósofas que desde la Antigüedad hasta nuestros días han contribuido y contribuyen a la construcción del pensamiento y el desarrollo de la sociedad. Ellas lo pensaron antes aims to shed a light on the lives of extraordinary women who defied conventional female roles by devoting themselves to literature, science, and philosophy. In these pages, readers will become acquainted with the ideas, works, and contributions of twenty-two female philosophers from Antiquity until the present time who have been--and still are--instrumental to the evolution of ideas and the development of our societies. ​. (shrink)

Spinoza’s concepts of wonder, the imitation of affects, cheerfulness, and devotion provide the basis for a Spinozist aesthetics. Those concepts from his Ethics, when combined with his account of rituals and festivals in the Theological-Political Treatise and his Political Treatise, reveal an aesthetics of social affects. The repetition of ritualised participatory aesthetic practices over time generates a unique ingenium or way of life for a social group, a singular style which distinguishes them from the general political body. Ritual and (...) the imitation of affects explain why specific styles of art are associated with consistent styles of bodily modifications, clothing, and affects. This paper claims, not that already similar people flock to the same art, but rather, that immersion in the same art is what produces their similarity. Art (especially in the immersive, festival-like experience of live performance) can generate the affect of devotion, which intensifies in-group love, temporarily blocks affects of sadness, and focusses one intently on the aesthetic experience due to devotion’s connection to wonder. Cheerfulness shows that, through variation of aesthetic objects, art can cause pleasure without risking excess. In addition, while politics’ central affect is sad fear, aesthetically-united groups are bound by joyful affects. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article investigates drawing as a form of devotional attention. Engaging with the work of María Lugones and examples from Josef Albers, Corita Kent, Franz Opalka, Georgia O’Keeffe, and William Kentridge, each section revolves around drawing in relation to embodied practices of being together with others. In addition to a personal account of memories and rituals of drawings, this article examines the degree to which drawing hones a pragmatic sense for fallibility, fluidity, and open-ended research, while arguing for drawing (...) as a form of commitment to community that challenges historical associations of creativity with individualistic or uninhibited freedom. (shrink)

This research explores the concept of religious universalism and its potential impact on expressions of Islamic devotion within Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The study aims to investigate how Islamic practices and beliefs can serve as a deterrent against the proliferation of religious extremism. By examining various dimensions of Islamic religiosity in these countries, this research seeks to uncover the ways in which a broad and inclusive interpretation of religion can contribute to countering the influence of radical ideologies. Through an (...) analysis of religious rituals, educational frameworks, and cross-faith engagements, this study offers insights into the capacity of religious universalism to mitigate the advancement of religious extremism across diverse cultural and social contexts. Contribution: This research enhances our understanding of how universality of religion can serve as a deterrent against religious extremism by examining its manifestations within the contexts of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The findings offer practical insights and recommendations that can inform policies and initiatives aimed at fostering tolerance, inclusivity, and harmony within diverse religious societies. (shrink)

Articles, chiefly on Hindu religious literature and Indian philosophy.

Devotion is the defining religious practice and central theological concept of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition, and this article is about the catalytic event that is said to instigate bhakti in the non-devoted. I examine how Jīva Gosvāmin and Viśvanātha Cakravartin, two important theologians in this tradition, argue that the cause of bhakti in the non-devoted is a meeting with a devotee. In this meeting, the non-devoted may develop conviction, which in turn gives him or her the motivation to continue (...) along the path of bhakti, the steps of which were charted in the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu of Rūpa Gosvāmin. Based on a few key passages from the Gauḍīya’s primary scriptural source, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Jīva and Viśvanātha argue that this conviction for bhakti is developed spontaneously. Since the spontaneous conviction to practice bhakti can only occur in sādhu-saṅga, or a meeting with a devotee, what causes that meeting? The devotee always acts freely and independently ; thus his or her motivation to meet and inspire conviction in the non-devoted is not reducible to a divine plan, divine grace, the piety of the receiver, special features of the receiver’s soul, high birth, or any other designation. Rather, the cause of sādhu-saṅga is the bhakti “living in the heart” of a devotee. This bhakti makes the devotee feel compassion toward the non-devoted, which leads him or her to provide sādhu-saṅga, which then creates conviction, which eventually leads to bhakti. (shrink)

This article approaches the notion of engagement from the perspective of critical ontology. With language as the starting point of its hermeneutic task, it commences with an etymological analyses of diverse Indo-European words gravitating around the semantic field of the notion of engagement. From these introductory insights obtained by an exercise in comparative linguistics, devotion and commitment are mapped as two opposite, yet inseparable, modes of being of engagement. Both of these modes seem to condition engagement in an ontologically (...) disparate manner. While examining their fundamental structures, some of the canonical concepts of history of philosophy such as being, existence, subjectivity, or world - and also some of its constitutive binary oppositions such as body/mind, individual/collective, transcendence/immanence, light/darkness and sacred/secular - will be reconsidered through the prism of different ontological dispositions that devotion and commitment impose respectively on engagement. The overall aim of this investigation is to bring forth the main existential characteristics of being-engaged, by interpreting the roles of who, where, and what of engagement, and in order to provide a fundamental conceptual apparatus for a critical ontology of engagement. (shrink)

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna lays out three paths of yoga as the means to achieve human perfection: the path of self-less action, the path of knowledge, and the path of devotion. In this paper I will argue for an interpretation of the Gita in which the path of devotion is the last step that leads to moksha. This is not to claim that bhakti yoga is more important than karma and jnana yoga, but rather that the latter two (...) are more elementary. In order to practice bhakti yoga, one must first have practiced karma and jnana yoga. All three forms of yoga are equally important—but there is a prioritized order in which they are to be practiced. On my reading, bhakti is more than having an intense feeling of love for God, because practicing devotion to God is an intellectual love of God that entails an intuitive understanding of the essence of things. My approach is to cross-examine the concept of human perfection as discussed in the Gita and Spinoza’s Ethics. Human perfection is characterized in both texts as a total liberation from being guided by things external to oneself other than one’s own nature. In other words, the aim of life is to liberate oneself by acquiring the right kind of knowledge. The freer one becomes and the more knowledge that one has, the more perfect one becomes. Thus, Spinoza’s idea of the “free man” resembles the self-realized agent in the Gita, because a human being becomes more “perfect” when he expresses God’s power to a greater degree. Bhakti yoga is the last step on the path to attain knowledge of God because in bhakti yoga, one employs the method of intuition to grasp God’s essence. As such, unlike karma and jnana yoga, the knowledge acquired in bhakti yoga is not empirical. In the Gita, rational devotion is a single act of both the mind and the heart, which, in turn, will lead to the practice of self-less actions. (shrink)

Devotion is associated with showing commitment to what individuals choose. But is perceived devotion influenced by how individuals react to what they did not choose? Two experiments (N = 1,000) indicate that rejecting alternatives is a key behavioral cue for assessing devotion. Study 1 documents the basic effect: individuals who reject alternatives were seen as more devoted than individuals who accept or are ambiguous toward alternatives. The result remained regardless of whether individuals self-identified with being devoted and (...) exerted effort toward their target of devotion. Rejecting alternatives predicted greater likelihood of being trusted and viewed as living a good life, mediated by perceived devotion. Study 2 examined whether people distinguish between different types of devotees who reject alternatives, in terms of the process (mindful vs. mindless) and nature (neutral vs. harmful to the self) of their choices. Individuals who engaged in harmful devotion were less likely to be perceived as devoted, trusted, or living a good life than individuals who did not. Individuals who mindlessly rejected alternatives were also evaluated more negatively than individuals who mindfully rejected alternatives. Altogether, these findings not only illuminate how rejecting alternatives inform our understanding of devotion but also reveal its broader impact on social evaluations. (shrink)

In Death-Devoted Heart Roger Scruton argues that Tristan und Isolde has profound religious meaning. Blending philosophy, criticism and musicology, he shows the work is as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries. Scruton's analysis touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption.

L’attribution au jésuite Jean-Pierre Caussade, faite sans recherche suffisamment critique des sources, du célèbre Traité de l’abandon à la Providence divine est remise en cause par l’analyse sérieuse, socio-historique, sémantique et graphologique, de la tradition manuscrite ainsi que par d’autres documents d’archives, dont certains récemment découverts. Ce traité, composé directement sous forme de traité et non de recueil de lettres, semble l’œuvre d’une femme de Lorraine, laïque et cultivée, correspondante de Caussade, en lien avec les monastères de la Visitation. Héritier (...) de la tradition mystique, mais influencé par la philosophie des Lumières, cet ouvrage signale le déclin du modèle de spiritualité « dévote » qui avait cours en Europe au XVIIe siècle.The attribution of the famous Traité de l’abandon à la Providence divine which was made to the Jesuit, Jean-Pierre Caussade, without carrying on any sufficient critical research about the sources, is questioned through the serious, sociohistorical, semantic, graphological analysis of the manuscript tradition as well as the analysis of other documents, some of which have been recently discovered in the Records. This treaty, directly written as a treaty and not as a collection of letters, seems to be the work of a woman living in Lorrain, a laywoman of great culture, a correspondent of J.P. Caussade, linked with the Visitation monasteries. Bearing a legacy of the mystic tradition, but also influenced by the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, this work shows that the model of “devout” spirituality current in Europe in the XVIIth century is on the wane. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende analisar os cemitérios como espaço de múltiplas devoções, dentre elas as devoções marginais: as diversas formas com as quais as pessoas cultuam seus mortos, através de seus túmulos. As devoções que são manifestadas perante esses túmulos dentro dos cemitérios demonstram esta prática de fé, que se denomina de devoção marginal. Pessoas comuns que após a morte, ganham a veneração de fieis que lhe pedem a interseção junto ao sagrado, são cultuadas como milagreiras. Após o pedido realizado, o (...) devoto passa há ornamentar o tumulo do Milagreiro, com Flores, Velas, Ex votos em forma de agradecimento. O túmulo então se torna objeto de veneração e peregrinação. O artigo examina como esta devoção no cemitério do Bonfim, em Belo Horizonte, mais especificamente no túmulo da milagreira Irmã Benigna, auxilia os devotos nos momentos de suas angústias e aflições. Analisa-se como essa devoção se perpetua à margem da crença oficial. Palavras-chave : Morte. Enterramento. Túmulo. Devoção. Irmã Benigna.This article analyzes the cemeteries as a place of many devotions, devotions among them marginal. the various ways in which people worship their dead through their graves. The devotions that are manifested before these graves within the cemeteries demonstrate the practice of faith is called the marginal devotion. Ordinary people who are worshiped as a miracle worker. The article examines how this devotion in the cemetery of Bonfim in Belo Horizonte City, more specifically in the miraculous Num Benigna’s Tomb helps the devotees by the time their distress happene. It looks at how devotion is perpetuated the margin of the official belief. Keywords : Death. Burial. Grave. Devotion. Nun Benigna’s. (shrink)

This volume introduces an original philosophy of Jewish religious thinking as devotional intelligence. It establishes the intellectual warrant of such thinking in light of two related principles: relativity v. intelligence—the metaphysical principle that knowing is of being—and the normative principle of sacral attunement.

Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava thinkers adapted rasa theory to a context of devotion to the god Kṛṣṇa. In doing so, bhayānaka-rasa, the aestheticized experience of horror, presents interesting complexities. This paper examines the conceptualizations of bhayānaka-rasa by four Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authors: Rūpa Gosvāmin, Jīva Gosvāmin, Kavi Karṇapūra, and Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa. Between them, they discuss three distinct modes of bhayānaka-rasa in a devotional context: a devotee’s fear after committing an offense against Kṛṣṇa, fear of some dreadful being who the devotee thinks might (...) hurt Kṛṣṇa, and fear of Kṛṣṇa’s display of his cosmic form. This paper also briefly examines the Rūpa’s explicit rejection of the fear felt by Kaṃsa as a case of devotional bhayānaka-rasa. A central concern for the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authors is whether fear, a typically unpleasant emotion, can attain the status of a rasa and how it is subordinated to more direct forms of devotion. This paper argues that these thinkers make an important contribution to reconceptualizing bhayānaka-rasa, particularly highlighting Jīva’s Gosvāmin’s argument that the real object of bhayānaka-rasa is not the person who serves as the source of fear, but is Kṛṣṇa, out of love for whom such fear is felt. (shrink)

Why do people persist in commitments that threaten their happiness, security, and comfort? Why do some of our most central, identity-defining commitments resist the effects of reasoning and critical reflection? Drawing on real-life examples, empirical psychology, and philosophical reflection, this book argues that these commitments involve an ethical stance called devotion, which plays a pervasive—but often hidden—role in human life. Devotion typically involves sacralizing certain values, goals, or relationships. To sacralize a value is to treat it as inviolable (...) (trade-offs with ordinary values are forbidden), incontestable (even contemplating such trade-offs is prohibited), and dialectically invulnerable (no rational considerations can disrupt the agent’s commitment to the value). Philosophy of Devotion offers a detailed philosophical account and defense of these features. Devotion and the sacralization of values can be reasonable; indeed, a life involving meaningful, sustained commitment depends on these stances. Without devotion, we risk an existential condition called normative dissipation, in which all of our commitments become etiolated. Yet devotion can easily go wrong, deforming into the individual and group fanaticism that have become pervasive features of modern social life. The book provides an alternative to fanaticism, investigating the way in which we can express non-pathological forms of devotion. We can be devoted through affirmation and through what is termed the deepening move, which treats the agent’s central commitments as systematically inchoate. Each stance enables a wholehearted form of devotion that nevertheless preserves flexibility and openness, avoiding the dangers of fanaticism on the one hand and normative dissipation on the other. -/- (The attached file contains the introductory chapter.). (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to test how far the concepts of depth psychology can be used to further understanding of religiously motivated acts of violence that occurred in another age and another cultural environment. The particular behaviour studied is the violence exhibited in the lives of the Tamil Saiva saints of Southern India who lived in the sixth to eighth centuries CE. The relevant historical evidence is the account of their lives recorded in the hagiographical epic known as (...) the Periya Purānam of Cēkkilār . The term “depth psychology” is here taken to denote both the psycho-analytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and their successors, and the analytical psychology of the Jungian school. It will be shown that in spite of the methodological difficulties, psychological concepts drawn from these sources can be used to throw light on the religiously motivated behaviour here considered. (shrink)

Why do some individuals willingly make extreme sacrifices for their group? Whitehouse argues that such willingness stems from a visceral feeling of oneness with the group – identity fusion – that emerges from intense, shared dysphoric experiences or from perceived close kinship with others. Although Whitehouse's argument makes a valuable contribution to understanding extreme sacrifice, factors independent of identity fusion, such as devotion to sacred values, can predict self-sacrifice.

It is tempting to think (1) that we may sometimes have hopelessly utopian duties and yet (2) that “ought” implies “can.” How might we square these apparently conflicting claims? A simple solution is to interpret hopelessly utopian duties as duties to "pursue" the achievement of manifestly unattainable outcomes (as opposed to duties to "achieve" the outcomes), thereby promising to vindicate the possibility of such duties in a way that is compatible with “ought” implies “can.” The main challenge for this simple (...) solution is to say what the relevant “duties to pursue” are supposed to involve. We survey several existing candidates (duties to try, duties to approximate, duties to do our part, and dynamic duties) and argue that none of them succeeds in delivering on the promise of the simple solution. We then propose a previously untheorized class of duties that we call "duties to devote ourselves" to achieving an outcome, and argue that such duties provide us with an interpretation of hopelessly utopian duties that is up to the task. (shrink)

According to the traditional Christian understanding, being devoted to God is partly constitutive of human welfare. I explicate this tradition view, in three stages. First, I sketch a general theory of well-being which I call ‘Platonic Personalist Perfectionism.’ Second, I show how being devoted to God is uniquely perfective. I discuss three different components of the posture of devotion: abnegation (surrender of one’s will to God), adoration (responding to God’s goodness with attention, love and praise), and existential dependence (receiving (...) one’s self-worth as an unmerited gift from God). All three components of devotion are perfective in a dual way: they are salvific (they remediate a great harm) and consummative (they confer a great benefit). Third, I respond to the objection that devotion involves subjugating oneself, and thus amounts to an all-things-considered harm, notwithstanding whatever benefits it confers. I argue that so long as one’s acts of abnegating, adoring, and existentially depending are acts of one’s own, then subjugation is not essential to devotion. However, devotion does diminish one if the object of one’s devotion is unsuitable. I argue that the only suitable object of devotion is the God of traditional theism. (shrink)

Current relational phenomenologies of the Holy Mass remain on a fundamentally horizontal level. Here I develop a phenomenology of the Holy Mass and of Eucharistic devotion that explores the spiritual as well as the ethical transformations attendant on individuals of faith who engage in these practices. On the one hand, I hold as premise the traditional and magisterial teachings of the Church on the Sacrament and its devotion. On the other hand, I make use of the phenomenology of (...) Emmanuel Levinas, interpreting him in line with the minority but not unsubstantial spiritual reading of his work. After first summarizing Church teaching on the Mass and the Eucharist, I point out how the relational approach to a phenomenology of the Eucharist has been misapplied to the Sacrament. I then point out shortcomings in the phenomenology of two other Catholic writers on the Eucharist, Jean-Luc Marion and Michael Purcell. Finally, I develop a more adequate phenomenology of the Mass and the Eucharist, bringing together the spirituality and the ethics of the individual and of the Church as an ethical people. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of meditation and devotionalism in the Radhasoami tradition of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, a tradition of reform that questions and transcends traditional Hinduism in many ways. In the following, we study several texts and ritual practices of the Radhasoami tradition, in the example of the elaborate meditation called surat śabda yoga (yoga of the sound of the inner current). Our goal is to explore the complex interactions between meditation and devotion. In addition, (...) we wish to address yogic, meditative and devotional embodied practices, such as the collective meditation during the satsaṅg. (shrink)

In the 13th and 14th centuries CE the Śrīvaiṣṇava Hindu community of south India struggled to integrate the traditional values of the older brahmanical hierarchical system with the devotional egalitarianism that had come to the fore with fresh force in the Tamil vernacular tradition in the 7th and 8th centuries and thereafter. One of the most vexed aspects of this integration pertained to caste, and whether devotionalism foreclosed a continuation of traditional caste distinctions: do divine love and grace mandate radical (...) egalitarianism? Śrīvaiṣṇava theologians were divided on the issue, some more conservative, some more radical in their rhetoric about continuity and change. Yet, as this essay argues, none were willing to go to the extremes either of dismissing caste structures entirely or of entirely subordinating devotion to caste. New values were to take primary place, while old norms were to be reinterpreted and given new meanings. Analyzing well-known examples from the tradition they argued instead a balance between norms and exceptions, treating violations of caste as occasions to glorify the power of devotion but without predicting the end of caste altogether. Attention to this case sheds light on caste and devotion in the Hindu context, the nature of ethical debate in India, and consequently too ways in which rhetoric functions more widely in ethical analysis. (shrink)

The political thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi has been increasingly used as a paradigmatic example of hybrid political thought that developed out of a cross-cultural dialogue of eastern and western influences. With a novel unpacking of this hybridity, this article focuses on the conceptual influences that Gandhi explicitly stressed in his autobiography and other writings, particularly the works of Leo Tolstoy and the Bhagavad Gītā. This new tracing of influence in the development of Gandhi’s thought alters the substantive thrust of (...) Gandhi’s thought away from more familiar quasi-liberal interpretations and towards a far more substantive bhakti or devotional understanding of politics. The analysis reveals a conception of politics that is not pragmatic in its use of non-violence, but instead points to a devotional focus on cultivating the self (ātman), ultimately dissolving the public/private distinction that many readings of Gandhi’s thought depend upon. (shrink)

Medieval and early modern devotional works rarely receive serious treatment from philosophers, even those working in the subfields of philosophy of religion or the history of ideas. In this article, I examine one medieval devotional work in particular—the Middle High German image- and verse-program, Christus und die minnende Seele (CMS)—and I argue that it can plausibly be viewed as a form of medieval public philosophy, one that both exhibited and encouraged philosophical innovation. I address a few objections to my proposal—namely, (...) that CMS is neither public enough nor that it counts as proper philosophy—and I attempt to defend CMS’s public philosophical credentials in light of these objections. I conclude with a brief discussion of how devotional texts like CMS can help us do innovative public philosophy today. (shrink)

The article is devoted to transformations and the crisis of values in a global world. The genealogy of values is traced as a way of existence and justification of normativity characteristic of modernity. In this context, value is compared with cost. Both the first and second are reductions inherent in the modern way of human existence. Value personifies the reduction of the complex, heterogeneous, qualitatively diverse world of external goods of pre-industrial society to a single denominator of abstract labor. Same, (...) the complexly structured and heterogeneous reality of due acquired the appearance of a single space of values. In this context, the theoretical limitations of the pan-production view of human historical development are analyzed. The current war, which in its impact on humanity has acquired a de facto global character, is considered as a defining symptom of the crisis of values in global reality. War as a feature of the modern world is significant not in itself, but as an expression of the growing role of violence in the life of global civilization. In turn, the increase in violence and coercion is a manifestation of an even deeper process — the depreciation of values. The depreciation of values does not mean the destruction of certain specific values, but in general the role of the due in human life. In this regard, a key question arises about the prospects for overcoming the process of depreciation of values. By analogy with the three recognized paradigms of philosophizing (being, consciousness/subject, language), three historical paradigms of normativity are distinguished: transpersonal indisputable prescriptions (“commandments”); mediated by personal reflection and recognition of binding significance (values); abstinences — negative normative presumptions aimed at ensuring peaceful productive interaction with guaranteed autonomy of participants in interactions. The development of the normative practice of such abstinences may be with a possible scenario for overcoming the depreciation of values in the global world. (shrink)

How is devotion (bhakti) related to knowledge (jñāna)? Does one lead to the other? Do they correspond to different paths for different people? Commentators on the Bhagavad-Gītā have debated these questions for centuries. In this essay I will suggest, as many Indian commentators have, that the paths of devotion and knowledge described in the Gītā can be harmonized. I will not draw from Indian texts, however, but from a suggestive parallel in the history of Chinese religions: namely, the (...) development of a tradition of “dual cultivation” of Pure Land and Chan 禪. I will focus in particular on the works of Yunqi Zhuhong 雲棲祩宏 (1535–1615) and his use of the distinction between principle (li 理) and phenomenon (shi 事) to reconcile seemingly divergent religious paths. I will conclude by considering the implications of this synthesis for nondualist interpretations of the Gītā. (shrink)

Devotion to the Prophet Muḥammad was a major feature of late medieval and early modern Islamic religious life across much of the Islamic world. The history of this devotion remains understudied in relation to its importance and pervasiveness. This study takes as its locus of analysis a particular instance of early modern devotion: a weekly, public all-night session of ṣalawāt upon the Prophet that would become known as the maḥyā. Developed by the peasant-turned-shaykh Nūr al-Dīn al-Shūnī in (...) late Mamluk Egypt, performance of the maḥyā would spread over the following century throughout the Arab Ottoman world, undergoing changes, provoking controversy, and becoming embedded in the sacred spaces and ritual life of one city after another. I approach the history of the maḥyā as a discrete and legible instance of ritual change in an Islamic context, exploring this instance of communal devotion to the Prophet through such lenses as ritual studies and the spatial turn, examining the intersection of this devotional ritual with practices of subjectivity, the use and contestation of ritual space, and the meaning, regulation, and experience of the night. (shrink)

While Yoga (also called Bhakti, “devotion”) is a comprehensive philosophy, it is importantly an ancient and basic ethical theory, unique to South Asia (what is commonly called the Indian tradition). It is not a variant of virtue ethics, consequentialism and deontology, but is an additional kind of moral theory. And in its literary articulation, in dialog and story (such as the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads), it has a long history of criticizing teleological ethical theories, including – and especially – (...) consequentialism. It is a radically procedural ethical theory, does not require the Good to elucidate the Right, and provides a critical response to all three alternatives. -/- The main obstacle to understanding Yoga is methodological. It pertains to how we can understand philosophical options that we do not necessarily agree with, and which are novel relative to our background assumptions and beliefs. Without methodological clarity, we will be doomed to understand alternatives in terms of familiar options. Yoga's metaethics provides us the tools necessary to engage in this research. In addition, it also sets out a unique normative (ideal) ethical theory and a non-ideal practice that is now the foundation of decolonial practices of direct action. (shrink)

I defend a conception of Logic as normative for the sort of activities in which inferences super-vene, namely, reasoning and arguing. Toulmin’s criticism of formal logic will be our framework to shape the idea that in order to make sense of Logic as normative, we should con-ceive it as a discipline devoted to the layout of arguments, understood as the representations of the semantic, truth relevant, properties of the inferences that we make in arguing and reason-ing.

To be open-minded is to be willing to revise or entertain doubts about one’s beliefs. Commonly regarded as an intellectual virtue, and often too as a moral virtue, open-mindedness is a trait that is generally desirable for a person to have. However, in the major theistic traditions, absolute commitment to one’s religious beliefs is regarded as virtuous or ideal. But one cannot be completely resolved about an issue and at the same time be open to revising one’s beliefs about it. (...) It appears, then, that religious devotion is inconsistent with open-mindedness. The more religiously devout a person is, the more firmly she will hold to her convictions. And the stronger her belief commitments, the less open-minded she will be regarding these beliefs. So there appears to be a paradox here, where from the standpoint of religious devotion, it is virtuous to display an intellectual vice, namely closed-mindedness. I discuss this problem and explore some potential routes of escape from the paradox. (shrink)

The subtitle of Rousseau as Author refers to Rousseau’s motto, which elegantly describes the gist of Rousseau’s now commonly practiced ideas of authorship and responsibility, and concerns three overlapping issues: Rousseau’s well-known truthtelling in matters public and private, his devotion to a peculiar understanding of philosophy as a way of life, and his singular boldness in making statements that he knew could result in literary and political persecution. As Kelly says, the focus of the book is on the third (...) issue, but ultimately the book’s intention is to “show the preconditions” for a “full treatment of Rousseau’s understanding of philosophy”. (shrink)

This book explores the key motif of the religious Other in devotional (bhakti) literatures and practices from across the Indian subcontinent. The primary aim of this book is to reconsider and challenge inherited notions of the bhakta's or devotee's Other and unmask processes of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of different social and religious agents. The book considers the ways in which bhakti might be conceived as having an inter-regional impact--as a force, discourse, network, mythology, ethic--while critically engaging (...) with extant scholarly narratives about what bhakti is and tracing when and how those narratives have been used. The sheer diversity of South Asia's devotional traditions renders them an especially rich resource for examining social and religious fault lines, thereby furthering scholarly understanding of how communalism and sectarianism originate and develop on local or regional levels, with wider geographic implications. Bringing together studies from a subcontinent-wide variety of linguistic, geographical, and historical frames for the first time, this book will be an important contribution to the literature on bhakti, and it will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Religion and Asian Religion. (shrink)

Small, mass-produced pipe-clay figurines were popular devotionalia in the late medieval Low Countries. In this paper, focusing on representations of the Christ Child, I study the sensory and playful ways in which such objects were used as ‘props of perception’ in spiritual games of make-believe or role-play. Not only does this particular iconography invite tactile and playful behaviour, the figurines fit within a larger context of image practices involving visions and make-believe. Through such practices images were animated and imbued with (...) a divine power. Contemporary written sources suggest that, especially for women, ownership of and sensory engagement with small-scale figures provided them with agency. (shrink)

This study explores how religious women become legitimate actors in the public sphere and analyzes their agency—its meanings, capacities, and transformative aims. It presents a novel case study of Israeli Modern-Orthodox Agunah activists who engage in highly politicized collective feminist resistance as religious actors working for religious ends. Embedded in and activated by Orthodoxy, they advocate women’s rights to divorce, voicing a moral critique of tradition and its agents precisely because they are devoutly devoted to them. Such political agency is (...) innovatively conceptualized as “devoted resistance”: critique within relationship, enabled by cultural schema, and comprising both interpretive skills and “relational-autonomy” capacities. This study contends that understanding agency within religious grammars reveals its underlying logics, highlighting how structures shape the meanings and realization of women’s varied “agentive capacities.” It challenges current dichotomies like feminism/religion, resistance/submission, and autonomy/dependence. Overall, the author argues for a nuanced, culturally specific, capacity-based, relational approach to analyzing religious women’s agency. (shrink)

Inwardness and interiority are concepts that have a multifaceted currency within many areas of medieval studies. These fields include, but are not limited to, historical studies, theology and religious studies, literary studies, and art history. Studies on inwardness, interiority, and selfhood intersect with an interest in what has often been called “popular religion” and in devotional behavior, both clerical and lay, to produce an engagement, across many fields, with inward or private aspects of religious belief and practice. “Popular religion” has (...) sometimes been presented as generally distinct or separate from official, ecclesiastical, or institutional ritual, and, as such, it is associated with other concepts like “private devotion” and even “interior piety.” Unhelpful binary oppositions are implied by qualifying terms like “private” and “popular,” because those qualifiers invoke the unsaid “public” or “official” or “outward.” More recently, terms like “vernacular theology” and Frömmigkeitstheologie have been preferred for their attempt to break down the “high-low” implications of terms like “popular religion” and “private devotion.” Though these terms themselves are not without potential problems or implications, the consonance or dissonance between individual religiosity and official or corporate expressions of religious belief can, and should, be examined in a more subtle manner than has often been the case. Medieval religious devotion was not a universally or solely private activity that was in some way opposite to the public, structured religiosity of the church's liturgy. It has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years that liturgy and devotion should not be opposed in this way, as private versus public, free and expressionist versus structured and defined. That having been said, it is nevertheless the case that the kind of piety that we are accustomed to call “devotional,” or contemplative, or meditative, presupposes and requires a certain inwardness and self-awareness, even if such activity is carried out in the company of others, or even during liturgical services. (shrink)

Theocratic communities ensconced within liberal democracies ought to be treated differently than they are at present. Liberals have neglected to consider carefully the challenges that theocracy presents, largely because none has undertaken to examine the essence of that way of governing. In this there is a serious problem, however, for existing legal structures impede severely the religious free exercise of theocrats, and no appropriate solution to this injustice has yet been given. ;Theocracy is a distinctive mode of governance involving rigid (...) rule and religious authorities, and promoting a particular value above all others. Understanding the nature of theocracy enables one to see its shortcomings; however, it also serves to show how that way of governing may reasonably be important to the devout. If one properly acknowledges the moral right of persons to revise and pursue their conceptions of the good life, one must allow that theocrats should be permitted to live in their uncommon communities without substantial interference from liberal government. The best way to resolve the problem of theocratic communities living inside liberal democracies could be to provide those groups with quasi-sovereign status, allowing them greater freedom to live as they see fit, within certain morally required parameters. (shrink)

This article examines how modern Chinese Buddhism has been influenced by Christianity. For our purposes ‘modern Chinese Buddhism’ refers to a form of what has become known in the West as ‘Engaged Buddhism’, but in Chinese is known by titles which can be translated ‘Humanistic Buddhism’ or ‘Buddhism for Human Life’. This tradition was initiated on the Chinese mainland between the two World Wars by the monk Tài X?, and Part one of the article is devoted to him. Since the (...) communist conquest of China, its main branches have flourished in Taiwan, whence two of them have spread worldwide. The most successful, at least in numerical terms, has been Fo Guang Shan, founded by a personal disciple of Tài X?, Hsing Yun, now very old, and it is on this movement that we concentrate in Parts two and three. We differentiate between conscious imitation and analogous development due to similar social circumstances, and show how Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism have had different effects. In Part four, we examine Fo Guang Shan as a missionary religion. (shrink)

This article seeks to adumbrate something of an ascending complement to Blondel's descending Christology. For Blondel, the Word as Incarnate is not only the Redeemer but is also he in whom creation is constituted. Christ's synthesizing perception of creation mediates between the world and the creating Absolute and establishes things as real. Blondel's 'Panchristism' suggests that in his passive perception Christ is the keystone that solidifies and integrates even the most ignoble components of creation. In the current economy this passive (...) perception embraces the world as marred by sin. The way in which sin assumed by Christ in suffering and passivity is transformed in redemption is left underdeveloped, however. One aspect of a Christology that ascends from the sufferings of Christ is highlighted in reference to Blondel's own devotion to the Sacred Heart. This devotion illuminates an integration of sin and suffering into glory that is compatible with Blondel's thought. (shrink)

Originally the Adoro te devote was not a liturgical hymn but a prayer, probably intended by Thomas Aquinas for personal use when attending mass. Quoting the at present most reliable version of the poem, the author studies Adoro te devote from the angle of transformation: poetic, Eucharistic and mystic or eschatological transformation. Structure and form are analysed, and a number of themes discussed: two alternative interpretations of adoration, several concepts of truth intended in the poem, the good thief and doubting (...) Thomas as symbols of moral and spiritual imperfection, and living in connection, in union with God. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present a case for the value of argumentation as an instrument of rational persuasion in doctor-patient (and general health professional–patient) communication. By doing so, I also emphasize the value of argumentation theory—as a body of knowledge devoted to the study of argumentation—both to enrich the study of doctor-patient communication and to enhance its quality by contributing to dedicated training courses for health professionals and patient education interventions. Argumentation is used in health professional–patient interactions, (...) and its significance in this context has been acknowledged in recent literature (see the collection of articles in Rubinelli and .. (shrink)