Introduction. The article analyzes the problem of memory of the Great Patriotic War in the story “Quarry” by the Belarusian writer Vasil Bykov. The memory of the War, as the authors of the article demonstrate, has special qualities and characteristics for those who participated in it, for those who really want to remember the War and really remember it. The purpose of the study. The paper shows how it is possible to interpret the phenomenon of memory in mythological and (...) class='Hi'>religious modes based on the material of V. Bykov’s novel “The Quarry”. Methods. The article uses the phenomenological method of A. Augustine and M. Heidegger, which leads to the existential time series of the “inner man”, as well as the method of creative hermeneutics, which allows to trace stable semantic structures behind the artistic canvas of V. Bykov’s text. The scientific novelty of the research. The mythological aspect of memory returns the characters to the point and event of the “beginning”, in which the formation of an integral self-aware personality took place, into an ontological event constituting the foundation of human identification. Such an event is a tragic, existential event. This event remains relevant in memory, not transient, not disappeared, and determines the characteristics of the subjectmemory all his life. This aspect of memory is opposed to “historical time”, according to which the past has already passed in memory; one should live and think today-the present and the future. The religious aspect of the story’s memory, as interpreted by the authors of the article, lies in the importance of memory, which it has in overcoming the power of time. Based on Augustine’s analysis, proposed by him in Confessions, the authors bring together the logic of V. Bykov’s memory research in this story and the reasoning of Bishop Hippo. Results. Memory endows the events of the past with living qualities of the present time and, thus, memory as a “memory of the sacrifice-ransom”, on the one hand, constantly encourages a Christian believer to think about death, and on the other hand, it is also an instrument of victory over it. In the matter of salvation, a religious person must remember himself, his deeds/offenses, his loved ones, the sacrifice of those and the One who redeemed this life and life in general with his death. In popular culture, in the religious worldview, in the historical attitude to life, such an attitude to memory is denied and causes misunderstanding. Hence, the attitude to the memory of the War in V. Bykov’s work seems outdated, archaic and irrelevant, which the authors of this article disagree with. Conclusions. The authors of the article conclude that the position of the writer front-line soldier V. Bykov in relation to the memory of the War is the position of “paradoxical evidence” and this position allows the author to really, most reliably and psychologically accurately describe from the “inanimate world” that area of the dead, terrible, inhuman that War creates and produces. And it turns out that it is necessary to remember this and think about it in order to be truly alive. (shrink)

The article outlines the methodological problems of the philosophical and religious studies discourse of the forecast activity, considers the forecast as a specific type of knowledge, the subject-object interconnection of knowledge in the conditions of forecasting. The analysis of the activity of the cognitive activity of the subject required, in turn, to consider the principle of anthropy and the vector of time changes. The article deals with the problems of the objectivity of scientific analysis of religious reality. The (...) article formulated the scientific-categorical apparatus, which corresponds to the forecast activity in the religious sphere. Specifies and defines certain concepts that help to focus the perspective of religious studies and adequately isolate and predict the religious aspect of social life. (shrink)

Though coming from distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion. Instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious. This unique collaboration fuses pragmatism and hermeneutics (...) and recognizes the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. Rorty discusses Vattimo's work Belief and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Vattimo explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. In a concluding dialogue, both philosophers analyze the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, (...) solidarity, and irony. This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

As research focusing on stress-related growth proliferates, links between religion and growth are increasingly reported. However, little research has focused on the role that religious coping plays in subsequent growth from major stressful life events. Findings from three longitudinal studies that examined aspects of religiousness as determinants of stress-related growth, as well as the potential mediation by religious coping, are presented. Results suggest that the influences of religiousness on growth vary by sample and by type of stressor. (...) Further, religious coping was found to mediate influences of religious orientations on growth for students and for older adults dealing with a variety of problems, but was unrelated to growth following bereavement in a second sample of students. Together, these studies provide support for the notion that religiousness influences growth in complex ways, only some of which are mediated through religious coping. Future research considerations are discussed. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Astrobiology in societal context Constance Bertka; Part I. Origin of Life: 2. Emergence and the experimental pursuit of the origin of life Robert Hazen; 3. From Aristotle to Darwin, to Freeman Dyson: changing definitions of life viewed in historical context James Strick; 4. Philosophical aspects of the origin-of-life problem: the emergence of life and the nature of science Iris Fry; 5. The origin of terrestrial life: a Christian perspective Ernan (...) McMullin; 6. The alpha and the omega: reflections on the origin and future of life from the perspective of Christian theology and ethics Celia Deane-Drummond; Part II. Extent of Life: 7. A biologist's guide to the Solar System Lynn Rothschild; 8. The quest for habitable worlds and life beyond the Solar System Carl Pilcher; 9. A historical perspective on the extent and search for life Steven J. Dick; 10. The search for extraterrestrial life: epistemology, ethics, and worldviews Mark Lupisella; 11. The implications of discovering extraterrestrial life: different searches, different issues Margaret S. Race; 12. God, evolution, and astrobiology Cynthia S. W. Crysdale; Part III. Future of Life: 13. Planetary ecosynthesis on Mars: restoration ecology and environmental ethics Christopher P. McKay; 14. The trouble with intrinsic value: an ethical primer for astrobiology Kelly C. Smith; 15. God's preferential option for life: a Christian perspective on astrobiology Richard O. Randolph; 16. Comparing stories about the origin, extent, and future of life: an Asian religious perspective Francisca Cho; Index. (shrink)

Global Governance Futures addresses the crucial importance of thinking through the future of global governance arrangements. It considers the prospects for the governance of world order approaching the middle of the twenty-first century by exploring today's most pressing and enduring health, social, ecological, economic, and political challenges. Each of the expert contributors considers the drivers of continuity and change within systems of governance and how actors, agents, mechanisms, and resources are and could be mobilized. The aim is not merely (...) to understand state, intergovernmental, and non-state actors. It is also to draw attention to those underappreciated aspects of global governance that push understanding beyond strictures of traditional conceptualizations, and that offer better insights into the future of world order. Three sections enable readers to appreciate better the sum of forces likely to shape world order in the near and not-so-near future: "Planetary," changes wrought by continuing human domination of the Earth and by war; current and future geopolitical, civilizational, and regional contestations; and life in and between urban and non-urban environments. "Divides," including threats to human rights gains; the plight of migrants; those who have and those who do not; persistent racial, gender, religious, and sexual-orientation-based discrimination; and those who govern and those who are governed. "Challenges," of food and health insecurities; ongoing environmental degradation and species loss; the current and future politics of international assistance and data; and the wrong turns taken in the control of illicit drugs and crime. Designed to engage advanced undergraduate and graduate students in international relations, organization, law, and political economy as well as the general reader, this book invites readers to adopt both a backward- and forward-looking view of global governance. It will spark discussion and debate as to how dystopic futures might be avoided and change agents mobilized. (shrink)

Religious education is a communication process between teacher and student. Martin Buber is one of the philosophers who attach importance to the communication and relationship that should be established between teachers and students in education. In Buber's dialogue philosophy, it is underlined that a reciprocal relationship should be established between teacher and student. Our study from this point aims to draw attention to the efforts of a sound communication opportunity between teacher and student in religious education in the (...) light of Martin Buber's thoughts. In this study designed as a qualitative research, the document analysis method was used. In this sense, the main theme of our study is Buber's books and articles translated into Turkish and English. Besides, the studies of Cohen, Friedman, Blenkinsop, and Boschki have also been studied. The relationship of the individual with the world in Buber's philosophy of dialogue takes place in two styles. The first is the I-S/He relationship style. The person who has this level of a relationship sees the world as an object to be experienced only for himself/herself. For this reason, there is no reciprocity in their relations and experience takes place within the individual. According to Buber, the second type of relationship is based on the I-You perspective. The individual who has this form of relationship makes the world meaningful in an open, sincere, and mutual relationship. In the education based on I-S/He behavior style, the teacher has a one-way relationship with students, which is not based on reciprocity. In this process, the teacher focuses more on the subject the student will tell. Buber criticizes this kind of education, which is avoided and not related to the student. According to Buber, education should be done according to the I-You behavior style. In this way, it is possible to realize the unique existence of the child and to unite with his/her inner and outer world with the power of mutual relationship and participation. In order for the learners to establish a sound relationship with the world in general and religious and moral phenomena in particular, the learners should be in contact with religious educators in the first place. In religious education, it is necessary to establish a relationship by the teacher in which religious beliefs and values are not imposed on the student and the authenticity of a student is respected. This relationship is only possible if the student trusts the teacher and knows that the teacher is really with him/her in person. The religious educator should provide the learner with real experiences that s/he can experience and feel and should be able to follow the inner world and thoughts of the learner in this process. In this context, it is necessary to turn onto the reality, problems, and needs of the period in which students live more than the future and adulthood. The tradition should be handled as a living organism that touches the student's life, not in the form of dull, finished events and stories, and focused more on principles and messages than events and people. As a result, education should aim not only to improve cognitive development and creativity but also to develop and excel in all aspects of the person. For this reason, emotional and social phenomena should be a part of religious education. The best way to include emotional and social phenomena in religious education lies in the relationship between teachers and students. For this reason, we think that it is necessary to concentrate more on relations theoretically between religious educators and learners. In fact, we also aim to remove the issue of communication from a technical issue and place it in an ontological issue perspective. This study aims to be a humble beginning for these purposes. (shrink)

Jack Miles, a former member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), and Mark Taylor, a philosophical atheist, have both in different ways brought religious and philosophical concerns into the wider world. Approaching the end of their careers as well as the end of their lives, they were prompted by the advent of a deadly pandemic amid worldwide political crises to think through matters of "ultimate concern": what is the human self, embedded as it is in a cosmos of nonhuman (...) and artificial intelligences? Within this larger ecology, what is the meaning of individual death? And can philosophy help us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually understand and accept our fundamental impermanence? The authors' sense of urgency about their impending mortality, the worth of a life, the grief of loss and what was left undone, the fragility of existence, the uncertainty of the ending permeate their conversations. Readers will be drawn into the inner lives, the hidden fears and emotions, the existential dread experienced by these two exceptional philosophers facing life's close in extraordinary times when both annihilation and revolutionary new beginnings seem equally possible. The authors glean insight from Kierkegaard and Weil, Dickinson and Baldwin, Nagarjuna and Mahavira, Bateson and El Greco, leavened with a little Gluck, Auden, Borges, Ella Fitzgerald, and Hamilton. Reminiscent of the intimate conversations in "My Dinner with Andre," they confront an unknown future. Combining the diary's closeness to the self with the reflection of the personal letter much as Karl Ove Knausgaard combines diary with novelistic realism, these two distinctive voices are uncompromising, immediate, and raw. At the book's end they decide that their dialogue "will continue to change us even after one of us, perhaps both of us, dies." Ghosts may not be holy spirits, but even an atheist can believe that they are real. (shrink)

This article explores the religious dimensions of Confucianism during the Ly-Tran dynasties (1009-1400 AD) in Vietnam, a period marked by significant sociopolitical and cultural transitions. Initially introduced as a moral and ethical philosophy from China, Confucianism underwent a complex process of localization, blending with indigenous Vietnamese beliefs and practices as well as Buddhism and Taoism. Through historical records, literary works, and ritual practices documented in “The Complete Annals of Đại Việt” and other classical texts, this study delves into how (...) Confucianism not only served as a guiding principle for governance, education, and social norms but also manifested religious aspects that influenced spiritual and religious life in Vietnam. The religious aspects of Confucianism during this era are evident in several key areas. Firstly, the concept of Heaven (Tian) and the Mandate of Heaven played a crucial role in legitimizing royal authority, with rulers and Confucian scholars frequently invoking divine will to justify political actions and social order. This sacralization of monarchy underpinned by Confucian ideals facilitated the integration of Confucianism into Vietnamese spiritual life. Secondly, the incorporation of Confucian rituals and practices, such as the Heaven Worship Ceremony (Tế Giao) and the veneration of Confucius and other sages at the Temple of Literature, highlights the religious dimensions of Confucian practice, emphasizing reverence, filial piety, and the moral obligations of rulers and subjects alike. Moreover, the article discusses how Confucianism interacted with and was influenced by Buddhism and Taoism, leading to a syncretic religious landscape in Vietnam. This interaction is illustrated through the blending of Confucian principles with Buddhist and Taoist ideals, affecting notions of kingship, governance, and the cosmological order. In conclusion, the religious aspect of Confucianism during the Ly-Tran dynasties significantly contributed to the shaping of Vietnamese identity, governance, and cultural heritage. By examining the religious dimensions of Confucianism, this article provides a more nuanced understanding of its role in Vietnamese society, highlighting the complex interplay between philosophy, religion, and politics in historical Vietnam. (shrink)

The paper attempts to show that Christian hope is not a product of religious fantasy. It finds today an ally in the dialogue with the natural sciences which started in recent years on the topic of the ultimate destiny of the world. The natural sciences have confirmed that the universe is doomed to physical annihilation. Humanity with its cultural riches, scientists say, is only an episode in universal history and doomed to perish. Hence, if the Earth is nothing more (...) than an island of rationality in a cosmic void, then the only thing we can do is to keep up a heroic attitude worthy of human beings towards our own fragile existence. Contemporary science’s visions of the future are pessimistic: abundant, though short-lived, evolution culminating in a sense of final futility and the ultimate destruction of all life in the universe. Such forecasts question religion’s claims for the eschatological transformation of all creation. Christian eschatology does not accept, however, reductionist presuppositions about the very nature of reality. The universe contains levels of meaning far richer than what we have been able to discover sofar. Theology’s task is not to provide easy consolation, or generate false hopes. It has a good reason to avoid catastrophism, and maintain calm in its strivings to keep up our faith in God’s concern for the destiny of all His creatures. Theologians have to take a serious stand on the very concept of finitude, furthered by natural and social sciences. This, in turn, will require critical review of such concepts as the world’s future in God, hope and new creation. This effort must be undertaken in dialogue with the scientific views of the world’s finitude. Both sides are prone to stereotype judgements and shallow answers which must be corrected in consideration of the complexity of the issue at hand. Christian theology has to justify its claim to truth, but certainly not by launching battles with science. Christian hope shows the new creation not as annihilation and destruction of the old but as its ultimate transfiguration and salvific transformation. It speaks about the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in this new universe’s emergence. Special attention is paid in the paper to the “logical” structure of matter. If the world ofultimate events is, in fact, to be a new world of the resurrection, created by transition into new reality, then certain scientific suggestions and data on the present world’s processes could prove helpful in grasping the truly cosmic dimensions of Christian hope. Crucial here will not so much be particular data but rather a sort of meta-science allowing the deduction of general concepts from the detailed achievements of scientific research. Such generalized insights include today the following elements: 1) the dynamic concept of physical reality, 2) the relationality of its processes and, 3) a deeper understanding of the complexity of matter/energy as carriers of a specific information-bearing pattern. It appears that there are some similarities in science’s and theology’s strivings for a deeper understanding of the truth of reality, which continues to evade our theories and teaches us modesty. Neither method nor concept has yet managed to explaineverything. There exists no universal key to a comprehensive interpretation. The postulate to avoid reductionism in approaching the manifold richness of reality is addressed to scientists and theologians alike. (shrink)

Recent summaries of psychologist James H. Leuba's pioneering studies on the religious beliefs of American scientists have misrepresented his findings and ignored important aspects of his analyses, including predictions regarding the future of religion. Much of the recent interest in Leuba was sparked by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham's commentary in Nature , “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith.” Larson and Witham compared the results of their 1996 survey of one thousand randomly selected American scientists regarding their (...) religious beliefs with a similar survey published eighty years earlier by Leuba. Leuba's original studies are themselves problematical. Nonetheless, his notion that different fields of science have different impacts on the religion‐science relationship remains valid. Especially significant is his appreciation of religion as a dynamic, compelling force in human life: any waning of traditional beliefs does not mean a decrease in religious commitment but calls for a new spirituality in harmony with modern scientific teachings. Leuba's studies, placed in proper context, offer a broad historical perspective from which to interpret data about religious beliefs of scientists and the impact of science and scientists on public beliefs, and opportunity to develop new insight into the religion‐science relationship. (shrink)

The paper attempts to show that Christian hope is not a product of religious fantasy. It finds today an ally in the dialogue with the natural sciences which started in recent years on the topic of the ultimate destiny of the world. The natural sciences have confirmed that the universe is doomed to physical annihilation. Humanity with its cultural riches, scientists say, is only an episode in universal history and doomed to perish. Hence, if the Earth is nothing more (...) than an island of rationality in a cosmic void, then the only thing we can do is to keep up a heroic attitude worthy of human beings towards our own fragile existence. Contemporary science’s visions of the future are pessimistic: abundant, though short-lived, evolution culminating in a sense of final futility and the ultimate destruction of all life in the universe. Such forecasts question religion’s claims for the eschatological transformation of all creation. Christian eschatology does not accept, however, reductionist presuppositions about the very nature of reality. The universe contains levels of meaning far richer than what we have been able to discover sofar. Theology’s task is not to provide easy consolation, or generate false hopes. It has a good reason to avoid catastrophism, and maintain calm in its strivings to keep up our faith in God’s concern for the destiny of all His creatures. Theologians have to take a serious stand on the very concept of finitude, furthered by natural and social sciences. This, in turn, will require critical review of such concepts as the world’s future in God, hope and new creation. This effort must be undertaken in dialogue with the scientific views of the world’s finitude. Both sides are prone to stereotype judgements and shallow answers which must be corrected in consideration of the complexity of the issue at hand. Christian theology has to justify its claim to truth, but certainly not by launching battles with science. Christian hope shows the new creation not as annihilation and destruction of the old but as its ultimate transfiguration and salvific transformation. It speaks about the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in this new universe’s emergence. Special attention is paid in the paper to the “logical” structure of matter. If the world ofultimate events is, in fact, to be a new world of the resurrection, created by transition into new reality, then certain scientific suggestions and data on the present world’s processes could prove helpful in grasping the truly cosmic dimensions of Christian hope. Crucial here will not so much be particular data but rather a sort of meta-science allowing the deduction of general concepts from the detailed achievements of scientific research. Such generalized insights include today the following elements: 1) the dynamic concept of physical reality, 2) the relationality of its processes and, 3) a deeper understanding of the complexity of matter/energy as carriers of a specific information-bearing pattern. It appears that there are some similarities in science’s and theology’s strivings for a deeper understanding of the truth of reality, which continues to evade our theories and teaches us modesty. Neither method nor concept has yet managed to explaineverything. There exists no universal key to a comprehensive interpretation. The postulate to avoid reductionism in approaching the manifold richness of reality is addressed to scientists and theologians alike. (shrink)

All theories of world creation, whether scientific, philosophical, or religious, can readily acknowledge the fact that humans have primarily evolved to engage with nature, the individual self, fellow human beings, society, and other naturalistic aspect of existence. Nevertheless, several novel challenges ascend when the human mind engages with technology, media, machines, and related concepts such as—ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, and to name a few. For that reason, we need philosophy and critical assessment of the uncovered essence of advanced technologies, media (...) and machines and our way of life concerning them. In other words, protectively assessing their impact requires a thorough examination of ethical and existential concerns, including technology’s implications for freedom, AI’s evolving role, the essence of human being, and the unexamined transformative societal changes that follow. Building upon the premise that these phenomena share a common thread despite their apparent disparities, our interdisciplinary pursuit draws inspiration from philosophical luminaries such as Luciano Floridi, Karamjit S. Gill, David Kaplan, Aldous Huxley, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Gandhi. Through philosophical insights, we explore the essence of technology and its broad effects, with a focus on its impact on human freedom and essence in both public and private domains. (shrink)

The Homo naledi discovery introduced questions that had not been previously posed regarding fossil finds. This is because, apart from their fascinating physiology, they seemingly deliberately disposed of their dead in a ritualised way. Although this theory may still be disproved in future, the present article provisionally accepts it. This evokes religious questions because it suggests the possibility of causal thinking, wilful and cooperative behaviour, and the possibility that this behaviour entails traces of proto-religious ideas. This poses (...) the challenge to develop a hominin hermeneutics that endeavours to reconstruct the possible motivation behind this action. The relatively larger brain with its enlarged Broca's area suggests the possibility of a sophisticated communication system and an enhanced way of dealing with emotion. We know that almost all life forms have some form of awareness and that more sophisticated degrees of consciousness may be present in the higher primates. Various 'clues' are investigated to try and understand the H. naledi phenomenon: lessons from chimpanzee studies, the implications of tool making for hominin development, the possibility of a proto-language and the role symbol formation may have played. The H. naledi case also indicates on a theological level that religion is natural. Some attention is given to this thesis. Biological and environmental factors come into play to illuminate biological factors like emotion and higher cognition without which religion would not be possible. Sophisticated cognition is coloured by affect and this makes some form of reflection on the fate of loved ones who have died a strong possibility. (shrink)

Critical analysis of the philosophy of death in Indic religions.

The Sabbath is part of Jewish tradition. In Christianity it has taken on a new meaning. Both faiths saw it as a gift from God, a tool to affirm one’s spiritual creed and identity, and a way to maintain a distinct faith identity. The secularism of contemporary society has resulted in a misinterpretation of the purpose of Sunday rest and a disregard for the spiritual aspects that the Sunday celebration involves. A false perception of Sunday rest has emerged in modern (...) times: It is not perceived as a divine gift that enables a spiritual ministry, which leads to resistance and opposition to the restless anxiety of the consumerist world and serves as an alternative to advertising’s demanding presence in this world. This rest, as a gift from God, has been one of the most fundamental defining features of man’s connection with God throughout history. Since Christian antiquity, there has been substantial debate over how to observe this tremendous gift of rest. Rest was valued as a gift in the Jewish culture in a specific way that included defining the identity of the chosen people. Later, in the Christian tradition, it was connected to the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection and the spiritual healing He provided to the world. There has been much debate on the continuity and discontinuity between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday, as well as on how the transition from the Sabbath to the Sunday celebration came about. The two qualities of the Jewish Sabbath – a day of rest and a day of religious celebration – have been transferred to the Christian Sunday but in a radically different context.Contribution: By analysing early Christian literature, this study aims to investigate how the concept of Sabbath rest was taken up and reconstructed in Christianity in the celebration of Sunday, and how spiritual work was a constant in the life of Christian communities up until the 4th century, when Sunday rest was established by law. Contrary to Rordorf’s opinions, this article aims to show that Christians, despite being physically obligated to work on Sundays, tacitly observed this day as a day of resurrection, emphasising the spiritual work of the virtues as their vehicle towards their entrance into the rest in God, even before Sunday became socially established as a day of rest (Heb 4:1–11). This study intends to show that this unique vision of the Sunday rest of the early church can be an element of resistance and an alternative to the demanding stress and restless anxiety of modern society. (shrink)

The twenty-first-century business world has witnessed a series of large-scale scandals and outright fraud. New legislation aims to help identify future cases of fraud and stop the trend, but is it enough? How can people of faith balance the requirements of their beliefs with the demands of economic life within an increasingly corrupted society? Why did so many people participate or choose to ignore downright fraud in the past and how can we start the business community on a (...) path of recovery? These essays pursue these question and many others, including the meta-ethical foundations of vocation as a necessary step for business recovery. They maintain that what is taking place in businesses today is not just the loss of will to do good, but the loss of meaning, which ultimately demands more than what traditional business ethics and corporate social responsibility can offer. Combining creative biblical interpretation, Christian moral reflection, and business expertise, this book is a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at how business leaders, professionals, and students can integrate a sense of calling into their careers and into the business world as a whole. (shrink)

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)

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)

Jung's Psychology as a Spiritual Practice and Way of Life considers the pioneering depth-psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, primarily as a sage of world-class stature. The authors focus on Jung as an archetypal wisdom teacher, in three important respects: (1) in the post-modern West, primarily in interaction with Friedrich Nietzsche and his Thus Spake Zarathustra and also with theologian Paul Tillich and Zen master Karlfried Graf Durckheim; (2) in his deep spiritual kinship with the timeless universality of Lao-tze and his (...) classic The Tao Te Ching; and (3) in consideration of the future prospects of Jung's psychology in mind/body medicine, especially neuroscience, and in dialogue with quantum speculation. This book contends that Jung's psychology is not primarily a form of psychotherapy in the conventional sense but essentially a dynamic "religious philosophical system" constituting a spiritual practice and way of life. The dialogue format suggests not only Jung's own dialogue or "confrontation" with the Unconscious but also his generally unacknowledged spiritual affinity with the central Western philosophical tradition, a tradition stemming from Socrates and Plato and their devotion to the task of "living the questions.". (shrink)

The future of the United States rests in many ways on how the ongoing challenge of racial injustice in the country is addressed. Yet, humanists remain divided over what if any agenda should guide humanist thought and action toward questions of race. In this volume, Anthony B. Pinn makes a clear case for why humanism should embrace racial justice as part of its commitment to the well-being of life in general and human flourishing in particular. As a first (...) step, humanists should stop asking why so many racial minorities remain committed to religious traditions that have destroyed lives, perverted justice, and justified racial discrimination. Rather, Pinn argues, humanists must first confront a more pertinent and pressing question: why has humanism failed to provide a more compelling alternative to theism for so many minority groups? For only with a bit of humility and perspective-and a recognition of the various ways in which we each contribute to racial injustice-can we truly fight for justice. (shrink)

Advance directives are specific competent consumers’ wishes about future medical plans in the event that they become incompetent. Awareness of a patient’s autonomy particularly, in relation to their right to refuse or withdraw treatment, a right for the patient to die from natural causes and interest in end of life issues were among the main reasons for developing and legalizing advance medical directives in developed countries. However, in many circumstances cultural and religious aspects are among many factors (...) that can hamper implementation of advance directives. Islam and Muslims in general have a good understanding of death and dying. Islam allows the withholding or withdrawal of treatments in some cases where the intervention is considered futile. However, there is lack of literature and debate about such issues from an Islamic point of view. This article provides the Islamic perspective with regards to advance medical directive with the hope that it will generate more thoughts and evoke further discussion on this important topic. (shrink)

This interreligious dialogue--in which alternating chapters present each woman's thoughts, with a response by the other--grew out of a workshop Gross and Ruether presented in Loveland, Ohio, in 1999. Their conversations range across themes including: What is most problematic about my tradition? What is most liberating about my tradition? What is most inspiring for me about the other tradition? And, finally, religious feminism and the future of the planet. The two feminist thinkers and writers present widely diverging (...) class='Hi'>life histories and faiths, but they reach agreement on the issue at hand--what Buddhism and Christianity can offer the struggle to create ecological sustainability. The work has no subject index. c. Book News Inc. (shrink)

Ethics in the anthropocene -- Atmospheric powers: climate change and moral incompetence -- Christian ethics and unprecedented problems -- Global ethics: moral pluralism and planetary problems -- Sustainability science and the ethics of wicked problems -- Toxic wombs and the ecology of justice -- Impoverishment and the economy of desire -- Intergenerational risk and the future of love -- Sustaining grace.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 157-158 [Access article in PDF] Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet: A Buddhist-Christian Conversation. By Rita M.Gross and Rosemary Radford Ruether. New York: Continuum, 2001. 229 pp. This is a delightful book with many strengths. One strength is the framework of questions that organize the book: "What is Most Problematic about My Tradition?" "What is Most Liberating about My Tradition?" "What (...) is Most Inspiring for Me about the Other Tradition?" Gross and Ruether answer these questions in turn both succinctly and powerfully and respond to each other's answers in illuminating ways. These questions are framed by three other sections: an introduction to the nature of the kind of interfaith dialogue that Ruether and Gross have engaged in for many years and that they reproduce in this book; two autobiographies; and an essay by each on what her tradition offers to the task of attaining ecologically sustainable societies so essential to the future of the planet. All of the writing in response to these topics and questions is admirably clear, deep, and engaging. It leads the reader into the heart of the thinking of both Ruether and Gross.Which of the many strengths of the book is the most important to one as a reader depends on whether or not she or he is coming fresh to the thought and scholarship of Ruether or Gross. In my case, although I have read and taught books and articles by Rosemary Ruether over the years, I am not thoroughly familiar with her theological and ethical thought. I learned a great deal from her short, accessible presentations of Christian history and of her theology in this book.On the other hand, I have been very interested for a long time in how gender is [End Page 157] constructed in Buddhism and how women and men have expressed themselves, taught, and acted in Buddhist cultures. I have read all of Rita Gross's past work with great appreciation. I have assigned her book Buddhism after Patriarchy in dozens of courses on Women and Religion and on Buddhism at my university. I found familiar from Rita's other work the arguments, visions, and imaginative reconstructions in this book in answer to the core questions. It is still the case that many Buddhist lineages and communities, particularly where non-Western teachers are in charge, are slow to open the full range of practices and positions of responsibility to women. Yet Buddhist practice has a great deal to offer women. Rita Gross writes eloquently on these topics, with clarity, accuracy, passion, and balance. You can trust her on these subjects.I thus found Rita's autobiographical piece to be the most illuminating offering of the Buddhist part of the book. She tells of the suffering a girl of her nature had to endure in the environment in which she grew up. The facts of her life make evident the extraordinary courage, determination, and commitment she called forth from herself as she forged her own identity and her own pioneering path. She tells of the many roadblocks she encountered from those in authority in her graduate school when she insisted that studying the religion of women was an important task of the History of Religions. Her story illustrates just how powerful the blindness that we academics nourish unchallenged in ourselves can be. It also shows how badly we can act when students demand that we open our eyes. She recounts the difference she believes Buddhist practice made in her ability to sustain her feminist scholarship in the face of persistent lack of academic support.In Rita's autobiography, as also in Rosemary's, one can see how a particular intellectual and moral direction emerged for each woman out of her response to the particular practices and convictions of her social world. Rita's autobiographical piece is very helpful in understanding this great scholar and her times and what Buddhist practice came to mean in the life of a Western feminist scholar of religion. Rosemary's liberal Roman Catholic upbringing... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 155-157 [Access article in PDF] Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet: A Buddhist-Christian Conversation. By Rita M.Gross and Rosemary Radford Ruether. New York: Continuum, 2001. 229 pp. Is feminism indigenous to Buddhism and Christianity? Or must feminists reinvent their religious traditions? The probing autobiographical reflections by Rita Gross and Rosemary Ruether expose the tensions of feminist reform. Like many (...) class='Hi'>religious feminists, they claim to preserve continuity with tradition despite their innovations. But upon reading Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet, the similarities between feminist Buddhism and feminist Christianity lead me to wonder whether feminism plays a more formative role than tradition in shaping their visions of the future.The ingenious structure of the book allows the opportunity for maximum dialogue. [End Page 155] Authors write chapters paired on the same topic, and each chapter has a short response attached. This organization mirrors the real-life dialogue between Gross and Ruether that occurred at a workshop in Grailville, Ohio, in 1999. The back-and-forth movement allows for meta-reflection on feminist interpretation, on the self-understandings of scholars who practice the traditions that they study.The first two chapters are autobiographical. There is an especially detailed account of Gross's journey toward Tibetan Buddhism and a shorter chapter on the evolution of Ruether's Catholic identity. The second pair of chapters responds to patriarchal religious origins. Ruether's critique of Christian sexism is theological, dealing with Christology, anthropology, and ecclesiology. In contrast, Gross asserts that the Buddhist "view" or theology is nonsexist and even feminist, thus she considers male leadership as the main obstacle to women. The difficulty of defending such large claims in a short space is compensated by the fact that their conclusions have already been developed in previous publications.Striking parallels emerge when the authors identify what is most liberating in their tradition and most inspiring in the other tradition. In both cases, mindfulness practice in Buddhism and the prophetic voice in Christianity are singled out. The overarching message is that Christians can learn about prayer from Buddhists, and Buddhists can learn about social critique from Christians. Another crucial parallel occurs when the authors choose one key social problem to address religiously—they both focus on environmental ethics. They agree that loving care for the earth is the key to both ecological and human flourishing.One asymmetry, however, concerns sensitivity to departure from tradition. In particular, Gross questions whether by utilizing "prophetic" critique she is applying an extrinsic Hebrew and Christian viewpoint to Tibetan Buddhist reflection. I greatly admire how she faces up to the problem of discontinuity between feminist critique and Buddhist institutions rather than insist that the tradition is inchoately feminist. Ruether, on the other hand, does not take the discontinuity between traditional and feminist Christian viewpoints as seriously, although she undoubtedly reshapes Christianity, particularly theological doctrines, into new forms.From a Christian perspective, I notice striking omissions in Ruether's presentation concerning the subject of prayer and the theme of suffering. When Ruether experimented with lay monastic practice early on in her career, she became impatient with silence and intensive prayer as isolating and unproductive. In her autobiographical chapter, she speaks of turning away from prayer toward social engagement. Yet she also mentions admiration for certain contemporary monks and nuns who are on the vanguard of creative worship and ethical engagement. Although she admires Buddhist mindfulness, she does not take seriously analogous Christian meditative practices and their capacity to sustain social activism. She leaves the impression that prayer and action are separate paths, whereas Christian prayer and resistance may be closely associated.The nature of suffering and its overcoming are topics central to Christianity and Buddhism, as well as to feminist thought. For feminists, reflection on suffering tends [End Page 156] to concentrate on exposing and removing its causes, such as abuse, oppression, or violence. Buddhists also focus on cessation of suffering, but "suffering" is centrally an individual barrier to overcome before social issues can be corrected. In contrast, Christians think about... (shrink)

This work provides an overview of attempts to assess the current condition of the concept of creation order within reformational philosophy compared to other perspectives. Focusing on the natural and life sciences, and theology, this first volume of two examines the arguments for and against the beauty, coherence and order shown in the natural world being related to the will or nature of a Creator. It examines the decay of a Deist universe, and the idea of the pre-givenness of (...) norms, laws and structures as challenged by evolutionary theory and social philosophy. It describes the different responses to the collapse of order: that given by Christian philosophy scholars who still argue for the idea of a pre-given world order, and that of other scholars who see this idea of stable creation order and/or natural law as redundant and in need of a thorough rethinking. It studies the particular role that reformational philosophy has played in the discussion. It shows how, ever since its inception, almost a century ago, the concepts of order and law (principle, structure) have been at the heart of this philosophy, and that one way to characterise this tradition is as a philosophy of creation order. Reformational philosophers have maintained the notion of law as 'holding' for reality. This book discusses the questions that have arisen about the nature of such law: is it a religious or philosophical concept; does law just mean 'orderliness'? How does it relate to laws of nature? Have they always existed or do they 'emerge' during the process of evolution? (shrink)

The relevance of the study of the problem of Christian axiology is due to the growing interest in religion and the associated change in world outlook and values ​​in contemporary Ukrainian society. The study of religious values ​​is caused by the urgent problem of finding universal moral values ​​of social development and clarifying the content, structure and nature of their functioning. The scientific study of religious values ​​is also relevant because this problem is closely linked to the value (...) aspects of political life. Christian values ​​are one of the most important factors influencing the formation and development of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

Aspect-perception is a phenomenon described in detail by L. Wittgenstein in part XI of Philosophical Investigations. The most famous example is the duck-rabbit figure, which can be viewed either as a duck or a rabbit, but the phenomenon extends well beyond visual Gestalt pictures and permeates various fields of human life, including aesthetic, moral and linguistic experience. Recently there have been attempts to apply the notion of aspect-perception to religious faith. It has often been observed that religious (...) faith involves a particular way of ‘seeing’ different objects and events (recall the famous phrase from the hymn Amazing Grace, ‘I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see’). For this reason, the attempt to use the category of aspect-seeing to analyze religious faith may appear promising. My aim in this paper to analyze critically one such attempt, made by N. K. Verbin in ‘Religious Belief and Aspect seeing’ and ‘Can Faith be Justified?’. In these papers Verbin argues for two closely related theses regarding religious belief. The first is conceptual; she proposes that we should understand ‘certain kinds of religious beliefs which we view as central to a person having a living faith’ as ‘a type of aspect-seeing’. The second follows from the first: we should modify accordingly the way we construe justification for religious belief. In what follows I expound Verbin’s conceptual claim and present arguments against equating religious belief with seeing religious aspects. Basing myself on examples of people who see religious aspects but do not reach religious belief, I conclude that the two categories should not be conflated. Although I reject Verbin’s overall claim, however, I concede that aspect-seeing does play a significant role in justifying religious belief, although not in the way Verbin proposes. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a re-reading of "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," William James's most well known work on ethics. I show that while James defends a naturalistic account of the basis of morality in the essay, he also makes a practical argument for religious faith, one that closely connects the piece to such works as "The Will to Believe" and The Varieties of Religious Experience. After discussing some of the strengths and weaknesses of (...) James's moral theory and metaethical views, I argue that the religious aspect of the essay—which has tended to be either ignored or downplayed by previous interpreters—is of crucial importance for understanding James's ethics, and that his practical argument is valid and worthy of serious consideration. (shrink)

What can you say after you say that the world—or at least human life on it—looks like it's nearing its end? How about starting with wonder at the possibility that dialogue and subjectivity—the bases of human language—are possible now? In _Time and Human Language Now_ two lifelong friends share, in the form of a long-distance e-mail correspondence, a conversation about the relation between cosmos and consciousness, and about the possibility of being responsibly open toward the future without either (...) despair or unreasoning hope. The urgency that underlies this dialogue is the conviction that there can only be reason for hope if the members of homo sapiens can learn—soon—how vital and astonishing is the phenomenon of shared human presence through language. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Untying Foucauldian Knots of Power/Knowledge and Tying Better Relationships with the Confucian PersuasionJoseph Harroff (bio)Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy. By James Garrison. Albany: SUNY Press, 2021.Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.—Dewey, Democracy and Education (2)There is no pure self to be redeemed here, but perhaps some kind of rehabilitation beyond the problematic trappings (...) of subject life might be possible.—Garrison, Reconsidering the Life of Power (54)The problem of critiquing power by untangling and retangling ourselves more creatively and intelligently in webs of habit and flows of somaesthetic information and value-laden ethical-political imaginative horizons of futurity is taken up by James Garrison in Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy (2021). By asking a series of ethically sustained and interculturally hermeneutically sensitive questions surrounding the critical problematic as to the conditions for the possibility of how "it is possible to use the sign chains of power to chain power," or how it is possible to "tie power up in its own knots" (p. 18), Garrison makes creative use of "subjectality theory" that foregrounds somaesthetic practices seeking to be in many ways recasting rather than simply reconsidering the life of power. It is through a methodological sounding of the depths of somaesthetic experience and a creative-critical inquiry into the ways in which the complex of social arts understood in the broadest possible conception, including at all ethical and political intersections, that this book enters into the domain of Confucian theorizing of persons as part of never-simply-located root-body-persons (shenti 身體)—that is, as offering a theory of relational persons that is simultaneously and intersectionally caught up in a manifold of social practices of aesthetic, ethical, political, and religious signification. It is by critically interrogating the historical a priori that condition the possibility for any specific knowledge-power discursive interpellation by drawing attention to the complex interplay and entanglement of forces and signification involved in tool-making and tool-using practices as a "sedimentation" (jidian 積澱) of [End Page 809] somaesthetic arts that straddle a polarity of natural-cultural form-functioning, that Garrison makes creative advances in pushing critical theory past a problematic pessimism and/or nihilism that stems from any brute recognition of the "skintight prison" houses we inhabit as a result of Foucauldian power knots.Using the idea of "sedimentation" to better articulate the complex strata of social experience as mediated by aesthetic culture Garrison draws heavily from Li Zehou. Li is suspicious of a Maoist model of conflating theory and practice, subject and object, especially when the treatment is part of a civic and political religiosity that renders the Great Helmsman a supreme leader and unilateral decision-maker in a Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the historico-teleological revolution. For Li, aesthetic sensibility is the "manifestation of the sedimentation of society in nature, and the sedimentation of humankind as a species in the individual."1 And moreover, the "animal structure and quality of psychology" is "transformed into something that has a human nature, in which sensation and rationality are dissolved and combined."2 This complex process of dissolution and combination is more like a Hegelian dialectic of spirit than it is a linear-totalitarian realization of Maoist voluntarism. However, this is what I want to begin challenging by asking what degree Garrison draws upon this aspect of Li. I would suggest that Maoist voluntarism can be read as part of a traditional Chinese philosophical problematic that prioritizes practice in order to realize the truth of nature (gongfu jishi benti 功夫即是本體).This way of approaching the Maoist dynamic of voluntarism seems much closer to the Expansive Learning 《大學》 dynamic of "from the King to the commoners, everyone takes self-cultivation as the root," but would avoid any problematic Maoist hubris regarding the limits, methods and confines of class "struggle." The post-linguistic turn and then return to a Deweyan process metaphysical and creatively democratic inquiry into experience to garner more intelligent methods for critiquing and cultivating embodied and relationally configured habits of perception, speech, and thought via the vocabulary of... (shrink)

While Walls to Bridges is a broad and comprehensive work, the actualization of a Global Ethic is concrete-not abstract. Professor Küng's vision into the future, built on the expanding Global Ethic is an inspiring read and a call to action for all. What is similar among the world's religious ideologies? What's next in the evolution of the global ethic? Professor and theologian Hans Küng has devoted much of his life to answering these questions. Küng achieved global notoriety (...) in the 60's when he became the first major Roman Catholic theologian of the 20th century to question the notion of papal infallibility. For this, he was stripped of his license to teach as a Roman Catholic theologian but continued teaching as a tenured professor of Ecumenical Theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In the 1990s, Küng initiated a project subsequently referred to as the Movement for a "Global Ethic." After massive world-wide research into past and present ethical principles, he spelled out clearly the foundational ethical principles that the world's religions and ideologies, past and present, de facto held/hold in common, that is: The minimal code of behavior that everyone in fact accepts (e.g., "Do not lie, steal, kill innocent persons....") This English translation of The Global Ethic Handbook is a culmination of the "Movement" Küng began in the 90s. He describes his vision for a Global Ethic and takes the reader through the essential aspects of a Global Ethic, including its social, political, legal, economics, communications, esthetics, and philosophical applications. It even describes his translation of the Global Ethic/Weltethos into musical compositions-indeed, a full-blown opera! (shrink)

Religious Representation in Place brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the Humanities and Sciences to broaden the understanding of how religious symbols and spatial studies interact. The essays consider the relevance of religion in the experience of space, a fundamental dimension of culture and human life.

Teaching, born of the period of the ancient sages, developed as the moral art of living that introduced humanity to teaching as a moral pursuit, to the formation of value, to a moral and religious mode of being, and to a set of moral principles that have survived into the modern day. The idea that the 'future of teaching' represents a technological disruption of moral traditions of teaching and what teaching might become has become a serious concern for (...) the current generation of philosophers in both China and the West. (shrink)

Marcel Gauchet has launched one of the most ambitious and controversial works of speculative history recently to appear, based on the contention that Christianity is "the religion of the end of religion." In The Disenchantment of the World, Gauchet reinterprets the development of the modern west, with all its political and psychological complexities, in terms of mankind's changing relation to religion. He views Western history as a movement away from religious society, beginning with prophetic Judaism, gaining tremendous momentum in (...) Christianity, and eventually leading to the rise of the political state. Gauchet's view that monotheistic religion itself was a form of social revolution is rich with implications for readers in fields across the humanities and social sciences. Life in religious society, Gauchet reminds us, involves a very different way of being than we know in our secular age: we must imagine prehistoric times where ever-present gods controlled every aspect of daily reality, and where ancestor worship grounded life's meaning in a far-off past. As prophecy-oriented religions shaped the concept of a single omnipotent God, one removed from the world and yet potentially knowable through prayer and reflection, human beings became increasingly free. Gauchet's paradoxical argument is that the development of human political and psychological autonomy must be understood against the backdrop of this double movement in religious consciousness--the growth of divine power and its increasing distance from human activity. In a fitting tribute to this passionate and brilliantly argued book, Charles Taylor offers an equally provocative foreword. Offering interpretations of key concepts proposed by Gauchet, Taylor also explores an important question: Does religion have a place in the future of Western society? The book does not close the door on religion but rather invites us to explore its socially constructive powers, which continue to shape Western politics and conceptions of the state. (shrink)

Lower limb major amputations are both life-saving procedures and life-changing events. Individual responses to limb loss are varied and complex, some individuals experience functional, psychological and social dysfunction, many others adjust and function well. Some patients refuse amputation for religious and/or cultural reasons. One of the greatest difficulties for a person undergoing amputation surgery is overcoming the psychological stigma that society associates with the loss of a limb. Persons who have undergone amputations are often viewed as incomplete (...) individuals. The medical and physical consequences of amputation serve as the centerpiece in acute care and are commonly at the forefront of prosthetic rehabilitation. Prosthetic prescription aims to compensate for functional and/or cosmetic losses where possible. The aims of rehabilitation following amputation are to restore acceptable levels of functioning that allow individuals to achieve their goals, to facilitate personal health, and to improve participation in society and quality of life either with or without prosthesis. Our article aims at underscoring some medical, social and religious aspects that can contribute to the wellbeing of patients who suffer a life changing event such as lower limb amputation. (shrink)

It is impossible not to discuss the question of time, at least for the philosophy of religion. However, to discuss the question of time is equally impossible, as the various perspectives presented in this volume show. Then what is time? Time is not, and yet everything is within time. Time is, but neither substance nor pure form. Being a dimension of all Being, not even God could or would withdraw from time. The authors of the contributions to this volume discuss (...) the unavoidability of time and its paradoxes, not the least with the purpose of giving time, as a recurring topic for the philosophy of religion. Contributors: Joseph Ballan, Jonna Bornemark, Oystein Brekke, Rebecca Comay, Iben Damgaard, Arne Gron, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Carsten Pallesen, Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen, Werner Stegmaier, Philipp Stoellger, Claudia Welz. (shrink)

Life education, also known as life and death education, is an important subject in Taiwan with institutions offering degree programs and courses that focus on quality learning and implementation of life education. What is interesting from the perspective of Taiwanese Education is that the teaching of life education also incorporates a number of Eastern-derived and conceptualized tenets, for example, Buddhist teaching and the importance of spiritual wisdom. This premise contends then that life education in Taiwan, (...) in general, is concerned with the promotion, fulfillment, and cherishing of quality life experiences (e.g., personal contentment, happiness). One example of life education, which resonates with other spiritual beliefs and religious faiths (e.g., Hinduism), is related to spiritual cultivation and the enlightenment of life wisdom. Our own teaching of the subject, likewise, places emphasis on the goal of teaching students to seek meaningful understanding of and appreciation for three major, interrelated components of life education: life wisdom, life practice, and life care. Life education is a beneficial subject as its theoretical understanding may help individuals cope with pathologies and negative life experiences. One negative life experience, in this case, is the ultimate fate of humankind: death. Approaching death and/or the onset of grief is something that we all have to experience. How does one approach death? It is not easy feat and, of course, grief for a loved one is personal and some of us struggle with this. We contend that spiritual cultivation and enlightenment, arising from life education, may assist us with the coping of death (e.g., the possibility of transcendence beyond the realm of life). Forming the premise of the present article, we propose that a person’s ‘spiritual and enlightened self’, reflecting the convergence of three major aspects of life education (i.e., Philosophical reflection, Enrichment of personal well-being, and Spiritual cultivation), would result in the initiation and creation of a number of virtues and positive characteristics – for example: having a positive outlook in life, showing compassion, forgiveness, etc. These virtues and quality characteristics, from our philosophical reasoning, are equivalent to those qualities that positive psychology advocates for. (shrink)

Religious naturalism and three scientific revolutions: Introduction -- The cosmological revolution -- The evolutionary revolution -- The ecological revolution -- Inwardness and awareness in nature: Introduction -- Inwardness of life and inwardness of mind -- Mind and consciousness in nature -- The range of conscious awareness on earth -- Presumptive rights and conflicts of rights: Introduction -- Rs of the thou of nature -- A scheme of presumptive natural rights -- A fourth R of the thou of nature (...) -- Conflicts of rights -- Hunting and fishing : Introduction -- Hunting -- Fishing -- Responses to the charge of impractical idealism -- Eating and wearing: Introduction -- Using animals for food -- The vegetarian response -- Using animals for apparel and other purposes -- Other areas of responsibility and concern: Introduction -- Experimenting on animals -- Rodeos, circuses, zoos, and aquariums -- Endangered species and despoliations of natural environments -- The human population explosion -- The threat of global climate change -- A new moral and religious consciousness: Introduction -- Empowerment in religion of nature -- Objections and replies -- Principles and prescriptions. (shrink)