Homelessness and its various forms of manifestation are a complex phenomenon. Street homelessness, which is the subject of this study, continues to be a challenge for the South African people and government. Different research studies have been undertaken on street homelessness. Various frameworks have been used in an attempt to understand and respond to street homelessness. Churches continue as key role-players in responses to street homelessness. There is a need, however, for churches to continually evaluate the (...) various approaches to street homelessness, with a view to sharpening those approaches to better understand and respond to the challenge. Churches need frameworks that can help them to theologically understand and adequately respond to street homelessness. Gustafson's framework of moral engagement is explored within the context of street homelessness, with a view to suggest ways and means by which the Methodist Church of Southern Africa could better understand and adequately respond to the problem of street homelessness in South Africa. (shrink)

In the Ukrainian scientific literature, theology and journalism, the concepts of "Kievan Christianity", "Kyiv-Christian tradition of Volodymyr's baptism", "Ukrainian Orthodoxy", "Churches of the Kiev Tradition "," Kiev Churches "," branches of the Kiev Church "," heirs of Vladimir baptism ", etc. However, analyzing the arguments in the disclosure of these concepts by different authors, we are confronted with the traditional problem of Ukrainian science - a variety of interpretations, engagement, and politicization of approaches. And in our case there is (...) also a confessional approach, which many researchers can not always avoid. (shrink)

This book uses the friendly format of the computing language Prolog to teach a full formal predicate logic. With Prolog, the scope and limits of both logic and computing can be explored and experimented. Students learning formal logic in a Prolog format can begin using their already developed informal abilities in logic to program in Prolog and conversely learn enough formal logic to examine Prolog and computing in general so major fundamental theorems can be demonstrated. Cases such as Church's (...) Thesis, Church's Theorem, Turing's Halting Problem, and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem provide the author with the means to assess some of the philosophical implications of logic and computing. Henry designed the book for undergraduate students, but it is also useful for philosophers and theologians who wish to see how computer programming serves as a probe into philosophical matters. Contents: The Formalization of Logic; Propositional Logic; Predicate Logic; Prolog: Programming in Logic; Logic Machines; The Scope and Limits of Logic and Logic Machines; Philosophical Reflections; Appendix; Bibliography; Index. (shrink)

In many experimental sciences, like particle physics or molecular biology, the proper place for establishing facts is the laboratory. In the sciences of population biology, however, the laboratory is often seen as a poor approximation of what occurs in nature. Results obtained in the field are usually more convincing. This raises special problems: it is much more difficult to obtain stable, repeatable results in the field, where environmental conditions vary out of the experimenter’s control, than in the laboratory. We examine (...) here how this problem affected an influential experimental research tradition in community ecology, the study of the ecology of the rocky seashores. In the 1960s, a handful of North-American ecologists, most notably Joseph Connell, Robert Paine and Paul Dayton, made the rocky seashores a model study system for experimenting in the field. Their experiments were deceptively simple: they removed species living on the seashore and described the resulting effects on the local ecology. These experiments exerted a deep influence on community ecology. They provided evidence for speculative developments concerning the theory of interspecific competition, the factors responsible for species richness and the ecology of food webs. They also stimulated novel conceptual developments. In particular, Paine developed the predation hypothesis, which states that the presence of predators can favour species richness, before introducing the keystone species concept, according to which some species exert disproportionate effects on ecological systems. More broadly, these experiments gave support to a methodological trend in favour of field experimentation. Only controlled perturbations in the field, it seemed, provided a reliable method to get insights into the structure of ecological communities. However, as experiments were continued in time and repeated in different sites, divergent results appeared. We analyse here how intertidal researchers coped with the variability of environmental conditions and tried to stabilize their results. In the process, they reconsidered not only their early conclusions, but also the exclusive status given to field experiments. Expanding on this case study, we discuss some significant differences between laboratory and field experiments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:St. Thomas Aquinas's Appeal to St. John the Baptist as a Benchmark of Spiritual GreatnessJohn Baptist Ku, O.P.When we think of sources of St. Thomas Aquinas's speculative theology, we rightly recall teachings given in Scripture—such as that sin came into the world through one man (Rom 5:12) or that all that the Father has belongs also to the Son (John 16:15)—as well as teachings, based on Scripture, (...) imparted by Church councils or Fathers, such as that Christ is one person with two natures1 or that the human nature of Christ is an instrument of his divinity.2 In the project of faith seeking understanding, these teachings lead expeditiously to distinctions and clarifications concerning person and nature, habit and action, primary and instrumental causality, intellect and will, faith and reason, and the like. However, the saints themselves too serve as a source for Aquinas's speculative theological reflection. Though they admittedly constitute a less abundant source than scriptural, conciliar, or patristic teaching, the saints' contribution to Aquinas's theology merits our attention.For instance, in "Jean-Baptiste: figure du prêcheur chez Thomas d'Aquin," Jean-Pierre Torrell observes that Aquinas's research into the Fathers of the Church for the Catena aurea bore considerable influence on his subsequent works, and Torrell documents how Aquinas's treatment of John the Baptist is a precise case that shows this influence.3 More recent [End Page 1119] scholarship has, fortunately, taken note of the saints' contribution to Aquinas's theology—in the figures of St. Benedict and the virgin martyrs.4This article will therefore examine St. John the Baptist as just such a source of Aquinas's speculative theology. Aquinas appeals to St. John as a benchmark of spiritual greatness against which to situate other figures: Christ, angels, Mary, apostles, prophets, evangelists, priests, and the people of God. By examining these cases, we will not only observe the Angelic Doctor's appreciation of the saints as our teachers, as examples to be imitated, and as proofs of God's love in transformative grace; we will also witness aspects of the Dominican master's theological method, that is, in his manner of interpreting Scripture and his application of reason to scriptural data to make arguments and draw conclusions.5 For instance, in his treatment of the least in the kingdom of heaven, Scripture will definitively confirm what theological reasoning can determine concerning the knowledge of those with the beatific vision. Furthermore, his exposition on the Blessed Virgin will reveal that he reads the Bible as a whole with one divine author, in support of traditional interpretations.6 However, he is not naive about diverse human authorship and the literal versus the spiritual senses [End Page 1120] of Scripture,7 and his methodology unveils his explicit conviction that Scripture must be the basis of theological claims.8My presentation will unfold in five sections. After (1) a glance at some of Aquinas's comments on the authority of various sources of theology so as to situate our conversation about the saints as a source of theology, I will review Aquinas's enlistment of John the Baptist as a standard by which to establish: (2) three simple points about Christians and Christ—that all of the articles of faith must be accepted, that prepubescent children can enter religious life, and that Christ's baptism manifests divine power—(3) the superiority of angels to wayfarers, among whom John the Baptist is the greatest, followed by apostles, prophets, and evangelists; (4) the eminence of John the Baptist and a ranking, in order, of God, angels, John the Baptist, prophets, priests, and then God's people; and (5) the holiness of Mary the Mother of God.The Authority of Various Sources of TheologyIn just a few lines in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas identifies the roles of reason and authority in theology. On one hand, "it is most proper" to theology to offer "proofs from authority," since theology's "principles are known through revelation"—making theological arguments dependent on "the authority of those making the revelation." But on the other hand, theology "also uses human reason, not to... (shrink)

Si l'importance d'un pédagogue se mesure à l'usage que l'on peut faire de son héritage, Freinet fait indéniablement partie des très grands. Ses techniques pédagogiques continuent d'être utilisées dans de nombreuses classes, plus encore à l'étranger qu'en France, mais il y a aussi dans son oeuvre des pistes de travail qui permettent de poursuivre la réflexion qu'il a entamée et d'en surmonter certaines limites. Freinet ne nous a pas légué une doctrine qu'il suffirait d'appliquer. Par bien des aspects, sa pédagogie (...) est une oeuvre ouverte, qui peut être reprise, approfondie et poursuivie dans des directions différentes. L'ouvrage présente les principales techniques Freinet (l'écriture libre, la promenade scolaire, l'imprimerie, le conseil des élèves), ainsi que leurs fondements théoriques, qu'ils soient pédagogiques, politiques, psychologiques ou épistémologiques. A chaque fois, on s'interroge sur l'actualité de ces techniques et des théories qui les accompagnent, de manière à nourrir le débat français sur l'école tout en cherchant à le délivrer du manichéisme et du conservatisme qui bien souvent le paralysent. A travers cette étude, Baptiste Jacomino rend à Freinet un hommage appuyé qui n'exclut pas la lecture critique. (shrink)

La participation au développement scientifique et technique d’individus n’appartenant pas à la sphère académique est une pratique ancienne, qui connaît aujourd’hui un regain d’intérêt, notamment sous la forme de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler « sciences participatives ». Les pratiques de participation se sont ainsi fortement diversifiées durant les deux dernières décennies dans des domaines comme les sciences de l’environnement, la biomédecine, l’astronomie ou encore la biologie fondamentale. Cette croissance marquée des programmes de « sciences participatives » a conditionné l’essor (...) d’une littérature pluridisciplinaire s’attachant à décrire ces pratiques dans leurs dimensions sociologique, politique, éthique ou épistémologique. Cet état de l’art se propose de recenser les principaux enjeux d’ordre épistémologique posés par les différentes formes de participation citoyenne à la constitution de connaissances scientifiques, en se restreignant ici au cas des sciences de la nature. Il s’agira de souligner à la fois les opportunités et les obstacles qu’elles soulèvent tels qu’ils sont présentés et étudiés dans la littérature. L’un des objectifs de cette recension est de contribuer ainsi à constituer la question de la participation citoyenne comme un champ de recherche à part entière pour la philosophie des sciences. (shrink)

continent. 2.3 (2012): 218–223 Vijay Prashad. Arab Spring, Libyan Winter . Oakland: AK Press. 2012. 271pp, pbk. $14.95 ISBN-13: 978-1849351126. Nearly a decade ago, I sat in a class entitled, quite simply, “Corporations,” taught by Vijay Prashad at Trinity College. Over the course of the semester, I was amazed at the extent of Prashad’s knowledge, and the complexity and erudition of his style. He has since authored a number of classic books that have gained recognition throughout the world. The Darker (...) Nations , a peoples’ history of the Third World, sent defibrillating shockwaves through an academic world that had almost forgotten the epic scope and historic dignity of the non-aligned movement and post-colonial struggles. In his recent, award-winning work, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , Prashad delves into his capacious knowledge of the Third World to excavate the discourses and narratives surrounding the upheavals of 2011. “Revolutions have no specific timetable,” states Prashad in the opening line of this exciting and provocative look at contemporary events. Instantly, an atmosphere of suspense emerges. The reader is alerted to the problem of history. Does the making of history then involve a suspension of historical time, or is it a continuous narrative structure into which events must eventually be integrated? Arab Spring, Libyan Winter shows that the answer to the question, “How is history made?” lies just as easily in the asking. The first half of the book works through the events that transpired to bring about the explosive popular uprisings of Arab Spring: Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. But the events are not put together in a cohesive, chronological fashion. Using an uncommonly gripping style more akin to the folk-story motif of the djeli than to traditionally Orientalist academia, Prashad suspends a given situation, points out its components, and traces back the characters and genealogies that define each link before resuming a narrative. Every moment is an end to itself, and an origin of something different. Thus, the making of history becomes the suspension of its own progress, it’s catastrophic 'stability,' in a process of differentiation through inclusion. Empirically, one might suggest that history is a condition of time, and by extension, of the subject, but history is also an eminent producer of the Subject and her concept of time through memory and narrative. Hence, history is often overdetermined by a dominant narrative of the sovereign. The apparently chaotic composition of Prashad’s historicity is, then, an interstitial morphology of resistance. It illustrates that the time to act for the revolutionary lies in the gaps within the dominant historical realities. It points out the sorties of signifiers constituting nothing in the obliterated ruins of history. Through such illuminations, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter breaks through “the surface of history” to elaborate revolution’s snapping synapses, exploding interruptions and breaches, connecting flows. Messianic Politics It is tempting to think, 'History is either singular, or it is diffuse. It is either one coherent factual narrative, or it is comprised of the aletheia of the multitude.' Yet the reader finds Prashad examining the structure of history on multiple levels. For Prashad, world history is shaped by geographically defined political movements, such as communism or national liberation, with historical agents like the working class for the former and the nationalist militant for the latter. Religion, however, is another matter: “Religion has an unshakable eschatology which a post-utopian secular politics lacks.” Within the telos of religion, there appears on the horizon the image of Benjamin’s thoughts on messianic time—time as “a small fissure in the continuous catastrophe,” a break with history, may contain an ultimate redemption of the human beyond the political power struggle. Succoring the split between geo-political and utopian-religious (messianic) time in the context of Arab Spring, Prashad indicates that the base of “the deep desire and commitment to some form of democracy” is forged by the affinity between eschatological Islamist politics with the People. To think about the Subject of messianic time in the context of the lack of a “coherent timetable” for emancipatory politics, it is perhaps best to return to the modern tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose prefigurative blending of liberation theology and emancipatory politics became most important during his works of 1963, the climactic year of “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the March on Washington, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In “The Letter,” King states the point bluntly: Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” The timing of rebellious action must not be a part of history. It must change history. The kairos appears spontaneous and untimely in its convulsive, shocking presence, yet it is, deeper still, a path, a longue durée , forged through diligent and rigorous praxis. King put a finer point on the path of historic liberation in his declaration in his 1963 speech at Western Michigan University: “[T]ime is neutral.... Somewhere along the way we must see that time will never solve the problem alone but that we must help time. Somewhere we must see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels on inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. We must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.” Time, then, exists in “the neutral,” while action must turn to the kairos , not only of taking time, but taking the right time. By turning our relation to time into kairos , we move time from its context within history to a duration between histories—the longue dure?e of Messianic time. The implementation of neutrality in this context suggests a broad space of time to extend through the valley of positive and negative. In Roland Barthes’s lectures from 1978, the neutral takes place in this minimal distance of non-conflict that exists outside of two extremes. It is, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, “the non-general, the non-generic, as well as the non-specific.” For Blanchot, the neutrality of time permeates life as death, impassive and beyond control; such is the neutrality of messianic time, which permeates the charge of history, changing the "I" into the "one." The neutrality of time therefore implicates history in a case against extremism, showing that the work of the radical is not to tend to any particular side, but to have the time to navigate through the terrible terrain of history by altering its course, its patterns and rhythms of movement, connection, sociality. Hence, one does not simply “make history,” one alters the course of history in accordance to “the right time.” The historical path toward emerging power is transmitted as a gesture to the outside of history, against history; a gesture as simple as reaching out. Thus a counterhistory, to use Foucault’s term, is brought forward as the guide of time past a point of no return, a Rubicon, the point where the normal path of history falls to the past. The subject, who must be the only true agent of history, facilitates time through helpfulness, and both the Subject and her history become decentered in relation to one another. Yet history negates the neutrality of time. As Barthes discloses, although the neutral is the “thought and practice of the nonconflictual, it is nevertheless bound to assertion, to conflict, in order to make itself heard.” Engaged with history, time is charged with a destiny, and becomes an opposition. As Prashad insists, “For Arab lands, the events of early 2011 were not the inauguration of a new history, but the continuation of an unfinished struggle that is a hundred years old.” The emergence of the Subject during Arab Spring did not conceive of a new history, but changed the path of history toward a different destiny. “Historical grievances combined with inflationary pressures now met with the subjective sense that victory might be at hand—this was not simply a protest to scream into the wind, but a protest to actually remove autocrats from their positions of authority. The facts of resistance had given way to the expectation of revolutionary change.” The negativity of this charge toward “revolutionary destiny” rendered control, as a positive force, seriously lacking. The lack of control lies in the problem that the Subject is not totally detemporalized or timeless, but untimely in her presence. The Subject is untimely, because her work is visionary, and it is only through such visionary work that the Rubicon can be crossed. Still, the crossing of this border is haunted by anxiety over an impending disaster that lays in wait. It is only through the form of what Benjamin calls divine violence, captivated not with the justice of the means, but the ends—the transformation of history—that a revelation of history’s traumatic foundations can be liberated, and patterns and rhythms of time developed throughout obscured traditions awakened. In this situation, the Subject appears to be outside of right, but setting the state to rights. Because her position is correct, in-so-far as the rebelling subject rebels due to a lack of recognition, her representation appears outside of the norm, which is mistaken as right. Therefore, such visionary work must be carried out through obscured traditions, underground, away from the surveillance of empire. Explaining his method from the start along the lines of Marx’s metaphor of the mole, Prashad insists, “It is the burrowing that is essential, not simply the emergence onto the surface of history.” Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a book on uncharted networks of time, spread out over the 252 pages like an elaborate spider’s web of passages intertwining with and overwhelming the machinery of the state. Although untimely, Arab Spring was not a flash in the pan, or a Facebook or Twitter revolution. Prashad notes that the government’s suspension of these tools led to further radicalism by furthering communications through face-to-face encounters. In existential terms, Arab Spring might be thought of as a revolution of Being over techne , an uprising of the unchartable, infinite potential of the Other. The name of this Other is found in Chance. The faith of the revolution lies in the proper decentering of the subject, its giving to the Other of time, for only with respect to time does history actually appear on the horizon of the subject, rather than as an imposition. This time of historical agency appears as a moment when anything can happen—a revolutionary truth event where everything comes into question while being realized in its Otherness as a community of the people begins anew in the streets amidst discourse, friendship, reconfigurations of hegemony, and a becoming of a constituent power. Throwing a wrench into the gears of the “cobwebbed tradition” of Orientalism, the decentering of history in Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a defining quality of its impassioned revolutionary cry. But perhaps the most paradigmatic points of the book emerge from the unexpected voices. To make the connection between the particular manifestations of revolutionary demands to the general historic terms of revolution, Prashad quotes an anonymous young Egyptian in Tahrir Square, who reminds us, “[T]he French Revolution took a very long time so the people could eventually get their rights.” Far from timelessness, the historicization of Arab Spring must exist precisely within the most uncanny appearance of time, as something that does not appear to come from the natural state of time as we know it, but in arriving has completely transformed the way that we understand time. Strange Monsters Revolution is never as simple as a revolt from below against a rusting structure of elites trying to remain in power. As with the French Revolution, Arab Spring consisted of complex familial ties, outside interests, and religious factions fighting alongside, often in awkward juxtaposition to, liberals, working class parties, farmers, and students. It is perhaps because of this historically difficult and incongruous composition that the Arabic word for revolution is thawra , referring to the image of the bull, or thawr , which has religious significance as a pagan deity for the Ancient Semitic tribes and Cartheginians. If Daniel Guérin was correct in saying, “Anarchism and Marxism drink from the same spring,” then it is quite a different oasis that drove the thirsty beast of revolution through what Prashad calls, “the Libyan labyrinth.” Recalling Bataille’s Acéphale, the intestinal labyrinth gains significance as the mode of metabolism and rumination in which, “(the Acephale) has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words, as a monster.” Unraveling the discourse of the revolution, the flows of power and hegemony—from Qaddafi’s nationalist coup in 1969 to the wars with Chad from 1978 to 1987, the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s to, finally, the War on Terror—we find that the metabolic process of Libyan Winter ends in the production of oil. In a process of what Prashad calls “involution,” Qaddafi’s bellicose policies, along with his attempts to nationalize Islam together with oil, mutated the source of his power, turning his house against itself. Already a divided nation, with its two major cities on opposite geographic sides of the country, Libya became split between two opposed political powers—liberal reformists and staunch nationalists—as Qaddafi’s political disengagement manifested through what can only be described in psychoanalytic terms as a recursive passage a l’act (mysteriously calling Wikipedia “Kleenex,” declaring that opponents drank hallucinogens with their instant coffee, and so on). Prashad declares, “The mercurial style that Qaddafi adopted was not about his personality alone, but also a leader’s natural response to a system that relied upon power brokers whose own loyalty… did not have any ideological commitment to the system.” As in the case of other nations during Arab Spring, the true expression of revolt was an outward exposition of what had inwardly been happening in microcosmic societies throughout the realm—from indigenous tribes to political parties, for a century, the people, partly motivated by (and in resistance to) economic impositions of development, had been changing the traditional social compositions and participating in what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls, “the relative autonomy of the movement from the leaders.” It was this empowerment of political reconfigurations taking place under the context of new democratic assemblages that shocked the elites and evoked such a powerful response. Unlike Qaddafi’s awkward policy choices and rants, real acts of power from the West were clear and decisive. Prashad sets the stages of war and diplomacy, far removed from the deserts, mountains, and cities that forged the backdrop of popular politics. Taking place under the now-classic architecture of the “four pillars” of US interests—oil, the War on Terror, Israel, and the circumvention of Iranian hegemony—we find elites rubbing elbows in “Heliopolist cocktail parties and hushed conferences in Kasr al-Ittihadiya” as well as the Concorde-Lafayette hotel in Paris, which provides the setting for a meeting of anti-Qaddafi figures consolidating their power. These scenes are buttressed with the careful portraiture of key historical actors. As Prashad brings the stage of history to life, we find the diplomats and liberals like Frank Wisner, whose career has brought him from Enron in the late 1990s to the Obama Administration, under the aegis of which he was meeting with Mubarak about military support during Arab Spring. We spy the provocateurs, for instance, gauche cavalier , Bernard Henri-Levy, who telephones Sarkozy from Benghazi about the need for more NATO air strikes. We follow the rebel military establishment as it suffers mysterious deaths and even more mysterious assents (like that of apparent CIA cohort, Khalifa Hifter). In each of these intriguing characters, we find different representations of the security state biopolitique: an oil-injected reification that drives Arab Spring from the resentment of rising food prices to the brink of implosion in Libyan Winter. Reminiscent of the scenes of Cold War soirées represented in old Bond films, the aristocratic fight for oil against democracy that was Libyan Winter presents a harsh truth that the new global crisis is simply the continuation of the old history: the global exploitation of capitalism waged against the imagination of the people. As Benjamin laments, “The labyrinth is the right path for the person who always arrives early enough at his destination. This destination is the marketplace.” Yet, “(t)he labyrinth is the habitat of… a humanity (a class) which does not want to know where its destiny is taking it.” Thus, the labyrinth leads, like the desert, only further into itself. As Blanchot explains, “The desert is even less certain than the world; it is never anything but the approach to the desert.” Only the visionary can take time out of the involution toward oblivion. It is here, in this approach to and escape from history, that we find ourselves within Benjamin’s Golgotha, Blanchot’s desert: A space of indeterminate uncertainty where we become familiar only with our own exile. Blanchot writes, “For the moderated and moderate man, the room, the desert, and the world are strictly determined places. For the man of the desert and the labyrinth, devoted to the error of a journey necessarily a little longer than his life, the same space will be truly infinite, even if he knows that it is not, all the more so since he knows it.” The desert, as allegory, provides an eschatology, a mortality in the destiny of Arab Spring. But any allegory of nature might lead to a labyrinthine eschatology (for example, in Bachelard, the forest presents "a limitless world"); the prescience of the untimely is always an uncanny acceptance of the infinite within the finite—the outside of what is understood. Transgenerational and occupied with the image of the future, the untimely makes otherness its home as it proceeds toward liberation. In the work of helping time navigate this dangerous passage of history, Prashad illustrates that the more violent break with history may have occurred in the peaceable struggles of Tahrir Square, and not in the military clashes of Qaddafi with his former Generals who defected to the CIA and NATO countries. It might be possible to suggest, then, that in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the historical subject of the people was drawn together in a Dionysian dance of different rhythms in the marvelous realm of the ancients, while we fear that the case of Libya suggests an Apollonian future where time, itself, may lay dying under the machinic hand of history. The properly Nietzschean inversion would follow: time is dead, for history has killed it. Yet, if time is dead, struck down in Golgotha, exposed in the desert, mauled by the thawra , it is only in the present sense that it is rendered impossible outside of the context into which the untimely has thrown us. Thus, if history becomes an art of revolution, life as being-towards-death (death as the provocation of the neutrality of time) becomes what Benjamin calls “the allegory of resurrection” through the glorious ruins of history. Prashad ends his work with a rousing finale: “The time of the impossible has presented itself. In Egypt, where the appetite for the possibilities of the future are greatest, the people continue to assert themselves into Tahrir Square and other places, pushing to reinvigorate a Revolution that must not die… For them the slogan is simple: Down with the Present. Long live the Future. May it be so.&rdquo. (shrink)

Dans les textes inédits « Effets moraux de l’accélération de l’histoire» et « Sommes-nous libres?», Jules Vuillemin montre un visage peu connu : celui d’un observateur engagé de son époque. Il y critique des mouvements sociaux et politiques contemporains – mai 1968 et la réforme du Code pénal de 1989 – en s’appuyant sur des considérations métaphysiques et morales. Plus que des tribunes politiques, ces textes montrent que la politique n’est pas, pour Vuillemin, simple affaire d’« opinion» et que l’engagement (...) n’a de valeur que soutenu par l’argumentation. (shrink)

Dans les textes inédits « Effets moraux de l’accélération de l’histoire» (1969-1970) et « Sommes-nous libres?» (1989-1990), Jules Vuillemin montre un visage peu connu : celui d’un observateur engagé de son époque. Il y critique des mouvements sociaux et politiques contemporains – mai 1968 et la réforme du Code pénal de 1989 – en s’appuyant sur des considérations métaphysiques et morales. Plus que des tribunes politiques, ces textes montrent que la politique n’est pas, pour Vuillemin, simple affaire d’« opinion» et (...) que l’engagement n’a de valeur que soutenu par l’argumentation. (shrink)

Le mouvement panorganisationnel traduit le destin de notre monde dans le chiasme du devenir-monde des organisations et du devenir-organisation du monde. Il consacre la domination de l’époque historiale de la cybernétique qui fut précisément le lieu de thématisation de la catégorie de l’organisation. Sans que nous n’y prenions garde, la clôture de la métaphysique s’opère sous nos yeux dans le management.

There is little information about the content of ethics consultations in pediatrics. We sought to describe the reasons for consultation and ethical principles addressed during EC in pediatrics through retrospective review and directed content analysis of EC records at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Patient-based EC were highly complex and often involved evaluation of parental decision making, particularly consideration of the risks and benefits of a proposed medical intervention, and the physician's fiduciary responsibility to the patient. Nonpatient consultations provided guidance (...) in the development of institutional policies that would broadly affect patients and families. This is one of the few existing reviews of the content of pediatric EC and indicates that the distribution of ethical issues and reasons for moral distress are different than with adults. Pediatric EC often facilitates complex decision making among multiple stakeholders, and further prospective research is need.. (shrink)

Ouvrage dense et paru de façon tronquée, La Philosophie de l’algèbre de Jules Vuillemin (tomes I et II) peut sembler composite. Nous montrons au contraire que ce manifeste de la structure en philosophie n’est pas rhapsodie mais système : ses parties ne prennent tout leur sens que dans leur relation au tout. Loin de remettre en cause le résultat de l’analyse structurale, l’étude génétique met au jour un souci constant de préservation de la systématicité au fil des transformations successives.

Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer | : À première vue, il s’agit d’une chose et son contraire : la guerre est tellement le lieu par excellence de la violation des droits humains que leur relation semble se résumer à cet antagonisme primaire — l’un serait la négation de l’autre. La guerre viole les droits et les droits ont la paix, donc l’absence de guerre, comme condition de possibilité. Puis l’on se souvient que, contrairement aux apparences, la guerre n’est pas cet état de (...) non-droit où tout est permis, mais un espace normé, codifié. Il est question des droits humains pendant la guerre — pour dénoncer leur violation, certes, mais la violation des règles n’est pas la preuve de leur absence — mais aussi avant la guerre, puisque certains conflits sont justifiés par la protection des droits des populations locales, ou en vertu d’un « droit de l’humanité » qui serait un intérêt à agir. Les relations entre droits humains et conflits armés sont résumées dans cet article en quatre parties : d’un point de vue historique, d’abord, où l’on montre leur réciprocité. En reprenant la trilogie de l’éthique de la guerre ensuite : la guerre au nom des droits humains, les droits humains dans la guerre et, en guise de conclusion, les droits humains après la guerre. | : At first glance these two terms may seem contradictory. War is the most extreme context of human rights violations, suggesting that they have a fundamentally antagonistic relationship and that one is the negation of the other. War violates rights, while rights require peace and hence the absence of war. Despite this appearance, however, war is not a state of lawlessness where all is permitted, but rather a regulated, codified space. There is a question of human rights in war and we obviously denounce their violation, but the violation of rules is not proof of their absence. There is another question of human rights before war, since certain conflicts are justified by the protection of the local population’s rights, or the “rights of humanity” as a cause for action. This article summarises the relations between human rights and armed conflicts in four sections : firstly from a historical perspective, focusing on their reciprocity. The next sections follow the trinity of the ethics of war : war in the name of human rights, human rights in war and, to conclude, post-war human rights. (shrink)

Si l’on peut parler d’un désir de Dieu inscrit dans le coeur de l’homme, qu’en est-il du côté de Dieu ? Dieu désire-t-il entrer en communion avec chacun de nous ? Y aurait-il du désir dans la Trinité sainte ? Après avoir élaboré une nouvelle conception du désir, Jean-Baptiste Lecuit s’interroge sur le désir de l’homme pour Dieu : en quoi consiste-t-il ? Quel exaucement lui est-il offert ? Par quelles voies ? Est-il naturel à tout être humain ? En (...) un renversement de perspective, l’auteur s’interroge aussi sur la possibilité que Dieu désire l’être humain et son salut. Il met au jour un courant ininterrompu de Pères de l’Église, de mystiques et de théologiens qui, malgré l’avis contraire d’Augustin et de Thomas d’Aquin, n’a cessé de reconnaître et d’annoncer un tel désir, de façon toujours plus insistante. Ce parcours passionnant dans la Tradition de l’Église débouche sur une réflexion justifiant l’attribution à Dieu d’un désir pour l’homme et montrant sa portée théologique et spirituelle. Carme déchaux de la Province de Paris, Jean-Baptiste Lecuit est professeur de théologie de l’université catholique de Lille. Il a publié aux Éditions du Cerf, L’Anthropologie théologique à la lumière de la psychanalyse (2007) ; Quand Dieu habite en l’homme (2010). (shrink)

Le terme « perception » apparaît pour la première fois dans son sens philosophique dans les Académiques de Cicéron, où il traduit le terme technique stoïcien κατάληψις, traduit également par compréhension. La perception n’est pas une « perception sensible » au sens moderne du terme, car elle ne se définit pas comme une impression produite en nous par les choses extérieures, mais comme l’assentiment donné à la phantasia dite compréhensive ou perceptive, c’est‑à‑dire celle qui est conforme à son objet, claire (...) et distincte. Il s’agit pour les stoïciens de l’un des critères de la vérité. Pour contester l’existence de la perception et son rôle-clé dans l’épistémologie stoïcienne, les académiciens ont adopté une stratégie en deux temps : affirmer que l’assentiment porte sur des propositions et non sur des représentations, et contester l’existence d’une représentation perceptive, discernable des représentations fausses. Les stoïciens ont répondu sur ces deux points et ont reconstruit la notion de perception inventée initialement par Zénon dans le cadre de cette polémique, qui a forgé la notion classique de la perception. Le continuisme perceptif des stoïciens et leur conception cinématographique de la perception sensible sont les clés de leur conception de la perception. (shrink)

Leibniz a tenté de donner une formulation logique de l'ordre, en cherchant à spécifier de la manière la plus générale possible, le sens des termes « antérieur » , « postérieur » et « conjoint ». L'analyse de ces termes tient en trois points. 1) Deux êtres étant donnés, est antérieur par nature (natura prius) celui qui est plus simple, c'est-à-dire celui dont l'analyse requiert un plus petit nombre d'opérations de l'esprit. Par suite, les êtres qui sont conjoints (simul) doivent (...) nécessairement se caractériser par le même degré de composition. 2) Le degré de composition d'un être correspond à son degré de perfection. Si les êtres antérieurs sont plus simples, les êtres postérieurs sont donc plus parfaits. 3) Enfin, deux êtres étant donnés, tels que l'un est plus simple et l'autre plus parfait, on dira que ces êtres diffèrent par le temps si en outre ils se contredisent et, réciproquement, que deux êtres compossibles se contredisent si et seulement s'ils ne sont pas tempore simul, ou s'ils n'appartiennent pas au même « état de l'univers ». Une telle analyse a le mérite de donner un exemple précis et relativement développé de ce que peut être le traitement leibnizien d'une relation particulière. Cette relation reçoit dans la mathesis, quand il s'agit de caractériser l'ordre axiomatique des notions incomplètes, une interprétation satisfaisante, à laquelle Leibniz n'a, semble-t-il, jamais renoncé. Mais l'interprétation métaphysique des termes prius, posterius et simul, qu'on trouve esquissée dans certains fragments des années 1680, soulève des problèmes insurmontables. It is well known that Leibniz's logic is grounded in the inherence of the predicate in the subject and in the compossibility of notions. It naturally stresses, therefore, relations of equivalence, rather than of order. Nevertheless, Leibniz provided a logical analysis of order, i.e. an account of the meaning of "prior", "subsequent", "concomitant". His account comprises three points: 1) Given two beings, the one that is more simple (i.e. the one whose analysis requires less operations of the mind) is prior by nature (natura prius). Hence, concomitant (simul) being. 2) The degree of composition of being corresponds to its degree of perfection. Hence, prior beings being simpler, subsequent beings are more perfect. 3) Given two beings such that one is simpler and the other more perfect, they differ temporally if they also contradict each other; conversely, two compossible beings contradict each other if, and only if, they are not simultaneous (i.e. if they do not belong to the same "state of the universe"). It will be shown that this relation makes it possible to characterize the axiomatic order of incomplete notions (in the field of the mathesis universalis). But the attempt to explain the terms prius, posterius and simul in a metaphysical manner, i.e. by laying the stress on the order among substances, raises grave philosophical problems. (shrink)

Fractal patterns offer one way to represent the rough complexity of the natural world. Whilst they dominate many of our visual experiences in nature, little large-scale perceptual research has been done to explore how we respond aesthetically to these patterns. Previous research (Taylor et al., 2011) suggests that the fractal patterns with mid-range fractal dimensions have universal aesthetic appeal. Perceptual and aesthetic responses to visual complexity have been more varied with findings suggesting both linear (Forsythe et al., 2011) and curvilinear (...) (Berlyne, 1970) relationships. Individual differences have been found to account for many of the differences we see in aesthetic responses but some, such as culture, have received little attention within the fractal and complexity research fields. This 2-study paper aims to test preference responses to fractal dimension and visual complexity, using a large cohort (N=443) of participants from around the world to allow universality claims to be tested. It explores the extent to which age, culture and gender can predict our preferences for fractally complex patterns. Following exploratory analysis that found strong correlations between fractal dimension and visual complexity, a series of linear mixed-effect models were implemented to explore if each of the individual variables could predict preference. The first tested a linear complexity model (likelihood of selecting the more complex image from the pair of images) and the second a mid-range fractal dimension model (likelihood of selecting an image within mid-range). Results show that individual differences can reliably predict preferences for complexity across culture, gender and age. However, in fitting with current findings the mid-range models show greater consistency in preference not mediated by gender, age or culture. This paper supports the established theory that the mid-range fractal patterns appear to be a universal construct underlying preference but also highlights the fragility of universal claims by demonstrating individual differences in preference for the interrelated concept of visual complexity. This highlights a current stalemate in the field of empirical aesthetics. (shrink)

Les mathématiciens et philosophes du xix e siècle ont souligné l’incapacité de la doctrine kantienne de l’espace à prendre en charge la fondation des géométries non euclidiennes, et cette difficulté semble pouvoir être rapportée à une tension interne à la notion kantienne d’extériorité : en cherchant à « exposer » l’espace comme condition de possibilité de la géométrie comme science a priori, Kant s’interdirait en réalité de rendre compte de sa fonction de possibilisation de l’expérience externe en général. Le même (...) problème se manifeste lorsqu’on cherche à rendre compte, comme nous le faisons ici, de l’extériorité des phénomènes sonores. À travers la description du rapport du son au temps, mais aussi à l’espace, et à la lumière de la musique savante contemporaine et en particulier d’une œuvre de Pierre Boulez dans laquelle la spatialisation du son joue un rôle majeur, nous montrons qu’il est nécessaire, pour sauver le transcendantal, de lui imposer un reformatage – et plus précisément un déplacement. Car dans la tension entre fondation des axiomes géométriques et ouverture du sujet à l’extériorité, ce qui se joue n’est pas autre chose que le sens même de la question transcendantale. (shrink)

Quoique l'auteur de quatre romans, dont l'un a été couronné par l'un des prix littéraires les plus prestigieux, Michel Henry n'a jamais véritablement formulé une esthétique du roman. L'objet de cet article est, après une étude détaillée de son concept de vie, de tenter de saisir quelle place la pratique littéraire pouvait avoir au sein de son système. Autrement dit, elle s'interroge sur la possibilité de fonder sa création littéraire sur sa réflexion philosophique.

On cherche à comprendre la critique qu’Adorno a proposée de la philosophie de l’histoire de Hegel. Parcourant la Dialectique de la raison, co-écrite avec Horkheimer, La Dialectique négative et divers écrits sociologiques d’Adorno, on montre comment cette critique s’opère au nom d’une pensée concrète de l’utopie, qui prend place dans les relations amicales et amoureuses, dans la politique ou dans l’art. Adorno, en effet, n’a jamais rejeté de manière unilatérale la conception de l’histoire chez Hegel. Bien qu’il l’ait critiquée sur (...) bien des points, il en a fait un outil heuristique pour comprendre la domination et pour développer sa propre idée de l’émancipation. (shrink)

Le livre de Nadine Bernard n’aborde pas un sujet neuf et ne comble pas un vide bibliographique. Les synthèses anciennes, telle celle de Claude Mossé, et plus récentes, comme le premier volume de l’Histoire des femmes paru sous la direction de Pauline Schmitt-Pantel ou encore le livre récent de Pierre Brulé, ont déjà beaucoup donné au lecteur, spécialiste ou non, qui s’intéresse à ce champ d’étude. Mais ce livre fait pourtant oeuvre utile. Procédant d’une bonne connaissance de la bibliographie...

Le but de l’article est double. Il s’agit d’abord de présenter la position du maître ès arts Jean de Jandun (m. 1328) concernant les rapports entre métaphysique et politique, puis d’indiquer comment sa solution, fondée sur l’idée d’un agir « en intention seconde », en fait l’héritier d’Averroès et, plus lointainement, de la doctrine de la providence d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise. Si le philosophe doit occuper un rang fondamental dans la cité en tant qu’il enseigne au prince ce qu’il faut savoir de (...) Dieu, cette fonction ne le subordonne aucunement puisqu’il n’est en vue des autres que secunda intentione. Comment Jean de Jandun l’explicite-t-il? Et que doit-il au providentialisme métaphysique de ses prédécesseurs grec et arabe? C’est à cela que l’article est consacré. (shrink)

La modernité européenne prétend s'ouvrir avec Descartes et sa déclinaison d'un cogito qui paraît tout englober. Cela pourtant n'eut lieu que par recouvrement de ce que les siècles précédents, qui virent naître la figure de l'intellectuel, avaient produit en arabe et en latin. Qu'y a-t-il de bouleversant - gelé par l'oubli, et donc neuf - dans ce que les médiévaux ont pu soutenir de la pensée? C'est ce qu'on cherche ici, en variant librement les entrées. Car la pensée est plurielle. (...) Si l'intellect est pour Aristote comme la main, instrument d'instruments, la pensée l'est aussi. Penser est une main, un outil fait d'outils, un mot rempli de mots. L'homme n'est pas l'être sans œuvre, il est celui dont l'acte n'a pas qu'un nom, l'animal dont l'œuvre propre est innommable autrement que dans la multiplicité. Voici par conséquent une sorte de lexique, certains repères d'une carte mentale où se profile, dans les connexions, ce que penser peut signifier"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Si le nom d’Albert Camus continue de s’imposer, aujourd’hui, comme une figure incontournable de la littérature et de la pensée françaises du XXe siècle, il n’en est pas moins demeuré une personnalité cosmopolite, sensible à ce que la culture ne s’accomplit véritablement qu’en l’absence de sectarisme, qu’en présence de l’autre — avec ou envers lui, peu importe. C’est aussi tout le sens de la collection « Exotopies » de l’Association portugaise des études françaises (A.P.E.F.) qu’inaugure ce volume : présenter des (...) travaux sur la langue et la culture françaises, mais d’un point de vue singulier, celui d’un autre pays. En lisant ce bouquet assez restreint, mais en même temps assez diversifié de travaux sur l’oeuvre d’Albert Camus, on relèvera donc qu’il ne s’agissait ni d’un hommage, ni d’une commémoration, si contraires au vif esprit de la littérature, mais de s’aviser de l’exceptionnelle variété et actualité de son oeuvre. En ce sens, il n’est de meilleure figure pour débuter cette collection à visée cosmopolite que celle d’Albert Camus, chez qui le geste d’écriture est totalement inscrit dans une vocation humaniste. Celle-ci ne s’entend pas dans un sens moraliste, mais dans un sens existentiel — sinon existentialiste —, qui veut que chacun se définisse par le souci qu’il a de l’autre, et que l’humanité s’apparaisse comme le perpetuum mobile de l’histoire, en même temps que son point fixe, son sens dernier. (shrink)

Essentielle au droit, la question de la valeur n'a pourtant jamais été prise au sérieux. Et pour cause, dans le sillage des sciences empiriques, la pensée juridique moderne s'est accommodée d'une épistémologie d'après laquelle toute proposition juridique est réputée vraie ou fausse si elle décrit un état de chose « réel ». Conçu comme un ensemble de faits sociaux, objectivement identifiables, le droit s'appréhende comme une discipline promouvant des idéaux scientifiques, dont la neutralité axiologique de l'observateur. Dans ces conditions, la (...) valeur, indémontrable puisqu'elle n'est pas un fait, est renvoyée aux confins du droit. Cet ouvrage vise à souligner l'articulation fondamentale entre la discipline juridique et le concept de valeur qui en constitue le pivot, et à proposer une définition juridiquement satisfaisante de cet objet central pour le droit. (shrink)

L’indéfini cartésien, qui désigne ce dont on ne peut prouver les bornes, s’applique à deux domaines : les mathématiques et la physique. Cet article examine son application au monde physique, en deux moments. D’abord, par l’examen de l’indéfinité de l’univers, où l’on montre que l’univers cartésien n’est ni fini ni infini, mais in-défini, à la fois selon l’espace et selon le temps . Ensuite, par l’examen de l’indéfinité dans l’univers, qui pose le problème de la continuité, à la fois dans (...) l’espace et dans le temps, où nous défendons une interprétation continuiste et aprioriste selon laquelle le temps cartésien est continu, et cette continuité n’est jamais qu’un pour soi. (shrink)

Deuxième volet d’une étude consacrée à la possibilité et l’existence chez Leibniz, cet article tente de reconstruire la conception leibnizienne de l’existence, notion fondamentale qui soutient toute l’ontologie de l’auteur et qui n’est pourtant ni clairement définie ni systématisée. En trois parties, nous établissons que l’existence leibnizienne est bien un degré de possibilité, un ajout, un complément, mais elle n’ajoute rien de nouveau. Elle n’est pas une perfection, mais une relation comparative de perfections entre elles. Elle n’est pas un prédicat (...) réel, mais un prédicat logique. Elle se définit comme ce qui est distinctement senti, ce qui plaît à un esprit tout en ne déplaisant pas à l’esprit le plus puissant, et ce qui est le plus harmonique. La conception leibnizienne de l’existence a plusieurs couches, et à de nombreux égards préfigure déjà la position kantienne. Second part of a study dedicated to possibility and existence in the philosophy of Leibniz, this article attempts to reconstruct his conception of existence, a fundamental notion that supports the entirety of his ontology, which is nevertheless neither clearly defined, nor systematized. In three parts, we establish that Leibniz’s conception of existence is a degree of possibility, an addition, a complement, which does not, however, add anything new. Existence is not a perfection, but a comparative relation of perfections between themselves. It is not a real predicate, but a logical predicate, characterized as that which is distinctively felt, as that which pleases a mind without displeasing the most powerful mind, and as that which is the most harmonious. Leibniz’s conception of existence has several layers and already prefigures to many the position of Kant. (shrink)

Les croyances ont une face subjective – elles existent parmi les états mentaux d’un agent éventuellement rationnel – et une face objective : avoir une croyance est essentiellement pour l’agent représenter quelque chose comme existant dans son environnement ou, s’il dispose d’un tel concept, représenter un contenu comme vrai. La relation des deux faces de la croyance a été souvent envisagée dans la littérature, donnant lieu à différents slogans plus ou moins heureux, par exemple que la croyance vise le vrai, (...) ou que le vrai est la norme de la croyance et de l’assertion. La lecture du texte de Gil sur la conviction suggère de reconsidérer cette relation et d’isoler un élément de la croyance, que j’appelle adhésion, qui lui-même se décline sous deux aspects, tenir pour vrai et tenir pour sien. Cette adhésion n’est ni identique ni réductible à l’acquiescement (section 2). Elle a sa phénoménologie propre (section 3) et est profondément bidimensionnelle (section 4). Elle est idéalement, c’est-à-dire seulement dans certaines situations de rationalité forte, une fonction de la justification (section 5). Enfin et surtout : elle doit être envisagée en combinant le profil modal du contenu de la croyance et le profil modal de l’élément attitudinal, c’est-à-dire du mode intentionnel (section 6). (shrink)

En dépit de leurs différences biophysiologiques, les hommes disposent tous d'une intuition du bien : bien en direction duquel l'humanité est appelée à travailler parle biais de l'intelligence et de la raison. Cette "loi naturelle", pensée depuis des siècles, a été analysée avec vigueur depuis quatre décennies. La loi naturelle est-elle une éthique universelle? La tradition chrétienne tente d'y répondre. A l'heure d'une société globalisée, où le caractère subversif des ambitions post-humanistes s'affirme, la loi naturelle suffit-elle à répondre aux enjeux (...) éthiques contemporains? (shrink)

RésuméL'article étudie les rapports que la théorie thomasienne de la vision béatifique entretient avec la noétique qu'Averroès expose dans sonGrand CommentaireduDe anima. DuCommentaire des Sentences, où le jeune Thomas propose une transposition explicite de l'intellection philosophique des substances séparées dans l'ordre théologique chrétien, aux œuvres de la maturité, qui n'en font plus mention, on tâche de présenter la nature exacte des emprunts et d'apprécier leur justesse en s'interrogeant sur la cohérence conceptuelle du geste de l'Aquinate: Thomas pouvait-il suspendre sa conception (...) de la vision de Dieu par essence à un dispositif noétique originairement actif dans un système jugé erroné et contraire à la foi? Pouvait-on théologiquement accorder au rapport entre essence divine et intellect ce que, philosophiquement, on refusait à celui entre l'intellect séparé et le corps? Si Thomas et ses partisans, dans la querelle qui s'ouvrait, l'assurent, on indique nonobstant ce que l'emprunt paradoxal d'origine conserve de conceptuellement problématique au cœur du thomisme. (shrink)

Le nom d'Averroès est celui d'un scandale. Voici l'homme d'une thèse folle qui soutient que l'intellect est séparé des individus et unique pour toute l'espèce. Conséquence? La négation de la proposition «je pense» : la ruine de la rationalité. Pendant cinq cents ans, l'Europe s'en offusquera. Comment comprendre cette histoire qui mêle fascination et rejet? D'où vient que l'averroïsme récusé d'emblée n'ait cessé de reparaître? Avec Freud, ce livre propose une réponse. Averroès, alias Ab(...) 1-Walïd Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Ru(...)d, (...) est l'archétype d'une «inquiétante étrangeté» venue perturber la latinité. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The BuddhaTerry C. MuckWhen I think of the Buddha, the subject of my scholarly study, the picture my mind produces is soft and blurred at the edges—out of focus but not in a way that makes it difficult to see or understand. It is more in the way a photography studio uses background and light to project the subject forward. The Buddha, in my mind’s eye, seems friendly, accessible. (...) This Buddha, my Buddha, manages to combine great warmth and great mystery.By contrast, when I think of Jesus, the object of my faith, I see clearly a well-defined personality. There is no portraiture here. It is more like a candid snapshot taken by a very good camera with plenty of natural light; a great photograph, a picture that produces a clear image, in my mind at least, of a person I know and understand. It is a picture of someone walking around Palestine doing great deeds, a father to my Buddha brother—and to me.I love both the Buddha and Jesus. I have loved Jesus since early Sunday school days in Huntington, Indiana, at the Bible Baptist Church on Lake Street. I have loved the Buddha since I first began reading about him in graduate school at Northwestern University and listening to Walpola Rahula lecture about him in classes there. Both the Buddha and Jesus were great men, doing divine things that have changed the world for billions after them. The differences my mind produces are in the realm of qualities. I love them both, but I see them differently.Why the differences? I suppose one reason is that they are different. Gautama Buddha lived in sixth-century B.C.E. India where he was the son of a king, chose a life of religious itinerancy, and died of food poisoning at eighty years of age. Jesus lived in Palestine in the first century C.E. where he was the son of a carpenter, chose a life of religious itinerancy, and was crucified by the Roman authorities after being convicted on a charge of political subversion.They both chose a life of religious itinerancy, to be sure. But the meaning of each of those traveling lives has been the subject of great debate, both within and without their respective religious traditions. Disagreements abound. In fact, in one of those [End Page 105] odd quirks of human cantankerousness, the deeper one gets into each of the traditions, Buddhism and Christianity, the more diverse and passionate are the views about the Buddha and the Christ.The diversity of views deep within each tradition can be stunning to the average Buddhist and Christian on the street, who tend to have a rather homogenized view of each other—kind of a standard life story that could be easily summarized in the pages and pictures of a comic book. But deep within the traditions, Buddhists argue about Buddha nature, Buddha veneration, and the role the Buddha plays in human liberation. Christians argue about Jesus’ divine and human status, his uniqueness, and the role he plays in human salvation. One good thing about all this disagreement: it makes my musings about the Buddha and Jesus pale in comparison.Still, I would like to understand better. Why do I see the Buddha and Jesus differently?Socialization and HistorySurely the most important reason can be summarized in one word: socialization. I was raised to love Jesus, to believe in him. Here’s how I was raised to see Jesus: Jesus is God’s son, born to a woman named Mary and a man named Joseph. God sent Jesus to help human beings lost in a morass of bad deeds, psychological confusion, and social injustices. This melange of evil is so pervasive among human beings that solutions can only come from someone outside the system, willing to enter into the system and guide others out, both by what he says and by what he does—how he lives his life.What Jesus said, what Jesus did, and who Jesus was—all are unique. Others of us can try to live like Jesus—indeed, we should. But none of us, not one, can... (shrink)

The African church has the most growing figures compared to the west and yet it contributes the least to world missions. This article analyses the issue of disparity in funding mission practices between the African church and its mother church, the Western church. It then explores reasons behind the African church's struggles to support missions and identifies opportunities for world missions to which the eastern Congolese church is exposed. A critical analysis of different arguments (...) and reports from different authors was used to draw the main conclusions and, therefore, identify the central reason of the disparity and provide recommendations for the two churches. The paper suggests how scholars and the church should rethink mission, missions and money in Eastern Congo. (shrink)

The shepherd has a very important role in God's purpose for His church. A shepherd should have the equipping ability as described in Ephesians 4:12a. This ability is manifested in two ways, namely: equipping the congregation with knowledge and experience of faith. The process of equipping the congregation will lead the Lord's congregation to spiritual maturity which is characterized by the unity of the spirit, the correct knowledge of the Son of God, full maturity and a level of growth (...) that is in accordance with the fullness of Christ. The results of the research conducted using the quantitative research method concluded that the ability of the pastor to equip the congregation based on Ephesians 4:1-16 had a significant effect on the spiritual maturity of the Baptist church congregations in the Special Region of Yogyakarta. (shrink)