Nicu Gavrilutã, Miscãri religioase orientale. O perspectivã socio-antropologicã asupra globalizãrii practicilor yoga Ed. Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2006.

B a c k g r o u n d. Genre-wise the article is a form of publication of analytical conclusions resulting from researching religious symbolism within the movie. The material for interpretation was derived from mass media, in particular cinematography. The article describes religious symbolism within the movie "Barbie" (2023). It is made apparent that the wide array of religious symbols in modern cinema requires a new approach. M e t h o d s. Issues with (...) defining religious symbolism in cinema have inspired a search of appropriate methods and research methodology. The article utilizes analytical approach based on religious symbolism found in the artistic source material – in this case a movie. R e s u l t s. With that considered the goal of the scientific research was to track down instances of religious symbolism in "Barbie" movie; such was confirmed to be abundant within otherwise mundane work. Barbieland symbolises paradise withiin the movie's fictional universe: it's a perfect place with no diseases or suffering, populated by perfect people ignorant of sorrow, problems, and worries. Naturally, the exile from paradise is a theme that is also predent. C o n c l u s i o n s. Brief research concludes that the "Barbie" movie features disguised religious symbolism – a common trope for many works within modern cinema. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDas verdrängte Sachproblem, das der Aufsatz in Erinnerung rufen will, ist die systematische und epistemische Verwandtschaft von Philosophie und Religion. Verdrängt wurde dieses Sachproblem im Zuge der positivistischen und historistischen Verkürzung des Denkens: Wie der Schlaf der Vernunft Ungeheuer und Dämonen gebiert, so entfesselt die Verkürzung des Denkens den modernen »Polytheismus der Lebenswerte« , dem die Gegenwart besonders hilflos ausgeliefert ist, weil sie der Versuchung nachgegeben hat, das anspruchsvolle Konzept der Vernunft durch das vermeintlich leichter und sicherer zu handhabende (...) Konzept der positiven Wissenschaften zu ersetzen. Eine solche Dialektik der Aufklärung läßt sich mit Kant und Hegel des Näheren als eine Dialektik der Säkularisierung begreifen, in deren Verlauf weder Vernunft noch Religion das bleiben, was sie ihrem eigenen Begriff nach sind. Dementsprechend breiten sich die Pathologien der Vernunft und die Pathologien des Glaubens immer stärker aus, weil sie sich in der mißlungenen Säkularisierung der Moderne gegenseitig verstärken. Denn eine Vernunft, die die »Lebensprobleme« der Menschen nicht mehr zu berühren vermag, ist eine pathologische und reduzierte Form der Vernunft. Dieser pathologischen Form der Vernunft antworten dann ebenso pathologische Kompensationsversuche, die das »ganz Andere« der Vernunft in einem pseudo-religiösen Jargon anpreisen – und womöglich für die eigentliche, »tiefere« Philosophie ausgeben. Im kritischen Gegenzug hierzu will der Aufsatz an die Einsicht erinnern, daß die Philosophie, als Wissenschaft der Wahrheit, nur sich selbst expliziert, indem sie den Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion expliziert, und indem sie umgekehrt das Wesen der Wahrheit expliziert, expliziert sie die Religion.SUMMARYThis essay calls to mind the suppressed problem of the systematic and epistemic relationship between philosophy and religion. This substantive issue has been suppressed by reductionist views of thinking which followed in the wake of positivism and historicism. Just as the sleep of reason brings forth monsters and demons, so the reductionist tendencies of thinking unleash the “polytheism of the values of life” . Our present age is helplessly at the mercy of these tendencies because it has given in to the temptation of replacing the ambitious concept of reason with the concept of the positive sciences which are supposedly easier to handle and can more successfully fulfil the promise of assured results. Such a dialectic of enlightenment can be conceived as a dialectic of secularisation, in the course of which neither reason nor religion remain what they are according to their own genuine conception. Consequently, the pathologies of reason and the pathologies of faith spread ever more rapidly, because they enhance one another in the context of the failed secularisation of modernity. A form of reason that is no longer in touch with the problems of human life is a pathological and reductionist form of reason. Strategies of compensation, however, which celebrate the “totally other” of reason in a pseudo-religious jargon, possibly even presenting it as the real, the “deeper” form of philosophy, are no less pathological. In contrast to such tendencies, this essay is intended to serve as a reminder of the insight that philosophy as the science of truth only explicates itself by explicating religion, and only explicates religion by explicating the character of truth. (shrink)

The one clear insight which can be gleaned from the discussions of religious language by both theologians and philosophers is that its reference is to the transcendent. This is almost axiomatic in Philosophy of Religion nowadays, and we feel that the remarks of Milton's archangel to the first man are most appropriate when he insists that all the conceptions we have of God or of the spiritual world are but inadequate symbols. Though this view has a long (...) history, it does not seem to have been at all general in antiquity. It may be said to have begun with Plato and then to have continued through later generations in Neo-Platonism till it mingled with the Christian tradition. We can see how easily such traditions were fused when we look at the fusion of Platonism and Judaism in Philo of Alexandria. This is how he expounds the Exodus passage where Moses is allowed to see the back, but not the face, of God: Everything which is subsequent to God the virtuous man may apprehend: God alone is inapprehensible. That is to say, God is not apprehensible by direct frontal approach—for such approach would imply God's being disclosed such as He is: but He is apprehensible through the Powers which are consequent upon His being; for those Powers do not present His being, nature, essence but only His existence from the resultant effects. (shrink)

When Jennifer Wallace travelled round Greece as a student, hiking through olive groves to hunt out the stones of old temples and lost cities, she became fascinated by archaeology. It was magical. It was absurd. Give an archaeologist a few rocks and, like a master storyteller, he could bring another world to life. Give him a vague hunch about the past, and he was prepared to spend hours raking through the soil in search of proof. From the plain of (...) Troy to the Titanic, and from Britain's Stonehenge to Ground Zero in New York, Digging the Dirt explores the excavation sites that have exerted the strongest pull on the public imagination. Some sites, in which bones are indistinguishable from dust, have driven archaeologists to despair. Other sites haunt poets with memories of loss and romance. All reveal the relevance of archaeology to our deepest cultural anxieties. Passionate and intelligent, Digging the Dirt engages with the work of philosophers and writers who have been stirred by the life below the ground, while never losing sight of the pressing demands of archaeologists today. In a world of postmodern spin, Wallace calls for a renewed sense of the poetics of depth and shows how ex. (shrink)

The present text attempts to sketch the premises of a discussion concerning the institutional crisis of philosophy in the Romanian educational system. Quantitative analyses are commented; also discussed are elements regarding the curricular integration of philosophy, aspects concerning the initial formation in philosophy and possibilities of insertion on the labor market. The article discusses some elements of the status of philosophy in high school, as well as the necessity of offering philosophy as a mandatory discipline (...) in the curriculum, the necessity of taking several active measures to regain philosophy’s specific place as formative discipline in the Romanian educational system. A distinct aspect concerns the discussion of the status of philosophy in relation to religion and ideology in the Romanian society. (shrink)

This book was undertaken before the terms 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' were coined and the further escalation of America's ideological civil war. It was prompted by deep wonderment at the way people tend to be wholly enclosed within their ideological frames and deaf to claims about reality that come from the opposite camp, no matter how valid they might be. Ideology consists of normative prescriptions regarding how society should be shaped, together with an interpretive roadmap indicating how this normative (...) vision can be implemented in reality. Ideological fixation is the result of tensions and conflicts between these two elements. The book does not focus on the normative aspect of ideology, which is largely subjective, but on its factual claims about the world, typically subordinate to, and often distorted by, the normative commitment. After theorists around 1960 proclaimed the 'death of ideology', ideological divides and clashes have reemerged with renewed intensity throughout the world, including in the liberal democracies. In the United States they have become particularly venomous. The other side is widely viewed as malicious, irrational or downright stupid, and, often, as barely legitimate. The zeal of the opposing sides is often scarcely less than that which characterized the religious ideologies of old. Indeed, historical religious ideologies have largely been replaced by 'secular religions' or 'religion substitutes'. The book is not another survey of past and present ideologies. It is an attempt to understand the cognitive, emotional and social roots of ideology and ideological fixation. It combines insights from evolutionary psychology regarding the nature of some of our deepest proclivities with a broad sweep through history. It proceeds from the Stone Age to the rise of civilization, the great religions and modernity, to a critique of fundamental factual premises that underlie some of the major debates dominating today's liberal democracies. (shrink)

Le symbolisme du temple court d'un Testament à l'autre, non sans de profondes transformations. Dans toutes les religions, le sanctuaire est conçu comme le centre du cosmos, point de rencontre du ciel et de la terre, et sa construction reflète la cosmogenèse. Le Temple de Jérusalem, qui a pu subir l'influence des anciens cultes cananéens et des civilisations voisines, n'échappe pas à cette loi générale. Mais la perspective historique et eschatologique, qui caractérise la foi yahviste, recouvre les symbolismes (...) cosmologiques. On les reconnaît néanmoins dans des détails architecturaux, comme les chérubins, dans le mobilier du Temple, le voile, ou encore dans le vêtement du Grand-Prêtre.Le Nouveau Testament assume le langage symbolique de l'Ancien, bien déstabilisé, à l'époque où Jésus entre en scène, par les évolutions et les antagonismes des divers groupes religieux. Un processus de spiritualisation et d'intériorisation s'était mis en route dans les écrits apocalyptiques et qumrâniens. Le rapport mis par les évangiles entre Jésus et le Temple, joint à d'autres éléments narratifs, de la Passion notamment, fait pénétrer le symbolisme du Temple dans la figure messianique de Jésus. C'est lui qui est le Nouveau Temple dans les écrits johanniques, qui présentent quelques affinités avec ceux de Qumrân. Dans les écrits pauliniens, comme chez les chrétiens hellénistes de Jérusalem, c'est la communauté chrétienne, unie au Christ, qui est le Temple spirituel habité par l'Esprit Saint. Le symbolisme cosmologique trouve là son aboutissement.The symbolism of the temple runs from one Testament to the other, but not without profound transformations. In all religions the sanctuary is seen as the center of the cosmos, the point of encounter between heaven and earth, and its construction reflects the cosmogenesis. The Temple of Jerusalem, which could have undergone the influence of old Canaanite cults and the neighboring civilizations, does not escape from this general law. But the historical and eschatological perspective, whicb characterizes Yahvist faith, covers over the cosmological symbolisms. We recognize them, nevertheless, in architectural details, such as the cberubims, the furniture of the Temple, the veil, and the vestment of the Higb Priest.The New Testament assumes the symbolic language of the Old, whicb, at the time wben Jesus entered upon the scene, was unstabilized by the evolutions and antagonisms of diverse religious groups. A process of spiritualization and interiorization began witb apocalyptic literature and the writings of Qumran. The relationship that the Gospels set up between Jesus and the Temple, joined to other narrative elements, notably of the Passion, made the symbolism of the Temple enter into the messianic figure of Jesus. He is the New Temple in the writings of John, who presents some affinities with the writings of Qumran. In the Pauline writings, as with the Hellenist Cbristians of Jerusalem, it is the Christian community, united witb Christ, who is the spiritual Temple inhabited by the Holy Spirit. The cosmological symbolism finds there its completion. (shrink)

Prophetic pragmatism and radical orthodoxy seek to overcome the limitations of traditional philosophy by means of religious practices. This essay compares and contrasts the two positions by discussing the importance of religious practices in "making sense" of the world and the lives of those who perform such practices. By taking advantage of and overcoming the postmodern age, both traditions free religion from the auspices of philosophy. However, certain theological limitations make radical orthodoxy more difficult to (...) implement than prophetic pragmatism, which is not only free of such limitations, but can also account for the radical orthodox position. (shrink)

The postmodern emphasis on human finitude encourages the reconsideration of religious traditions, and more particularly of Christianity. The doctrine of a vulnerable God dying on a cross speaks to postmodern civilization. Jesus Christ infuses transcendence into the realm of immanence by assuming the human predicament to its bitter end. The present essay critiques the recent attempts of deconstructionist philosopher John D. Caputo and systematic theologian Roger Haight to provide postmodern expositions for the Christian doctrine on the person of Jesus (...) Christ. With the help of the fundamental notion of agapeic love, we demonstrate that in Jesus Christ, Caputo's philosophy of the event and Haight's theology of the symbol can be meaningfully integrated and human finitude responsibly overcome. (shrink)

English summary: In this anthology distinguished and internally renowned scholars from different fields present their different and often controversial concepts of consciousness.

Recent scholarship in cognitive theory emphasizes the situatedness of cognitive processes, which occur not only in minds but in bodies engaging with their environments. This article relies on these insights to rethink the concept of religious beliefs. It argues that to believe in something is more fundamental than to believe that something is the case. Religious beliefs are primarily expressions of trust rather than propositional statements. To believe in God is to trust in God, reflecting cognitive processes rooted (...) in embodied and enacted experiences. (shrink)

There is more than one ‘hard problem'. Just as it is hard for consciousness to grasp itself, it is also hard to examine your own society from the ‘outside'. The same problem applies to scientific paradigms , our taken-for-granted assumptions generally, and the collective representations that sustain them -- such as soup spoons and scientific conferences . To get an ‘outside’ view of ‘Tucson III', I asked my friend Tjiniman, who is a stone-age hunter, to help me out. He (...) is studying anthropology part-time, though he does not believe everything he is told, and prefers to retain his traditional world-view. The following account is mainly his, with a few suggestions from me. (shrink)

With respect to many, if not most issues, there exist significant differences of opinion among individuals who seem to be equally knowledgeable and sincere. Individuals who apparently have access to the same information and are equally interested in the truth affirm incompatible perspectives on, for instance, significant social, political, and economic issues. Such diversity of opinion, though, is nowhere more evident than in the area of religious thought. On almost every religious issue, honest, knowledgeable people hold significantly diverse, (...) often incompatible beliefs. -/- Religious diversity of this sort can fruitfully be explored in many ways — for instance, from psychological, anthropological, or historical perspectives. The current discussion, however, will concern itself primarily with those key issues surrounding religious diversity with which philosophers, especially analytic philosophers of religion, are most concerned at present. Specifically, our discussion will focus primarily on the following questions: How pervasive is religious diversity? Does the reality of this diversity require a response? Can a person who acknowledges religious diversity remain justified in claiming just one perspective to be correct? If so, is it morally justifiable to attempt to convert others to a different perspective? Can it justifiably be claimed that only one religion offers a path into the eternal presence of God? The answers to such questions are not simply academic. They increasingly have great impact on how we treat others, both personally and corporately. (shrink)

Discusses the Christian Platonism of W.R. Inge, Paul Elmer More, A.E. Taylor, and William Temple, as well as the Platonic themes in Whitehead's and Santayana's religious thought.

This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited.

This work contains the Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Glasgow in the academic years 1932-1933 and 1933-1934.

The religious consciousness functions symbolically. As the orientation towards the sacred belongs to consciousness, human existence is constituently symbolic. For Eliade, symbolism is an immediate given of consciousness, an essential object of intelligence that belongs to human beings and can be found in any existential situation of man in cosmos. If, according to Eliade, the religious history of humanity begins with the existence of the sacred, with those infinite hierophanies which organize the world and fill it with significances, (...) then we are entitled to state the anthropological importance invested by Eliade into the religious symbolism. (shrink)

Stone argues that religion must be understood in its connections with world politics for the successful conduct of foreign policy. Without peace among religions, there can be no peace, and without understanding the role of religion in politics, there can be neither peace nor successful foreign policy.

Jordan Peterson is a darling among conservatives and religious people alike. In defending religious belief as the only bulwark against a return to the dark ages, it becomes obvious that Peterson himself doesn't believe in what he preaches. People, he insists, should believe in the archetypal symbolism that is only revealed through a close reading of the Bible. If atheists would only read scripture with more sophistication they wouldn't so embarrassingly reject religion, and simultaneously threaten the very (...) foundations of Western Civilization. It turns out that it's Peterson who comprehensively ignores symbolism. A simple Sunday school lesson shows this. (shrink)

It probes the work of Pythagoras, Galileo, Berkeley, Einstein, and others, exploring how "number magic" has influenced religion, philosophy, science, and mathematics.

The phenomenon of religious experience is of interest to modern researchers in the field of phenomenology and analytical philosophy abroad, but remains unpopular in Ukraine. The interview talks about why philosophy does not stop trying to explore such experiences, and raises the question of the relevance of religion in the age of secularization. Jason Alvis clarifies some points of his project «phenomenology of inconspicuousness» and shares an unpopular view on the work of Martin Heidegger in general (...) and on his concept «eine phenomenologie des Unscheinbaren» in particular. The researcher draws attention to the difference in the reading and interpretation of Heidegger's philosophy in the USA and Europe. J. Alvis responds with his own concept to the challenge of the «spectacle era», which seeks to perceive God as another performance with special effects in the form of a miracle. But the most important thing is that the phenomenologist finally suggests moving away from obsessive dialectics, because God cannot be explained using the categories of «visible» or «invisible». So inconspicuousness does not mean that God cannot be seen. Just the opposite - it can and should be seen in completely everyday moments. Such a vision gives an active role to the subject of religious experience. The philosopher explains why the thesis that religion is irrelevant and unimportant today does not stand up to criticism and points out that in fact there is rather a turn towards religion. The good thesis «We make religion» reflects not only the modern view and possibilities of science in researching this issue. This is a call to fill religion with a new meaning, to finally notice in it a personality whose role could previously be leveled by tradition. In this conversation, you can find the destruction of clich s related to religiosity as such. The text also contains references to modern trends not only in the study of religious experience, but also in the social reinterpretation of the content of this experience through the prism of faith. (shrink)

In this study the author makes a comparison between the two main types of existentialism: the Christian and the non-Christian. Dr. Kingston handles the issues in a fair and honest way, neither concealing his own position nor dealing unfairly with those of whom he is most critical.

In Issue 7 of Think, Brendan Larvor criticised the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, for suggesting that atheism and humanism ought not to be taught in schools alongside the religious faiths. In Issue 9, Brenda Watson defended the Archbishop's view. Here, Larvor replies to Watson. The numbers below refer to numbered points in Watson's piece.

William Lane Craig has defended a modern First Cause argument based on 1) a principle of universal causality and 2) the claim that the universe must have had a beginning. But 1) is susceptible to counter examples from quantum theory. Moreover, Craig’s defense of 2) is open to serious question. He claims that an actual infinity (of time) is impossible; he also claims that 2) is in fact supported by big bang theory. I argue that both of these claims are (...) mistaken, and that in consequence we have no particular reason to suppose that 2) is true. I conclude that the First Cause argument fails, but I suggest that a weaker inductive argument might be worth a try. (shrink)

Fourteen essays consider the interaction between Greek philosophy and Jewish religious thought during the Hellenistic period. Attention is paid to the work of Ben Sira, Solomon, and Philo of Alexandria, especially concerning issues like stoicism, freedom and determinism, creation, mysticism, and sex. Attempts to find a synthesis of Jewish and Greek thought are emphasized. Author and title index only. c. Book News Inc.

HOST is the theory that to be conscious of a mental state is totarget it with a higher-order state (a `HOS'), either an innerperception or a higher-order thought. Some champions of HOSTmaintain that the phenomenological character of a sensory stateis induced in it by representing it with a HOS. I argue that thisthesis is vulnerable to overwhelming objections that flow largelyfrom HOST itself. In the process I answer two questions: `What isa plausible sufficient condition for a quale's belonging to aparticular (...) mental state?' and `What is the propositional contentof HOSs that target sensory states?'. (shrink)

The origins of genocide have been sought by scholars in many areas of human experience: politics, religion, culture, economics, demography, ideology. All these of course are valid explanations, and go a long way to getting to grips with the objective conditions surrounding genocide. But, as Berel Lang put it some time ago, there remains an inexplicable gap between the idea and the act of mass murder. This article aims to be a step towards bridging that gap by adding a (...) human dimension to the existing explanations. Building on Roger Caillois’s anthropological analysis of ‘war as festival’, Georges Bataille’s concept of society’s ‘excess energy’, and Emile Durkheim’s idea of ‘collective effervescence’, and connecting these terms to those used explicitly in relation to the Holocaust by Dominick LaCapra (‘scapegoating’ and the ‘carnivalesque’) and Saul Friedl‰nder (‘Rausch’ or ‘ecstasy’), I argue that prior to and during any act of genocide there occurs a heightening of community feeling, to the point at which this ecstatic sense of belonging permits, indeed demands, a normally forbidden act of transgression in order to ‘safeguard’ the community by killing the designated ‘threatening’ group. This article is a theoretical starting point aimed at stimulating discussion, in which I refer to the Nanjing and My Lai massacres and the genocides in Nazi Germany and Rwanda to show where empirical research is needed to illustrate this concept of ‘genocide as transgression’. (shrink)

Since the first half of the nineteenth century in which English was introduced as the language of higher education in India, the word and concept of “philosophy” has played an important role in Indian intellectual life. First the study of philosophy must have meant the study of Western philosophy in Indian universities, butlater various attempts were made to discover the Indian versions of philosophical traditions in Sanskrit literature. Today no one doubts that there has been a rich (...) and very long tradition of such intellectual activities as are fully compatible with what European philosophers have actually been doing. Nevertheless, it is sometimes very difficult to draw a strict line between philosophy and religion in Indian thought. The present study will focus on that passage of the Nyāyamañjarī by a Kashmirian Nyāya scholar Jayanta which deals with the justification of the authority of the Vedas and other religious scriptures. From the analysis of the passage we may detect that there are two different dimensions in his application of logic for this issue. On the one hand he appeals to logical thinking for the defence of the Vedic authority and tries to establish the proper proof. But on the other hand he seems to be conscious of the limitation of reasoning, for he refers to those thinkers without refuting them in the latter half of the passage, according to whom every religious scripture must be accepted as valid insofar as the path of reasoning and argumentation is taken. (shrink)

This book redefines religious studies as a field in which a plurality of disciplines interact. A social science when understood as a body of knowledge, religion is also marked by discovery, appreciation, orientation, and application--an interplay of the arts and sciences. Teaching religious studies involves the question of the occupation of territories and disentangling occupation from violence.