This essay explores the intersection of communication and culture. It proposes that a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry–a phenomenology of communications–implicates culture in that all communication helps shape and reflects a society’s cultural assumptions and aspirations. In an era of social media and electronic communication, the impact on culture has accelerated. Both positive and negative aspects of social media reverberate in American popular culture that Christopher Lasch described as a culture of narcissism and David Brooks calls a culture of the (...) “Big Me.” The essay revisits a documentary about Mike Tyson’s life and career that exemplifies what it means to be an American, renewing a culture that aspires to redeem the American dream of a more perfect union beyond preference and prejudice. It shows also why American culture needs to be transformed from a narcissistic, self-referential, tribal perspective of identity politics and false tolerance toward a culture that respects individual autonomy and privacy, reconnects rights and responsibilities, and encourages true diversity, inspired by transcendent norms and ideals worthy of a creature created in the image and likeness of God. (shrink)

Belgrade University student demonstrations, 1996-97, represent a turning point in the emergence of a democratic civic culture and civil society in the former Yugoslavia. Large-scale student demonstrations were triggered by the regimens cancellation of the November 1996 municipal election victories by the united opposition, Zajedno, in more than a dozen cities throughout Serbia, Demonstrating independently of political parties, student demands concerned not only narrow issues of university education, funding and governance, but also much larger society-wide issues concerning democratic prospects for (...) Serbia Student demonstrations helped achieve several important goals, including the reinstatement of the 1996 opposition victories, and hastened Milošević's departure. Belgrade students sought consciously to transcend Serbian nationalism, effectively challenging the regime, while distancing themselves from all political parties. Crucial in terms of overcoming the virulent nationalisms, exploited by political leaderships throughout the Balkans in the 1990s, was the students' quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society. Following Milošević's demise, the studem movement became institutionalized in Otpor as a genuine civil society public-interest group and unofficial watchdog. (shrink)

Ecumenical dialogue and reconciliation among Christians, the dictates of academic freedom, and the very integrity of science and faith call for a new conceptual framework, episteme or paradigm for understanding the phenomenon of man, including the proper relationship between science and faith. Both science and Scripture suggest a more humane, charitable, and open-ended approach to science and religion. Freedom of inquiry and Christian charity constitute the essential prerequisites for a new episteme reflected by the imperative for a Second Reformation in (...) the religious sphere, coupled with the prospects for a post-Kantian Second Copemican Revolution in the scientific sphere. (shrink)

This essay proposes that while a "Christian" democracy may be too idealistic, liberal democracy presupposes transcendent moral and spiritual norms, in particular a Judeo-Christian foundation for human dignity and human rights. A Biblical understanding of human nature as fallible and imperfect susceptible to worldly temptations, emphasizes free choice and personal responsibility, and the imperative to limit the temporal exercise of power by any man or institution. Maritain's concept of integral or Christian humanism is founded on personalism, the unique value and (...) dignity of each human being created in the image of God, and the need for community. The major challenge for literal democracy is how to reconcile individual freedom with socio-economic-political-legal institutions and processes which require the constraint of man-made laws and the exercise of authority and power The essay condudes that perhaps the major legacy of the American founding is the notion of the priority of liberty which offers the best prospects for conjoining reason and faith, the secular and the sacred, Athens and Jerusalem, The priority of liberty also animates Maritain's vision of a "Christianly-inspired" personalistic society capable of advancing both individual human flourishing and the common good. (shrink)

Political culture theory enjoyed a revival during the 1980s despite its alleged inability to account for change, values, conflict, and differences within nations. A new school of thought attempts to remedy the shortfalls of Almond and Verba's The Civic Culture. The grid-group cultural theory, propounded by Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, proposes a typology of ways of life as the missing link in a cultural-functional analysis of the formation of preferences. This essay assesses cultural theory as a methodology and a substantive (...) theory or sociology of knowledge. Cultural theory claims that there are only five possible ways of life: Hierarchy, egalitarianism, fatalism, individualism, and autonomy. Yet it fails to address questions of universal values, ethics, power, or human rights and freedoms. There are inherent problems in applying cultural theory as a mode of political analysis. In the absence of exogenous, non-systemic ethical criteria, cultural theory as a social construction of reality begs the question of ethical conduct. (shrink)

At the dawn of the Third Millennium, philosophy is at an important crossroads in its role as paideia—philosophy educating humanity. A major challenge for philosophy today is to mediate the emergmg science-religion dialogue, and enhance understanding of the relationship between science, ethics, and faith. Curiously, the methodological dilemmas and thorny issues of demarcation between science and religion reflect a new awareness regarding metascientific questions posed by science itself. We are at the threshold of a new Golden Age of scientific discoveries (...) and faith-informed, interdisciplinary, and liberal learning interconnecting once more all areas of knowledge with ethics and faith. The likely key to new discoveries is an interdisciplinary approach seeking interrelatedness between all phenomena. This means also that the restoration of philosqphy in the classic sense as sophia or the love of wisdom can only be achieved within the larger framework of dialogue among all disciplines in the quest for truth. (shrink)

A new paradigm is emerging which places Charles Darwin's theory of evolution via natural selection into a larger conceptual framework with greater explanatory power. Darwinism needs to be reconceptualized as a scientific enterprise and philosophical worldview. A larger framework is needed to account for the immaterial laws of nature which guide evolutionary mechanisms and processes to achieve predetermined ends that reflect a superlative Intelligence, Mind or God. Curiously, Darwinism fails to explain intelligent observers who can make sense of the laws (...) of nature. Immanuel Kant's conception of man as both phenomenon and noumenon suggests that man is the missing link between science and religion, and that the two views of genesis—-evolution and creation--are complementary rather than antithetical. Evolution should be taught as science, not ideology. Teaching evolution as science means opening the theory to critical scrutiny which can correct, modify, enrich, and develop the theory in interdisciplinary perspective. But the theory of evolution reaches well beyond science narrowly defined, and broaches philosophical, ethical, and theological dimensions which can be addressed only in interdisciplinary conversation bringing to the table insights from many disciplines. Finally, Darwinism as a materialist, reductionist worldview needs to be humanized, if not Christianized, and thus reach its full potential as science. It would then also recognize human exceptionalism, the teleological imperative, the principle of tolerance, and the fundamental religious insight that we live by faith. (shrink)

Curiously, in the late twentieth century, even agnostic cosmologists like Stephen Hawking—who is often compared with Einstein—pose metascientific questions concerning a Creator and the cosmos, which science per se is unable to answer. Modern science of the brain, e.g. Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind, is only beginning to explore the relationship between the brain and the mind-the physiological and the epistemic. Galileo thought that God's two books-Nature and the Word-cannot be in conflict, since both have a common author: God. (...) This entails, inter alia, that science and faith are to two roads to the Creator-God. David Granby recalls that once upon a time, science and religion were perceived as complementary enterprises, with each scientific advance confirming the grandeur of a Superior Intelligence-God. Are we then at the threshold of a new era of fruitful dialogue between science and religion, one that is mediated by philosophy in the classical sense? In this paper I explore this question in greater detail. (shrink)

This essay explores the conceptual foundations of C. S. Lewis' pilgrimage to a Christian worldview and its implications for Christian scholarship in the Third Millennium. C. S. Lewis' essential Christian worldview has three distinct yet complementary strands: The Tao, Natural Law, or the moral sense; the ecumenical inspiration of Mere Christianity; and the quest for truth and authentic values in the real world. These three strands converge in Lewis' own pilgrimage and witness to the immediacy and relevance of religious experience. (...) Curiously, the reality and truth of the Christian vision finds eloquent exposition in Lewis' lucid prose In the recounting of this consummate storyteller, the Christian worldview emerges as both real and transcendental or "numinous," whose truth is found in historical evidences and lived experience. It is for this reason that Lewis is aptly called an apostle to the sceptics. Lewis' literary imagination thus provides inspiration for a Christian humanist paideia as propaedeutic to renew both liberal arts education and the culture of liberalism. (shrink)

Contemporary natural science is returning to the question of First Principles concerning the origin, nature, and destiny of man and the universe, while the social sciences bracket man and the question of values, and theologians largely concede factual pronouncements about the world to scientists. This essay proposes that man himself is the missing link between science and religion, nature and spirit. And that the main challenge for science and religion today is to find a common, intersubjectively transmissible language which could (...) bridge the conceptual gap between these two fields of inquiry, A genuine science-theology dialogue would have to "unbracket" man and encompass the totality of human experience via a global approach to all knowing seeking to rediscover the interconnectedness and complementarity between facts and values, knowledge and faith, science and religion. (shrink)

The Fifth European Conference on Science and Theology, held in Freising and Munich, Germany, 1994, exemplified the growing worldwide interest in science-religion dialogue. The keys to this dialogue care the emergmg linkages and interfaces among all the sciences, on the one hand, and the enigmatic complexity of questions concerning the origin, nature, and destiny of man and the universe, on the other. Both increasingly address issues of meaning values, and ultimate causes, which lie well beyond the ken of science as (...) presently understood. Underlying the current science-religion dialogue is a sense of awe, humility, and wonder in the face of incomplete knowledge seeking understanding and transcendental faith seeking rational foundations. (shrink)

This editorial highlights the remarkable contributions in this JIS volume that explore the arts as a gateway to the transcendentals of beauty, truth and goodness. It focuses on the recurring notions of order, telos, and creativity reflecting the essential attributes of human nature as imago Dei. Apart from the arts as art therapy, how can the arts connect one to the transcendentals? Can homo musicus aspire to self-transcendence? A shining example of music as self-transcendence is the life and times of (...) Tony Bennett, the legendary singer and an American icon of traditional pop, big band, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett’s love of music, in particular, transcends his physical limitations engendered by the onset of Alzheimer’s in later life. (shrink)

From the Adriatic to the Baltic, from the Elbe to the Urals and beyond, totalitarianism has collapsed. Yet the 1989 bloodless revolution in Eastem Europe caught most observers by surprise. This essay explores the signal socio-cultural forces which contributed to the sea-change. Throughout Eastem Europe, grassroots movements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s demanding greater participation in social, economic, cultural, and political life. Thus, the rise of a new civic culture and civil society preceded and fostered the momentous changes in (...) Eastem Europe, This essay offers a model of transition from authoritarian systems to political democracy, highlighted by "The Menshevik Divide," and places East European nations and the USSR on a cognitive map which indicates the relative strength of civic values and autonomous action just before the revolution (1988), Curiously, this model also shows why the transition remains incomplete, since authoritarian values and political processes keep many post-communist systems in a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship. Hence, the quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society is still a futuristic project in much of Eastem Europe and the Soviet successor states, suspended between democracy and "virtual communism.". (shrink)

This essay considers Medjugorje, a small mountain village in Bosma-Hercegovina, as an icon or a bridge between God and man. The contemporary quest for national roots in the Balkans has led to cultural policies in the Yugoslav successor states which deny all common bonds among the South Slavs, resulting in a Kafkaesque civil war. Drawing on the crisis of liberal democracy and community in the West, the essay explores the prospects for peace in the former Yugoslavia, as reflected in Our (...) Lady of Medjugorje's call for moral and spiritual renewal. It concludes that the quintessential, universal. Christian, and ecumenical Medjugorje message of peace represents a bridge to eternity, just as the historic Old Bridge in Mostar and the Višegrad Bridge over the Drina River are symbolic of a common South Slav history and destiny. (shrink)

This essay seeks to exploe the nature and effects of the new Post-Industrial Revolution as epitomized by the digital universe, the fusion of synthetic biology and cybenetics, and the promise of genetics, engendering new hopes of a techno-utopian future of material abundance, new virtual worids, human-like robots, and the ultimate conquest of nature. Central to this prefect is the quest for transcending human limitattons by changing human nature itself, consciously directing evolution toward a posthuman or transhuman stage. Less well understood (...) is the utopia-dystopia syndrome illuminated by ttw dystopian imagination refracted in science-fiction literature in such famous twentieth-century dysopias as Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and George Orwell's 1984, cautioning that utopias may lead to their opposite: dystopia, totalitarianism, dictatorship. The thrall of techno-utopia based on technology as a prosthetic god may lead to universal tyranny by those who wield political power. The essay concludes that what humanity needs is not some unattainable Utopia but rather to cherish and nurture its God-given gifts of reason, free will, conscience, moral responsibility, an immortal soul, and the remarkable capacity of compasston to become fully human. (shrink)

Globalization offers a comprehensive framework for addressing prospects for the peaceful evolution of people and societies in the Third Millennium, Global markets, trade and communications, along with science and technology, now drive social, economic, and political development, modernization, and cultural change. Globalization thus holds great promise of extending economic prosperity throughout the world. Paradoxically, globalization can also deepen the divisions between rich and poor nations, contribute to the revolution of rising expectations in the Third World, and exacerbate frustrations caused by (...) the accelerated pace of socio-economic and political development and cultural change. The contemporary resurgence of religion reflects crisis of modemity--the loss of traditional anchoring of social, cultural, and ethical mores, self- and group identification and meaning. The key to a peaceful, democratic globalization is a successful modernization strategy which seeks to reconcile and conjoin the best elements of modernity and tradition, the individual and community, freedom and order, secularism and religion, democracy and authority. (shrink)

This essay explores an interdisciplinary framework for the comparative study of genocide. It traces the Other Holocaust of communist genocide in the twentieth century, with an estimated 100 million victims. Both the Nazi Holocaust and communist genocide raise major ethical dilemmas concerning individual and collective responsibility. The central underlying dynamic common to the Nazi Holocaust, communist and other genocides is the radical discounting of human life and dignity, and denial of the intrinstic worth of each individual human being. Hence the (...) moral equivalency of evil Mass crimes against humanity run counter to the ethical precepts of all major religions, in particular the Judaeo-Christian tradition which considers man inviolable, created in the image of God Those who would honor and remember the victims of past genocides, whether Christians or Jews, believers or nonbelievers, need to rededicate their efforts to prevent such atrocities in the future by defending human rights and the persecuted in the present. (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that the central postmodern challenge is to recover stable, objective normative standards that presuppose cultural renewal and liberal arts education building on the classical paideia of educating the whole person. Humans possess an innate moral sense that requires nurturing and developing to encompass both résumé and eulogy virtues as proposed by David Brooks’ The Road to Character. Wisdom-seeking traditions aim at self-mastery, but need tempering by neo-Kantian epistemological modesty to eschew utopias in their quest (...) for transcendence, recalling the Augustinian conception of humanity’s fallen nature, the need for community, the aspiration for good works in the City of Man, and the soul’s yearning for redemption and salvation in the City of God. The essay concludes with the “Angel Initiative” as an example of practical wisdom that reflects Brooks’ humility code, the wisdom-seeking traditions’ emphasis on the Way, and Christianity’s promise as “a religion of second chances.”. (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that interdisdplinary sudies hold special promise in achieving new scientific-technological breakthroughs and mapping more effective socio-economic, political, and cultural modes of interaction enhancing human flourishing. Universities are crucial to this endeavor in their multiple roles of teaching, learning, research, and service, educating youth and adults for meaningful careers, life, and participatory citizenship in a democracy. Higher education is, thus, a major transmission belt for culture. In the Third MilIennkim, interdisciplinary approaches to learning suggest new (...) methodologies that seek dialogue and integration of research findings across the disciplines to overcome the compartmentalization of knowledge which hinders new discoveries in the natural sciences and "connecting-the-dots" in the social and behavioral sciences, while humanities are key to understanding the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of human beings. Redeeming the culture and educating the Selfie generation require the integrated knowledge and insights of all disciplines. (shrink)

The Quest for the Holy Grail is symbolic of man's quest for transcendence. In a postmodern world, this quest is more important than ever, since postmodernity questions the significance of all quests, values, ethics, morality, purpose, personal responsibility, and community, and thus the very essence of what it means to be human. The resulting desert of the soul reflects postmodernity's radical discounting of all human aspirations. Yet the two most basic human passions---the love of freedom and the yearning for salvation---may (...) be reconciled within a larger conceptual framework which seeks to preserve the essence of each in harmony. The recovery of a teleological conception of the human soul or self as purposeful human action informed by the moral imperative could bridge the epistemic gap between liberalism and fundamentalism. The vision of the Holy Grail as a quest for self-transcendence and an encounter with God represents also the fulfillment of the perennial human quest for meaning redemption, and perfection. (shrink)

This essay explores a new conceptual paradigm for bridging the gulf separating what C. P. Snow called The Two Cultures--science and the humanities. Central to this rainbow paradigm is a more unified, holistic, and integral understanding of human life in society. A fruitful science-theology dialogue presupposes a much broader context of a revitalized Third Culture which weaves together insights from all the arts and sciences, social sciences and humanities. The essay thus invokes the incarnational dimension of man as God's creation (...) and truth as the Logos or ultimate Reality. The conclusion follows that a new lingua franca--a more felicitous conceptual understanding focusing on man as the missing link-requires integrative insights across all disciplines. Such an integral vision of what it means to be fully human reflects a sapiential, existential, and eschatological challenge of unity in diversity, that is, a truly human culture or a culture of cultures. (shrink)

This essay explores the digital challenge, how to humanize technology, and the need to rethink the digital-human divide. This is imperative in view of superintelligent Al, which may escape human control. The information age poses quandaries regarding the uses and abuses of technology. A major critique concerns the commercial design of digital technologies that engenders compulsive behavior. All technologies affect humans in a reciprocal way. The new digital technologies-from smartphones to the Internet—where humans are tethered to machines, can impair our (...) autonomy, hijack attention, rewire the brain, and diminish concentration, empathy, knowledge, and wisdom. The remedy is to restore deep reading, human interactions, personal conversations, real friendships, and respect for autonomy and privacy, building a nurturing culture of tolerance, coupled with transcendent norms and ideals worthy of a creature created in the image and likeness of God. This aspiration should be at the center of a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry—a phenomenology of communications. (shrink)

This essay proposes that the human quest for meaning, self-realization, and self-transcendence via the moral "ought" as the proper end, purpose, or goal for man constitutes the teleological imperative. This pan-human quest for universal touchstones for values and truths should thus be the focus of both moral education and cultural renewal. Central to this quest is a re-conceptualization of virtue ethics as radically transcending the social construction of reality. Virtue may he fully understood only within the larger parameters of natural (...) right or natural law, which posit an underlying moral order in Creation, independently of and preceding, human perception and cognition. The right ordering of the human soul or self reflects the larger cosmological order of the universe, and its fulfillment in the Golden Rule or the Tao, the Judeo-Christian traditions expressed in the Decalogue, and the New Testament's call for charity. (shrink)

This essay explores the intellectual and spiritual ferment in Tito's Yugoslavia focusing on its two major protagonists, Milovan Djilas and Mihajlo Mihajlov, Their quest for an open society and the first freedoms-thought, speech, press, assembly, and association-inspired a phenomenal rebirth ofcivic culture and civil society that toppled commmist rule in the 1989 peaceful revolution which swept across Eastern Europe and shook the Kremlin, This Third Revolution is set in the larger framework recalling the unique features of Yugoslavia's "independent road to (...) socialism," following the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, which made "Djilasism" possible. Titoism as a case study of modernization highlights the promises and pitfalls of Marxist-Leninist ideology whose utopia of a classless society remained a straitjacket limiting efforts at liberalization and democratization. Thus, post-Tito Yugoslavia became a cauldron of nationalist contestations for Tito's mantle of leadership. Mihajlov warned of the consequences of ethnic or identity politics in a multi-ethnic state, resulting in the division of post-Tito Yugoslavia along national/ethnic lines, which triggered the 1990s civil war and "ethnic cleansing" on all sides. The essay concludes that both Djilas and Mihajlov championed freedom. Yet Mihajlov's is the more enduring and universally redeeming vision whose transcendent grounding in a Christian metaphysics resonates across time and space, ennobling cultures. (shrink)

This essay offers hope that beyond the specter and tragedy of the Yugoslav civil war lie the prospects for peace, democratization, economic and political reconstruction, and the evolution of a democratic Third Yugoslavia. But, to realize this hope, there is a need for the development of a genuine civic culture and civil society in the Yugoslav successor states based on democratic values, pluralism, and tolerance, rooted in the conception of universal human rights, constitutionalism, and equality before the law. The South (...) Slavs may have to retrieve their historical memory which predates the fateful divisions along ethnic, cultural, and religious lines. The Swiss model of autonomous cantons, four major languages, neutrality, but a pronounced common national identity is also instructive for democratic prospects of a possible future South Slav (con-) federation and peace in the Balkans, A proposed Illyrian Constitution would bind the South Slavs together, reconnecting individual human rights to community. Above all, moral and spiritual renewal are the necessary precondition for peace and reconciliation, as well as economic and political reconstruction and the genesis of a democratic Third Yugoslavia. (shrink)

This essay proposes that the crisis of the contemporary university presents a unique challenge and opportunity to re-imagine the university as a quest for truth, reflecting John Henry Newman's ideal of a "wholeness of vision" and "enlargement of the mind" in educating the whole person. Higher education can become more meaningful and relevant by combining a strong core curriculum in the liberal arts with vocational and career preparation, interdisciplinary engagement, and consilience between Athens and Jerusalem as modeled in the science-ethics-religion (...) dialogue. A rediscovery of natural law and the moral law, universals and absolutes, which guide human aspirations for justice, fairness, and community, can counter the postmodem temptation for subjectivity and disconnection. The most cogent remedy for student boredom and faculty apathy is intellectual diversity for a renewed sense of excitement in exploring insights across the disciplines regarding ourselves and the world. This calls also for superceding the anti-liberal strictures of political correctness, rededicating the university to its essential task of free inquiry. (shrink)

This essay proposes an interdisciplinary framework for teaching markets and morals by exploring the linkages between political economy, civil society, and culture. Free markets in capitalist mixed economies shape, and are shaped by, political institutions of representative democracy, the vibrancy of civil society, and the values, norms, and beliefs embedded in culture. The major challenge for liberal society and free markets is to reconcile individual and group interests with the common good. The cultural contradictions of capitalism reflect the inadequacy of (...) commercial virtues to sustain a liberal society. External constraints of law and institutional checks and balances in all spheres need to be conjoined with internalized moral constraints of a well-ordered individual conscience. This, in turn, requires a normative order which transcends radically the selfishness of individual and group interests, thus preserving liberty and democracy while enhancing economic efficiency and the social beneficence of free markets. The essay thus confirms Alexis de Tocqueville's notion of the interdependence of liberty, morality, and faith. (shrink)

"La distinción que suele hacerse entre el Derecho político y la Teoría general del Estado no obedece, en realidad, a una exigencia lógica; la separación ni es clara, ni tiene fundamento. Son dos aspectos del mismo problema científico: estudio jurídico del Estado. La Teoría general del Estado se ocupa generalmente de definir los principales aplicables a todo Estado y en todas sus manifestaciones. El Derecho político, partiendo de estos conceptos generales que sienta la Teoría, investiga más en concreto la vida (...) orgánica del Estado, sus funciones internas y exteriores y las relaciones del Poder Público con los individuos". Oskar Georg Fischbach. (shrink)

Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks, rendering the attack without force against a more balanced (...) construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted appeals to matters Kious considers morally ‘clear’, while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally morally ‘clear’, namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits one’s argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance. These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts. Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter. (shrink)