Ancestor worship is a diffusive religion. Different nationalities may have different ideas about ancestors, but ancestor worship plays the same role. In the development of modern society, Ancestor worship still plays an important role in the demand for human psychology, the shaping of individuals, the stable development of families, and the cohesion of ethnic groups. The development and inheritance basis of ancestor worship is closely related to Chinese religion and culture, and the (...) integration of the two has also promoted the continuous inheritance and development of Chinese religion and culture. At the same time, ancestor worship is also the concrete manifestation of filial piety advocated by Confucianism and Taoism in Chinese traditional culture. By analyzing the basis of the formation of ancestor worship and its inheritance characteristics, this paper discusses the important role of ancestor worship in Chinses religion and culture and further discusses the influence of Confucianism and Taoism on the inheritance of ancestor worship by combining the relationship between filial piety and ancestor worship in Confucianism and Taoism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 2 Seiten: 127-152.

This paper reflects on two sets of terms in the field of religious studies, mainly through a comparative study with the divinities and ancestorship between African and Confucian cosmologies: the first one is the classification of monotheism, polytheism and animism; and the second is so-called ‘ancestor worship’. I argue that the classification system of monotheism, polytheism, and animism is partially invalidated in both African religions and Chinese Confucianism. This is because in both traditions, even if there is a (...) supreme or original being, it is on a continuum or spectrum with other divinities and even human beings, rather than an absolute Other. Similarly, the use of the simple word ‘worship’ to summarise ancestorship in African religions and Chinese Confucianism is actually a simplification of the relationship between the living and ancestors across both traditions. (shrink)

This paper examines three ancient traits of religion whose origins likely date back to the Upper Paleolithic: ancestor worship, shamanism, and the belief in natural and animal spirits. Evidence for the emergence of these traits coincides with evidence for a dramatic advance in human social cooperation. It is argued that these traits played a role in the evolution of human cooperation through the mechanism of social scrutiny. Social scrutiny is an effective means of reducing individualism and enhancing prosocial (...) behavior. Religion’s most ancient traits represent an extension of the human social world into the supernatural, thus reinforcing within-group cooperation by means of ever-vigilant spiritual monitors. Believing that the spirits were always watching may have helped reduce the number of non-cooperators within a group while reinforcing group behavioral norms, thus allowing humanlike levels of cooperation to emerge. (shrink)

Philosophical aspects of belief and ancestor worship in Southern Vietnam.

Worship as the work of the people of God does not arise in a vacuum. It is contextual and cultural. In the areas of the world, long designated as the mission field, many developments were transported to countries in the global south and imposed on local peoples. This was true of the arrival of Presbyterians who came to settle in southern Africa. Presbyterians imported two differing traditions of worship, the evangelical and the liturgical, and introduced them to the (...) indigenous peoples they encountered. They were adopted without adaptation and have largely followed their European ancestors and contemporaries. Africans have largely followed their missionary mentors but have found ways of subverting these traditions by forming a new tradition by blending aspects of each and adding their own African brand of Spirit inspired and led. worship while their mentors pay only lip service to their African colleagues. Contribution: This article highlights the historical continuities in the worship of a mainline Church of European Origin (CEO) with their ecclesiastical and ecumenical source(s). This is in discontinuity with the worship traditions of African Christian communities, which are less formal and tend to incline towards the charismatic and Pentecostal traditions with their freedom of expression of faith rather than the more cerebral forms of expression. (shrink)

This paper discusses archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence for the use of the San Pedro cactus in northern Peru as a vehicle for traveling between worlds and for imparting the “vista” (magical sight) necessary for shamanic healers to divine the cause of their patients' ailments. Using iconographic, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence for the uninterrupted use of this sacred plant as a means of access to the Divine and as a tool for healing, it describes the relationship between San Pedro, (...) ancestor worship, water/fertility cults and also the common symbolic associations between San Pedro and wind-spirits. It closes by suggesting that the more than 2000 year time-depth of using this plant as a means for accessing the realms of Spirit and as a tool for healing should serve to challenge the unfortunate tendency in the contemporary United States to consider this plant as a “recreational drug.”. (shrink)

Spiritual insecurity among African Christians is a huge challenge. The insecurity among other things arises from African people’s former traditional African ancestral world view of ancestral veneration. The ancestors promote or hinder African Christians’ reliance on Christ because they have presupposedly acquired the supernatural power that enables them to provide diagnoses and solutions to life challenges. The inherent problem in the ancestral world view, however, is that the ancestors are both respected and feared by their descendants because they can either (...) bless or harm depending on the state of the relationship between the surviving human beings and the ancestors. The basis of the unpredictable influence of ancestors lies in the fact that they are considered as human beings who carry their human qualities to the spiritual world. In light of this situation, one constructive approach that can be advanced to address the challenges of African Christians’ spiritual insecurity is a proper understanding of Christ as a sinless representative of humanity. This approach maintains that healing and coping with life within the challenge of African spirituality in the context of threatening life issues can be addressed by an appropriate understanding of Christ’s sinlessness. The article argues for the foundational status of Christ as a sinless representative of humanity as the controlling framework. In doing so, Christ’s sinlessness and the sinfulness of natural ancestors are juxtaposed to compare the two ontologies in order to draw some pastoral guidelines for African Christians. This approach pays close attention to the factors and mindset that sustain people who adhere to ancestral worship and assess them through a lens of Christology focusing on Christ’s sinlessness as an exemplary doctrine. (shrink)

Compiled by disciples of Confucius in the centuries following his death in 479 B.C.E., _The Analects of Confucius_ is a collection of aphorisms and historical anecdotes embodying the basic values of the Confucian tradition: learning, morality, ritual decorum, and filial piety. Reflecting the model eras of Chinese antiquity, the Analects offers valuable insights into successful governance and the ideal organization of society. Filled with humor and sarcasm, it reads like a casual conversation between teacher and student, emphasizing the role of (...) the individual in the attainment of knowledge and the value of using historical events and people to illuminate moral and political concepts. Confucius's teachings focus on cultural and peaceful pursuits and the characteristics of benevolent and culturally distinguished government. He also discusses ancestor worship and other rites performed for the spirits of the dead. The single most influential philosophical work in all of Chinese history, _The Analects of Confucius_ has shaped the thought and customs of China and neighboring countries for centuries. Burton Watson's concise translation uses the pinyin romanization system and keeps explanatory notes to a minimum, yet his intimate knowledge of the Confucian tradition and precise attention to linguistic detail capture the original text's elegance, cogency, and wit. (shrink)

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

1. Chesa ran muŏt in'ga -- 2. Sŏnsa-Koryŏ sidae ŭi tawŏnjŏk chesa munhwa -- 3. Chosŏn sidae Sŏul ŭi yugyosik chesa munhwa -- 4. Chesa munha ŭi kŭndaejŏk pyŏnyong kwa hyŏndaejŏk sesokhwa.

Compiled by disciples of Confucius in the centuries following his death in 479 B.C.E., _The Analects of Confucius_ is a collection of aphorisms and historical anecdotes embodying the basic values of the Confucian tradition: learning, morality, ritual decorum, and filial piety. Reflecting the model eras of Chinese antiquity, the Analects offers valuable insights into successful governance and the ideal organization of society. Filled with humor and sarcasm, it reads like a casual conversation between teacher and student, emphasizing the role of (...) the individual in the attainment of knowledge and the value of using historical events and people to illuminate moral and political concepts. Confucius's teachings focus on cultural and peaceful pursuits and the characteristics of benevolent and culturally distinguished government. He also discusses ancestor worship and other rites performed for the spirits of the dead. The single most influential philosophical work in all of Chinese history, _The Analects of Confucius_ has shaped the thought and customs of China and neighboring countries for centuries. Burton Watson's concise translation uses the pinyin romanization system and keeps explanatory notes to a minimum, yet his intimate knowledge of the Confucian tradition and precise attention to linguistic detail capture the original text's elegance, cogency, and wit. (shrink)

I. C. Jarvie was trained as a social anthropologist in the center of British social anthropology - the London School of Economics, where Bronislaw Malinowski was the object of ancestor worship. Jarvie's doctorate was in philosophy, however, under the guidance of Karl Popper and John Watkins. He changed his department not as a defector but as a rebel, attempting to exorcize the ancestral spirit. He criticized the method of participant obser vation not as useless but as not comprehensive: (...) it is neither necessary nor sufficient for the making of certain contributions to anthropology; rather, it all depends on the problem-situation. And so Jarvie remained an anthro pologist at heart, who, in addition to some studies in rather conventional anthropological or sociological molds, also studied the tribe of social scien tists, but also critically examining their problems - especially their overall, rather philosophical problems, but not always so: a few of the studies in cluded in this volume exemplify his work on specific issues, whether of technology, or architecture, or nationalism in the academy, or moviemaking, or even movies exhibiting excessive sex and violence. These studies attract his attention both on account of their own merit and on account of their need for new and powerful research tools, such as those which he has forged in his own intellectual workshop over the last two decades. (shrink)

Recent studies of the evolution of religion have revealed the cognitive underpinnings of belief in supernatural agents, the role of ritual in promoting cooperation, and the contribution of morally punishing high gods to the growth and stabilization of human society. The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity, and the sequence in which they emerged, have remained unknown. Here we reconstruct the evolution of religious beliefs and behaviors in early (...) modern humans using a global sample of hunter-gatherers and seven traits describing hunter-gatherer religiosity: animism, belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, high gods, and worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human affairs. We reconstruct ancestral character states using a time-calibrated supertree based on published phylogenetic trees and linguistic classification and then test for correlated evolution between the characters and for the direction of cultural change. Results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait. Belief in an afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship. Ancestor spirits or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent in early humans, suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies. There is a significant positive relationship between most characters investigated, but the trait “high gods” stands apart, suggesting that belief in a single creator deity can emerge in a society regardless of other aspects of its religion. (shrink)

Ths historical legacy inherited by thinkers of the Ch'un-ch'iu period comprised, briefly speaking: a religious world outlook characterized by ancestor worship; the ethical concept of filial piety and brotherliness, which was linked to ancestor worship, or derived therefrom; the concept of a ritual system; the conditions of aristocratic politics and scholar bureaucracy. These were things shaped on the basis of the blood ties in a patriarchal and racial society, and they were passive, from the standpoint of (...) progress, being the obstacle that hindered people from making big strides forward. Next, there were the tendency toward simple materialism and dialectics, which was born from the bowels of religious world outlook; the materialist philosophy of complaint against and hatred and cursing of Heaven; the belief in things and in laws; and Shih Po's doctrine of "Things are produced when matter combines." These were positive things, especially the last three, which emerged at a time when the slave system had begun to collapse, and which formed the premise of their ideological advance. Who among the thinkers of the Ch'un-ch'iu period would inherit and develop these things, what questions would be raised, probed, discussed, or argued on the common basis of their traditional thought, and what specific forms would be used to answer these questions had to be determined by their class stand and by the characteristics of the period in which they lived. (shrink)

Since 1995, thousands of people in Taiwan have pledged each year to donate their cadavers to the medical college run by the Buddhist Tzu Chi (Ciji) Foundation. The “surge of cadavers” seems intriguing in a society where ancestor worship continues to be salient. Drawing on my fieldwork in 2012–2013 and 2015, the purpose of this paper is to describe a series of practices involving the transformation of a cadaver into a Buddhist moral subject: the donor, the family, and (...) the medical school engage in various endeavors and rituals involving “emotional practices” to honor the deceased; situate the donation as a “good death”; and fulfill the family's obligations to ancestor worship. I argue what makes the ritual transformation efficacious is the dominant currency of emotional practices. Emotional practices “authenticate” the ritual transformation. The main ethic for commemorating the cadaver donation is not generosity or dāna but equanimity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:100 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY porary philosophers, mesmerized by neurology, does not even appear to exist: that our casual, mechanical view of nature, when extended beyond the workings of gears and pulleys and the collision of billiard balls to become a general conception of how things happen, is a metaphysical prejudice. In sum, this is a valuable addition to the thought of Wittgenstein, and an important work of philosophy in (...) its own right. A. R. LoucH ~laremon$ Graduate ~ehool Final Integration in the Adult Personality. By A. Reza Arasteh. (Leiden: E. J. BriU, 1965. Pp. 404.) This amazing work bears the subtitle ".4 Measure ]or Health, Social Change, and Leaderahip." But though many readers might consider such a design a formidable task, the book actually accomplishes infinitely more. It offers a completely novel approach to depth psy= chology and psychiatry, incorporating these disciplines into the broader context of an original monolithic philosophy of our time. It also shows a unique and quite unexpected way of how to overcome the "departmentalization of sciences" which has resulted in "fragmented theories of man." Thus it provides something many of us have been looking for rather desperately: a holistic psychology and philosophy, directed toward human life in its entirety and, by its own nature, encompassing a great healing force. Dr. A. Reza Arasteh has obtained this fortunate result by amalgamating Western concepts with oriental ideas and, therefore, for the first time has eliminated from our thinking another cleavage which threatened to invalidate our psycho-philosophical findings. For, in the jet and space age where there is actually one world, what use could a Western psychiatrist make of his psychodynamic training when called upon to treat a person from the Near or Far East with a completely different frame of reference based on an apparently distinct culture and tradition? Arasteh, an Iranian now with the George Washington University's Department of Psy= chiatry, has done something quite unusual for a Persian scholar and psychologist brought up in Islamic cultural tradition: he has devoted many years of thorough research to our Western neuropsychiatric, psychological and philosophical heritage and compared and confronted it with his home=grown Near-Eastern and Far-Eastern wisdom, doctrines, and scientific methods. This confrontation performed by a searcher who has delved equally deep into the basic sources of Western and Eastern culture has given Arasteh the golden opportunity to explore the weaknesses and strengths of both approaches to life and more: the insight that if both cultures were to adopt the positive findings of their seemingly opposite doctrines and drop their own negative ones, they could overcome the shortcomings barring the road to full in= tegration and personal maturity. In other words: a pooling of the best philosophical and psychological discoveries of the East and West would help to bring about a monolithic, yet diversified approach to the problems of life and man which was lost after the Middle Ages. It would help to overcome and use for his best the anxiety of modern man who is fumbling in uncertainties while desperately longing for meaningfulness. According to Arasteh, the West has reached the end of its tether because of an overemphasis on intellectual solutions and endeavors which even in their most brilliant forms fall short of any substantial activity of life. It is a fallacy to believe, as Freud and long before him Socrates did, that a purely intellectual understanding of problematic or even neurotic behavior will lead any man to overcome and eliminate these failures. The intellect never has the power to change a personality and bring about what the Iranian psychologist calls a total "rebirth." Oriental attitudes toward life, on the other hand, are too much focused on inner feelings and socio-psychological directedness, thereby neglecting the independent action of the intelhgent individual. Religion and family, in some countries even connected with ancestor worship, have been and sometimes still are at the foreground of oriental thought. BOOK REVIEWS 101 Yet, in the basic chapter of h/s work, titled, "Principles of Psyehocultural Analysis: A Technique for Developing Fully Integrated Individuals," Arasteh stresses a very important point all too frequently overlooked in our era of specialization: "Regardless of language, culture and temporal... (shrink)

In this article, I show that women are depicted in the early Confucian texts not primarily as undertaking household duties or nurturing children but rather as partaking in rituals of mourning and ancestor worship. To make the argument, I analyze, besides the more philosophical texts like the Analects and the Mencius, texts known as the “Five Classics,” which describe women in their social roles in much more detail than the former. What women’s participation in rituals reveals, I contend, (...) is that the domestic-political distinction does little to illuminate the philosophical vision offered by the early Confucian texts. Relatedly, while women’s involvement in communal religious rituals has also been noted about early Greece, the political import of such participation is even more pronounced in the Confucian case. Specifically, I show that, by embodying intergenerational continuity, the mourning and ancestor rituals that women partake in are foundational to the Confucian state. (shrink)

Recently, our society has experienced lots of social structural change such as low birthrate and aging population. The most important ways that can practice filial piety, for example, supporting parents and memorial rites are increasingly difficult nowadays. As a solution associated with supporting parents, I suggest to shift policy that estimates public supporting which government supports more than private supporting that children support their parents in family. In addition, in order to complete the joint responsibility that family as well as (...) government are involved with, I suggest that institutional arrangements for the financing(for example, tax system) should be accompanied. As a solution related with memorial rites, I primarily suggest the turning perception that mutually understands ancestor worship from the point of filial piety, not the religious perspective. Furthermore, in order to succeed filial piety culture, I suggest that we need to switch the traditional ancestral rite to the more simplified and reasonable form of memorial ceremony that may be suitable to thepattern of modern life, and the sense of value of younger generation. (shrink)

The living body appears like an endlessly renewable reservoir of authenticity, hope, and taboo. But, for the sake of conceptual clarity, we are often been told that the (mere) body should be distinguished from the flesh. That is, it’s undeniable that I have a body; that I notice yours; that we worry about their birth and death and upkeep. But the flesh is a more transcendentalized, loaded concept – not least given its frequently religious background (incarnation: the Word made Flesh). (...) It is the body ‘kicked upstairs’, ‘bumped up’ one ontological level. Flesh is like a mantra, an obsessive leitmotif. Is the difference just one of abstraction? Indeed, crucial to the narrative of phenomenology (most obviously in Merleau-Ponty but really, throughout, including in enactivism), to the story of ancestor worship and identity it tells itself and its acolytes around the campfire, is a basic distinction between the merely physical body and the flesh as something requiring ‘mineness’, namely, an understanding of it as uniquely ‘my own’, a feeling of ‘what it is like to be embodied’. This goes back to the Husserlian distinction between Körper, ‘body’ in the sense of one body among others in a vast mechanistic universe of bodies, and Leib, ‘flesh’ in the sense of a subjectivity which is the locus of experience. In this essay I reflect on this vision of the body’s authenticity and its costs, and contrast it with insights derived from Georges Canguilhem, whose critique of mechanism/mechanicism is not done in the name of a wholescale organicism and/or an unproblematized éloge of embodiment and privacy. (shrink)

This commentary criticises Bering on two counts. First, because we do not know what he attributes to natural selection and what he sees as derived representations. Second, Bering's ethnography of religion is inadequate. People who practise ancestor worship are not concerned with their own survival but with that of others. Many supernatural beings are not thought of as morally motivated.

Heroes may be brave, but not all of those who act bravely are necessarily heroes. Confucius is one of the most important figures in Chinese history, the philosopher-founder of an intellectual, ethical tradition that has shaped a quarter of the world's population. Often overlooked outside his native country, Jonathan Clements reveals Confucius to be an outspoken and uncompromising man, and places him within the context of China of 2,500 years ago. Confucius, a contemporary of Buddha, was the illegitimate son of (...) a retired soldier and a teenage concubine. He had a passionate belief in respect for others and it was this belief which underpinned his life and teachings. He advised the famous figures of his day, gaining their respect, and also the undying enmity of those whose paths he crossed. He was equally proud of both achievements, saying that if the evil people of the world liked him, he was doing something wrong. Confucius established many ideas that are taken for granted today. His theories became the foundation of one of the world's first civil services and established enduring social structures throughout Asia. In collating and refining the words of earlier, forgotten thinkers, he also preserved elements of China's prehistoric culture, and its ancient religion of ancestor-worship. (shrink)

Confucianism in general, and Confucian ideals in particular, which arrived in Vietnam in the first cen- turies of our era, were accepted by our Vietnamese dynasties and have served as ideological functions for a long time. Furthermore, Confucian morality has played a significant role in Vietnamese tradi- tional life. Additionally, Confucian virtues have had a long-standing influence on Vietnamese society. It has had a beneficial and detrimental impact on public life since its inception. The purpose of the article is to (...) examine the tactics of Confucian politics’ influence on modern Viet- namese society and our societal problems. The rel- evance of customs, traditions, and beliefs, as well as the cult of ancestor worship, is highlighted; the value of moral education in the family is empha- sized; and the influence of public opinion is being highly considered. Along with that, the impact of Confucian principles on Vietnamese society is ex- amined, both through the institutions of communal self-government in villages and communes and through policy implementation. The author points out various inconsistencies between Confucian principles and modern Vietnamese society. Further modernization, according to the author, should be accomplished not by shattering the ideals embod- ied in Vietnamese society or by Confucianism’s standards, but by adapting their individual provi- sions to the needs of the present. (shrink)

An examination of the earliest creation traditions and symbols of China and their similarities to those of other ancient cultures Reveals the deep parallels between early Chinese words and those of other ancient creation traditions such as the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt Explores the 8 stages of creation in Taoism and the cosmological origins of Chinese ancestor worship, the zodiac, the mandala, and the I Ching Provides further evidence that the cosmology of all ancient cultures arose from a (...) single now-lost source Building on his extensive research into the sacred symbols and creation myths of the Dogon of Africa and those of ancient Egypt, India, and Tibet, Laird Scranton investigates the myths, symbols, and traditions of prehistoric China, providing further evidence that the cosmology of all ancient cultures arose from a single now-lost source. Scranton explores the fundamental similarities between the language that defined ancient Chinese cosmology and that of other creation traditions, revealing the connections between the phonetic structure of the words, their glyphs, and their use. He demonstrates striking parallels between the earliest systems of writing in China and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. He examines the 8 levels of creation in Taoism and the cosmological origins of Chinese ancestor worship, mythical emperors, the zodiac, the mandala, and the I Ching. He details the fundamental principles of land-use in ancient China in relation to the symbolism of a Buddhist stupa and the Dogon granary, ritual shrines that are also the central symbol of other creation traditions. Understanding the true meanings of these symbol complexes also reveals the sophisticated scientific understanding of these ancient cultures, for these creation symbols directly correlate with our modern understanding of atoms and the energetic makeup of matter. In exploring Chinese cosmological traditions, Scranton sheds new light on the contention that the sacred knowledge of the ancients is the legacy of an earlier culture who gave primitive humanity the tools they needed to birth the first known civilizations. (shrink)

In his own lifetime Confucius never attained real power and he died feeling that his life had been a failure; yet his teaching came to dominate the political and ritual life of China for thousands of years and to inspire many thinkers in the outside world. Howard Smith describes China in the sixth century B.C. and shows how its history of internal conflict, together with the cult of ancestor worship, gave rise to Confucius' central doctrines of order and (...) 'piety'. He relates how a few disciples kept this teaching alive after Confucius' death and how it came finally to be accepted throughout the huge Chinese empire as the basis for political, educational and ceremonial life. He describes also how Confucianism was slowly changed by the rival philosophies and religions with which it had to compete. This book is therefore not only a history of one of the world's greatest systems of belief but also a study of how such a system both creates and is created by the society in which it exists. -- From publisher's description. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:100 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY porary philosophers, mesmerized by neurology, does not even appear to exist: that our casual, mechanical view of nature, when extended beyond the workings of gears and pulleys and the collision of billiard balls to become a general conception of how things happen, is a metaphysical prejudice. In sum, this is a valuable addition to the thought of Wittgenstein, and an important work of philosophy in (...) its own right. A. R. LoucH ~laremon$ Graduate ~ehool Final Integration in the Adult Personality. By A. Reza Arasteh. (Leiden: E. J. BriU, 1965. Pp. 404.) This amazing work bears the subtitle ".4 Measure ]or Health, Social Change, and Leaderahip." But though many readers might consider such a design a formidable task, the book actually accomplishes infinitely more. It offers a completely novel approach to depth psy= chology and psychiatry, incorporating these disciplines into the broader context of an original monolithic philosophy of our time. It also shows a unique and quite unexpected way of how to overcome the "departmentalization of sciences" which has resulted in "fragmented theories of man." Thus it provides something many of us have been looking for rather desperately: a holistic psychology and philosophy, directed toward human life in its entirety and, by its own nature, encompassing a great healing force. Dr. A. Reza Arasteh has obtained this fortunate result by amalgamating Western concepts with oriental ideas and, therefore, for the first time has eliminated from our thinking another cleavage which threatened to invalidate our psycho-philosophical findings. For, in the jet and space age where there is actually one world, what use could a Western psychiatrist make of his psychodynamic training when called upon to treat a person from the Near or Far East with a completely different frame of reference based on an apparently distinct culture and tradition? Arasteh, an Iranian now with the George Washington University's Department of Psy= chiatry, has done something quite unusual for a Persian scholar and psychologist brought up in Islamic cultural tradition: he has devoted many years of thorough research to our Western neuropsychiatric, psychological and philosophical heritage and compared and confronted it with his home=grown Near-Eastern and Far-Eastern wisdom, doctrines, and scientific methods. This confrontation performed by a searcher who has delved equally deep into the basic sources of Western and Eastern culture has given Arasteh the golden opportunity to explore the weaknesses and strengths of both approaches to life and more: the insight that if both cultures were to adopt the positive findings of their seemingly opposite doctrines and drop their own negative ones, they could overcome the shortcomings barring the road to full in= tegration and personal maturity. In other words: a pooling of the best philosophical and psychological discoveries of the East and West would help to bring about a monolithic, yet diversified approach to the problems of life and man which was lost after the Middle Ages. It would help to overcome and use for his best the anxiety of modern man who is fumbling in uncertainties while desperately longing for meaningfulness. According to Arasteh, the West has reached the end of its tether because of an overemphasis on intellectual solutions and endeavors which even in their most brilliant forms fall short of any substantial activity of life. It is a fallacy to believe, as Freud and long before him Socrates did, that a purely intellectual understanding of problematic or even neurotic behavior will lead any man to overcome and eliminate these failures. The intellect never has the power to change a personality and bring about what the Iranian psychologist calls a total "rebirth." Oriental attitudes toward life, on the other hand, are too much focused on inner feelings and socio-psychological directedness, thereby neglecting the independent action of the intelhgent individual. Religion and family, in some countries even connected with ancestor worship, have been and sometimes still are at the foreground of oriental thought. BOOK REVIEWS 101 Yet, in the basic chapter of h/s work, titled, "Principles of Psyehocultural Analysis: A Technique for Developing Fully Integrated Individuals," Arasteh stresses a very important point all too frequently overlooked in our era of specialization: "Regardless of language, culture and temporal... (shrink)

Yung Sik Kim's new book is a welcome addition to the large number of studies of the thought of Chu Hsi, arguably the most important literati thinker in China since the Southern Song dynasty . Chu's ideas became orthodox empire‐wide during the early Ming dynasty , and during the Ming and Qing dynasties millions of candidates for the imperial civil service examinations mastered the “Learning of the Way” associated with Chu and his followers. With the exception of the pioneering study (...) by Yamada Keiji in 1978, nearly all previous accounts of Chu's ideas written by students of Chinese philosophy have emphasized the metaphysical, moral, and epistemological concerns in Chu's writings. Those more concerned with imperial dogma and state power in China since 1400 have tended to paint Chu Hsi's “Learning of the Way” as a monolithic, authoritarian ideology that legitimated the Ming and Qing dynasty rulers politically, socially, and culturally among gentry elites.Kim acknowledges that the core of Chu Hsi's grand intellectual synthesis was focused on moral and social philosophy, but in this book Kim provides compelling information that Chu was also concerned with natural knowledge about the three levels of reality: heaven and earth, the myriad things in the world, and the human realm. Humans thus formed a triad with heaven and earth as the most numinous living thing because they were endowed with the psycho‐physical stuff of ch'i that was most clear and complete. Recognizing no boundary between the physical and the spiritual, Chu Hsi equated human nature with the universe. The basic concepts that informed Chu's natural world were yin‐yang, the five evolutive phases, and the dualism of li and ch'i .Chu Hsi advocated a scholarly agenda that would explain why things and events were as they were. Through the “investigation of things,” the heavenly principle that inscribed the ch'i of each object and event could be discovered. Normally historians of Chinese philosophy stress the place of universal heavenly li in Chu's thought, but Kim makes a concerted effort not to overlook the important place of ch'i as the aggregated collection of stuff in the universe, some dense and falling like the earth, some airy and rising like heaven. Indeed, as important as li was for Chu Hsi's moral philosophy, ch'i was the most important concept he employed to explain natural phenomena, material changes, and earthly events. With no discontinuity between matter and life, or between materiality and mind, Chu's philosophy made no allowance for the Western distinctions between the material and spiritual spheres or between the physical and mental realms.It was precisely such views that troubled the Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci who came to China in the late sixteenth century. Ricci and his European cohort would be condemned in the early eighteenth century by French Jansenists and Spanish Franciscans for their overly accommodational compromises with traditional Chinese religious practices such as ancestor worship, which Ricci interpreted as a civil rite. Nonetheless, when Ricci studied Chu Hsi's moral philosophy and natural thought, he was appalled at its materialism and atheism, which he considered the fault of Buddhism and its impact on Song literati such as Chu Hsi.The “noninertness” of ch'i carried over from the dynamic materiality of all things, including the human mind, to the formless and unfathomable spirits and ghosts that existed in a border area outside the natural realm between heaven and human beings. The dispersion of ch'i upon death could take many forms but, according to Chu Hsi, in the end all such ch'i disaggregated, leaving no ongoing or abiding spiritual form for humans, plants, or animals. The ch'i of the ancestors could be prayed to because the materiality of their descendants was the same ch'i, but even this continuity could not survive more than a few generations. Again, the Jesuits were shocked at this atheistic view of the human soul and its eventual demise materially with no possible eternal life after death.Accordingly, Kim's careful study of what Chu Hsi thought about the natural world makes it evident that most modern studies have elided an essential aspect of traditional Chinese thought, particularly the centrality of ch'i in the dynamic processes of collection and dispersion that produce all things, whether living or inanimate. Students of Chinese philosophy have tended to prioritize those aspects of Chu Hsi's views on universal li and its instantiated forms that are more amenable to a Western, Judeo‐Christian‐Islamic reading drawn ultimately from the debate between Plato and Aristotle over the universal forms of particular things.Modern presentations, in other words, have failed to grasp why a generation of Jesuit scholars who spent their adulthood in China during the seventeenth century found Chu Hsi's views alien and dangerous. Kim deserves credit for going against the tide of twentieth‐century scholarly interpretation and restoring to Chu Hsi those aspects of his natural philosophy that have been conveniently repressed to make his views more palatable. Rather than just the builder of the orthodox brick wall of traditional Chinese moralism, we can see that Chu Hsi's natural philosphy challenged any view of the world that assumed theological differences between life and death, mind and body, or the spiritual and physical. (shrink)

En Afrique, les religions ancestrales enseignent à chercher sa cohérence intérieure, en restant relié aux autres et à l’univers. Ainsi, chez les Maasaï, la spiritualité peut se traduire par ces lignes de force : vaincre ses peurs, rester relié, ne pas créer de divisions en soi et autour de soi. L’homme doit mettre en adéquation ses mots et ses actes pour éviter la dissonance et les antagonistes, sources de déséquilibres personnel et relationnel. Actes et mots doivent être «jumeaux», aller de (...) paire. Aucune différence entre le dire et le faire chez ces peuples d’Afrique, qui savent par expérience que cette cohérence est la garantie de relations saines et durables. Au-delà des images, l’Afrique est avant tout la terre de la religion. Non pas d’une religion mystique et abstraite vouée aux grandes questions de la métaphysique, mais d’une religion terrienne, liée à la nature, qui s’exprime à chaque instant de la vie, qui inspire aux hommes et aux femmes chaque geste, chaque parole. Sophie Ekoué nous guide dans la découverte de la sagesse africaine, dans toute la diversité des peuples. Mythes fondateurs de l’Afrique, art de la parole juste et du silence, représentation du corps à travers les masques et les danses, conception du temps conjugué au présent, lien étroit entretenu avec les ancêtres et la nature : autant de conceptions du monde à prendre en compte dans notre quotidien, quelle que soit notre culture et nos croyances. (shrink)

朱熹是宋代理学的集大成者，也是成就斐然的礼学大家。他一生议礼、考礼，对礼的本质、价值、结构、功能进行了具有理学特色的阐述，对古代礼制也悉心潜玩，博考深辨，其见解多为后代礼学家所称引。朱熹礼学是其宏大的 理学体系的重要组成部分，在经学思想史上具有非常重要的地位，对宋元以降的中国乃至整个东亚社会产生了深刻的影响。本书从朱熹的三《礼》学思想入手，从学、理、用三个层面对朱熹礼学进行了系统论述，将文本分析与思 想、社会、政治的互动结合起来，考察了朱熹礼学思想形成的背景、内容及其特点。对困惑学界多年的朱熹晚年思想转型、朱熹为何要编撰《仪礼经传通解》、朱熹如何处理礼学与理学的关系等重要学术问题也作了进一步的探索 。.

IN MANY RELIGIOUS CULTS AROUND THE world, ancestors Features are worshipped. And well they may be, for ancestors, not gods, hold..

When one sees an opening chapter entitled “From Science to Love” it begs for further reading. After all, for most these are incongruent terms that represent two seemingly opposite sides in a debate, logic, and systematic evaluation vs. emotion. There have been many books written about the convergence of science and spirituality, and one cannot help but notice how some of today’s physicists are sounding more like spiritualists than scientists, but Dr. Portola uses this platform as wake up call for (...) humanity. There is a brief discussion about some well-known enlightened beings in our history, including founders of today’s organized religions, and our progression from animism to polytheism, and eventually monotheism, but Portola astutely points out the role that science played in explaining natural phenomena. Our ancestors could not have imagined these discoveries, and it was science that moved us past idol worship to spiritual independence. The author is well versed in the primary disciplines of research that suggest survival and devotes part of the book to discussions of the nature of consciousness, neuroscience, thought transmission, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, mediumship, and instrumental TransCommunication, but the overall message is clear that science can show us the road but changing the world paradigm starts with individual transformation. In the discussion of the neurosciences and parapsychology it is suggested that perhaps an adjustment to the scientific method is indicated by putting more value on the anecdotal personal experiences that are so prevalent. In his discussion about a paradigm shift Portola suggests that all people, including scientists and mediums, will understand more by first finding themselves through contemplation and reflection. It is only after we open to the subtle layers of consciousness that we can achieve the necessary balance needed to reach our objectives. The suggestion that scientists also need to contemplate and reflect upon the bigger picture seems contrary to the definition of science, but I suspect that Portola is correct. (shrink)

In much of the literature concerning African theories of meaning, there are certain clues regarding what constitutes meaningfulness from an African traditional perspective. These are theories of meaning in life such as the African God’s purpose theory, which locates meaning in the obedience of divine law and/or the pursuit of one’s destiny; the vital force theory, which locates meaning in the continuous augmentation of one’s vital force through the expression and receipt of goodwill, rituals and the worship of God; (...) and what I will call the transcendent communal normative theories, where meaning is located in the positive contributions one makes to his/her society, whether as a human being or as an ancestor. I contend that all these theories have one thing in common that unifies them – and that is the legitimization of God’s existence through the continued sustenance of the universe. This, I will show, constitutes the meaning of life (in cosmic terms) from an African traditional religious perspective. To argue for this thesis, I will first tease out the basic tenets of the previously described theories of meaning. I will then analyse the metaphysical underpinning of the African relational ontology and how it reflects on the subject of being. Finally, I will end by showing the role of the universe in legitimizing the existence of God as a thing in the world, and how that constitutes the meaning of life. (shrink)

Ikhtisâr refers to the process of compilation a work by summarizing short and concise information or a large volume of work through abbreviation. It is intended to facilitate reading, learning and memorization, or to eliminate difficult parts in a book written in the form of Ikhtisâr. The compilation of concise works that fulfilled their purpose has become widespread over time and transformed into a tradition and also concise works have been compiled in fiqh as in other disciplines of sciences. In (...) particular, the work entitled Ghayâ fi’l-Ikhtisâr by Abu Shudjâ al-Isfahânî (d. after 500/1107), which is one of the concise works written in the Shafi'î madhhab, constitutes an important part of this tradition. In this study, primarily, the concise works written in the field of usûl/ancestor and furû/descendant in the Shafi’î madhhab were identified and given in chronological order, right after that, Ghayâ fi’l-Ikhtisâr and Ahmad bin Omar al-Shatirî’s (d. 1360/1941) work entitled Al-Yaqut al-Nafis were examined in terms of the ikhtisâr method. The comparative method was employed in order to determine the common and different aspects of these two works, which are among the basic sources of the Shafi'î madhhab, in terms of content and method. In this context, primarily, basic information regarding Ghayâ fi’l-Ikhtisâr and Al-Yaqut al-Nafis was presented, and right after that the classificcations and information in both works were compared and evaluated in terms of style. In this respect, it was determined that some of the topics in one of the aforementioned works are not included in the other work, and that there are certain differences between them in terms of the arrangement of the topics and the way they are explained. Based on this, in Ghayâ fi’l-Ikhtisâr the topics are dealt with in a brief manner and jurisprudential rulings are presented without giving much space to their evidences. In Al-Yaqut al-Nafis, on the other hand, each topic is dealt with in a detailed manner, and the elements, conditions and provisions related to the topics are mentioned as sub-headings. In particular, issues related to fiqh other than worship are explained with examples. Nevertheless, as in Ghayâ fi’l-Ikhtisâr the evidences of fiqh provisions are not included much. The topics in both works are arranged according to the Shafi'î fiqh methodology. (shrink)

The emerging consensus, on the intervention of Jesus into the commercial operations of the Jerusalem Temple, speaks in terms of an enacted parable aimed at the temple hierarchy, against the backdrop of the ongoing economic and social oppression of the time. In this article, I consider four essential scholarly insights (keys): The possibility that Caiaphas introduced trade in sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple; the link between the money changers and Greek-style bankers; the Jewish witness to the extent of high-priestly corruption (...) in the 1st century CE; and finally the presence of the image of Baal-Melkart on the Tyrian Shekel. In the light of the fourth key, in particular, we discover Jesus, like the prophets of old (Jeremiah and Elijah), standing against the greed of the High priests and their abuse of the poor and marginalised, by defending the honour of God, and pronouncing judgement on the temple hierarchy as ‘bandits’ (Jr 7:11) and, like their ancestors, encouragers of ‘Baal worship’ (Jr 7:9). (shrink)

Among the scientific heritage of B.O.Lobovyk is a particularly interesting work - works devoted to the study of the pre-Christian religiosity of Ukrainians and the peculiarities of the emerging Christianity of Kyivan Rus. In particular, Section III: Religious Beliefs of the Chronicles of Slavs and Section IV: The Old Ukrainian Political Thought 1 so the ten-volume "History of Religion in Ukraine" not only affects the breadth and depth of the problem's coverage, phenomenal encyclopaedic erudition and culture of the author's words, (...) but also wake up new questions and induced to their research. Thus, BOloobovik carried out a detailed analysis of the religious complex of Ukrainians in their pre-Christian period and an analysis of the features of early Christian Ukrainian thought highlights: who believed in the worship of our ancestors. In our opinion, one of the logical directions of the continuation of these studies is the elucidation of what the Ukrainians appreciated before Christianization in the world and what transformations of axiological orientations were experienced by Ukrainian neophytes. (shrink)

The modem Hindu understanding of divinity has been preserved throughout the history of the religion by the ritual practice of successive generations of believers. Coming to understand the cultural origins and elaborations of the Hindu perception of the Divine can be perplexing to the individual situated in a Judeo-Christian cultural context. Likewise, making sense of Hindu ritual may also be confusing to the Westerner considering the negative light "idol worship" has been given by Judaism and Christianity. The purpose of (...) this paper is to investigate Hindu ritual via participant observation in an effort to comprehend the creation and transmission of the Hindu community's perception of the divine. The ethnographic data gathered herein supports a unique and often forgotten paradigm of religion as a system of bonds within a kinship structure originally perpetuated by William Robertson Smith. In light of such data, the application of Robertson Smith's theoretical perspective, and more modem interpretations of ancestral cult worship, significant light may be shed on the relationship of the contemporary Hindu to their pantheon and permits one to understand the cultural perception of god(s) as integrated members of the believing community. These results support an interpretive paradigm of Religion as a system of bonds created via a process of abstraction of familial bonds that may be applied more broadly to many conceptualizations of gods and ancestors cross-culturally. (shrink)

Every culture is concerned about what happens to people when they die. Even when the dominant religion/ideology provides an answer, an examination of what people actually say and do generally discloses various inconsistences, for example between what they claim to believe and what their actions suggest that they believe or at least consider possible. In every traditional Buddhist society, adherents are supposed to believe in rebirth, a fate which only those who achieve enlightenment escape, and yet in both the Indian (...) and the Chinese Buddhist traditions people worship and to some extent interact with their dead ancestors and in doing so preserve local pre-Buddhist beliefs and customs. In both traditions there are likewise inconsistencies between what people believe about themselves and what they believe about others, as well as beliefs about how to treat dead parents and how to treat dead strangers. Much in the observable mixture of beliefs and practices may be ascribed to the Buddha himself. (shrink)