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

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Religious Background of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN IT IS AN EXCEEDINGLY GREAT PLEASURE tO participate in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of the Journal of the Historyof Philosophy.The editor, Professor Makkreel, offered me the opportunity to discuss the rationale for my present research, which I hope has some relevance for future research in the history of philosophy. At a symposium at the American Philosophical Association meeting in (...) Washington in December x985, I argued for taking the historyof philosophy seriously, that is, understanding thinkers and ideas in their actual historical contexts, instead of detaching them into some ahistorical ethereal realm. I argued that one could not make sense of a philosopher's thought detached from his time and circumstances. His ideas could not be understood unless one took account of the language, the usages, the issues and the concerns of the thinker and his time. The all too frequent "reconstruction" of philosophers ' thoughts sees them instead as logical machines, simply moving from clearly stated premises to their logical consequences. As many of us have sought to show, this often grossly distorts what Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz and others might have actually thought, and misses much of what they were probably thinking about. I should like to carry this theme further by examining the need to take seriously the religious aspect of philosophizing. I will center on the intellectual scene of the seventeenth century, which I am currently working on though I believe many of the same points could be made about any period in the history of philosophy. Among historians of science there is an ongoing debate about whether the history of the subject should be studied internally or externally. The [:35] 36 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY internalists examine a set of ideas presented by scientist A, and trace their use or development by scientist B. The study that results is primarily the tracing of the course of a set of ideas through a time period. Background data about the scientists, their problems, and their place in society are regarded as of little relevance. The externalists insist that one cannot understand why various questions became important, why various individuals tried to solve them, why they used certain kinds of possible solutions instead of others, etc., unless one knows the external conditions of the time. This has spawned a lot of interesting research into the way scientific studies went on, who supported them, who did them, how they got accepted, and so on. The sociology and even anthropology of science is now a thriving research area, yielding many amazing studies about the scientific world and how it functioned. In so doing, scholars have not just examined the great successful scientists, the Keplers, Galileos, Harveys, and Newtons, but also the small fry, the mediocre, the poor scientists, and even the incompetent ones. They have examined why wrong-headed theories were supported, and accepted, while evidence supporting other theories was readily available. Their concern with the actual course of scientific development as an ongoing part of intellectual history is vital to understanding the scientific world of today, which plays such an overwhelming role in our society. So, some people study the education of the good, the mediocre, the bad scientists; their relative social statuses, incomes, and so on. The religious concerns are, of course, an obvious part of the story from Copernicus to Kepler to Newton to Darwin to Freud to Einstein. The scientists were involved in an ongoing religious world that influenced the role of science. The above named scientists had their religious or irreligious views that were involved with their scientific concerns. And, as we know too well, the impact of their work on religion has been of great importance to the broader intellectual world, and the impact of religion on the acceptance of their science has been and is part of the ongoing intellectual world. This interest amongst historians of science in the sociology, psychology, and anthropology of science has hardly rubbed off on the historians of philosophy. Most of the leading scholars of the last few decades in this work are hardly known and rarely cited in studies in the history of philosophy. We... (shrink)

This study analyses several aspects of the relationship between communist censorship and literature, from the vantage point of literary sociology. Focusing on the issue of religious drama, the author intends to examine the transformations undergone by Romanian literature in the 1950s and 1960s, considering the impact of totalitarian communist ideology had upon it. What the study highlights is the game between prohibition and subversiveness, between misappropriation and reappropriation, which shaped the literary climate of that period. One of the (...) conclusions envisaged here is that despite unrelenting and excessive pressures exerted by censorship, literature resisted being turned into an ally of the Romanian Communist Party. (shrink)

God is playful. Like a child building sand castles on the beach, God creates the world and destroys it again. God plays with his (or her) devotees, sometimes like a lover, sometimes like a mother with her children, sometimes like an actor in a play. The idea of God's playfulness has been elaborated in Hinduism more, perhaps, than any other religion, providing one of the most distinctive and charming aspects of Indian religious life. Lila or "divine (...) class='Hi'>play" can refer to many things: to God's playful creation of the world and to religious dramas or "plays," as well as to various motifs in Hindu art. But despite the importance of lila in the cultural history of South Asia, few comprehensive studies of it are available, partly because scholars have tended to emphasize only one dimension of lila--either the theological or the performative--at the expense of the other. The Gods at Play fills this gap by bringing together scholarly essays on all aspects of this important Hindu idea, providing students with a broader understanding of popular Hindu culture and religion. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the socially oriented, pragmatically naturalist conception of religious faith John Dewey developed in A Common Faith and elsewhere, as well as Dewey’s influence on later pragmatist and naturalist currents in the philosophy of religion. In particular, Dewey’s distinction between “the religious”, on the one hand, and actual historical religions, on the other, is explained and discussed. According to Dewey--the most important classical pragmatist following James--the religious aspects of experience can be appreciated without (...) metaphysical commitments to anything supernatural. Dewey’s pragmatism thus seeks to emancipate “the religious” from the dogmatism and supernaturalism typical of traditional religious metaphysics. Dewey’s relation to Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, and the role played by metaphysics and the criticism of metaphysics in both, are also examined. (shrink)

This book explores the challenges of informed consent in medical intervention and research ethics, considering the global reality of multiculturalism and religious diversity. Even though informed consent is a gold standard in research ethics, its theoretical foundation is based on the conception of individual subjects making autonomous decisions. There is a need to reconsider autonomy as relational-where family members, community and religious leaders can play an important part in the consent process. The volume re-evaluates informed consent in (...) multicultural contexts and features perspectives from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It is valuable reading for scholars interested in bioethics, healthcare ethics, research ethics, comparative religions, theology, human rights, law and sociology. (shrink)

In his book Rede en religie: Een verkenning, Michiel Leezenberg discusses three aspects of religion: religion as a belief system, as it pertains to moral values and the experience of meaning, and as a practice. Concerning each of these aspects, he asks himself the question of the relation between religion and rationality. While touching on all three, this paper focuses on Leezenberg's treatment of the second aspect of religion. Although religion is of course a system of beliefs, these (...) beliefs are strongly embedded in specific practices, making a straightforward comparison with scientific beliefs highly problematic. The central problem discussed here is that of the relation between religious values and modern, secular values. The paper argues that the opposition is not simply between religious and secular morality, but between any morality in which moral taboos play an essential role and a certain utopianism present in secular morality. This leads to an investigation of the supposed link between religion and conservatism. The paper ends with a discussion of the recent phenomenon of the 'retour du religieux' in the form of a growing interest in religious experience via 'spirituality'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pragmatic Aspects of Kantian TheismSami PihlströmI. IntroductionIs there a god? What do we, and what should we, mean by this question? How, if at all, might the question, given that its meaning(s) can be clarified, be settled or even rationally discussed? Is there any chance for a reasonable, scientifically minded person to believe in the reality of God, or is atheism the only intellectually responsible option for us (...) today? Is theism inevitably committed to the pseudoscientific absurdities of creationism, the "intelligent design theory," and other unfortunately increasingly influential fundamentalisms?The purpose of this article is not to solve these issues in the philosophy of religion. Nor will I engage in the science vs. religion controversy in any detail. I do, however, hope to illuminate the traditional issue of theism1 from a specific philosophical perspective. The kind of questions listed above help to describe the problem framework we are entering, as well as the sidetracks to be avoided in serious philosophy of religion (e.g., the debate between creationism and Darwinism, which is hardly scientifically interesting).2 Furthermore, my remarks will not be restricted to the opposition between theism and atheism3 as such. The metalevel contrast between evidentialism and fideism opens up another basic dispute in the modern debate over theism, perhaps even more important philosophically than the theism vs. atheism dispute itself, as it concerns the criteria in terms of which the latter dispute is to be adjudicated, and the kind of reasons that may be invoked to support (or attack) theism.4 It seems to me, for reasons that will properly emerge in due course, that there is a desperate need for a middle ground or synthesis between these two extremes in contemporary philosophy of religion, and the [End Page 110] present article will go some way toward providing such a synthesis by redescribing the problem of theism in Kantian (and to some extent pragmatist) terms. In short, evidentialism is, in most cases, inadequate as an interpretation of religious people's views on God, because religious faith needs no rational (religiously neutral) evidence, and can be neither defended nor criticized in terms of such "scientific" evidence. Religion, in short, is a human practice quite different from science, and though it may be related to science in various ways-that is, it is not completely "autonomous" and self-standing-it cannot be adequately evaluated by means of criteria internal to scientific practices. Fideism, in turn, is highly problematic, because it tends to lead to relativist and irrational views by sharply distinguishing between faith and reason and advancing the view that reason has no role at all to play in religious issues. Fideism sees science and religion as too autonomous from each other, while the evidentialist's error is the opposite one.5The proposal I will explore and (with some reservations) defend in the following inquiry is a reconceptualization of the theism vs. atheism and evidentialism vs. fideism issues in an explicitly ethical manner-though obviously only some selected perspectives on such an enormous task can be taken up in a single article. Indeed, both evidentialism and fideism, arguably, turn out to be insufficiently ethical responses to the problem of theism vs. atheism. The traditional alternatives themselves-that is, theism and atheism, when characterized as opposed metaphysical standpoints regarding the question of God's existence-suffer from the same insufficiency. Philosophical debates over these matters have unfortunately often ignored the ethical, hence pragmatic, aspects of the problem of God's existence; or, more precisely, philosophers of religion have traditionally been interested only in the ethical implications theism (or atheism) might have, instead of considering whether theism (or atheism) might itself be grounded in ethical premises, or whether such metaphysical issues might in the end be inevitably entangled with ethical ones. It is to these ethical issues at the heart of the theism debate that I suggest we should turn our attention. This suggestion, as we will see, amounts to a Kantian-and pragmatist-rearticulation of what the question is ultimately about. However, while Immanuel Kant's doctrine of the "postulates of practical reason" and William James's pragmatist defense of the legitimacy of... (shrink)

My essay first takes me into the arena in which science, spirituality, and theology meet. I comment on the enterprise of science and how scientists could well benefit from reciprocal interactions with theologians and religious leaders. Next, I discuss the evolution of social morality and the ways in which various aspects of social play behavior relate to the notion of “behaving fairly.” The contributions of spiritual and religious perspectives are important in our coming to a fuller (...) understanding of the evolution of morality. I go on to discuss animal emotions, the concept of personhood, and how our special relationships with other animals, especially the companions with whom we share our homes, help us to define our place in nature, our humanness. It is when we take the life of another being in the ritual of compassionately euthanizing them (“putting them to sleep”) that who we are in the grand scheme of things comes to the fore. I end with a discussion of the importance of ethological studies, behavioral research in which a serious attempt is made to understand animals in their own worlds, inquiries in which it is asked, “What is it like to be another species?” Species other than nonhuman primates need to be studied. I plead for developing compassionate, heartfelt, and holistic science that allows for interdisciplinary talk about respect, grace, spirituality, religion, love, Earth, and God. (shrink)

Tennessee State University's coach of women's track and field reflects on his life, career, and experience as a coach for the 1960, 1964, and 1980 summer Olympics.

In a concert hall, the attitude of the audience focusses on the formalistic aspects of music. In religious rituals, music is a means of leading the hearer to a spiritual experience. What happens when music, meant originally for a liturgical purpose, is played in a concert setting? Gadamer shows, with his conception of Verwandlung ins Gebilde, that an art work is never static, but carries a depth in itself, which is connected to an artistic ingenuity throughout centuries. In (...) this ‘depth’ lies the connection to the listener, which is broader than a mere aesthetical one. On the other hand, music in itself has a strong ‘theatrical’ side, which can easily surpass its contemplative aspect in consumer culture. It appears that this aspect, in combination with the formalistic-aesthetic approach of modern museum culture, of which concert culture is a part, made the hearer become almost ‘deaf ’ to the religious content; because a concert practice focusses primarily on entertaining the hearer, s/he is not able to engage in the music as a source of spiritual edification of the soul. Nevertheless, Gadamer’s conception of play makes us be aware that there will always be new, unexpected ways in which the truth comes into being in the interaction of a piece of music and its hearer. In order to create such a reality, it is necessary to turn to new and renewing hearing practices, where the play between music and the hearer has a wider range of musical experience than the mere formalistic aspect. (shrink)

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

There is a certain ambiguity in Descartes’ Meditations, as there is any great sphere of endeavor. How, after all, does one bridge the gap between the autobiographical “I” of the Discourse and the Meditations, and the world of learned scholarship; the “guardians of tradition”, both religious and temporal? How does one mediate the way in which one is received by the tradition which has so eloquently been put out of play in the pursuit of one’s personal project? In (...) short, how can Descartes ensure that his pioneering work is not misunderstood; that it is not viewed as a threat to religious and national institutions?In reflecting on these questions, I believe Descartes arrived at a concept of community which sought to balance personal autonomy with institutional obligation in such a way that the scientist’s ultimate judgment was preserved, while proximately acknowledgement was made of the prevailing scientific and religious “world picture”, and only challenged obliquely.Thus, there is a certain tension in Descartes’ theorizing about community, a tension which was quite naturally carried over into his practical community relationships. Furthermore, I will argue that Descartes’ “tool” for getting around in these tension filled community situations is what I shall call his doctrine of “order and intention”. Ultimately, it is this reliance upon intentionality which throws his “balance” out of balance, and gives rise to repeated charges of “dissimulation”. How this situation came to pass, and Descartes’ tortuous attempts at resolving the emerging problems, is largely the subject of the following pages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Moral and Religious Thought of Yi Hwang (Toegye): A Study of Korean Neo-Confucian Ethics and Spirituality by Edward Y.J. ChingMaria Hasfeldt Long (bio)The Moral and Religious Thought of Yi Hwang (Toegye): A Study of Korean Neo-Confucian Ethics and Spirituality. By Edward Y.J. Ching. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. vii + 204. Hardcover $99.00, isbn 978-3-030-77923-8.In recent years, the study of Korean Neo-Confucianism as an international (...) field has been growing exponentially. Compared to former decades, the number of international publications has grown significantly over the last ten years, with Edward Y.J. Chung as one of the most active scholars. The Moral and Religious Thought of Yi Hwang (Toegye): A Study of Korean Neo-Confucian Ethics and Spirituality is the culmination of an almost decade-long study of the Korean Neo-Confucian scholar, Yi Hwang Toegye (1501–1570). With a focus on the moral and spiritual aspects of the theories of Toegye, Chung maps out a brilliant overview of the philosopher's worldview and literary works. Chung's primary objective is to provide "thought-provoking" and fresh insights into one of the most important Korean Neo-Confucian thinkers in history, as well as shed light on Neo-Confucian thought in general and how Toegye's philosophy in particular can be relevant in modern interreligious dialogues (p. 149).Consisting of ten chapters, where each chapter could serve as an individual article, Chung takes the reader through the core concepts of Toegye and his development of a form of self-cultivation different from the Chinese Neo-Confucian idea of self-cultivation. This together created a holistic religious worldview with a strong spiritual dimension, which manifests through selfcultivation practices. The first two chapters introduce Toegye and the historical context of 16th-century Joseon-dynasty Korea (1392–1910); his understanding of the Neo-Confucian tradition as the true learning; and his rejection of Daoism and Buddhism. With the reader introduced to the immediate historical context and Neo-Confucian discourse of the time, the following three chapters cover Toegye's religious and moral understanding of the relationship between the Heavenly Principle (C. tianli, K. cheolli) and human nature (C. renxing, K. inseong). Furthermore, Chung covers the moral-spiritual implications that the Four-Seven Debate had on Toegye's later practical self-cultivation for becoming a sage. In short, the debate concerns the relation between the "four sprouts" of human characteristics as first described by Mengzi (ca. 371–289 BCE) and the seven human emotions mentioned in various classical texts. Toegye believed in the doctrine that the "experience of Heaven was within oneself" (p. 47). Therefore, [End Page 1] to become a sage, one would have to commit to the active practice of an inner feeling of reverence (C. jing, K. gyeong) daily.Chapter six dives into the spiritual practice of self-reflection and mind cultivation (C. xinxue, K. simhak), which was an ongoing process that would lead the practitioner closer to sagehood. The seventh chapter focuses on how this spiritual dimension of Toegye's doctrine is relevant to broader discussions of ecology today. With a strong love for nature, Toegye incorporated the idea of nature within his spiritual self-cultivation, which Chung elaborates on. It was important for the human being to be in harmony with Heaven, earth, and all myriad things. This meant respecting and spending time in nature also played a part in the daily practice of spiritual self-cultivation. Moving on, in chapters eight and nine, Chung presents a comparative study on the philosophical and theological question of how to transcend evil, as well as the matter of interreligious dialogue. By way of a textual-interpretive approach, Chung compares Toegye's thought with Christian contra Buddhist theological ideas and how these findings can help develop an interreligious approach. In chapter nine, Chung suggests that the idea of self-transcendence through self-cultivation can be the ultimate reality. In this chapter, Chung wants to break with the tendency in interreligious dialogue where many scholars rely heavily on Christian theological terms. Chung introduces Neo-Confucian concepts and terms, especially the terms used by Toegye. The last and concluding chapter... (shrink)

Tourism, as an industry, has become one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy these days and has specific features that are different from other industries. In the tourism industry, production and consumption points occur spatially at the same time. In addition, the tourism industry contributes to the economic growth of developed regions and can simultaneously distribute the wealth created geographically. It is notable that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused many challenges in the tourism industry (...) regarding the presence of tourists in tourism centres and the closing of all tourism service chains, including food, entertainment, transportation and travel services worldwide. Tourism-related businesses, which are considered as invisible export and one of the engines of development and occupation, have been rendered obsolete. In other words, the businesses, as well as multiple units and activities in the related chain, have been damaged and employees of this industry have lost their jobs. This has led to the recession and regressive course of the developing and large industry of tourism in the world. It is worth noting that the tourism industry includes various sections, the most important of which is religious tourism. All religions in the world have different religious places, works, traditions and customs, which have become amongst the most important tourist attractions. Meanwhile, Muslims and the religion of Islam play a significant role in this branch of tourism. The Hajj, pilgrimage to holy places and the existence of mourning ceremonies or religious celebrations of Muslims are amongst the largest religious tourism events in the world. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious tourism in Iraq in 2021. This field study was conducted on 4500 Muslim managers and staff of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, clothing stores and souvenir shops around the holy shrines of imams and religious places in Karbala, Najaf, Kufa, Samarra and Kazemi. According to the results, the tourism of Iraq, which is mainly limited to Muslim religious sites in several major Iraqi cities, has also seen a decline in the number of religious tourists. The negative effects of COVID-19 on religious tourism have also been proved statistically by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), as µ ≥ 3 has been counted in all indices.Contribution: Our findings offered new insights into the impact of COVID-19 on tourism, based on statistical analysis. In this study, the authors showed how COVID-19 affects various aspects of religious tourism, which has not been addressed in previous researches. (shrink)

Bruce Wilshire’s work has three parts: Theatre and the Reality of Appearance; Reality and the Self; The Limits of Appearance and the Limits of Theatrical Metaphor. Chapter One covers “What Is Theatre?”, Chapter Two “What Is Phenomenology?”, both in a popular lecturer’s manner. As actor and scholar, he discusses playwrights from Sophocles to Grotowski in the rest of Part One. There is no pretense of philosophical depth or originality. But Muses are brought intelligently and enjoyably together. Only when Husserl or (...) Heidegger is rather artificially injected, does the text turn occasionally opaque. Often Part Three is similarly readable. Welcome remarks on social scientists’ abuse of “role-playing” are usefully applied to Erving Goffman’s use of theatrical metaphors in theorizing on social roles. Excellent comments on those who “dismiss religious practices as [necessarily] regressive and self-deceptive” come soon after. Too mechanical, behavioristic or cheaply cynical views of human beings are attacked, despite Wilshire’s own concessions to pessimism. At the end one reads: “it is not clear whether vital and authentic individual identity is still possible for us….We must aim for a community of compassion in which each recognizes the tragic aspects of the other”. (shrink)

In this paper I will deal with the question of the religious education in the public schools in Romania, from the point of view of the relationship between Church and State. My quantitative and qualitative analysis of the bills concerning religious education, the way in which law has been applied and some of the consequences of this application wants to circumscribe the meaning of some concepts such as religious liberty and the new religious forms. The basic (...) consequence of this I hope will be the redefining of the notion of public space and of the role played by religion with its characteristic aspects: the relationship between state and religious organizations. This will clearly show the essential bond between two main aspects of religious liberty: the formal aspect - legal and institutional - and the informal aspect – an aspect connected to the personal and social attitudes regarding the new forms of religious behaviour. (shrink)

The impact of genetic technologies is being felt in many aspects of society, including medicine and the legal system, as well as the personal lives of individuals. How do we make sure that all segments of the population are equally aware of these technologies and have ample opportunity to voice opinions and shape the future? One ongoing effort, which began ten years ago and in which we are directly involved, is the Personal Genetics Education Project, a nonprofit initiative housed (...) within and largely supported by the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. The goal of pgEd is to raise public awareness and promote conversations about the benefits and implications of the genetics revolution in ways that are inclusive of all voices regardless of socioeconomic, educational, ethnic, cultural, or religious background. This essay describes our approach and experience in hopes that they will be of help to others engaged in similar efforts. (shrink)

According to the written sources, the Iconoclast controversy was all about the veneration of icons. It started in the late seventh century, after most iconodule provinces had been lost to Byzantine rule, and lasted until the turn of the millennium or so, when icon veneration became generally established in the remaining parts of the Byzantine Empire. However, as far as material evidence and actual images are concerned, the Iconoclast controversy centred on apse images and other, equally large and monumental representations, (...) none of which were ever venerated. Prior to Iconoclasm, such images had not been customary at Constantinople, where the early Christian tradition had been largely aniconic and focused on the symbol of the cross. Thus, the introduction of monumental Christian imagery to Constantinople appears to have been a major aspect of the Iconoclast controversy. This paper asks why and finds that the images in question, whilst not for veneration and therefore not essential to the theological debate, stood out for imperial propaganda. They led to close visual integration of the emperor and the church that had previously been kept apart, because aniconic traditions used to limit imperial presence inside Constantinopolitan church buildings. It seems, then, that the Iconoclast controversy, although conducted in religious terms, was partly driven by a hidden agenda of imperial appropriation and power play. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the attitude of the great world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism) to the world of finance, including banking. The issue of usury plays a key role together with the evolution of ethical aspects related to obtaining compensation for money lending. The analysis is focused on the other aspects of banking activities, such as saving, investing, and institutional development of the banking sector as well. The author underlines the far-reaching convergence between (...) religions in this area, in spite of the considerable variation in historical and geographical conditions of their formation. The importance of cultural (religious) differences, including the nuances or more fundamental aspects, has a significant impact on bank management in different regions. For successful development, large multinational corporations have to take into consideration the abovementioned circumstances, regardless of globalization processes. (shrink)

Self-monitoring theory explains the individual differences in using interpersonal adjustment techniques like self-control, self-regulation, and self-presentation. Self-monitoring plays a key role for understanding the social life. Therefore, it has been one of most popular research topics in social psychology. The aim of this study is to find out if there is a meaningful relationship between religious orientation and self-monitoring, and to determine the direction of the relationship if it exists. Besides, examining the effect of religious group membership on (...) self-monitoring is another aim of this study. In accordance with this purpose, Religious Orientation Scale and Revised Self-Monitoring Scale are applied to sample group which consists of 437 female and 369 male participants aged16 to 65+ living in Bursa. The results has revealed that there is a meaningful positive correlation between intrinsic religious orientation and self-monitoring. In addition, no meaningful relationship between religious group membership and self-monitoring has been confirmed.Summary: The adaptation process of the human being as a social creature starts in a mother's womb and becomes more complicated in consequence of coming into the world which is full of stimulus. In the beginning, this process has only a physical aspect, but with the inclusion of emotional, cognitive, and social factors over time turns into developmental tasks that people will struggle throughout their lives. The social development involves the process of becoming of the individual as an organic part of the society. As the individual realizes the existence of the other, he/she develops similar patterns of behavior that can be approved by the other. Because the meaningful relationships that form the backbone of social development constitute an important part of the self. Belonging is one of the main needs, that the individual shapes his emotions, actions, and decisions more or less in line with this need in order not to encounter the possibility of social exclusion. While belonging is a universal need for every healthy individual, there are differences between individuals in terms of directing the course of the relationship, role sharing, and using situational clues. Individual differences in how people construct interpersonal processes led Mark Snyder to systematize and theorize the concept of self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is a concept that expresses individuals' control of self-presentation, expressive behavior, and non-verbal emotional expression and their regulation. Accordingly, individuals with a high tendency to shape their behavior according to the context are classified as high self-monitors and those with low tendency are classified as low self-monitors. It can be said that adherence to religion, which is one of the determinants of social behavior, is related to self-monitoring. In this context, the main subject of this study is the relationship between self-monitoring and religiosity. The study aims to examine the effect of intrinsic-extrinsic religiosity on individuals' self-monitoring levels. Besides, as a form of religiosity, to reveal whether religious group religiosity affects self-monitoring, the study examines also self-monitoring levels of individuals belonging to the religious group and those who are not.The sample of the study was selected by a simple random sampling method and it consists of 806 participants aged 16 to 65+ living in Bursa in 2017. 437 (54.2%) of the participants in the research are women and 369 (45.8%) are men. In this study, a relational screening model was used for determining the presence, direction, and degree of the relationship between the variables. The questionnaire technique was preferred as the method of gathering information. The questionnaire was arranged in a way that does not require asking the participant any other questions apart from the questions on the form. The questionnaire form used in this research consists of 43 items. At the beginning of the questionnaire, there is a 9-item personal information form that includes demographic items consisting of age, gender, educational status, marital status, occupation, place of residence, socio-economic status, levels of subjective religious involvement, and religious group membership. For the measurement of self-monitoring, a 12-item "Self-Monitoring Scale", which was developed by Mark Snyder, revised by Richard Lennox and Raymond Wolfe and adapted by İlknur Özalp Türetgen and Sevim Cesur to Turkish (α =.80) was used. For the measurement of religious orientation, a 22-item “Religious Orientation Scale” developed by Gordon Allport and Michael Ross and adapted to Turkish by Fatma Gül Cirhinlioğlu was used (α =.90). Data collected through scales were processed by One Way Variance Analysis (ANOVA), t-Test, Pearson Correlation Analysis, and Simple Linear Regression Analysis and turned into research findings.According to the results of the simple linear correlation analysis conducted to reveal whether there is a relationship between the self-monitoring scores of the participants and the intrinsic religious orientation scores, there is a positive and significant relationship between the variables (r = 0.102, p = 0.004 0.05). The result of the correlation analysis between self-monitoring and the level of subjective religious involvement shows that no significant relationship is found (r = 0.051, p = 0.146> 0.05).This research expected that there was a negative relationship between self-monitoring and intrinsic religious orientation. However, the analyses has not reported anticipated results as addressed in the previous research. Therefore, this study opens the door for asking new questions about the subject. Religious groups, by their very nature, can refer the individual to self-presentation control, obedience, to act as deemed appropriate by the group, to adapt to the group, to change behavior without attitude change, and therefore, to attitude-behavior inconsistency. It can be argued that not only religious groups but, by their nature, all social groups create harmony-oriented pressure on the individual. Therefore, it can be predicted that belonging to a group, in general, may have a significant effect on the level of self-monitoring. The high self-monitoring scores of the participants, whether religious or non-religious group members of this study may have reduced the observability of the difference between the two groups. Therefore, repeating the study on a different sample may produce different results. (shrink)

The era of the Tang dynasty was a period of great flourishing of all aspects of Chinese culture, when changes covered the most diverse spheres of philosophy, art and literature. The article examines the role played in this cultural transformation by translations from Sanskrit into Chinese of the religious and philosophical texts of Indian Buddhism. The specificity of the Chinese approach to the translation of Indian texts is demonstrated, when, at the initial stage, many works were translated in (...) a rather free style due to the lack of precisely established correspondences between Sanskrit and Chinese philosophical terms. The authors identify two additional factors that influenced the nature of the translations. Firstly, this is the requirement of compliance with the norms of public, mainly Confucian, morality. Secondly, the adaptation of the Indian philosophical context to the Chinese cultural and worldview traditions, which led to the emergence of new schools of religious and philosophical thought that were not known in India itself, such as Tiantai, Jingtu or Chan, each of which in its own way influenced the art of the Medieval China. Special attention is paid to the activities of the legendary translator, Xuanzang, whose travel to India gave a huge impetus to the development of Chinese philosophy in subsequent centuries, as well as to the contribution to Chinese culture and art, which was made by the translation activities of the three great teachers of the Tang era Shubhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the role of stained glass in the visual semiosis of religious buildings in Crimea. The object of the study is the stained glass decor of the sacred architecture of the Crimea. The research uses the methods of cultural (hermeneutic and semiotic) and artistic (idiographic and structural) analysis of stained glass art in the sacred space of Crimean architecture, the method of analysis of previous studies, the method of synthesis in conclusions regarding the development (...) of stained glass in the Crimean cult architecture. In the study, the authors considered the following areas of the topic: the development of stained glass art of the Crimea in sacred architecture; the meaning of color and subject symbols in stained glass compositions of religious buildings of the Crimea. The main conclusions of the study are: 1. Stained glass art, more precisely, its subject component, is not authentic for the Crimea, it appears in the decor of residential and public buildings during the late XIX century, the beginning of the eclecticism of Art Nouveau and imitation of Gothic and Byzantine models. Colored glass in earlier periods decorated the windows of well-to-do houses of representatives of various Crimean ethnic groups, however, stained glass as a phenomenon was not characteristic of sacred structures. 2. Due to its geographical location, Crimea is a multicultural and multi-confessional territory, where various religious trends developed: ancient pantheism, Byzantine Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism with the colonization of Catherine's time, Islam, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Judaism. Stained glass windows in religious buildings of various faiths, in addition to decorative function, play a symbolic role, conveying through color, symbolism of abstract and object forms one or another sacred meaning. 3. A special contribution of the authors to the study of the topic is the cataloging, art history and cultural description of examples of stained glass art in the sacred architecture of the Crimea. The scientific novelty of the study is that the authors for the first time carry out an ontological analysis of stained glass art in the sacred visual semiosis of the Crimea and analyze its semiotic aspects. (shrink)

Die Kulturgeschichte kennt eine Vielzahl an unterschiedlichen Variationen des Spiels. In einer bestimmten Hinsicht erweist sich die Form des Spiels als ein konstitutives Phänomen von Kultur. Unter der Voraussetzung, dass es sich bei Religion um ein kulturelles System handelt, kann zudem erwartet werden, dass auch sie den Impuls des Spielerischen in sich aufnimmt. Vor diesem Hintergrund zielen die Beiträge dieses Bandes darauf ab, einzelne Verflechtungen zwischen Spiel und Kultur aus theologischen und philosophischen Perspektiven zu untersuchen. Dabei geht es sowohl darum, (...) theoriegeschichtliche Hintergründe des Zusammenhangs sichtbar zu machen, als auch darum, die Verhältnisse zwischen Spiel, Religion und Ethik systematisch zu untersuchen."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto and University of Toronto Ross E. G. Upshur * Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Joint Centre for Bioethics University of Toronto, Toronto * Corresponding author: Ross E. G. Upshur, Primary Care Research Unit, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 2075 Bayview Avenue, #E-349, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4N 3M5. Tel.: 416-480-4753; Fax: 416-480-4536; Email: ross.upshur{at}sunnybrook.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Are restrictive measures and duties to care ethically reasonably acceptable to faith-based organizations? This (...) study describes the perceptions of individually interviewed spiritual leaders of the disease control measures used during the recent SARS outbreak in Toronto. Four central themes were identified: the relationship between religious obligation and civic responsibilities; the role of faith-based organizations in supporting public health restrictive measures; the reciprocal obligations of public health and religious communities during restrictions; and justifiable limits to duties to care. We conclude that, within certain constraints, spiritual leaders find restrictive measures ethically reasonable and that spiritual leaders can play an important role during pandemic and epidemic control planning. Public health officials should therefore include them in the early and ongoing deliberations of the criteria and logistics for implementation during public health emergencies. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

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

In the wake of Albrecht Dieterich, in this paper I try to show how the overall arrangement of the hymns in the Orphic hymn book follows the progression of a nocturnal ritual. I insist on the frequency with which the hymns talk about the fear of meeting a divinity or a phasma that would be in an unkind and violent state and could drive the initiates into madness. Thus, the hymns construct the mystery experience as an event that is, at (...) least in part, dangerous and frightening. This concern with madness as a possible negative result of the initiatory experience is just one aspect of the role Bacchic initiation played in healing madness sent by evil demons, and it conveys a seriousness to these rites that makes them into something very different from the hobby of some placid burghers. Far from being only the songs that accompanied the tryphé of a Bacchic social event, the hymns point to the emotional complexity and seriousness of Bacchic mystery cults.Dans le sillage d’Albrecht Dieterich, cette étude entend montrer comment l’arrangement global des pièces reprises dans le recueil des hymnes orphiques épouse la progression d’un rituel nocturne. On insiste sur la récurrence, dans les hymnes, du motif de la crainte de rencontrer une divinité ou un phasma qui pourrait être malveillant, violent, et frapperait les initiés de folie. Ainsi, les hymnes construisent l’expérience mystérique comme un événement qui est, au moins pour une part, dangereux et effrayant. Ce souci pour la folie comme résultat négatif potentiel de l’expérience initiatique n’est qu’un des aspects du rôle que l’initiation bachique jouait dans la folie curative envoyée par de mauvais démons, et cela confère du sérieux à ces rituels qui étaient quelque chose de bien différent d’un passe-temps pour petits bourgeois placides. Loin d’être seulement les chants qui accompagnaient la truphê d’un moment de sociabilité bachique, les hymnes renvoient à la complexité émotionnelle et au caractère sérieux des cultes à mystères bachiques. (shrink)

The widespread assessment of the early period of Semyon L. Frank’s work as being influenced by German Neo-Kantianism is in need of a critical scrutiny. There are several reasons why the Russian philosopher’s interest in Neo-Kantianism merits a closer look. First, two systemic theories belonging to different trends exerted a decisive influence on Russian philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: German Neo-Kantianism and Vladimir Solovyov’s school of all-unity. Second, Frank himself and the German Neo-Kantians considered Nicholas of (...) Cusa to be one of their forerunners and pointed out the importance of his mathematical ideas for their mathematical studies. Thirdly and lastly, Frank paid particular attention, especially in his formative period as a philosopher, to the leading trend in the early twentieth century, namely German Neo-Kantianism, which led some students of his work to believe that German Neo-Kantianism played the decisive role in Frank’s abandonment of Marxism in favour of religious ontology. Frank’s fundamental disagreement with German Neo-Kantianism was expressed in his work The Object of Knowledge in which he criticised the Neo-Kantian concepts of number and time. Although Frank rightly points out the one-sidedness of the Neo-Kantian definition of number, most notably in the works of the Marburg philosopher Paul Natorp, on the whole his criticism of the Neo-Kantian concept of number and time as being different from his own is not entirely convincing. In my opinion, Frank’s attempt to explain the abstract concept of number through a still more abstract concept of all-unity was not crowned with success because he ignored the experience of Christian theology and the Trinity dogma as well as the profound thoughts of the Rev. Pavel Florensky on this topic. (shrink)

Are restrictive measures and duties to care ethically reasonably acceptable to faith-based organizations? This study describes the perceptions of individually interviewed spiritual leaders of the disease control measures used during the recent SARS outbreak in Toronto. Four central themes were identified: the relationship between religious obligation and civic responsibilities; the role of faith-based organizations in supporting public health restrictive measures; the reciprocal obligations of public health and religious communities during restrictions; and justifiable limits to duties to care. We (...) conclude that, within certain constraints, spiritual leaders find restrictive measures ethically reasonable and that spiritual leaders can play an important role during pandemic and epidemic control planning. Public health officials should therefore include them in the early and ongoing deliberations of the criteria and logistics for implementation during public health emergencies. (shrink)

Are restrictive measures and duties to care ethically reasonably acceptable to faith-based organizations? This study describes the perceptions of individually interviewed spiritual leaders of the disease control measures used during the recent SARS outbreak in Toronto. Four central themes were identified: the relationship between religious obligation and civic responsibilities; the role of faith-based organizations in supporting public health restrictive measures; the reciprocal obligations of public health and religious communities during restrictions; and justifiable limits to duties to care. We (...) conclude that, within certain constraints, spiritual leaders find restrictive measures ethically reasonable and that spiritual leaders can play an important role during pandemic and epidemic control planning. Public health officials should therefore include them in the early and ongoing deliberations of the criteria and logistics for implementation during public health emergencies. (shrink)

We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs—that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings (...) that guide make-believe play. -/- Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief—which he terms religious “credence”—is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance. -/- It is hardly controversial to suggest that religion has a social function, but Religion as Make-Believe breaks new ground by theorizing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Once we recognize that our minds process factual and religious beliefs in fundamentally different ways, we can gain deeper understanding of the complex individual and group psychology of religious faith. [Abstract writing credit: book editor Andrew Kinney, HUP]. (shrink)

What role should religion play in a religiously pluralistic liberal society? Public bioethics unavoidably raises this question in a particularly insistent fashion. As the 20 papers in this collection demonstrate, the issues are complex and multifaceted. The authors address specific and highly contested issues as assisted suicide, stem cell research, cloning, reproductive health, and alternative medicine as well as more general questions such as who legitimately speaks for religion in public bioethics, what religion can add to our understanding of (...) justice, and the value of faith-based contributions to healthcare. Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist viewpoints are represented. The first book to focus on the interface of religion and bioethics, this collection fills a significant void in the literature. (shrink)

What role should religion play in a religiously pluralistic liberal society? Public bioethics unavoidably raises this question in a particularly insistent fashion. As the 20 papers in this collection demonstrate, the issues are complex and multifaceted. The authors address specific and highly contested issues as assisted suicide, stem cell research, cloning, reproductive health, and alternative medicine as well as more general questions such as who legitimately speaks for religion in public bioethics, what religion can add to our understanding of (...) justice, and the value of faith-based contributions to healthcare. Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist viewpoints are represented. The first book to focus on the interface of religion and bioethics, this collection fills a significant void in the literature. (shrink)

How and why should hope play a key role in a twenty-first century democratic politics? Alan Mittleman offers a philosophical exploration of the theme, contending that a modern construction of hope as an emotion is deficient. He revives the medieval understanding of hope as a virtue, reconstructing this in a contemporary philosophical idiom. In this framework, hope is less a spontaneous reaction than it is a choice against despair; a decision to live with confidence and expectation, based on a (...) rational assessment of possibility and a faith in the underlying goodness of life. In cultures shaped by biblical teaching, hope is thought praiseworthy. Mittleman explores the religious origins of the concept of hope in the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, rabbinic literature and Augustine. He traces the roots of both the praise of hope, in Jewish and Christian thought, and the criticism of hope in Greco-Roman thought and in the tradition of philosophical pessimism. Arguing on behalf of a straightened, sober form of hope, he relates hope-as-a-virtue to the tasks of democratic citizenship. Without diminishing the wisdom found in tragedy, a strong argument emerges in favour of hope as a way of taking responsibility for the world. Drawing on insights from scriptural and classical texts, philosophers, and theologians - ancient and modern, Mittleman builds a compelling case for placing hope at the centre of democratic political systems. (shrink)

The _Vessantara Jataka_ is one of the most popular and influential Theravada Buddhist texts and the final and longest scripture in the Pali Canon. It tells the story of Prince Vessantara, who attained the Perfection of Giving by giving away his fortune, his children, and his wife. Prince Vessantara was the penultimate rebirth as a human of the future Gotama Buddha, and his extreme charity is frequently portrayed in the sermons, rituals, and art of South and Southeast Asia. This anthology (...) features sophisticated literary and anthropological analyses of the ethics of giving, understanding of attachment and nonattachment, depiction of the trickster, and unique performative qualities of the _Vessantara Jataka_. Contributors to the volume include well-respected anthropologists, textual scholars in religious and Buddhist studies, and art historians who unravel from multiple perspectives the text's morality, religion, and place in contemporary academic debates. These experts show the _Vessantara Jataka_ to be as brilliantly layered as a Homerian epic or Shakespearean play, with aspects of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and utopian fantasy intertwined to problematize and scrutinize Buddhism's cherished virtues. Unusual for its disciplinary range, this collection helps recast Buddhism as a human tradition rich in ethical and aesthetic complexity. It also features an introduction describing the work's main themes and styles, a character glossary, and a bibliography. (shrink)

Includes emotional and affective feelings. Mood builds on the human organism's body, but you must turn to the development of affective experience of the body. I did not last for more than the physical body Zhumo, this article from the mood in the body discussed the rise of the body, to significant problems of the body by the body to experience over the body, as well as the physical body plays in the emotional life of role, will be particularly focused (...) on the discussion of the role of the brain. Basically, the emotional mood of the rise in the body surface of the body, but the emotion does not stop the body. Since the emergence of human consciousness with the intention of the role, so there are feelings of the development. Affective refers to the so-called intentional sexual feelings, especially those that point to the meaning and value of high-level emotions, such as aesthetic, moral feelings and religious sentiments. This paper illustrates how the human experience from the development of the aesthetic experience of the body, powered by the desire to develop a sense of beauty and art have meaning in the world. Furthermore, affective development also has its ethical dimension. This paper by discussing Aristotle's "practical wisdom", as well as Confucianism, Taoism-related ideas, show affection broad sense of the ethical dimension. Finally, to discuss the religious aspects of affective life, and do a little due. Human affectivity includes emotions and feelings. Emotions have their physiological foundation on human body as organism, whereas intertional feelings refer to body as lived. The present author has in his previous writings put emphasis on body as lived, but few words have touched upon body as organism. This paper makes a remedy on this point and attempts to deal with problems such as how emotions arises from body as organism so as to make clear the transition from body as organism to body as lived, and the role organic body played in our emotional life, focus being put on the functions of the brain. Basically speaking, the emotional aspect of human affectivity is originated from, but not limited to, organic body. I see our body as the locus of human desire, defined as a dynamic energy towards the meaningfulness of life. Because of the emergence of consciousness and its intentionality, we have a further development of life of our intentional feelings. "Intentional feeling" denotes those feelings with intentionality that directs iself towards meaningulness and values, especially those intending higher levels of mental activities such as aesthetic feeling, moral feeling and religious sentiment. We will discuss first how aesthetic feelings emerge from body as lived, in the way that desire as dynamism of meaning develops into a world of aesthetic values. Intentional feeling has its ethical dimensional, in the sense determined by Aristotle's idea of ​​phronesis, Confucian idea of ​​moral praxis and Daoist idea of ​​life praxis. In the end, this paper will try to shematize the religious dimension of intentional feeling. (shrink)

The Scottish scholar James McCosh was a champion of the Free church, a successful and much-published philosophy professor at Belfast for 16 years, and an energetic and innovative President of Princeton University from 1868 to 1888. The Religious Aspect of Evolution was published in 1888, and this second edition from 1890 took account of A. R. Wallace's latest work, Darwinism. McCosh, who already in Ireland had developed a 'theory of the universe conditioned by Christian revelation' was one of very (...) few clergymen in America who defended evolutionary theory. He impressed upon his students that while there seemed to be great truth in Darwin's theory, the work of the coming age must be to separate that truth from the error springing up around it. This would enable scholars to follow and even embrace science while also retaining their faith in the Bible. (shrink)

What are the primary characteristics that define what it means to be human? And what happens to those characteristics in the face of technology past, present, and future? The three essays in Image, by leading philosophers of religion Mark Taylor, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Thomas Carlson, play at this intersection of the human and the technological, building out from Heidegger's notion that humans master the world by picturing or representing the real.Taylor's essay traces a history of capitalism, dwelling on the (...) lack of humility, particularly in the face of our own mortality, that is the persistent failure of humans, before turning to art as a possible way to bring us back to earth and recover humility before it is too late. Rubenstein zeroes in on the delusions of imaginative conquest associated with space travel. Through a genealogy of the modern "view from space" from the iconic Earth rise photo of 1968 up to the new privatized American space race, Rubenstein provides an analysis of the perils of the one-world and the false unity it projects. In his essay, Carlson takes as his starting point the surveillance capitalism of facial recognition technology. He dives deep into Heidegger to meditate on the elimination of individuals through totalizing gestures and the relationship between such elimination and our encounters with mortality. Each of these essays, in its own way, reflects on the nature of imagination, the character of technological vision in contemporary culture, and the implications of these for the kinds of sociality and love that condition our human experience. (shrink)

'Dialogue' was invented as a written form in democratic Athens and made a celebrated and popular literary and philosophical style by Plato. Yet it almost completely disappeared in the Christian empire of late antiquity. This book, the first general and systematic study of the genre in antiquity, asks: who wrote dialogues and why? Why did dialogue no longer attract writers in the later period in the same way? Investigating dialogue goes to the heart of the central issues of power, authority, (...) openness and playfulness in changing cultural contexts. This book analyses the relationship between literary form and cultural authority in a new and exciting way, and encourages closer reflection about the purpose of dialogue in its wider social, cultural and religious contexts in today's world. (shrink)

_A bracing account of liberalism’s most radical critics introducing one of the most controversial movements of the twentieth century__ “Powerful.... Bracing.... Part of the book’s eerie relevance comes from the role Russia plays throughout.”—Ezra Klein, _New York Times___ “One of the best books I’ve read this year.... Its importance at this critical moment in our history cannot be overstated.”—Rod Dreher, ___American Conservative__ In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the twentieth (...) century, the “radical right,” and discusses its adherents’ different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Rose shows how such thinkers are animated by religious aspirations and anxieties that are ultimately in tension with Christian teachings and the secular values those teachings birthed in modernity. (shrink)

Landscape, Religion, and the Supernatural presents a summa of current and classic theorizing on religion and the supernatural in relationship to the land and develops this theorizing further by confronting it with a rich set of folkloristic and historical data. Focusing on the themes of "time and memory", "repeating patterns", "identity formation", "morality", "labor", "playfulness and adventure", "power and subversion", "sound", "emotions", "coping with contingency", "home and unhomeliness", as well as "nature and environment", the book engages with a broad range (...) of theoretical concepts and approaches from the interdisciplinary field of landscape theory and the study of religions. It brings this theorizing into dialogue with the rich culture of local storytelling and landscape-related traditional beliefs of the Strandir district of the Icelandic Westfjords. In this rural region, landscape-related traditions have been collected since the early nineteenth century and continue to be important to this day. Confronting this rich heritage with the insights of landscape theory both in and beyond the study of religions allows important new contributions to theorizing landscape and religion, especially when it comes to considering the perspectives on landscape held by rural populations rather than the urban upper classes that have stood in the focus of research to date. The example of the Icelandic Westfjords shows the extreme richness of religious and supernatural approaches to the landscape that can be developed in rural communities, and how they are significantly and characteristically different from the urban perspectives of literature and the arts. (shrink)

This article explores the religious interpretation of play philosophy across different historical periods and contexts, from ancient Greek thought to contemporary digital media. Drawing on the works of prominent philosophers such as Heraclitus, Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Huizinga, as well as recent scholarship on digital media and religion, the article examines the role of play in shaping religious thought, practice and experience. It consists of three main sections, focusing on divine play in ancient Greek philosophy, (...) the religious connotations of the ‘playful order’ in the works of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Huizinga, and the transformative potential of video games as a medium for religious expression and exploration. Contribution: By synthesising diverse perspectives and examining the religious implications of play philosophy in various contexts, this study offers new insights into the relationship between the divine and humanity, and the significance of play in religious life. It also highlights the potential of digital media to provide innovative avenues for religious exploration, fostering a deeper understanding of the role of play in both historical and contemporary religious contexts. (shrink)

Introduction: Laughter as an expression of human nature in the Middle Ages and the early modern period: literary, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological reflections -- Judith Hagen. Laughter in Procopius's wars -- Livnat Holtzman. "Does God really laugh?": appropriate and inappropriate descriptions of God in Islamic traditionalist theology -- Daniel F. Pigg. Laughter in Beowulf: ambiguity, ambivalence, and group identity formation -- Mark Burde. The parodia sacra problem and medieval comic studies -- Olga V. Trokhimenko. Women's laughter and gender politics (...) in medieval conduct discourse -- Madelon Köhler-Busch. Pushing decorum: uneasy laughter in Heinrich von Dem Türlîn's Diu crône -- Connie L. Scarborough. Laughter and the comic in a religious text -- John Sewell. The son rebelled and so the father made man alone: ridicule and boundary maintenance in The Nizzahon vetus -- Birgit Wiedl. Laughing at the beast: the judensau: anti-Jewish propaganda and humor from the Middle Ages to the early modern period -- Fabian Alfie. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi and Giovanni Boccaccio -- Nicolino Applauso. Curses and laughter in medieval Italian comic poetry -- Feargal Béarra. Tromdhámh guaire: a context for laughter and audience in early modern Ireland -- Jean E. Jost. Humorous transgression in the non-conformist fabliaux: a Bakhtinian analysis of three comic tales -- Gretchen Mieszkowski. Chaucerian comedy: Troilus and Criseyde -- Sarah Gordon. Laughing and eating in the fabliaux -- Christine Bousquet-Labouérie. Laughter and medieval stalls -- Scott L. Taylor. Esoteric humor and the incommensurability of laughter -- Jean N. Goodrich. The function of laughter in The second shepherds' play -- Albrecht Classen. Laughing in late-medieval verse and prose narratives -- Rosa Alvarez perez. The workings of desire: Panurge and the dogs -- Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. Laughing out loud in the Heptaméron: a reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre's ambivalent humor -- Lia B. Ross. You had to be there: the elusive humor of the Sottie -- Kyle Diroberto. Sacred parody in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of wit -- Martha Moffitt Peacock. The comedy of the shrew: theorizing humor in early modern Netherlandish art -- Jessica Tvordi. The comic personas of Milton's Prolusion VI: negotiating masculine identity through self-directed humor -- John Alexander. Ridentum dicere verum (using laughter to speak the truth): laughter and the language of the early modern clown "pickelhering" in German literature of the late seventeenth century (1675-1700) -- Thomas Willard. Andreae's ludibrium: Menippean satire in The chymische hochzeit -- Diane Rudall. The comic power of illusion-allusion -- Allison P. Coudert. Laughing at credulity and superstition in the long eighteenth century. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1913 Edition.

The national hero of the present-day Albania is Skanderbeg’s father, Gjon (Yuvan) Kastrioti. Despite the fact that the Albanians tried to resist the Ottomans expeditions during the reign of Gjon, they were eventually defeated. As a result of this defeat by Sultan Murad II in 1423, Gjon was forced to give his four sons as captives. The youngest of his children was Skanderbeg, who together with three older brothers was given as captive due to the defeat by the Ottomans, had (...) to reside in the palace for many years. During this time, he had the opportunity to obtain a remarkable Ottoman education and to benefit from other privileges provided for them. It is obvious that the facilities provided by the Ottomans as well as the personal abilities and skills he gained in the Ottoman Empire enabled him to achieve successes in various fields. Therefore, he was able to be promoted to important positions within the Ottoman Empire. However, some of his demands were rejected and he became deprived from some of privileges granted to him due to the promises and incentives of the opponents of the Ottomans and some small victories resulting from his father's dominance in the direction of rebellion. During this rebellion against the Ottomans, they have received both material and spiritual aid Western powers as result the warm relations they enjoyed with the Western powers. In addition, these warm relations gave the opportunity to be acquainted with the Western culture. In the course of events, it can easily be said that Skanderbeg became a renowned figure not only in the Eastern culture but also in the Western culture. After his rebellion against the Ottomans, he denounced Islam and returned to his former Christian faith. There have always been controversies about the sect he adopted related to the Christian belief whether became a Catholic or Orthodox Christian. Although he had close ties with the Pope, the greatest enemy of the Ottoman Empire, his rebellions against the Ottomans did not originate from his religion.In this study, we appealed mostly to the daily reports of the priests of the time, primarily in Albanian and Turkish and English as well. In terms of Ottoman and Turkish - Albanian relations, the issue is a very important one and therefore has occasionally been evaluated in view of the historical perspective of religions. (shrink)