In the modern world, provincialism in reflective thinking is dangerous, possibly tragic. If philosophy is to fulfill one of its main functions—that of guiding the leaders of mankind toward a better world—its perspective must become worldwide and comprehensive in fact as well as in theory. This, the motivating theme of the Second East-West Philosophers' Conference held at the University of Hawaii in the summer of 1949, is likewise the theme of this volume, the complete report of that Conference. The (...) goal of the eminent philosophers participating was the discovery of avenues of progress toward a synthesis of Oriental and Occidental thought. They attempted to reach tentative conclusions in the fields of methodology, metaphysics, and ethical theory. Conference activities consisted of meetings, lectures, discussions, undergraduate courses, and graduate seminars. As far as possible, the proceedings were limited to the study of East-West philosophy; extensive attention was not given to the strictly religious aspects of any philosophical tradition. Participants in the Conference were convinced that philosophy is now entering upon a new stage of development which will be characterized by trans-cultural cooperation and world perspective. This development can be of tremendous significance in world thought and eventually in the lives and actions of the people of the world. Twenty-three of the formal papers presented at the Conference comprise the substance of this book; a significant proposal for synthesis is stated or implied in almost every one. A comprehensive introduction by the editor, a summary of the results and conclusions of the Conference seminars, a who's who of contributors, and an exhaustive index round out the volume. (shrink)

The paper deals with some religious and philosophical ideas of the Austrian philosopher Gerhard Oberhammer, who analyses the religious text of vishishta-advaita tradition from the point of Levinas’ philosophy. In the final fragment of his article Oberhammer analyses the formula of Ramanuja parabhaktiparajVAnaparamabhakti, which is understood in the works of the later thinkers of vishishta-advaita as prapatti. Meanwhile this formula for Ramanuja himself means only the meditative God-vision in the form of the steady remembering of God and vision (...) of Him in the images of the Vishnu religion. (shrink)

The paper examines the religious and philosophical concept of the personal daimon in the Greek magical papyri in relation to Greek philosophy and especially to the Neo-Platonist philosophers. Questions to be addressed are: What is the nature of the personal daimon? What is the relationship between the personal daimon and the individual and how is this relationship established in magic? Special emphasis is placed on the role of the magico-theurgic ritual of systasis in the process of establishing the (...) relationship with the personal daimon. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between magic rituals, mysteries and philosophy, focusing on the issue of the internalization of the personal daimon. (shrink)

Was Maimonides a radical philosopher who subtly argued for a naturalist world and who saw the obligation to keep the Torah's commandments as a social and moral obligation - or was he a conservative Jewish believer who only tried to formulate philosophical arguments in favour of a revealed religion? This question has been central to the interpretation of Maimonides from the 12th century until modern times. In the four chapters of this book, Shalom Sadik argues for a radical philosophical interpretation (...) of Maimonides. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 845-857, July 2022.

This history of Russian thought was first published in Polish in 1973 and subsequently appeared 2005 in a revised and expanded publication. The current volume begins with Enlightenment thought and Westernization in Russia in the 17<SUP>th century and moves to the religious-philosophical renaissance of first decade of the 20<SUP>th century. This book provides readers with an exhaustive account of relationships between various Russian thinkers with an examination of how those thinkers relate to a number of figures and trends in (...) Western philosophy and in the broader history of ideas. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition and study of a unique and important Muslim polemic against Christians and Jews. The Book of Disputation was written in Arabic by a Mudejar (subject Muslim living under Christian rule in late medieval Iberia) and offers new insight into the cultural and intellectual life of this Muslim minority. The text advances arguments drawn from natural philosophy-largely from Aristotle and Averroes-along with more traditional revealed sources such as the Qur'an and the Bible. Mudejar communities suffered (...) a diminution of religious and political intelligentsia over time. This text, however, highlights the author's particular conception of the world as the creation of God in his defense of Islam, demonstrates the vitality of intellectual life among Muslims in medieval Christian Iberia, and documents the continued cultivation of natural philosophy within these Muslim communities. (shrink)

Since the outburst of the financial-economic crisis in 2008, there has been quite some public discussion about the failure of neoliberal policies since the 1980s. Much less attention has been paid to its ideological character. Meanwhile, neoliberalism is still there, guiding the course of societies, organizations and individuals. We can observe the ‘strange non-death of neoliberalism’. In this article two questions are explored: which key philosophical elements characterize neoliberalism, and why has it got an ideological character? First, three statements on (...) neoliberalism are formulated. Next, its anthropological and social-philosophical development is considered, taking advantage of Taylor’s grand narrative of modernity. Finally, the potential of a new architectonic critique of society is considered. (shrink)

This book examines the multifarious nature of wisdom and explores the various types of wisdom and their interrelations. As an investigation of the nature of wisdom and its different expressions it addresses a concern of academic philosophy but also concerns of comparative studies, religious studies, and the humanities generally.

This is an anthology of literary, religious, and philosophical texts from the entire Middle Ages and the early modern age that address already quite explicitly religious toleration and even tolerance.

This volume explores the inherent pluralism of Hinduism through ethnographic and philosophical evidence as presented in the Journal of Anthropological Society of Bombay. The essays dated 1886-1936, represent a period that marked the emergence of a European-educated native intelligentsia with a rationalist outlook. The essays cover a wide range of topics from Tree Worship in Mohenjo Daro, the origin of the Hindu Trimurti, interpretation of Avestic and Vedic Texts; to a second set of more localized papers that cover the Muhammadan (...) Castes of Bengal, the Tenets and Practices of a Certain Class of Faqirs in Bengal, the Theoretical History of the Goddess Yellamma, and much more. Written during a particular historical as well as intellectual period that reflected certain key patterns - a period just following the Bengal Renaissance of the nineteenth century that ushered in the ideologies of a reformative Hinduism - this volume highlights how religions of all denominations have influenced each other and appear to have mingled beliefs and practices from multiple sources. It shows how tolerance and inclusiveness along with syncretism have been part of India's religious and social history. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of religions, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and sociology of religion. It will also be useful to those interested in inter-religious dialogues and civil society. (shrink)

Volume 57, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 1-2.

In Practicing Safe Sects F. LeRon Shults provides scientific and philosophical resources for having “the talk” about religious reproduction: where do gods come from – and what are the costs of bearing them in our culturally pluralistic, ecologically fragile environment?

Participation in religious liturgies and rituals is a pervasive and complex human activity. This book discusses the nature of liturgical activity and the various dimensions of such activity. Nicholas Wolterstorff focuses on understanding what liturgical agents actually do and shows religious practice as a rich area for philosophical reflection.

Europe is the community of nations which, in the favorable conditions of a small yet extremely diversified continent, took over and developed the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization transformed and enriched by Christianity. Philosophy, theology, liturgy, religion, national culture and tradition are still manifestations of this heritage. Europe is not merely a region or geographical location. It is an idea that expresses cultural and social ideals. The nature of Europeanness is not defined by race or place but by freedom and culture (...) in the broad sense. Latin Europe created a sphere of civilization. Though ridden by contrasts and differences, not merely an organic unity was established but also a unity of a spiritual kind by accentuating and merging of values all Europeans have in common. This was also made possible by Christianity whose ethos came to pervade a multiplicity of socio-cultural phenomena. (shrink)

Religions and philosophies in East Asia: pathways for self-transformation -- Adaptations and interactions: Chinese traditions and Korean ways -- From Buddhism to neo-Confucianism: metaphysics and hegemony -- Sagehood meets western learning: from principle to the Lord of heaven -- Eastern learning and Protestant Christianity: new religions and a Korean God -- Korea(s) complex modernity: Buddhist renewals, post-Christianities, Juche and Shamanism.

Calls into question the traditional polarity of theism and atheism.

This anthology contains twelve papers on various aspects of Platonism, ranging from Plato's Republic to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus and Hermias, to the use of Platonic philosophy by Cudworth and Schleiermacher. The papers cover topics in ethics, psychology, religion, poetics, art, epistemology, and metaphysics.

아베로에스는 내세의 행복에 대한 종교적 교의를 등한시한 채로 철학적⋅이론적 관상을 통한 현세의 행복에만 초점을 맞추는 철학자로 해석되어 왔다. 이런 평가와 달리 본 논문에서는 아베로에스로부터 철학적⋅이론적 관상을 통해 인간이 궁극적 행복을 얻을 가능성을 사실상 허용하지 않을 뿐만 아니라 인간의 행복 추구와 연관된 종교적 교의를 정당화하고자 면모를 드러내고자 한다. 이런 목적을 위해 본 논문에서는 아베로에스 철학적 인간학과 행복론의 근간인 능동 지성과 인간의 연합과 관련한 이론을 검토하면서 철학적⋅이론적 관상을 통한 행복의 획득이 불가능하다는 점을 설명할 것이다. 그리고 종교와 그것의 철학과의 관계, 그리고 인간의 행복 (...) 추구와 관련한 아베로에스의 이해가 종교가 내세에서의 행복은 물론 현세에서의 행복 추구와 관련하여 중요한 역할을 강조하고 있다는 점을 보여줄 것이다. 이런 의도가 성공적이라면 아베로에스의 종교와 철학에 대한 접근방식은 오늘날에도 철학과 종교에서 논하는 행복 추구와 관련하여 유효한 교훈을 제공하는 사례임이 부각될 것이다. (shrink)

Religious disagreement is an emerging topic of interest in social epistemology. Little is known about how philosophers react to religious disagreements in a professional context, or how they think one should respond to disagreement. This paper presents results of an empirical study on religious disagreement among philosophers. Results indicate that personal religious beliefs, philosophical training, and recent changes in religious outlook have a significant impact on philosophers' assessments of religious disagreement. They (...) regard peer disagreement about religion as common, and most surveyed participants assume one should accord weight to the other's opinion. Theists and agnostics are less likely to assume they are in a better epistemic position than their interlocutors about religious questions compared with atheists, but this pattern only holds for participants who are not philosophers of religion. Continental philosophers think religious beliefs are more like preferences than analytic philosophers, who regard religious beliefs as fact-like. (shrink)

Ways of Living Religion provides a philosophical analysis of different types of religious experience, focusing on the lived experience of religion rather than mere statements of belief or doctrine. Christina M. Gschwandtner distinguishes between experiences by examining their defining features, showing their continuity with human experience.

This unique volume collects some of the best recent work on the philosophical challenge that religious diversity poses for religious belief. Featuring contributors from philosophy, religious studies, and theology, it is unified by the way in which many of the authors engage in sustained critical examination of one another's positions. John Hick's pluralism provides one focal point of the collection. Hick argues that all the major religious traditions make contact with the same ultimate reality, each encountering (...) it through a variety of culturally shaped forms of thought and experience but all offering equally effective paths to salvation or liberation. Another central position is William P. Alston's defense of the Christian practice of forming beliefs about manifestations of God in response to experiences of divine presence or activity. Articles by Hick and Alston develop their arguments and other selections respond, criticizing or defending various aspects of one or both positions. Religious skepticism, religious exclusivism, religious inclusivism, and other perspectives are also represented. In the introduction, the editors suggest connections among the articles and report on additional exchanges between the contributors. The only anthology that provides comprehensive coverage of the current philosophical debate about religious diversity, The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity is ideal for courses and seminars on the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and world religions. (shrink)

One popular conception of natural theology holds that certain purely rational arguments are insulated from empirical inquiry and independently establish conclusions that provide evidence, justification, or proof of God’s existence. Yet, some raise suspicions that philosophers and theologians’ personal religious beliefs inappropriately affect these kinds of arguments. I present an experimental test of whether philosophers and theologians’ argument analysis is influenced by religious commitments. The empirical findings suggest religious belief affects philosophical analysis and offer a (...) challenge to theists and atheists, alike: reevaluate the scope of natural theology’s conclusions or acknowledge and begin to address the influence of religious belief. (shrink)

Religious diversity exists whenever seemingly sincere, knowledgeable individuals hold incompatible beliefs on the same religious issue. Diversity of this sort is pervasive, existing not only across basic theistic systems but also within these theistic systems themselves. Religious Diversity explores the breadth and significance of such conflict. Examining the beliefs of various theistic systems, particularly within Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Basinger discusses seemingly incompatible claims about many religious issues, including the nature of God and the salvation (...) of humankind. He considers particularly the work of Hick, Gellman, Plantinga, Schellenberg, Alston, Wainwright, and Quinn, applying their perspectives on 'exclusivism' and 'pluralism' as they become relevant to the issues in question. Basinger's survey of the relevant literature, proposed solutions, and fresh insights offer an invaluable contribution not only for philosophers of religion and philosophical theologians but for anyone interested in the increasingly significant question of what a religious believer can or cannot justifiably say about their religious perspective. (shrink)

A discussion of how making a decision about religious belief places this kind of belief in a category which distinguishes it from 'belief in other minds' or 'belief in an external world'. This has important consequences for a philosophical approach to religious belief.

Leading scholars examine religious and philosophical dimensions of the Chinese classic known as the Daodejing or Laozi.

This book discusses the philosophical issues underlying the teaching of religious education, and the conflict between religion and democratic values; it scrutinises religious education programmes in the UK, USA and Australia, and evaluates their effectiveness.

How did Elijah Muhammad's establishment of the Nation of Islam affect the civil rights movement in the United States? Philosophers and Religious Leaders answers that question and others as it presents 200 leaders whose lives and work have greatly influenced the world we live in today. Profiles include: Muhammad Abduh—architect of Islamic modernism. Mary Daly— influential feminist theologian and philosopher. Mary Baker Eddy—founder of Christian Science. Mencius (Meng K'o)—Confucian moral philosopher and interpreter. Shang Yang—Chinese philosopher of legalist school.

Abstract. The modern concept of the inner self containing a private inner world has ancient philosophical and religious roots. These begin with Plato's intelligible world of ideas. In Plotinus, the intelligible world becomes the inner world of the divine Mind and its ideas, which the soul sees by turning “into the inside.” Augustine made the inner world into something merely human, not a world of divine ideas, so that the soul seeking for God must turn in, then up: entering (...) into itself and then looking above itself at the intelligible light of God. In modernity, “ideas” become the immediate object of every act of mental perception, the essential inner objects of the mind's eye. Locke makes the inner space inescapably private, excluding the divine inner light. Postmodern attempts to reconceive the relation of mind and world, rejecting the modern conception of a private inner self, will need to deal with lingering Platonist intuitions about the immediacy of the mind's vision. (shrink)

... Introduction to Buddhist Tantra Tantra forms the esoteric basis of all major religions. It stands for the awakening of dormant divinity. It is a mystic technique to invoke the spirituality of man and woman.

The article explores Søren Kierkegaard's interpretation of Abraham's paradoxical obedience (Genesis 22). It does so on the basis of five scenic narrations told by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, and in his late Journals. Jacques Derrida is found to focus on similar points in his Gift of Death: especially on the suspension of ethics by religion and on the concepts of offering as well as of responsibility. Derrida claims that human responsibility is always tied to what he calls universal offering (...) to a radical other. The article argues that both the late Kierkegaard and Derrida exaggerate the inexplicability of the religious situation, each of them in his own way, and that the distinction between religion, ethics, and human responsibility is to be maintained (against Derrida), together with awe before the incommensurability of the single individual. /// O presente artigo investiga a interpretação kierkegaardiana acerca da paradoxal obediência de Abraão descrita no capítulo 22 do Livro do Génesis. Para a elaboração do respectivo argumento, o artigo baseia-se em cinco elementos narrativos incluídos na obra Temor e Tremor, bem como nos Diários, de Søren Kierkegaard Salienta-se também o facto de Jacques Derrida, na sua obra Donner la mort, insistir nos mesmos pontos atinentes a Kierkegaard, nomeadamente os relativos à suspensão da ética pela religião, bem como nos conceitos de doação e de responsabilidade. Derrida, com efeito, defende que a responsabilidade humana está sempre ligada àquilo que ele considera ser uma doação universal a um outro radical. O artigo considera que tanto o último Kierkegaard como Derrida exageram no que se refere à inexplicabilidade da situação religiosa, cada um deles num modo que lhe é próprio, e afirma que a distinção entre religião, ética e responsabilidade humana deve ser preservada, ao contrário do que diz Derrida, juntamente com a admiração devida diante da incomensurabilidade do indivíduo em sua singularidade. (shrink)

The essays in Religious Upbringing and the Costs of Freedom are the personal stories of philosophers who were brought up religiously and have broken free, in one way or another, from restraint and oppression. As trained philosophers, they are well equipped to reflect on and analyze their experiences. In this book, they offer not only stories of stress and liberation but ruminations on the moral issues that arise when parents and other caregivers, in seeking to do good (...) by their children, sometimes end up doing real harm to their personal development and sense of autonomy as individuals. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Raymond D. Bradley, Damien Alexander DuPont, Diane Enns, Paul H. Hirst, Amalia Jiva, Irfan Khawaja, Christine Overall, Tasia R. Persson, and Glen Pettigrove. (shrink)

Forty four years after the publication of Harvey Cox‟s The Secular City that celebrated “the progressive secularization of the world as the logical outcome of Biblical religion” (Newsweek)1, we almost feel the bones of religious fundamentalism cracking under the pressure of secularization. At the same time, however, the Hegelian dialectic holds ground as both refuse to be crushed by either; and any compromising stance only begets another rival; to the effect, that it can be said that fundamentalism is never (...) a phenomenon that may be extinguished. (shrink)

Should we merely celebrate diversity in the sphere of religion? What of the social cohesion of a country? There is a constant tug between belief in religious truth and the need for respect for other religions. Religious Diversity: Philosophical and Political Dimensions examines how far a firm faith can allow for toleration of difference and respect the need for religious freedom. It elucidates the philosophical credentials of different approaches to truth in religion, ranging from a dogmatic fundamentalism (...) to a pluralism that shades into relativism. Must we resort to a secularism that treats all religion as a personal and private matter, with nothing to contribute to discussions about the common good? How should law approach the issue of religious freedom? Introducing the relevance of central discussions in modern philosophy of religion, the book goes on to examine the political implications of increasing religious diversity in a democracy. (shrink)

Religious diversity exists whenever seemingly sincere, knowledgeable individuals hold incompatible beliefs on the same religious issue. Diversity of this sort is pervasive, existing not only across basic theistic systems but also within these theistic systems themselves. Religious Diversity explores the breadth and significance of such conflict. Examining the beliefs of various theistic systems, particularly within Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Basinger discusses seemingly incompatible claims about many religious issues, including the nature of God and the salvation (...) of humankind. He considers particularly the work of Hick, Gellman, Plantinga, Schellenberg, Alston, Wainwright, and Quinn, applying their perspectives on 'exclusivism' and 'pluralism' as they become relevant to the issues in question. Basinger's survey of the relevant literature, proposed solutions, and fresh insights offer an invaluable contribution not only for philosophers of religion and philosophical theologians but for anyone interested in the increasingly significant question of what a religious believer can or cannot justifiably say about their religious perspective. (shrink)