Rumi whirling in a secular age: Applying medieval Sufi wisdom to the questions of our day

In a secular society, obsessed with materialism and consumerism, the 13th-century mystical teacher and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273), has found a surprisingly widespread following. While his work is often misunderstood and diluted, this research proposed the opposite: that Rumi may broaden his modern admirers’ worldview and bring about an encounter with God. This study thus applied the insights of an 800-year-old mystic to the questions of today. The research comprised of a qualitative literature research method that first explored the life and writings of Rumi, and then investigated the issues and yearnings of a secular society as proposed by philosopher Charles Taylor. The study showed that Rumi may indeed open up the enclosed secular worldview by adding significance to our living, God to our loving and hope to our dying.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article was a study in religion – applying the work of a medieval Sufi mystic to the philosophical questions of today. It also considered Anatolian history and Persian literature and offered philosophical options. It further related to missiology, as well as systematic and practical theology.

Privacy and the Communitarian Self

<p>Contemporary philosophical debates about privacy turn on important questions regarding selfhood. Minimally, someone who endorses the possibility of informational privacy is committed to the idea that there are ‘selves’ or ‘persons,’ and that it is possible to decide what information relates to them and how. I argue that most popular accounts of privacy rely on a liberal conception of the self. In the Kantian tradition, persons are characterised as ‘transcendental subjects,’ always partly prior to, and unencumbered by, their particular circumstances. Communitarians argue, however, that the liberal notion of the self offers only a partial account of personhood. It is not possible to reason as a transcendental subject because, in various ways, our sense of self is defined by circumstance. Our connections to various communities – such as a family, religion, or state – as well as the shared representations and meanings we rely on to gain self-knowledge, are indispensable parts of what it is be a person. Drawing on the work of Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Alisdair MacIntyre, I argue that to properly account for our want of privacy and its moral significance, we must look to the complex relationships between a person, their personal information, and the communities they inhabit.</p>

Privacy and the Communitarian Self

<p>Contemporary philosophical debates about privacy turn on important questions regarding selfhood. Minimally, someone who endorses the possibility of informational privacy is committed to the idea that there are ‘selves’ or ‘persons,’ and that it is possible to decide what information relates to them and how. I argue that most popular accounts of privacy rely on a liberal conception of the self. In the Kantian tradition, persons are characterised as ‘transcendental subjects,’ always partly prior to, and unencumbered by, their particular circumstances. Communitarians argue, however, that the liberal notion of the self offers only a partial account of personhood. It is not possible to reason as a transcendental subject because, in various ways, our sense of self is defined by circumstance. Our connections to various communities – such as a family, religion, or state – as well as the shared representations and meanings we rely on to gain self-knowledge, are indispensable parts of what it is be a person. Drawing on the work of Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Alisdair MacIntyre, I argue that to properly account for our want of privacy and its moral significance, we must look to the complex relationships between a person, their personal information, and the communities they inhabit.</p>

Gianni Vattimo, Charles Taylor y los corolarios políticos de la hermenéutica

En el presente trabajo se analizan dos de las posibles traducciones de la filosofía hermenéutica al campo de la teoría política. Principalmente, se expone la concepción del «pensamiento débil» de Gianni Vattimo, una versión nihilista y posmoderna de la tradición hermenéutica. En contraposición, se presenta la propuesta de Charles Taylor en relación con la gestión de la diversidad multicultural, también informada por principios hermenéuticos, pero dentro de una forma peculiar de realismo moral. A través de una comparación crítica entre la obra de ambos autores, se pretende sostener que la variante de Taylor supera algunas de las contradicciones y defectos que el modelo de Vattimo exhibe. Globalmente, la posición que se busca defender es que una hermenéutica que mantenga un lugar relevante para el concepto de «verdad» está mejor dotada para construir un modelo político productivo.

Religious Studies and the Values of Critical Humanism

This chapter proposes that a proper telos for the study of religion is Critical Humanism. Drawing on Aristotle and Charles Taylor, it explains how Critical Humanism provides a theoretical framework for studying religion and describes its mobile, liberal, dialogical, and inclusive aspects. Building on the ideas of Felski, Walzer, Rorty, and the environmental humanities, it notes how Critical Humanism places a premium on expanding the moral imagination and examines the connections between that idea and humanistic scholarship. That discussion leads into an account of four values to which the study of religion can be connected: post-critical reasoning, social criticism, cross-cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. The chapter then describes four works in the study of religion that exemplify these values. Lastly, it summarizes the chapter’s arguments in response to the challenges posed by Weber’s view of science and Welch’s reckoning with the field’s “identity crisis” as described in chapters 1 and 2.

Scientific Rationality and Causal Explanation

This chapter examines the work of Donald Wiebe and the Scientific-Explanatory Method. Otherwise known as the naturalistic paradigm, the Scientific-Explanatory Method insists that the study of religion should operate within a value-free, disinterested, and empirical set of parameters. The chapter examines Wiebe’s ideas and then enlists and expands on insights offered in the previous chapter to show how Wiebe’s naturalism rules out valid sources of knowledge about human experience. Drawing on the philosophical anthropology and hermeneutical ideas of Charles Taylor, it shows how naturalism drapes human conduct under the banner of behaviorism and excludes from consideration the idea that human beings are agents who act according to intersubjective reasons. The chapter concludes by arguing that the naturalistic paradigm relies on a fact-value distinction that reflects and reinforces the commitments to value-neutrality that the book identifies as afflicting the field.

Equal Performances: An Exploration of Eliza Haywood's Depiction of Hillarian Ideals in Fantomina

<p>My thesis connects Eliza Haywood with the Hillarians, a London-based coterie of young writers and artists headed by Aaron Hill in the first half of the 1720s, and explores the possibility that in Fantomina, Or Love in a Maze (1725), Haywood used tropes of performance from her theatrical career to work out the implications of the Hillarian ideals of progressive conduct on female agency. Haywood’s early novels, including Fantomina, can be connected to the group, and can be shown to encompass its behavioural ideals – a self-consciously progressive model of male-female conduct. My first chapter examines aspects of what Charles Taylor terms the “social imaginary” of the early eighteenth century. John Locke’s theory of personal identity (Part I) redefined the self in terms of consciousness, which meant the self could change. Conduct literature (Part II) defined the behaviour of women as “innate” through the regulation of sexual desire. In Part III, I show women philosophers, writers, and playwrights began to see women’s conduct, like the self, as constructed, and began applying this to relations between the sexes. If conduct was constructed it could change, and women began to work out these ideas and the implications of this change on stage. I show Haywood could have taken this theatrical convention of working philosophical ideas out on stage and adapted it to her fictions, particularly to Fantomina, via the process of novelisation. It is possible that as theatrical tropes crossed over into fiction in novelisation, the use of performance to work out philosophical ideas crossed over too. My second chapter explores Haywood’s participation in manuscript literary culture. Part I positions her in the literary culture of her time, and connects her with the Hillarians, opening a new critical context in which to read her work. Part II connects the composition of her early texts with her coterie, arguing it is possible all her 1719-1725 texts, including Fantomina, were conceived and first read within the group. It explores the impact of this on the context and meaning of Fantomina, and how Haywood could have used genre, particularly the tropes of amatory fiction, to explore the ideas of the Hillarians. Chapters Three and Four draw these strands of manuscript and performance together. Haywood’s association with the Hillarians, as I argue in Chapter Three, likely influenced her authorial agency in Fantomina. In Part I, I argue Haywood possibly had control over the image of the original portrait of her 1725 Secret Histories frontispiece. I then examine her narrative agency (Part II). Shifts in narrative discourse in Fantomina show Haywood used narration techniques adapted from the theatre, and these narrative shifts gave her a public voice: in these shifts, she appears to comment on how relations between the sexes are constructed – a pivotal focus of the Hillarians. Chapter Four explores Haywood’s development of the heroine’s agency in relation to sexual desire. This focus reveals the differing conduct of the heroine and Beauplaisir within the same relationship, as well as the power structure of the relationship – again pivotal focuses of her coterie. Haywood appears to be working out the implications of Hillarian ideals in relation to female agency, particularly sexual consent. I conclude Haywood used masquerade and performance to develop a system of self-knowledge that relied on its expression through emotion, rather than the mind, and that this system can be extended beyond knowledge of the self to knowledge of others – and possibly further.</p>