Between Metaphysical and Liberal Pluralism: A Reappraisal of Rabbi A. I. Kook's Espousal of Toleration

AJS Review ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Ross

Much has been said and written about the unique position regarding toleration that was adopted by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Its uniqueness within Jewish tradition is not open to doubt. The question I would like to explore here is the extent to which his version of toleration is compatible with the toleration that has become part of the modern secular outlook. In order to accomplish this task, I begin by setting up a typology of two basic varieties of toleration, relating one to the skepticism of the relativist who espouses liberal pluralism, and the other to religious systems with absolutist claims for truth. In the second part of the article, a sketch of the history of toleration in Judaism, this typology is confirmed. The third part of the article is a review of R. Kook′s notion of toleration, which seems at first to conform to the type of toleration generally associated with liberalism, but, when translated into practical policy, displays some significant aberrations. The fourth part suggests that these aberrations are not evidence of inconsistencies or anomalies, but rather an indication of the fact that no attitude of toleration, even that of the most liberal pluralist, can completely evade the necessity for intolerance at some point; and that different views regarding the point where toleration should be limited reflect different epistemological positions, each of which is associated with a different societal ideal which serves as the criterion for limiting toleration.

Numen ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arvind Sharma

AbstractThe paper is conceptually divided into four parts. In the first part the widely held view that ancient Hinduism was not a missionary religion is presented. (The term ancient is employed to characterize the period in the history of Hinduism extending from fifth century B.C.E. to the tenth century. The term 'missionary religion' is used to designate a religion which places its followers under an obligation to missionize.) In the second part the conception of conversion in the context of ancient Hinduism is clarified and it is explained how this conception differs from the notion of conversion as found in Christianity. In the third part the view that ancient Hinduism was not a missionary religion is challenged by presenting textual evidence that ancient Hinduism was in fact a missionary religion, inasmuch as it placed a well-defined segment of its members under an obligation to undertake missionary activity. Such historical material as serves to confirm the textual evidence is then presented in the fourth part.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 492-504
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Zelenin

The present review is devoted to Vasiliy Molodyakov’s book “Charles Morraus and the “Action française” against Germany: from Kaiser to Hitler”. The review examines the main thoughts and postulates of the book. The book represents the first part of the trilogy on the life, activity and views of the French writer, publicist ad thinker Charles Morraus, as well as on the history of the right monarchic movement “Action française”. The article also gives a concise review of the other works of this author.


1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-294
Author(s):  
Eugene M. Waith

The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Cristoforo Landino constitute an important document. Composed in the manner of Ciceronian dialogues, they present us with a group of speakers famous in the history of Florentine thought: among others, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Alberti, and Ficino of the ‘Platonic Academy’ at Careggi to which Landino belonged; Alamanno Rinuccini, the Acciaiuoli, and Marco Parenti of the other ‘academy', presided over by Argyropoulos. The first dialogue deals with the relative merits of the active and contemplative life, the second with the problem of the highest good—two topics dear to the Renaissance. The third and fourth give an allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid. It would be hard to find personages or themes more central to quattrocento intellectual history. Inevitably one looks to the Disputationes for the light they throw on these Florentine scholars and on their interests.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-556
Author(s):  
Reginald S. Lourie

FROM the viewpoint of the pediatric psychiatrist, the problems of obesity, as seen clinically, can be thought of as having three layers. The first is constitutional, better described as physiologic, which may be broken down into genetic and structural elements. The second is psychologic, consisting of the values that food intake or the obesity itself come to have. The third layer is made of the cultural and social reactions to food and fat. These attitudes encountered inside and outside the home intermesh in their effects with the physiologic and psychologic levels. These, in turn, are also interwoven, until one cannot separate one layer from the other. However, when individual cases are scrutinized they reveal the pathology at one layer or the other to predominate and indicate where efforts to modify the abnormality might best be directed. Incidentally, the same levels operate on the other side of the coin, anorexia. From the practical point of view, let us consider the natural history of obesity and the clinical varieties one sees in practice, and let us see how the three-layer concept fits. First, as pointed out by Gordon, there is a tendency to be complacent or even pleased with obese infants. At level one, the physiologic, such constitutional factors as those present in the neonate born with an excessive quantity of pepsinogen secreted by the gastric mucous membrane could have the effect of producing as Mirsky points out, a relatively intense or even continuous hunger, and make greater demands on its mother for nursing.


This chapter discusses the book Studia z dziejów i kultury Żydów w Polsce po 1945 roku (Studies on the History and Culture of Jews in Poland after 1945), which was edited by Jerzy Tomaszewski. This volume consists of three short monographs by Polish graduate students in the early stages of their professional development. Two were originally written as MA theses: one by Maciej Pisarski on Jewish emigration from Poland from 1945 to 1951, and the other by Albert Stankowski on Jewish emigration from western Pomerania from 1945 to 1960. The third, by August Grabski, on the organization of Jewish religious life in Poland during the communist and (primarily) post-communist eras, originated as a seminar paper. On the whole, postgraduate writing of this type, if it is published at all, appears in limited-circulation journals for an audience of academics. The fact that these studies were published in book form, especially in paperback with the aid of a subsidy from the Polish Ministry of Culture, offers further testimony of the keen interest in the history of Jews in Poland evident among the Polish public in recent years.


Slovene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-253
Author(s):  
Dmitry Rudnev ◽  
Heng Fu

The article presents a many-sided analysis of a pamphlet by Giovanni Marana translated by Antiochus Kantemir into Russian in 1726. In the first part of the article, we describe various editions of Marana’s pamphlet and establish the one that became the source for Kantemir’s translation. This source is found out to be the publication of the pamphlet in one of the “Élite des bons mots” collections. Next, the correspondence between the text of the translation and the French text is analyzed, the deviations and errors in the Kantemir’s text are revealed and their explanation is given. It is concluded that the surviving manuscript of the translation was made from an earlier one and was not the final version of the text. The manuscript of the translation was published in 1868 as a part of the collected works by Antiochus Kantemir and was subjected to a considerable revision. The second part of the article is devoted to comparing the text of the manuscript and the published text, describing spelling and punctuation corrections, as well as mistakes made during the publication of the manuscript. The contradictions in introduced spelling corrections are noted. In the third part of the article, the technique of translation, ways of transferring lexical and syntactic units to Russian are analyzed. Kantemir uses a large number of borrowed words to describe the everyday life in Paris and France, however, mainly Slavic word-building models are used for translating the behavioral sphere vocabulary. The fourth part of the article describes the stylistic key of translation. While making the language of translation closer to the language of the French original, the translator left Russian as a basis, which he slavicised in two ways: first, with a small number of “background slavonicisms”, evenly distributed throughout the text; secondly, with “slavonicisms-inclusions”, creating points of stylistic tension. It is concluded that the degree of slavicisation of the text is not great.


2020 ◽  
pp. 32-39

The article studies the analysis done by American scholar Y.Bregel (1925-2016) of the poet, historian, translator and statesmen Munis and Ognahiy’s “Firdavs ul-Iqbal”. “Firdavs ul- Iqbal” is a unique encyclopedic work that reflects the history, culture, ethnography, literary environment and social processes of Khorezm in historical and artistic form. A comprehensive study of “Firdavs ul- Iqbal” interests not only local scientists but also foreign scholars, as a result, there is known and unknown studies appeared in scientific sphere. The study of the problem by foreign scholars has not been sufficiently researched. This scientific need served as the basis for covering one of the urgent problems of philology. Yuri Bregel was an American historian, orientalist, and author of several monographs on the history, culture and literature of Central Asia. In particular, the scientist studied the work “Firdavs ul-Iqbal” seriously, and dedicated to the history of the Khiva khans, and created a scientific critical text. He also translated the work into English and played an important role in acquainting foreign readers and scholars with the essence of the work “Firdavs ul-Iqbal” by Oghahiy and Munis. The preface by J. Bregel about the source consists of four parts. The first part is devoted to the works of Munis and Oghahi, the second part covers the properties of “Firdavs ul-Iqbal”, the third to the study of the work and the fourth part reveals the characteristics of handwritten copies of the source.The author of the article revealed the scientist’s research skill as much as possible based on Y.Bregel’s scientifically rich English preface.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (47) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stiegler Bernard

Stiegler argued in Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise (the third volume of Technics and Time) that we must refer to archi-cinema just as Derrida spoke of archi-writing. In this article he proposes that in principle the dream is the primordial form of this archi-cinema. The archi-cinema of consciousness, of which dreams would be the matrix as archi-cinema of the unconscious, is the projection resulting from the play between what Husserl called, on the one hand, primary and secondary retentions, and what Stiegler, on the other hand, calls tertiary retentions, which are the hypomnesic traces (that is, the mnemo-technical traces) of conscious and unconscious life. There is archi-cinema to the extent that for any noetic act – for example, in an act of perception – consciousness projects its object. This projection is a montage, of which tertiary (hypomnesic) retentions form the fabric, as well as constituting both the supports and the cutting room. This indicates that archi-cinema has a history, a history conditioned by the history of tertiary retentions. It also means that there is an organology of dreams.


1934 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 807-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. H. Bailey

International concerted action by states in economic affairs, save in the sphere of communications and transport, has a history of little more than one generation's span. Indeed, apart from the three disconnected conventions concluded before the Great War at Brussels concerning sugar subsidies, the publication of customs tariffs, and the exchange of comparable commercial statistics, respectively, efforts for international coöperation between governments date only from the Peace Settlement. Of the pre-war agreements, the first was denounced before the War; the second, which might still prove of considerable importance when national tariffs become fairly stable, has proved ineffective in a period of violent tariff changes; while the third came into operation only in 1922.The movement, therefore, with the important exceptions in the sphere of communications and transport, owed its impetus to the work of the Peace Conferences; but save for Part XIII of the Versailles Treaty and the similar provisions of the other treaties—the labor clauses—no specific machinery was established by the treaties either within or without the framework of the Covenant for economic coöperation.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2006 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-84
Author(s):  
Jacek Filek

The history of philosophy is a history of the basic paradigms of philosophical thinking. These paradigms are marked out by the changing ways of experiencing being. Philosophy „declines“ being. Expressing this more grammatico, philosophy conjugates the infinitive „to be“. The first word of the first First Philosophy is „is“ - this is the „antiquity“ of philosophizing, the objective paradigm, the philosophy of objectivity, for which reason is the dominant human faculty and truth is the primary notion. The time of this paradigm is the past. The first word of the second First Philosophy is „I am“ - this is the „modernity“ of philosophizing, the subjective paradigm, the monological philosophy of subjectivity, for which the will is the dominant human faculty and freedom is the primary notion. The time of this paradigm is the future. The first word of the third First Philosophy is „you are“ - this is „the now“ of philosophizing, the dialogical paradigm, the philosophy of „the other“, for which feeling is the dominant faculty and responsibility is the primary notion. The basic notion of this new paradigm of thinking is responsibility, and its time is the present. These paradigms, however, are not in conflict with one another; rather, in showing the various aspects of being they help us to experience its fullness. The full experience of being can therefore be summarized in a triad of notions: truth - freedom - responsibility. However, what responsibility consists of remains to be determined.


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