scholarly journals CONCEPTIONS OF SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOURTH/TENTH-CENTURY MUSLIM THEOLOGY: AL-BĀQILLĀNĪ'S THEORY OF HUMAN ACTS IN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Thiele
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Central Notion ◽  
Theories Of Action ◽  
Freedom Of Action

AbstractMan's individual responsibility is a very central notion in Muslim theology. Rational foundations for moral responsibility presuppose, however, that man has in some way control over his actions. It was therefore of central concern to theologians to formulate theories of action that were coherent enough to account for human self-determination. This article examines al-Bāqillānī's reflections on human acts and attempts to contextualise his thought within the discussions of his time. I will briefly review the Muʿtazilites’ theory of freedom of action, against which the Ašʿarite school developed its own position. I will then outline the fundamentals of the opposing standpoint adopted by Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī, who proposed to base human self-determination on voluntariness. Finally, I will discuss how al-Bāqillānī drew on and further developed al-Ašʿarī's ideas. Based on the extant volumes of al-Bāqillānī's Hidāyat al-mustaršidīn, I argue that he attempts to coherently organise the school's understanding of the famous theory of “acquisition” (kasb) by affirming two fundamental principles: a) that human acts are created by God and b) that there is nevertheless a real correlation between man and his “acquired” acts.

Rashid Rida’s Struggle to Establish A Modern Islamic State

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Assad N. Busool
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Arab Muslim ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Presence

Reform movements are important religious phenomena which haveoccurred throughout Islamic history. Medieval times saw theappearance of religious reformers, such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Taimiyah,Ibn Qayim al-Jawziyah and others; however, these reform activitiesdiffered significantly from the modern reform movement. The medievalreformers worked within Muslim society; it was not necessary to dealwith the external challenge presented by Europe as it was for themodern Muslim reformers after the world of Islam lost its independenceand fell under European rule. The powers of Europe believed that Islamwas the only force that impeded them in their quest for world dominanceand, relying on the strength of their physical presence in Muslimcountries, tried to convince the Muslim peoples tgat Islam was ahindrance to their progress and development.Another problem, no less serious than the first, faced by the modernMuslim reformers was the shocking ignorance of the Muslim peoples oftheir religion and their history. For more than four centuries,scholarship in all areas had been in an unabated state of decline. Thosereligious studies which were produced veered far from the spirit ofIslam, and they were so blurred and burdened with myths and legends,that they served only to confuse the masses.The ‘Ulama were worst of all: strictly rejecting change, they still hadthe mentality of their medieval forebearers against whom al-Ghazali,Ibn Taimiyah and others had fought. Hundreds of years behind thetimes, their central concern was tuqlid (the imitation of that which hadpreceeded them through the ages). For centuries, no one had dared toquestion this heritage or point out the religious innovations it impaired.In conjunction with their questioning of the tuqlid, the modernreformers strove to revive the concept of ijtihad (indmendentjudgement) in religious matters, an idea which had been disallowedsince the tenth century. The first to raiseanew the banner of $tihad inthe Arab Muslim world was Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani; after himSheikh Muhammad ‘Abduh in Egypt, and after him, his friend and ...

On the Relation Between Collective Responsibility and Collective Duties

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-131
Author(s):  
Niels de Haan
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Type Symmetry ◽  
Moral Demands

AbstractThere is good reason to think that moral responsibility as accountability is tied to the violation of moral demands. This lends intuitive support to Type-Symmetry in the collective realm: A type of responsibility entails the violation or unfulfillment of the same type of all-things-considered duty. For example, collective responsibility necessarily entails the violation of a collective duty. But Type-Symmetry is false. In this paper I argue that a non-agential group can be collectively responsible without thereby violating a collective duty. To show this I distinguish between four types of responsibility and duty in collective contexts: corporate, distributed, collective, shared. I set out two cases: one involves a non-reductive collective action that constitutes irreducible wrongdoing, the other involves a non-divisible consequence. I show that the violation of individual or shared duties both can lead to irreducible wrongdoing for which only the group is responsible. Finally, I explain why this conclusion does not upset any work on individual responsibility.

scholarly journals The principle of self-determination in the family law through history and today

2004 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Gordana Kovacek-Stanic
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
200Th Anniversary ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Moment

In the jubilee year 2004, Serbia marks the 200th anniversary of The First Serbian Uprising, structuring of modern Serbian state and its legal system comparatively speaking, France marks the 200th anniversary of passing the French Civil Code, one of the most significant civil codifications in the 19th century. It was an occasion to study certain institutions of family law through history and today. The used approach is modern, we studied the ways how the principle of self-determination influenced the family-legal solutions today, and we investigated if one could talk about the effect of this principle in the historical sense, too. The principle of self-determination implies the possibility for the subjects of family-legal relations to arrange their own relations themselves ? both the partner and parent relations. However, this principle undergoes significant limitations in the family law because the family relations are personal relations by character, as well as because of the need to protect the weaker participant, both the weaker partner or a child who needs protection stemming from his/her very status. Within marriage law, the principle of self-determination of the spouses (extramarital partners) is, among other things, made concrete through the possibility for an agreement about the effects of marriage (extramarital union), then through the possibility of agreed divorce, while the procedure of mediation in the marriage litigation contributes to the realization of the mentioned principle. As for the effects of marriage (extramarital union), the paper particularly discusses property relations, that is the marriage property contract, because it is at the moment a current issue in our domestic law. Within the relations between parents and children, the concretization of the principle of self-determination in parental care is significant, particularly in the situations when the relations between the parents were disturbed and resulted in a separation or a divorce with the joint parental care (application of the parental right). All institutions are analyzed in the positive law, in the historical context (solutions from the Serbian Civil Code the former Hungarian Law), and viewed comparatively in the European legal systems of the east and west European countries.

“Face-to-Face”: The State, the Individual, and the Citizen in Russian Taxation, 1863-1917

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanni Kotsonis
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Direct Taxation ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
The Individual

From the 1860s to 1917, direct taxation provides a window onto the paradoxes of reform in late imperial Russia. The new systems of assessment that culminated in the income tax of 1916 aimed to individualize government in a regime still ordered by legal estate and collective identity; to recognize the autonomy of the individual while disassembling and reintegrating the person by way of comprehensive assessment; and to promote a sense of citizenship, participation, and individual responsibility while still defending autocracy. Yanni Kotsonis suggests that these tensions were borrowed, along with the new techniques of taxation and of government, from European and transatlantic practice, but Kotsonis also locates the distinctiveness of the Russian case in the historical context and the set of ideological premises into which the practices were introduced.

Socializing Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Levy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The World ◽  
Institutional Actors ◽  
The Way

There is a near universal consensus that the bearers of moral responsibility are the individuals people identify with proper names. In this chapter, it is suggested that if people take the exercise of agency as a guide to the identification of agents, they may find that agents sometimes extend into the world: they may be constituted by several individuals and/or by institutions. These extended agents may be responsible for morally significant outcomes. The chapter argues that institutions or extended agents may also be responsible for the failure of individuals to satisfy the epistemic conditions on moral responsibility. Individuals may believe virtuously but falsely, due to the way in which cues to reliability are socially distributed. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a focus on individual responsibility may have distracted people from the urgent task of reforming the institutional actors responsible for widespread ignorance about morally significant facts.

John Dewey and Teacher Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Schmidt ◽  
Randall Everett Allsup
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
Beginning Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Teacher Wellbeing ◽  
Thoughtful Reflection ◽  
Continued Learning

John Dewey’s writings on schooling are extensive, and characteristically wide-ranging: teachers are expected to think deeply about knowledge construction, how we think and learn, the purpose of curriculum in the life of the child, and the role of school and societal reform. He worked throughout his life to develop and refine his philosophy of experience, describing all learning as defined by the quality of interactions between the learner and the social and physical environment. According to Dewey, teachers have a responsibility to structure educational environments in ways that promote educative learning experiences, those that change the learner in such a way as to promote continued learning and growth. The capacity to reflect on and make meaning from one’s experiences facilitates this growth, particularly in increasing one’s problem-solving abilities. While Dewey wrote little that specifically addressed the preparation of teachers, his 1904 essay, “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education,” makes clear that he grounds his beliefs about teachers’ learning in this same philosophy of experiential learning. Dewey argued that thoughtful reflection on previous and current educational experiences is especially important in teacher preparation; teacher educators could then guide beginners to examine and test the usefulness of the beliefs formed from those experiences. Teacher educators, therefore, have a responsibility to arrange learning environments for beginning teachers to promote sequential experiences leading to increased understanding of how children learn, “how mind answers to mind.” These experiences can then help beginning teachers grow, not as classroom technicians, but as true “students of teaching.” Dewey’s ideas remain relevant, but must also be viewed in historical context, in light of his unfailing belief in education and the scientific method as ways to promote individual responsibility and eliminate social problems. His vision of a democratic society remains a fearless amalgam of human adaptation, continuity, change, and diversity: public schools are privileged locations in a democracy for the interplay and interrogation of old and new ideas. Teacher preparation and teacher wellbeing are crucial elements; they can provide experiences to educate all children for participation in their present lives in ways that facilitate their growth as citizens able to fully participate in a democracy. Despite criticism about limitations of his work, Dewey’s ideas continue to offer much food for thought, for both research and practice in teacher education.

Hume, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Pitson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Common Life

This chapter aims to relate Hume’s discussion of liberty and necessity to central themes in his philosophy, including causation, the self, the distinction between virtue and vice, and naturalism as a response to skepticism. From this perspective, many points of contact with contemporary discussions of free will and moral responsibility emerge. Hume’s account of moral responsibility, with its implications for the conditions under which ascriptions of responsibility are withheld or qualified, is considered in detail. The notion of agent autonomy is linked to Hume’s distinction between the calm and violent passions. The kind of self-determination for which Hume allows here is distinguished from that of the libertarian and is also contrasted with the problematic notion of responsibility for self that leads to skepticism about the very possibility of moral responsibility. Hume’s appeal to “common life” provides a naturalistic response to skepticism in this, as well as in other philosophical contexts.

Marketing to Inner-City Blacks: PowerMaster and Moral Responsibility

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
George G. Brenkert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Market Segment ◽  
Market System ◽  
Marketing Campaign ◽  
Unfair Advantage ◽  
Marketing Program ◽  
Moral Responsibilities

Abstract:PowerMaster was a malt liquor which Heileman Brewing Company sought to market to inner-city blacks in the early 1990s. Due to widespread opposition, Heileman ceased its marketing of PowerMaster. This paper begins by exploring the moral objections of moral illusion, moral insensitivity and unfair advantage brought against Heileman’s marketing campaign. Within the current market system, it is argued that none of these criticism was clearly justified. Heileman might plausibly claim it was fulfilling its individual moral responsibilities.Instead, Heileman’s marketing program must be viewed as part of a group of marketing programs which all targeted inner-city blacks. It is argued that those marketers who target this particular market segment constitute a group which is collectively responsible for the harms imposed by their products on inner-city blacks. This responsibility is reducible neither to individual responsibility nor to a shared responsibility. It constitutes a dimension of moral responsibility to which marketers must pay attention.

‫ساويس أسقف الأشمونين أول من كتب من الأقباط باللغة العربية‬ (Severus, Bishop of Ashmunein, first Coptic Bishop to write in Arabic)

Abgadiyat ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
‫يوحنا نسيم‬ ‫يوسف‬
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Environment ◽  
Different Sources

As an introduction, our study will start with a historical context of Egypt in the Abbasids and Fatimids periods. We will highlight the artistic and literary environment. We will expose the different religious factions, viz. Muslims, Christians and Jews. We will overview the life of Severus, or at least what is known about him before his ordination as a Bishop of Ashmunein such as his nickname (Kunya), his education and his employment. We will discuss the different sources related to his life. Severus from the tenth century, was one of the first Christians who wrote in Arabic. He wrote several treatises, tackling different subjects, such as dogmatic theological subjects and apologetic texts against others as well as a treatment of psychology. We will discuss the reasons of the choice to use Arabic. We will discuss his works and his vocabulary and we will give a list of his works that survive. We will give a brief summary of each book. We will argue about some books ascribed to him such as the History of the Patriarchs and the Order of Priesthood. Our conclusion stresses that freedom and prosperity allow Severus to expose his ideas. (Please note that this article is in Arabic).

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