Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Gavin Flood
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Niche Construction ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Human Wellbeing ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

There is a deep connection between the ideas of life, religion, and civilization: life has impelled religion, which has driven civilization, and we need to understand religion through the category of life. Although the history of religions has often been characterized by oppression and violence, religions have also promoted human wellbeing and the fulfilment of life variously conceived, often seen as correcting an error or fault in the human condition. Two sources account for this: first, the history of civilizations themselves and, in particular, the religions that drive them that offer accounts of the relationship between life itself and the living; second, we need to turn to human evolution and to read civilizations in terms of niche construction, the environmental structure that promotes the flourishing of particular life forms. The first account locates explanation in the history of civilizations; the second locates it in the evolutionary and cognitive sciences.

On the Lives of Modern State Law

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Samera Esmeir
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Law ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Intimate Life ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Key Questions

Modern state law is an expansive force that permeates life and politics. Law's histories—colonial, revolutionary, and postcolonial—tell of its constitutive centrality to the making of colonies and modern states. Its powers intertwine with life itself; they attempt to direct it, shape its most intimate spheres, decide on the constitutive line dividing public from private, and take over the space and time in which life unfolds. These powers settle in the present, eliminate past authorities, and dictate futures. Gendering and constitutive of sexual difference, law's powers endeavor to mold subjects and alter how they orient themselves to others and to the world. But these powers are neither coherent nor finite. They are ripe with contradictions and conflicting desires. They are also incapable of eliminating other authorities, paths, and horizons of living; these do not vanish but remain not only thinkable and articulable but also a resource for the living. Such are some of the overlapping and accumulative interventions of the two books under review: Sara Pursley's Familiar Futures and Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria. What follows is an attempt to further develop these interventions by thinking with some of the books’ underlying arguments. Familiar Futures is a history of Iraq, beginning with the British colonial-mandate period and concluding with the 1958 Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Sex, Law, and Sovereignty is a history of “French Algeria” that covers a century of French colonization from 1830 to 1930. The books converge on key questions concerning how modern law and the modern state—colonial and postcolonial—articulated sexual difference and governed social and intimate life, including through the rise of personal-status law as a separate domain of law constitutive of the conjugal family. Both books are consequently also preoccupied with the relationship between sex, gender, and sovereignty. And both contain resources for living along paths not charted by the modern state and its juridical apparatus.

Presenting the Past: The Genre of Commentary in Theoretical Perspective

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a theoretical discussion of the genre of commentary writing. Rather than examining the role of commentary in a specific religion, it attempts to articulate a set of useful questions to begin the process of rethinking what this genre is and, in the process, help create a theoretical vocabulary and conceptual framework for an analysis of commentary from the history of religions. The article is divided into three parts. The first broadens the traditional concept of a "canon", ostensibly the raw data upon which the commentary imposes a taxonomy. The second argues that the human condition, what Heidegger calls the way in which we are thrown into the world, demands that we interpret it. Finally, it is suggested that commentary is fundamentally about location or space, thereby providing the classificatory schema that is necessary for contextualizing both past and present. The main goal of this article is to problematize the current discussion of commentary in a theoretical way.

scholarly journals HUMAN EXISTENCE PRESENT AND FUTURE (PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEAS OF Y. N. HARARI)

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Current State ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

The article is devoted to the concept of Y. N. Harari on the evolution of humankind, its current state and prospects for future development, set out in his works "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" and "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow". Harari offers quite original ideas about the main stages of civilization. He emphasizes that the development of humankind has been determined by three revolutions: cognitive, agrarian and scientific. The first revolution led to the emergence and spread of the species Homo Sapiens; the second – determined the relationship between man and the environment; the third is capable of bringing to an end the history of humankind, and of beginning a new history to which man, as he/she now exists, may no longer have any relation. In this regard, Harari addresses purely philosophical issues. He reflects on what is the essence of man, what is the meaning of his/her life, what should he/she strive for, where is the line between man and superhuman forms of existence, how will society change in the future, what are the global challenges facing humanity now? As a result, Harari concludes that the urgent task of modern humanity has been to find immortality, happiness and superpowers that can turn people into gods. In a sense, this transformation has already begun. Thanks to unprecedented scientific and technological progress, humanity has been able to intervene in the development of nature and man (cognitive sciences, bioengineering, etc.). People change the world and nature as they want, but the main problem is that people don't really know what they want. Harari sees the main task of today in the fact that a person should think about the question – what he/she really wants. Thus, Harari's reflections touch on global philosophical problems, which are especially relevant today, and therefore deserve close attention of scientists.

Neo-Darwinian Cosmologies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Strachan Donnelley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Relationship

In this chapter, Donnelley argues that evolutionary theory constitutes one of the most profound revolutions in the whole history of Western science and philosophy. The relational cosmology developed by Spinoza and Whitehead had then to take a decisive turn when it came into contact with an evolutionary perspective and was more explicated as a philosophy of organic life. This is exemplified, for Donnelley, in the work of Hans Jonas, who developed a new philosophy of organic life, and Ernst Mayr, who was instrumental in showing the genetic basis of Darwinian natural selection and who contributed as well as a historian and philosopher of science. Donnelley reviews the similarities and differences of these two thinkers in terms of materialism, causation, and the relationship between natural science and natural philosophy. He concludes that Mayr is the philosopher and ethical champion of natural and human becoming. Jonas, on the other hand, is the philosopher and ethical champion of organic and human being. He is less stunned by the innumerable material forms and processes of life than by the very fact of life itself and especially organic life’s capacity for moral responsibility, evidenced in human beings.

The Philosophy of Life as the Field of Immanence

2019 ◽  
pp. 299-321
Author(s):  
Gavin Flood
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
Modern View ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
History Of ◽  
Weak Claim

The philosophies of life that emphasize life as a plane of immanence, in which there is no outside and no transcendence beyond the world, have expressed a modern non-dualism that is compatible with contemporary developments in neuroscience, social cognition, and evolution. A strong philosophical claim is that the immanence view expresses a truth about life itself, supported by science, against which the history of religions can be measured. A weak claim is that modern articulations of life itself are no more adequate than those of tradition, but the modern view is simply another approximation in expressing the field of immanence. The chapter argues for the weak view.

The First Domestication

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Pierotti ◽  
Brandy R Fogg
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Best Friend ◽  
Cooperative Hunting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Emotional Capacity

This book changes the narrative about how wolves became dogs and in turn, humanity's best friend. Rather than describe how people mastered and tamed an aggressive, dangerous species, the authors describe coevolution and mutualism. Wolves, particularly ones shunned by their packs, most likely initiated the relationship with Paleolithic humans, forming bonds built on mutually recognized skills and emotional capacity. This interdisciplinary study draws on sources from evolutionary biology as well as tribal and indigenous histories to produce an intelligent, insightful, and often unexpected story of cooperative hunting, wolves protecting camps, and wolf–human companionship. This fascinating assessment is a must-read for anyone interested in human evolution, ecology, animal behavior, anthropology, and the history of canine domestication.

Frühchristliche Religion als Wahrnehmungsobjekt und Erkenntnisprozess

2014 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-21
Author(s):  
Michael Tilly
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis essay explores the exegetical possibilities and boundaries of the history of religions approach to the New Testament. In part 1 it offers an overview of the history of historical critical exegesis of the New Testament from the magisterial research of the history of religions school to the newest approaches of historical Jesus research. In part 2, three hermeneutical problems for the exegete are outlined: the relationship between text and tradition, the relationship between early Christian literature and its surroundings and the relationship between the New Testament as an ancient collection and its reception today.

scholarly journals C. C. Martindale (1879–1963), the History of Religions, and the Theological Imagination of David Jones (1895–1974)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-584
Author(s):  
Anna Svendsen
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religious Crisis ◽  
The Church ◽  
Theological Thinking

Abstract Although the work of his Jesuit contemporaries Ronald Knox and Martin D’Arcy is perhaps better known today, C. C. [Cyril Charlie] Martindale’s (1879–1963) thinking about “the relationship between paganism and Christianity” in the early twentieth-century theological debates surrounding the field of “History of Religions” would have a profound effect on the unique intersection of theological thinking and artistic form in the work of the British Catholic poet and painter David Jones (1895–1974). Jones’s reading of Martindale’s short story collection The Goddess of Ghosts (1915) in 1919 would help to resolve a “religious crisis” Jones experienced in his exposure to the arguments of the skeptical scholar of “History of Religions,” James Frazer. Martindale’s presentation of his ideas in a literary form not only provided Jones with a hermeneutic (derived from the church fathers) for thinking about the relationship between paganism and Christianity, but also suggested an artistic model for exploring theological ideas with literary language.

scholarly journals Monstrøsitet som kulturel og religiøs diskurs

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Feldt
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
The Other ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Other World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Gain Access

The present contribution attempts to understand and interpret the significance of monstrosity, a well-attested phenomenon in the history of religions. First, monstrosity is interpreted as a mode of cultural discourse pertaining to boundaries and the construction of cultural categories. Its social function is understood along the theories of Girard. The presented view, however, suffers from a lack of adequacy. It neither explains the use of monsters in religious discourses, nor does it indicate why they are often used to bring about transformation and change. In addition to this, it does not offer an explanation for why monsters may be seen as positive and benevolent creatures.Second, the use of monsters in religious discourses is examined and monstrosity is interpreted in relation to Turner’s concept of  liminality. The concept, however, is extended to include not only ritual sequences but also spatial and conceptual structures. In religious discourses, monsters can be seen as stigmatized pendlers between this world and ‘the other world’. It is claimed that monsters embody access to the transformative powers of transcendence and may thus be used both to ward off evil and to gain access to benevolence.In the last part of the contribution, these views are illustrated by an analysis of selected narrative and ritual monster traditions from the religions of ancient Mesopotamia. The examples document that monsters are not inherently evil creatures and that it makes sense to understand monsters in relation to boundaries and liminality. In religious discourses, monsters are used to focus on the relationship of humans to transcendence: preserving or obtaining blessing and life and warding off curse and death. Monsters are instruments for gaining access to transcendence, they are embodiments of liminality, and they are used to transform the existing order of things. Monsters dissolve differences and thereby thematize the possibility of change. In this manner, the use of monsters contributes to a questioning of fixed classifications and identities.

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