Contributions of Religions to the Common Good in Pluralistic Societies from a Christian Perspective? Some Critical Remarks

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk J. Smit
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Common Life ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
Pluralistic Societies ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common World

Abstract The paper argues that, from the perspective of South African experiences, four notions in the title could easily lead to misunderstandings. The notion of a Christian perspective could ignore the deep diversity and contestation within the Christian traditions themselves. The notion pluralistic could easily be too innocent to address the deep forms of division, alienation and injustice in real life. The notion of the contributions made by religions may be understood, especially by Reformed Christians, primarily in terms of speaking, while the real contributions made by religions to the common life may in fact be more complex and more fundamental. The notion of societies in the plural may again be too superficial and innocent and obscure the ways in which we share a common world and life today.

scholarly journals Social cohesion and social capital: Possible implications for the common good

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Cloete
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Bridging Social Capital ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Common

The main objective of the article is to identify the possible implications of social cohesion and social capital for the common good. In order to reach this overarching aim the following structure will be utilised. The first part explores the conceptual understanding of socialcohesion and social capital in order to establish how these concepts are related and how they could possibly inform each other. The contextual nature of social cohesion and social capital is briefly reflected upon, with specific reference to the South African context. The contribution of religious capital in the formation of social capital is explored in the last section of the article. The article could be viewed as mainly conceptual and explorative in nature in order to draw some conclusions about the common good of social capital and social cohesion.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article contributes to the interdisciplinary discourse on social cohesion with specific reference to the role of congregations. It provides a critical reflection on the role of congregations with regard to bonding and bridging social capital. The contextual nature of social cohesion is also addressed with specific reference to South Africa.

Climate Change and the Common Good: Some Reflections from the South African Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst M. Conradie
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South African ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Common ◽  
Christian Discourse ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractThis article is based on the observation that any theological discourse is always from a particular location and a particular point of view, which is immediately recognized by others. At the same time, any (theological) discourse cannot escape the use of universals, of common categories that we need to communicate with others. We make constructions of the whole, of that which is common, albeit that we ineluctably make particular constructions of the whole. This poses particular challenges for discourse on the common good in the context of public theology. On this basis the article investigates a selection of ecclesial statements on climate change produced during the course of the year 2009 alone that are available in English. It focuses on how these statements handle the dilemma of speaking about the universal and the particular, given the moral ambiguities surrounding any Christian discourse on climate change. It argues that most of these documents are plagued with problems of reception; namely, whether the stipulated addressees would actually receive and read the documents, let alone respond to them appropriately.

scholarly journals Losing Real Life: James Baldwin and the Ethics of Trauma

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-127
Author(s):  
Mikko Tuhkanen
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Real Life ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Native Son ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Sarah Schulman ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cost

This essay proposes that we turn to James Baldwin’s work to assess the cost of, and think alternatives to, the cultures of traumatization whose proliferation one witnesses in contemporary U.S. academia. Beginning with some recent examples, the essay briefly places these cultures into a genealogy of onto-ethics whose contemporary forms arose with the reconfiguration of diasporic histories in the idioms of psychoanalysis and deconstructive philosophy in 1990s trauma theory. Baldwin speaks to the contemporary moment as he considers the outcome of trauma’s perpetuation in an autobiographical scene from “Notes of a Native Son.” In this scene—which restages Bigger Thomas’s murderous compulsion in Native Son—he warns us against embracing one’s traumatization as a mode of negotiating the world. In foregoing what Sarah Schulman has recently called the “duty of repair,” such traumatized engagement prevents all search for the kind of “commonness” whose early articulation can be found in Aristotle’s query after “the common good” (to koinon agathon). With Baldwin, the present essay suggests the urgency of returning to the question of “the common good”: while mindful of past critiques, which have observed in this concept’s deployment a sleight-of-hand by which hegemonic positions universalize their interests, we should work to actualize the unfinished potential of Aristotle’s idea. Baldwin’s work on diasporic modernity provides an indispensable archive for this effort.

In Joint Matrimony We Share: Controlling the Powers to Use the Trust to Limit Matrimonial Property Rights in South African Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-111
Author(s):  
Aubrey Manthwa ◽  
Paul Nkoane
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Robust Approach ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

The deceitful use of trusts has created a fair amount of controversy, specifically where it has appeared that a trust has been employed to limit the rights of third parties. This article argues that it is in the interests of the law to ensure that rights are vindicated when unlawfully limited. Similarly, it is in the interest of the common good that legitimately acquired rights are protected. Trust laws state that there must be a separation between control and enjoyment and, in cases where there is no separation, the courts may scrutinise the affairs of a trust. Recent developments have illustrated that measures that provide relief to spouses upon the dissolution of the marriage may not be readily invoked, especially for marriages in community of property. Family trusts have provided spouses with avenues for hiding assets that would otherwise fall into the joint estate. Courts need to adopt a robust approach when dealing with trust assets upon the dissolution of a marriage, particularly to protect the rights of competing spouses.

scholarly journals Performing the common good: volunteering and ethics in non-state crime prevention in South Africa

Africa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Kirsch
Keyword(s):  
Crime Prevention ◽  
South African ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractUsing fieldwork data from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, this article highlights ambiguities of volunteering as idea and practice by exploring discursive strategies used by volunteers in the field of civic crime prevention when the ethical honesty and selflessness of their commitment to volunteering is questioned by others. These ambiguities relate to asymmetries in the relationship between donors and recipients of volunteering, as well as, most importantly, the challenge to determine what constitutes the ‘common good’. This article demonstrates that these strategies entail the accommodation of contentions about: (1) the social identity of the volunteer by stressing the volunteer's commitment to abstract causes and objectives; (2) powerful asymmetries between donors and recipients of volunteering by invoking an encompassing sociality; and/or (3) the (alleged) self-interest of volunteers by defining the personal benefits achieved by volunteering not as an end in themselves but as ‘private means’ to ‘public ends’. All three strategies have in common that volunteers as ‘ethical subjects’ can here be shown to be co-produced with South African ‘communities of ethics’ on different social scales.

scholarly journals Nature of the common good as the foundation of the community

2021 ◽  
Vol XIX (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Karol Jasiński
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Common Life ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Third ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Integral Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

The subject of interest of the author of the text is the common good as an inalienable element of the organization of the human community. The paper consists of three parts. The first part analyses the need for a common good as the basis of social and political life. The starting point was the distinction of four forms of common life (community, society, political body and state), defining the nature of society, presentation of three forms of relationship between man and society (individualism, collectivism and personalism) and identifying problems related to the definition of the common good. In the second part, the author presented a reflection on the procedural common good in the liberal tradition, the issue of impartiality and identification of the common good in the process of the debate. In the third part, attention is paid to the personalistic view of the common good, which is based on the integral development of personal human nature in the framework of the appropriate institutions and structures. This understanding of the common good is, in the author’s conviction, the best point of reference in social and political life.

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