The Prophetic Word of God and History

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-251
Author(s):  
Walter Brueggemann
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The One ◽  
Acts Of God

Presently, there are two views of human history vying for our allegiance. The one is grounded in the Enlightenment and insists that history is a closed process whose course is determined by the dictum that “might makes right.” The other view is that of supernaturalism, which regards every event in history as a direct act of God. Challenging both of these views is the prophetic construal of history. This construal dares to identify extraordinary human events—the promise of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, the exodus, the pronouncements of Israel's great prophets, and the ministry of Jesus—as acts of God. Such extraordinary events have the power to free us to speak of God as enacting “newness” also in our time.

Scripture, Inspiration and the Word of God

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Garrett
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Human History ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The One ◽  
Dialogical Relation ◽  
As If

This article seeks to restate the idea of the inspiration of scripture in the context of contemporary debates about authority. It is argued that an adequate theory of scripture must be constructed as part of a comprehensive theology of the “word of God”, on the one hand, and a dynamic theology of the Spirit, on the other. In short, the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture cannot be stated in isolation, as if the Bible could be treated as an isolated object, whole and complete in itself. Only as the word of God empowered by the Spirit of God is comprehended in all its dimensions, and as the reception and interpretation of each dimension is apprehended in dialogical relation to the others, can we grasp what is the unique and irreplaceable part that biblical literature plays in the economy of God's self-declaration in human history.

The TTIP and the SCO in the Light of the Success Conditions for Economic Integration

2015 ◽  
pp. 274-295
Author(s):  
Engin Sorhun
Keyword(s):  
Economic Integration ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Contribution ◽  
Human History ◽  
Shanghai Cooperation Organization ◽  
Transatlantic Trade ◽  
The One ◽  
Economic Bloc ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Trade And Investment

The last global economic crisis has prompted new dynamics in the scope of economic integration: On the one hand, the Transatlantic economy witnessed the formation of the largest economic integration in the human history: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). On the other hand, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) recently adopted the economic vision for initiating an economic integration. Since both integration projects were recently launched, this chapter is intended to make a small contribution to the limited scientific resources available to policymakers, academicians, NGOs, etc. In this respect, this chapter first presents a set of political, economic, institutional, and natural conditions suggested in the principal economic integration literature for the success of a regional economic bloc. Second, it aims at evaluating the TTIP and the SCO in the light of these success conditions.

Historical Views of Homosexuality: European Renaissance and Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Geographic Variations ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
European Renaissance

Spanning the Renaissance and the Enlightenment—the 15th/16th to the 18th centuries—the early modern period in Europe sees a fundamental evolution in relation to the conception and expression of same-sex desire. The gradual emergence of a marginalized homosexual identity, both individual and collective, accompanies a profound transformation in the understanding of the sexed body: the consolidation of two separate and “opposite” sexes, which sustain physiologically grounded sexual and gender roles. This new paradigm contrasts with an earlier one in which masculinity and femininity might be seen as representing points on a spectrum, and same-sex desire, perceived as potentially concerning all men and women, was not assimilable to a permanent characteristic excluding desire for and relations with members of the other sex. These developments, however, happened gradually and unevenly. The period is therefore characterized by differing models of homosexual desire and practices—majoritizing and minoritizing—that coexist in multiple and shifting configurations. The challenge for historians is to describe these in their full complexity, taking account of geographic variations and of both differences and continuities over time—between the beginning of the period and its end, between different points within it, and between early modernity and the present or the more recent past. The tension between similarity, identity, and the endurance of categories, on the one hand, and alterity, incommensurability, and rupture, on the other hand, defies dichotomous thinking that would see them as opposites, and favor one to the exclusion of the other. In making such comparative studies, we would no doubt do well to think not in singular but in plural terms, that is, of homosexualities in history.

Enlightenment Infinitesimals and Tolstoy’s War and Peace

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-451
Author(s):  
Russell Winslow ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Mathematical Problem ◽  
Human Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Extreme Form ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The One

During the Enlightenment period the concept of the infinitesimal was developed as a means to solve the mathematical problem of the incommensurability between human reason and the movements of physical beings. In this essay, the author analyzes the metaphysical prejudices subtending Enlightenment Humanism through the lens of the infinitesimal calculus. One of the consequences of this analysis is the perception of a two-fold possibility occasioned by the infinitesimal. On the one hand, it occasions an extreme form of humanism, “transhumanism,” which exhibits limitless confidence in the possibility of human science. On the other hand, the concept of the infinitesimal also contains within itself a source for a critical “posthumanism,” that is to say, a source which initiates the dissolution of the presuppositions of humanism while simultaneously announcing a different ontological organization. In , Tostoy’s novel takes up the problem of the relation between reason and motion and makes the two-fold possibility visible by presenting a contrast between its theoretical presentations and the lived experiences of the characters in the novel. Thus, is the setting in which the author has chosen to conduct this analysis.

The Legal and Political Philosophy of Leonard Nelson

1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-453
Author(s):  
Levi D. Gresh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

The legal philosophy of Nelson is fundamentally a liberal doctrine. It is, on the one hand, opposed to the philosophy which places a supreme trust in human reason and which believes that man can sit down and codify a system of laws in which there will be no gaps; and, on the other, it is opposed to a belief in the necessary rationality of existing institutions in the onward sweep of human history, the idea which was so dear to the Historical School of jurisprudence.Nelson is a Naturrechtlehrer in the sense that he believes in the existence of metajuristic criteria of justice. That there are elemental principles of justice which are universal, and according to which laws are either just or unjust, decisions either right or wrong, Nelson believes cannot be denied. The moment we admit the injustice of a statute, or a judicial decision, we admit that we have used a criterion on which to base our opinion. The mistake we make, however, is to suppose that we can discover criteria, either empirically or logically.

scholarly journals Humanism and nature – some reflections on a complex relationship

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörn Rüsen
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
The One

The paper starts with a systematical analysis of the interrelationship of humanism and nature. It proceeds to a historical reconstruction of this relationship in the development of Western humanism from ancient Rome via Renaissance till the Enlightenment of the 18th century. In both respects the result of the analysis is the same: The Western tradition of humanism is characterised by a gap between an emphasis on the cultural quality of human life on the one hand and nature on the other one. Men are entitled to dominate and govern nature and use it for their purpose. This fits into an idea of a progressing destructive relationship between man and nature in the West. On the other the tradition of humanism has put the gap between man and nature into a harmonising cosmological or theological context. In this context a simple destructive relationship between man and nature is not possible. The humanism of today has to pick up the challenge of the ecological crisis and to refer to its tradition where man and nature are mediated into a meaningful and sense-bearing interrelationship. Instead of simply referring to the traditional cosmology a convincing idea of this mediation or even synthesis can only be made plausible by referring to the already pre-given synthesis between nature and culture, the human body.

The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter's overriding objective is to explain how both the invention of our modern understanding of the social sciences, on the one hand, and the post-Enlightenment establishment of the modern nation-state, on the other, encapsulated doctrines which severed modernity from the Enlightenment philosophy which is presumed to have inspired it. It offers illustrations not so much of the unity of political theory and practice in the modern world as of their disengagement. In providing here some brief remarks on how post-Enlightenment justifications of modernity came to part company from their Enlightenment prefigurations, it hopes to sketch an account of certain links between principles and institutions which bears some relation to both Enlightenment and Hegelian conceptual history.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Context of the Enlightenment and the Contemporary Era

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-210
Author(s):  
Halina Walentowicz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Human History ◽  
Human Element ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
The One ◽  
European Thought ◽  
Ethical Universalism

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a special personage in the history of Enlightenment philosophy and European thought in general. This is so, because, on the one hand, he propounded ideas that were typical for the Enlightenment and greatly influenced his contemporaries—after all, it was he who inspired Kant with the idea of the autonomy of the will as a source of moral and juridical law, a conception which became the foundation of Kantian practical philosophy—but on the other criticised many popular ideas of his day, which from our contemporary perspective appear to have been the superstitions of the Enlightenment period. Rousseau rejected the uncritical apology of (universalistically understood) reason together with the “ethical universalism” professed by rationalists since Socrates. In his claim that human history ran in a circle (from nature in its primeval purity to nature as the expression of civilisational decay), he contested the Enlightenment’s widespread belief that it was a linear, continuous, cumulative and by nature unchangeably progressive process. Because of his transgression of the Enlightenment paradigm, Rousseau is sometimes considered to have been the first modern philosopher. And, in my opinion, rightly so, because his thought stood ahead of its time, and in many ways anticipated contemporary philosophy. I believe that especially the Frankfurt School owes a lot to his achievements. Rousseau’s thought already carried the main seeds of critical theory: the intertwinement of progress and regression over human history, emphasis on the mastering of nature and the destruction of the human element in the course of civilisational evolution, a social-historical (and not purely theoretical, as in Kant’s case) critique of reason for the sake of reason and not from the position of irrationality. Long before Max Horkheimer and his associates at the Institute of Social Research, and even ahead of Sigmund Freud, he saw reasons to ambivalently evaluate the results of human self-creation and to highlight the regressive tendencies present in human history.

Autonomy beyond Voluntarism: In Defense of Hierarchy

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefaan E. Cuypers
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The One ◽  
Technical Terms

We haveconflictingpre-philosophical intuitions about what it means ‘to be true to ourselves.’ On the one hand, autonomy and authenticity seem closely connected to the lucidity of reflectiveness; on the other, they seem tightly interwoven with the immediacy of unreflectiveness. As opposed to a ‘Platonic’ intuition about the inferiority of the unexamined life, we have an equally strong ‘Nietzschean’ intuition about the corrosiveness of the examined life. Broadly speaking, the first intuition is more akin to the tradition of the Enlightenment, and the second, more to that of Romanticism; the one is reminiscent of Descartes and Hume, the other of Rousseau and Herder.The use of the technical term ‘autonomy’ and the concomitant term ‘self’ is primarily limited to philosophy, while in daily life ‘freedom’ and ‘person,’ respectively, are used instead. Unfortunately, in their deployment of these technical terms philosophers have generally failed to acknowledge the two modes of ‘being true to ourselves’ associated with the Enlightenment and Romanticism, for they usually employ the concept of autonomy in a unitary way.

Great projects and crude realities

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Giménez Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Universal Schooling

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the circumstances that have conditioned the development of education in Spain from the enlightenment to the present day. Design/methodology/approach – Multidisciplinary scientific approach that combines the interpretation of the legal texts with the revision of the doctrinal and theoretical contributions made on the issue. Findings – From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the history of education in Spain has been marked by constant fluctuations between the reactionary instincts, principally maintained by the Catholic Church and the conservative social classes, and the progressive experiments, driven by the enlightened and the liberals first, and the republicans and the socialists later. As a consequence of that, the fight for finishing with illiteracy and guaranteeing universal schooling underwent permanent advances and retreats, preventing from an effective modernization of the Spanish educative system. On the one hand, renewal projects promoted by teachers and pedagogues were inevitably criticized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, obsessed with the idea of preserving the influence of religion on the schools. On the other hand, successive governments were weak in implementing an educational policy which could place Spain at the level of the other European and occidental nations. Originality/value – At the dawn of the twenty-first century, although the country has overcome a good part of its centuries-old backwardness, increasing economic difficulties and old ideological splits keep hampering the quality of teaching, gripped by neoliberal policies which undermine the right to education for all. The reading of this paper offers various historical clues to understand this process.

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