scholarly journals Hermeneutics contra fundamentalism: Zygmunt Bauman’s method for thinking in dark times

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Davis
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
World Views ◽  
Sociological Method ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Meaningful Communication

Faced with a rise of populism seemingly in all corners of the globe, the need to facilitate meaningful communication between different world-views and to resist the closing down of dialogue is pressing. In this paper, I argue that Zygmunt Bauman’s sociological method has always been concerned with this problem and that a better appreciation of his writings on hermeneutics provides us with a vital strategy for resisting fundamentalist thinking in today’s dark times. To begin, I briefly explore the relationship between hermeneutics and fundamentalism before moving on to elaborate Bauman’s method of sociological hermeneutics. In the final section of the paper, I assess the implications that Bauman’s method has for the discipline of sociology at a time when the certainty of things is the most avid of dreams dreamed by people harassed and oppressed by the uncertainty of liquid modern life, apparently whatever the human consequences.

A Religion of Reason

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick C. Beiser
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Religion And Ethics ◽  
Religion Of Reason ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter is an examination of Cohen’s main work on the philosophy of religion, his Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums. Cohen’s religion of reason was an attempt to respond to two opposing conceptions of religion: that of the romantics (Schleiermacher, Fries) and that of the Tübingen school (Baur, Strauβ‎). The romantics saw the essence of religion in feeling, the Tübingen school saw it in myth. Cohen tried to rescue the rational content of religion by interpreting it mainly in ethical terms, which he believed to consist in rational imperatives. Cohen’s concept of God is interpreted in terms of the validity of these ethical imperatives and not in terms of the existence of any entity. One section considers Cohen’s re-examination of the relationship between religion and ethics, which now stresses the distinctive characteristics of religion within ethics. The final section criticizes Rosenzweig’s interpretation of Cohen as a proto-existentialist.

What the Climber Saw: Strauss's Alpensinfonie and the Romantic Tradition of Nature Representation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
David Larkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Tone Poem ◽  
Peak Response ◽  
Landscape Features ◽  
Musical Compositions ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
The Relationship

Initially criticized for its naïve representation of landscape features, Strauss's Alpensinfonie (1915) has in recent years been reinterpreted by scholars as a deliberate challenge to metaphysics, a late outgrowth of the composer's fascination with Nietzsche. As a consequence, the relationship between Strauss's tone poem and earlier artworks remains underexplored. Strauss in fact relied heavily on long-established tropes of representing mountain scenes, and when this work is situated against a backdrop of similarly themed Romantic paintings, literature, travelogues and musical compositions, many points of resemblance emerge. In this article, I focus on how human responses to mountains are portrayed within artworks. Romantic-era reactions were by no means univocal: mountains elicited overtly religious exhalations, atheistic refutations of all supernatural connections, pantheistic nature-worship, and also artworks which engaged with nature purely in an immanent fashion. Strauss uses a range of strategies to distinguish the climber from the changing scenery he traverses. The ascent in the first half of Eine Alpensinfonie focuses on a virtuoso rendition of landscape in sound, interleaved with suggestions as to the emotional reactions of the protagonist. This immanent perspective on nature would accord well with Strauss's declared atheism. In the climber's response to the sublime experience of the peak, however, I argue that there are marked similarities to the pantheistic divinization of nature such as was espoused by the likes of Goethe, whom Strauss admired enormously. And while Strauss's was an avowedly godless perspective, I will argue in the final section of the article that he casts the climber's post-peak response to the sublime encounter in a parareligious light that again has romantic precedents. There are intimations of romantic transcendence in the latter part of the work, even if these evaporate as the tone poem, and the entire nineteenth-century German instrumental tradition it concludes, fades away into silence.

Islamic Groups and their World-views and Identities: Neo-Traditional Salafis and Progressive Muslims

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adis Duderija
Keyword(s):  
Paper Briefly ◽  
World Views ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper presents a snap-shot discussion on the origins and the world-views behind two global contemporary movements among Muslims, namely Neo-Traditional Salafis and Progressive Muslims. It endeavours to historically situate and position them in relation to the cumulative Islamic historical harvest and delineate their approach to modernity. Additionally the paper briefly examines the concept of the role and the function of women within these respective world-views. Finally, it analyses the implications of the underlying ideology of these movements on the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims in both Islamicate and non-Islamicate societies.

Responsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 378-396
Author(s):  
William Schweiker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Ethical Vision ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the importance of moral responsibility in Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which in turn allows the reader to interpret his work within the wider compass of Christian humanism. While Niebuhr’s ethics never showcased the concept of responsibility in the way other thinkers did during his time, he nevertheless insisted that the moral capability of responsibility is basic to human dignity. Utilizing the distinction Max Weber made between two forms of ethics, the chapter suggests that moral responsibility constitutes the ‘form’, rather than the ‘norm’, of Niebuhr’s anthropological project. Niebuhr’s project can be seen as an attempt to retrieve the lost insights of the Reformation regarding sin and grace within the historical condition of modern life initiated by the Renaissance. This orientation in Niebuhr’s work bears some of the features of Christian humanism. The final section discusses how Niebuhr’s theological and ethical vision can contribute to Christian thinking in our time.

China–India Myths in Xu Dishan’s ‘Goddess of Supreme Essence’

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Gal Gvili
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyses the scholarship of prominent May Fourth writer Xu Dishan as gateway for understanding his fiction. A close examination of his engagement with Indian religions and mythology in his fiction constitutes a vision of a China–India literary horizon through a literary device termed as ‘transregional metonymy’: tropes that travelled between China and India through the cultural exchange of myths. The chapter elaborates on this literary device through a close reading of Xu Dishan’s ‘Goddess of Supreme Essence’ (1923). The reading shows how a shared China–India figurative domain emerges in the story to offer a new understanding of myths and how they function in modern life. It also suggests that instead of rewriting the past, myths can rewrite the present; instead of using myths to establish a national culture, literature can use myths to imagine a transregional horizon. Focusing on India to think about the nature of storytelling and the relationship between myth and reality, Xu Dishan undid the binary distinction between ancient India as a soul brother and colonial India as a cautionary tale.

scholarly journals On Unbalanced Sampling in Bankruptcy Prediction

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Gruszczyński
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Bankruptcy Prediction ◽  
Common Error ◽  
Sample Bias ◽  
Sample Composition ◽  
Random Samples ◽  
Unbalanced Sampling ◽  
Extended View ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Binomial Models

The paper discusses methodological topics of bankruptcy prediction modelling—unbalanced sampling, sample bias, and unbiased predictions of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy models are typically estimated with the use of non-random samples, which creates sample choice biases. We consider two types of unbalanced samples: (a) when bankrupt and non-bankrupt companies enter the sample in unequal numbers; and (b) when sample composition allows for different ratios of bankrupt and non-bankrupt companies than those in the population. An imbalance of type (b), being more general, is examined in several sections of the paper. We offer an extended view of the relationship between the biased and unbiased estimated probabilities of bankruptcy—probability of default (PD). A common error in applications is neglecting the possibility of calibrating the PD obtained from a bankruptcy model to the unbiased PD that is population adjusted. We show that Skogsviks’ formula of 2013 coincides with prior correction known for the logit model. This, together with solutions for other binomial models, serves as practical advice for obtaining the calibration of unbiased PDs from popular bankruptcy models. In the final section, we explore sample bias effects on classification.

scholarly journals Einige Erfahrungen und Gedanken über Hochschuldidaktik an der Massenuniversität / Some remarks and observation on teaching methods at university with mass student attendence

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Hagemann-White
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Final Section ◽  
University Teaching ◽  
Teaching Behavior ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
University Of Berlin ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Fruitful Cooperation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe author reports her experience of and observations on the teaching of sociology at the Free University of Berlin. She examines the teaching behavior of the instructors, the relationship between colleagues, and those between teachers and students. Certain tendencies in the practice of teaching are viewed as expressing a form of coping by projection with the failures experienced in trying to reform studies, failures that are in fact caused by the unfavorable real conditions at the university. A tendency to make university teaching more like schooling is observed; reasons for this are found in the effects of pressure towards professional competition, which prevents both fruitful cooperation between instructors and genuine communication with students. The additional difficulties experienced by women in teaching are described. In the final section conclusions are drawn in the form of practical suggestions which take account of the actual possibilities of a university with very large numbers of students.

The R2P, Protection of Civilians, and UN Peacekeeping Operations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Coupling Strategy ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Policy Challenge ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyses the relationship between the two related concepts of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and the protection of civilians (POC) with particular emphasis on how their relationship has played out in the context of United Nations peacekeeping operations. It begins by providing an overview of the main similarities and differences between R2P and POC before moving on to examine various attempts to link the two concepts with specific reference to their application within UN peacekeeping operations. The final section analyses some of the main criticisms levelled against their linkage. The chapter concludes that a de-coupling strategy is unlikely to succeed, in part because POC can never be made completely apolitical and uncontroversial. As UN peacekeepers are called upon to operationalize both the R2P and POC agendas, a key policy challenge will be ensuring that the relationship between the two does not become counter-productive.

Part 1 Constitutionalism and Islam: Conceptual Issues, 1.1 Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: A Contemporary Perspective of Islamic Law

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamali Mohammad Hashim
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
General Characterization ◽  
The Third ◽  
Islamic Countries ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
Islam And Secularism ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter begins with a brief characterization of Islamic constitutional law and its underdeveloped status as compared with other branches of Islamic law. It then highlights salient differences between the Islamic and Western approaches to constitutional law and briefly discusses Islam and secularism. The next section provides a general characterization of the Islamic system of rule under four sub-headings. The first of these defines government in Islam as a trust (amānah); the second describes it as a limited and thus non-totalitarian government; the third addresses the Islamic system of rule as a qualified democracy; and the last characterizes it as a civilian not a theocratic system of government. The final section summarizes the main results of the preceding analysis and offers some tentative conclusions on the relationship between Islamic government and democratic constitutionalism.

scholarly journals “The Atlas of Our Skin and Bone and Blood”: Disability, Ablenationalism, and the War on Drugs

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Andrea Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Final Section ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gloria Anzaldua ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
North Central ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Border Zones ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the relationship between disability and the aspirational health of the civic body through an analysis of the criminalization of immigration and the war on drugs. In particular, this paper utilizes tools from transnational disability studies to examine the formation and maintenance of a form of ablenationalism operating within immigration reform and drug-related policies. Specifically, the militarization of border zones, as well as the vast austerity measures impacting people across North, Central, and South America have shaped notions of public health, safety, and security according to racial, gendered, and settler logics of futurity. The final section of the paper turns to three authors who have been situated in various ways on the margins of the United States, Gloria Anzaldúa (the Mexico-U.S. border), Aurora Levins Morales (Puerto Rico), and Margo Tamez (Lipan Apache). As such, this article analyzes the liberatory, affective, and future-oriented dimensions of disabled life and experience to chart possibilities for resistance to the converging momentum of carceral settler states, transnational healthcare networks, and racial capitalism.

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