scholarly journals The Concept of Virtue in Religious Philosophy of Hermann Cohen

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-412
Author(s):  
Z. A. Sokuler
Keyword(s):  
Usual Sense ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Moral Ideal ◽  
The Social ◽  
Attributes Of God ◽  
The Common ◽  
Religion Of Reason ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Hermann Cohen

The concept of virtue was of great interest and importance for H. Cohen. In the interpretation of this concept in his latest work “Religion of reason from the sources of Judaism” the most important concepts of this work were brought in the focus: the specificity of definition of what is the religion of reason; understanding of the uniqueness of God; correlation; messianism. For Cohen, a single system of virtues presupposes a single and unique ethics and correlates with the idea of the unity of humanity. The last concept, in his opinion, maturated in the fold of monotheism. Humanity is one, because all people are creations of the unique God. “Religion of reason” treats of the common universal virtues. In the religion of reason, the idea of God and morality are inextricably linked. Cohen rejects metaphysical speculation about the nature of God, about the attributes of God inherent in himself. The religion of the mind speaks of God only in correlation with man. God is a moral ideal and reveals himself to man by giving him moral commandments. Morality connects man and God, and this connection is revealed in detail by Cohen in the theme of virtues. Understanding God as Truth is important for the disclosure of this topic. The corresponding virtue for a person is faithfulness to truth, or truthfulness. In addition to truthfulness in the usual sense, for Cohen, faithfulness to truth requires correct worship of God. The correlation culminates in the idea of messianism, which is interpreted by Cohen as an endless movement of a whole humanity to the social justice.

scholarly journals Deep-Down Time: Political Tradition in Central Africa

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 341-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Common View ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Impact

Around 1850 the peoples of central Africa from Duala to the Kunene River and from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes shared a common view of the universe and a common political ideology. This included assumptions about roles, statuses, symbols, values, and indeed the very notion of legitimate authority. Among the plethora of symbols connected with these views were the leopard or the lion, the sun, the anvil, and the drum, symbolizing respectively the leader as predator, protector, forger of society, and the voice of all. Obviously, in each case the common political ideology was expressed in slightly different views, reflecting the impact of differential historical processes on different peoples. But the common core persisted. The gigantic extent of this phenomenon, encompassing an area equal to two-thirds of the continental United States, baffles the mind. How did it come about? Such a common tradition certainly did not arise independently in each of the hundreds of political communities that existed then. However absorbent and stable this mental political constellation was, it must have taken shape over a profound time depth. How and as a result of what did this happen? Is it even possible to answer such queries in a part of the world that did not generate written records until a few centuries ago or less?This paper addresses this question: how can one trace the social construction of such a common constellation over great time depths and over great regional scale? All the peoples involved are agriculturalists and the political repertory with which we are concerned could not easily exist in its known form outside sedentary societies.

Alcohol Problem Prevention: A “Common Sense” Approach

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-393
Author(s):  
Selden D. Bacon
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Direct Methods ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alcohol Problems ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Alcohol Related Problems ◽  
Social Science Approach

In view of the low likelihood of the acceptance of the social science approach to alcohol problems proposed several years ago, a “common sense” approach is suggested as an alternative. Several assumptions guide this proposal, the principal one being the absence of any significant progress in the reduction of alcohol problems in the United States over the past 200 years. By the development of a common vocabulary and direct methods of observation and data collection, the “common sense” approach would provide for identifying the strengths of the multitude of past and current efforts in dealing with alcohol problems in terms of both intervention and prevention. The guiding criterion in such an approach would be the impact on alcoholism and alcohol-related problems, the definition of which would be a major task of the research.

Cohen, Hermann (1842–1918)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zank
Keyword(s):  
Major Influence ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Core ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Religion Of Reason ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Hermann Cohen

Hermann Cohen was the founder of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism and a major influence on twentieth-century Jewish thought. Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism) (1919) is widely credited with the renewal of Jewish religious philosophy. Cohen’s philosophy of Judaism is inextricably linked with his general philosophical position. But his system of critical idealism in logic, ethics, aesthetics and psychology did not originally include a philosophy of religion. The mainly Protestant Marburg School in fact regarded Cohen’s Jewish philosophy as an insufficient solution to the philosophical problem of human existence and to that of determining the role of religion in human culture. Thinkers who favoured a new, more existentialist approach in Jewish thought, however, saw Cohen’s introduction of religion into the system as a daring departure from the confines of philosophical idealism. Cohen identified the central Jewish contribution to human culture as the development of a religion that unites historical particularity with ethical universality. At the core of this religion of reason is the interdependence of the idea of God and that of the human being. Cohen derives this theme from the Jewish canon through a philosophical analysis based on his transcendental idealism.

scholarly journals A Criminal Misconduct and the Mechanism of its Establishment

Lex Russica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (10) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
A. M. Gerasimov
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Offense ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Judicial Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Nature ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Criminal Legislation

The study is focused on the development of the theory of a criminal misconduct as an independent type of a criminal offense. The aim of the work was to formulate the author’s definition of a criminal misconduct that meets the social demand for the liberalization of the branch of criminal legislation. In the course of the research, the dialectical method was used, which made it possible to discover and analyze the common nature and, at the same time, the independence of a criminal offence and a criminal misconduct A universal tool of cognition was combined with such specific scientific methods as systemic and formal-logical methods. The theses developed in the work are based on the analysis of the content of criminal legislation, as well as the corresponding standins of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and representatives of the criminal law doctrine.The author gives examples from judicial practice as illustrations of legally significant situations that receive an ambiguous criminal-legal assessment at the level of law enforcement.Based on the results of the study, the concept of a criminal offense was formulated and the mechanism of its establishment was revealed. A criminal misconduct is justified as an act, although it contains signs of any corpus delicti, formally belonging to the category of small or medium severity, but recognized by the court, due to its insignificance, as not posing a public danger. The mechanism for establishing a criminal misconduct presupposes a statement in the act of the category of public danger (formal signs of corpus delicti) and further exclusion of the degree of public danger and, as a consequence, public danger in general. The ideas presented in the work can serve as a motive and basis for rethinking issues related to the substantiation of the nature of a criminal misconduct and its delimitation from other legal torts.

scholarly journals Kierkegard and Solov’yov as religious thinkers and critics of public religion

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-78
Author(s):  
P. Huiting
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Public Religion ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind

On the basis of the work of S. Kierkegaard «Exercises in Christianity» and V.S. Solovyov's «Readings on God-manhood» the article presents a comparative analysis of the positions of the authors as religious thinkers, formed in line with the problem of limiting the claims of the mind, which in earlier philosophy had become the only and comprehensive explanatory principle. The article outlines the common ground of their positions, which is a criticism of the official religion and the formalism of state churches. It notes that the innovative and original religious philosophies of Kierkegaard and Solovyov have a common mission – the revival of Christianity degenerated into a public religion, but at the same time they differ in character and structure. It concludes that Kierkegaard and Solovyov, critically reinterpreting the Christian religion that is contemporary to them, offer their religious philosophy as a way out of the crises of their time.

Language, social nature of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Essential Contribution ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Learning Language

Language is mostly used in a social setting. We use it to communicate with others. We depend on others when learning language, and we constantly borrow one another’s uses of expression. Language helps us perform various social functions, and many of its uses have become institutionalized. But none of these reflections settle the question of whether language is an essentially social phenomenon. To address this we must consider the nature of language itself, and then ask which social elements, if any, make an essential contribution to its nature. While many would accept that language is an activity that must take place in a social setting, others have gone further by arguing that language is a social practice. This view commits one to the claim that the meanings of an individual’s words are the meanings they have in the common language. The former view need not accept so strong a claim: meaning depends on social interaction because it is a matter of what one can communicate to others but this does not require the existence of communal languages. A competing conception which rejects the social character of language in either of these versions is the thesis that language is mentally represented in the mind of an individual.

The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine)

1988 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Social Habits ◽  
Definition Of

One of the more endearing of the seventy-eight treatises which make up the Moralia of Plutarch is one entitled ‘On not minding your own business'. The Greek title, Περ Πολυπραγμοσνης, reminds us momentarily of Plato's famous definition of justice in Republic 4, which is to do your own thing (μ πολυπραγμονεῖν). Plutarch was indeed an ardent Platonist, but here he is concerned not with political philosophy but with social habits. The treatise reminds me of nothing so much as of a famous Lancastrian comedian of my youth called Norman Evans, who in a sketch called Over the Garden Wall assumed the transvestite role of a nosy female neighbour, simultaneously pegging out clothes and retailing juicy items of gossip. For Plutarch, after defining this nosiness or πολυπραγμοσνη as ‘an unhealthy and harmful state of mind, a fondness for learning the misfortunes of others, a disease apparently free of neither envy nor malice’, condemns the common tendency to pry into the social origins of neighbours, their debts, and their private conversations. He likewise condemns people who read their friends' letters, and who watch sacred ceremonies which it is μ θμισ ρν (perhaps he had in mind Clodius' gate-crashing of the rite of Bona Dea). Such inquisitiveness, says Plutarch, is invariably accompanied by a wagging tongue, for what these people gladly hear, they gladly blab about: a ἃ γἔρ δως κοουσιν, δως λαλοσιν Pascal in his Pensees says much the same thing: ‘Curiosity is only vanity. Most often we only wish to know in order to talk about it.’

scholarly journals Hermann Cohen, Maimonides, and the Jewish Virtue of Humility

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Erlewine
Keyword(s):  
Western Culture ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
The Common ◽  
Religion Of Reason ◽  
Hermann Cohen ◽  
Bear Witness

AbstractThis paper explores Hermann Cohen’s engagement with, and appropriation of, Maimonides to refute the common assumption that Cohen’s endeavor was to harmonize Judaism with Western culture. Exploring the changes of Cohen’s conception of humility from Ethik des reinen Willens to the Ethics of Maimonides and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, this paper highlights the centrality of the collective Jewish mission to bear witness against the dominant order of Western civilization and philosophy in Cohen’s Jewish thought.

scholarly journals Attitude as an Expressible Info-Operational Reaction to a Perceived/Purposed Object/Objective

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
External Information ◽  
Psychological Concept ◽  
The Social ◽  
Controversial Problem ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The definition of the psychological concept of attitude is still a controversial problem, and the scholars have not yet reached a consensus on this important issue. The attitude is defined in various ways, as a mental and emotional “construct” not directly detectable, or as a “psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity”. However, as attitude is an achievement of the mind during the exploration of reality, it is naturally to approach first of all the nature of mind and the relation with the cognition processes from the informational perspective. Therefore, in this paper it is investigated the concept of attitude from a completely new point of view, starting from the informational nature of consciousness. It is shown that the informational structure of consciousness can be fully described by the activity of seven distinct cognitive centers and the attitude can be defined actually as an informational reactive output with respect to an object/objective either perceived or mentally proposed. The attitude is thus the result of a decisional info-processing of an input internal or external information, expressible by the specific informational center managed by the brain associated with this activity, defined suggestively as I want. It is shown that attitude is consequently a function of all other six centers, which intervene in the decisional process as decisional criteria or as priority contributing components, and these centers can become dominant or inactive. In agreement with some previous studies and with the neuro-connections of specific regions of the brain, it is shown that emotions contribute to attitude, but also the personal state, the inherited predispositions, the social interactions, the life experience and the trust in the objective, if this is a proposed project. Associated with the attitude, behavior is different, depending on all cognitive centers.

What Can Social Science Teach Catholic Social Thought About the Common Good?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cloutier
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

Recent Catholic literature on the common good centers on the state’s creation of the social condition for the flourishing of individuals. This view stands in contrast with a premodern conception of the common good as shared participation in the enterprise of the social whole, which appears incompatible with liberal pluralist societies. To get beyond this forced choice between individualism and imposed collectivism, Catholic social teaching can learn much from how social science’s richer description of the social whole depicts shared participatory structures of contention and competition as crucial for the achievement of the common good. Yet, following insights from both social science and the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, prudence must be developed to distinguish between structures of competition that do promote the common good and others that do not. The essay concludes with a revised definition of the common good that includes these insights.

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