scholarly journals A philosophical approach to the 'religion - national mythology' synthesis

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
Nonka Bogomilova

The paper analyses the philosophical aspects of the 'religion - national mythology' synthesis. The main directions of the study are as follows: 1. Both on the individual and social plan, the orientation of the transcending universalizing power of religion could vary depending on the macro-social movements a community /or an individual/ is involved in. For the individual as for the community, religion could be a cultural position transcending ego and ethno-centrism, mono-cultural tendencies; in situations of internal differentiation and disintegration of these entities, the universalizing binding role of religion is partialized and determined by various social groups, who are often in opposition to each other due to their economic political, ethnic, psychological features; 2. This process is usually related to the invalidation of universally uniting religious-moral bonds and values and intensification of differences: power, property, doctrinal differences to a shift of the weight center from internal spiritual movements /particularly typical of mysticism, asceticism, priesthood/ on to practical social action - reformist heresies, the various practical theologies of revolution, liberation, the religious-motivated wars; 3. When reduced to an ethnic, political, or state emblem, religious affiliation to Judaism, Islam Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism has become and still remain a tool for the sacralization of military and political conflicts. In religion-motivated conflict situations, opposing parties de-sacralize their Sacred Books as their acts contradict the books' moral content; 4. The power of historical mythologies is in reverse proportion to the capacity of a nation to periodically renew its social life world - its psychological attitudes labour relations, political stereotypes; 5. In this type of situation religion is usually reduced to 'belonging', as G. Davie put it, at the expense of 'believing' and a corresponding moral behavior. The religious universe becomes thus subordinated to partial group values, instead of standing above them.

Author(s):  
O. Zimenko

postgraduate student, Department of Information, Library and Archival Affairs, Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, Kharkiv, Ukraine INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE: CONCEPT AND EVOLUTION IN MODERN SCIENTIFIC IDEA The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the concept of “informational impact”, its evolution in scientific idea, as well as methodological aspects of the development of information technology in the context of their connection with the phenomenon of the information impact. The methodology. The work studies this issue by examining the basic methods and principles of information studies. The results. The concept of “informational influence” can be represented as a form of influencing the consciousness of the individual, carried out using the media resource in order to change the formed assessments, opinions, beliefs, values ​​for further transformation of its behavioral response to events. Not enough attention is paid to the informational influence as a phenomenon in the works of the scientists, because it is considered as an integral part of other definitions, and not as a separate phenomenon. It is important to note that the concept of “informational impact” as a phenomenon is almost not considered in scientific works. Most often, informational influence was an integral part of other definitions, rather than a separate process. Thus, this problem has not been considered comprehensively, and it needs additional attention of the scientific community. Informational influence, as well as the use of media resources in modern conditions are becoming an integral part of socio-political conflicts. The media and the phenomenon of informational influence itself is a tool for both the emergence and resolution of conflict situations. The conclusion about global informatization and formation of high-tech information infrastructure, and also about importance of consideration of information influence as one of tools of manipulative technologies is made. The scientific novelty. The author’s definition of the concept of “informational influence” is formulated, as well as its place as a tool of manipulative possibilities are analyzed, and also the questions of manipulative possibilities of mass media and communication are considered. The practical significance lies in the analysis of scientific and theoretical views of this matter. The phenomenon of informational influence in the context of information warfare and manipulations is considered.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina L'vovna Kabakhidze

Among the neologisms actively used in youth environment, one come across multiple words with negative connotation, which are used to describe aggressive behavior or destructive emotional state. Aggression, conflict, alienation are the markers of modern society, which infiltrate all spheres of social life, including the system of education, which on the one hand is influenced by the external environment, while on the other is the mechanism for harmonization of public relations, formation of moral and ethical attitudes, as well as worldview values of the society. The ongoing anthropological crisis, which actualized the problem of conflictogenity in the sphere of higher education, laid the groundwork for this research. The goal of this article lies in the analysis and review of foreign research dedicated to the causes of conflicts that occur in the academic environment, as well as the mechanisms for their settlement. The author employs the combination of descriptive, comparative methods, classification, and introspection methods for the development of original perspective on the topic. Having provided the philosophical-psychological foundations of the modern anthropological crisis, and its conflictogenity in the system of higher education on the individual and institutional levels, the author classifies the types of conflicts along with the ways for overcoming them, and gives  special attention to such that may find their application in the Russian educational space. The main result of this research lies in the description of the types of conflicts in the academic environment, methods of their settlement, as well as practical recommendations for eliminating conflicts in the Russian universities. The novelty of this article consists in the systemic description of problematic field of the research – conflictogenity in the system of higher education, and determination of the mechanisms for overcoming conflict situations, considering national, cultural, and administrative specificity of higher education institutions in the Russian Federation.


Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.


Author(s):  
C. Daniel Batson

Empathy-induced altruism provides benefits for (a) the person in need, (b) other similar people, and (c) the person feeling empathic concern. Specifically, there is evidence that it can produce the following: more and better help for those in need; less aggression toward them; less derogation and blaming of victims of injustice; increased cooperation in conflict situations (business negotiations, political conflicts, and tensions between students in school); less negative attitudes toward stigmatized groups; increased willingness to help these groups; more sensitive and responsive care in close relationships; increased happiness and self-esteem; less stress; more meaning in life; and greater longevity. The list of benefits of empathy-induced altruism for which there is at least preliminary evidence is impressive. Although not a panacea, it can be a powerful force for good.


Author(s):  
Barbara J. Risman

This is the first data chapter. In this chapter, respondents who are described as true believers in the gender structure, and essentialist gender differences are introduced and their interviews analyzed. They are true believers because, at the macro level, they believe in a gender ideology where women and men should be different and accept rules and requirements that enforce gender differentiation and even sex segregation in social life. In addition, at the interactional level, these Millennials report having been shaped by their parent’s traditional expectations and they similarly feel justified to impose gendered expectations on those in their own social networks. At the individual level, they have internalized masculinity or femininity, and embody it in how they present themselves to the world. They try hard to “do gender” traditionally.


2003 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Offer

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile – dead theorists have uses – care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.


1923 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-215
Author(s):  
Raymond G. Gettell

In the introduction to his readings in political philosophy, Professor Coker says, “since the time of Plato there has been, in every philosophic age, some inquiry as to the justification of political organization in general, as to the relative merits of different political forms, and as to the appropriate position and privileges of the individual as master, member, or subject of the political order of society. Why do we have political organization? What in our present condition do we owe to it? What future benefits may we properly expect to derive from it? Are its purposes characteristically manifold and changing, or are they ultimately reducible to a few limited objects or to some single end? What is its best form? Who should control it? What is its proper relation to the ideas and sentiments of the community at its basis? What spheres of individual and social life is it incompetent to enter? Philosophers and publicists of various types have sought to answer these questions in abstract terms.”If an analysis be made of the questions with which political thought has been concerned, it is found that emphasis was placed at various periods upon widely different types of problems. In the medieval period political controversy centered in the contest for supremacy between spiritual and temporal authorities; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dominant interest was in the contest between monarchic and democratic theories of political organization; at present, the extent of state activities has come into prominence, and the connection between political and economic interests is especially close. Besides, political conditions have changed so greatly from age to age that the same problem had quite different meanings at different periods.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000842982110042
Author(s):  
Alastair Hay

Two core lines of argument presently define our understanding of why Christianity’s historical influence continues to persist in the lives of Americans to a degree not observed in Canada (despite the recent loss of religious affiliation in both countries). These are: 1) changes in the functional dominance of social systems (i.e. shifts to the welfare state in Canada) and 2) important foundational, cultural differences between Canada and America. Using a historiographic approach (coupled with quantitative research conducted in Canada and the US), this article argues that one less well-recognized factor also deserves our attention: Charles Taylor’s observation that American religious culture was primed for the Age of Authenticity. In this article I argue that Taylor was probably right. Over and above the well-established individualistic character of the religious lives of Americans is a related, but important, additional effect—the sanctioning of the ‘this-worldly’ potential of the individual life from within its religious institutions. It is this aspect of America’s religious exceptionalism, I argue, that has also helped to render the religious lives of Americans less vulnerable to – but not immune from – the watershed effects of the sixties compared to Christianity in Canada.


Author(s):  
Hidayatul Reza ◽  
Franky Liauw

The conflict between the two social understandings between individualism and collectivism does not need to be clashed, but instead it needs to be managed according to values, morals and ethics. So that it can become a social force for social life. In this issue, architects can play a role in cultivating a 'space' that is fit to the problem of individualism-collectivism. The research method used is a comparative and synergistic method. Literature in the form of journals and books on the phenomenon of individualism-collectivism is used as a reference and comparison. To be able to change a person's attitude, it is necessary to have an environmental role that creates events and events that occur repeatedly and continuously, gradually being absorbed into the individual and influencing the formation of an attitude. In order for this approach to be applied easily, this approach must be applied to basic human needs. In basic human needs there is a hierarchy of the most basic, namely physiological needs, the most basic needs to be fulfilled because they include things that are vital for survival, namely, clothing, food, and shelter. So in order to answer this issue, the vertical housing function is fixed. In addition, vertical housing is considered important because it responds to limited land and the increasing human population. Vertical housing with a collaborative space in grouped dwelling unit concept, because offers many possibilities, from people who live together sharing physical space to communities that share values, interests and philosophies of life. Grouping system is also be an important value and in community prefer to live in small community amount 4-10 members with various background. Consisted by good quality personal space and supporting facilities to develop self-potential as self-actualization. Keywords:  collaborative; collectivism; individualism; monodualism; self actualization Abstrak Konflik dua paham sosial antara individualisme dengan kolektivisme tidak perlu dibenturkan, tetapi justru perlu dikelola menurut nilai-nilai, moral, dan etika, sehingga dapat menjadi kekuatan sosial bagi kehidupan bermasyarakat. Dalam isu ini, arsitek dapat berperan dalam mengolah ‘ruang’ yang fit terhadap permasalahan individualisme-kolektivisme. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode komparatif dan sinergis. Literatur berupa jurnal dan buku tentang fenomena individualisme-kolektivisme, dijadikan sebagai acuan dan pembanding. Untuk dapat mengubah sikap seseorang diperlukan peran lingkungan untuk menciptakan kejadian-kejadian dan peristiwa-peristiwa yang terjadi berulang-ulang dan terus-menerus, lama-kelamaan secara bertahap diserap kedalam diri individu dan memengaruhi terbentuknya suatu sikap. Agar pendekatan ini dapat diterapkan dengan mudah maka pendekatan ini harus diterapkan pada kebutuhan dasar manusia. Pada kebutuhan dasar manusia terdapat hierarki yang paling dasar yaitu kebutuhan fisiologis (physiological needs), kebutuhan yang paling dasar untuk dipenuhi karena meliputi hal-hal yang vital bagi kelangsungan hidup yaitu, sandang, pangan, dan papan. Sehingga untuk menjawab isu ini, ditetapkan fungsi hunian vertikal. Selain itu, hunian vertikal dinilai penting karena untuk mejawab keterbatasan lahan dan semakin tingginya populasi manusia. Hunian vertikal dengan mengusung konsep ruang kolaboratif pada setiap unit hunian yang dikelompokkan, karena menawarkan banyak kemungkinan, mulai dari orang-orang yang tinggal bersama dengan berbagi ruang fisik hingga komunitas yang juga berbagi nilai, minat, dan filosofi hidup. Sistem pengelompokan penghuni juga menjadi nilai penting dan dalam komunitas lebih menyukai jumlah yang sedikit 4-10 orang dengan latar belakang yang berbeda. Ditunjang dengan kualitas ruang pribadi yang baik dan fasilitas penunjang yang dapat mengembangkan potensi sebagai bentuk aktualisai diri.


2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 858-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger

If we are going to explain the slow pace of de-Christianization for the United States relative to other industrialized societies in the North Atlantic West, we might well begin with the church-state relationship. The absence of an established church in the United States has enabled religious affiliation to function, like other voluntary organizations in “civil society,” as mediators between the individual and the nation. I conimented on this rather old idea in a book C. John Sommerville is kind enough to cite in another connection, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture, but since he does not take up this point, I will develop it a bit further here, before reacting to Sommerville's other concerns as expressed in his refreshingly fair-minded rejoinder to my essay in the March 2001 issue of Church History.


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