Authority in Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Doostdar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
Scientific Experiment ◽  
Cumulative Learning ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines the place of personal experience in contemporary Iranian spirituality, What is known as “experience” is equivalent to the Persian word tajrobeh (Arabic tajriba). The sense of tajriba is linked as scientific experiment or methodical empirical observation to Spiritism. As a kind of experience associated with cumulative learning and mastery over time, a sense of tajrobeh comes close to the German concept of Erfahrung. This chapter first considers the concept of “heart” before discussing tajrobeh in terms of Erlebnis, experience that is more personal, immediate, intense, and perhaps ineffable than what Erfahrung implies. It then explores the views of Arezu Khanum on heart, Abdol-Karim Soroush on religiosity, and Mostafa Malekiyan on spirituality and religious experience. It also shows that in the twentieth century, the terms tajrobeh and Erlebnis converged in Iranian reformist formulations of “religious experience” inspired by modern European thinkers.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

Choosing a religion in the context of specificity of a religious experience

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-15
Author(s):  
V.Yu. Lebedev ◽  
A.L. Bezrukov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Groups

The paper considers the process of choosing religion in a modern society. Factors that affect the behavior of an individual in the process of choosing religion are considered in the light of religious, psychological and social sciences. The classification of religions is divided into two types: personal experience religions and dogmatic religions. A modern man's motivation to be a follower of new religious movements is considered using the examples of neoprotestant, neohindu and neopagan religious groups.

Empirical Spirits

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Doostdar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Psychical Research ◽  
Empirical Observation

This chapter examines some of the earliest attempts at synthesizing theological speculation with the methods of the empirical sciences, drawing special attention to the epistemic and moral consequences of such syntheses. It also considers the neglected influence of Spiritism and psychical research among Iranian intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter first discusses the role of Mirza Khalil Khan Saqafi in bringing Spiritism to Iran and Spiritists' method of communication with disembodied souls, which they claimed were the fruit of modern scientific discovery. It then explores how experimental spirit science atracted interest from outside the network of commited Spiritists, focusing on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's views on hypnotism and séances with disembodied spirits. Finally, it shows how the Spiritists promoted empirical observation as a reliable means for verifying the existence of souls.

The Hermeneutical Keys to William James’s Philosophy of Religion: Protestant Impulses, Vital Belief

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-316
Author(s):  
David J. Zehnder
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
William James ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
American Psychologist ◽  
Over Time

This essay argues that the American psychologist and philosopher William James should be viewed in the Lutheran Reformation’s tradition because this viewpoint offers the hermeneutical key to his philosophy of religion. Though James obviously didn’t ascribe to biblical authority, he expressed the following religious sensibilities made possible by Martin Luther and his contemporaries: 1) challenge of prevailing systems, 2) anti-rationalism, 3) being pro-religious experience and dynamic belief, 4) need for a personal, caring God, and also 5) a gospel of religious comfort. This essay asks, in one specific form, how religious concerns can hold steady over time but cause very different expressions of faith.

Metrics

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Duffell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
British Culture ◽  
British Study

This chapter examines the history and developments in British study of medieval metrics during the twentieth century. It explains that the contribution of British scholars to medieval metrics has been minor partly because British culture prefers empirical observation to abstract systems. In the second half of the century several British scholars made substantial contributions to historical metrics. They include Geoffrey Leech in his linguistic guide to poetics, W. Sidney Allen in his reconstruction of Classical Latin phonology and Nigel Fabb in his study of form and literary theory.

Crossing the Last Frontier: Transatlantic Movements of Asian Maritime Workers, c. 1900-1945

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Balachandran
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Migration Network ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Us Immigration

This essay explores the maritime migration network between Asia and America by way of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. It pays particular attention to the maritime activity of ‘lascar’ seamen, and the movement of labour between Britain, America, India, China, and Hong Kong. It examines the changes that underwent the network over time, the quantities of migrants and their intended destinations, and the period of upheaval caused by each World War. It also examines the racial, social, political, and cultural factors that shaped British and US immigration policies during the period. It concludes by stating that the US was undoubtedly a primary destination for Asian labourers, despite the well-broatcast perils relating to wages, racism, nationalism, and subjugation.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-154
Author(s):  
Jenifer L. Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Over Time

The complexities of life for slaves with disabilities continued into the Civil War as some became “contraband.” With emancipation, the experiences of freedpeople with disabilities, including veterans, grew more obscure. The use of disability as a marker of inferiority, however, expanded in potent new ways by drawing on the ideology of ableism during Reconstruction to legitimize white dominance. Using the lens of intersectionality, it is clear how the antebellum era’s multitude of disabling narratives of race substantiated the racial order of society and established an enduring set of foundational myths, beliefs, and practices about race. Over time, overt analogies between blackness and disability gave way to more subtle suggestions of black inferiority and “damage imagery” that echoed well into the twentieth century.

The Changing Fortunes of Syncretism

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-54
Author(s):  
Ross Kane
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Over Time

Syncretism’s varying connotations have become sedimented within the word over time. To unearth the perceived challenges around syncretism, the chapter studies the word’s history up to the early twentieth century—its use, how it has been deployed, about whom, and for what ends. The word “syncretism” has been used to reconcile opposing factions, neutrally describe religious mixture, and disparage religious mixture. In Christian circles, the term’s pejorative turn came only recently, in the early twentieth century. This shift relates to wider fears among Christians during this period as Christianity spread in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These fears relate to two key themes, revelation and race.

Before the Standing Stones: From Land Forms to Religious Attitudes and Monumentality

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce E. Salisbury
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Spiritual Beliefs ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Religious Feeling ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Over Time

Any study of great prehistoric monuments from standing stones to pyramids involves exploring people’s spiritual beliefs. There had to be some strong sense of awe to motivate people to do the kind of extraordinary work to erect such monuments, and in the ancient world, religion served as the greatest motivator. There are many ways to study religion, and each academic discipline uses its own methods, which in turn shape its conclusions. Anthropologists compare different religions to see how different cultures express their beliefs; sociologists look at the functions religions serve to maintain a social cohesiveness. Psychologists of religion might look at the way religious feelings are manifest in individuals, and theologians try to explore deep truths about the nature of God. All these approaches reveal some truths about this complex phenomenon we call religion and the results often seem like those of the proverbial blind men describing parts of an elephant while missing the glory of the whole. I, too, will focus on one small part of the religious experience—the feeling that lies at the heart of those who have felt the spiritual, and while there have been many disciplines that have studied this religious experience, from psychology to philosophy to sociology, my approach is historical. I will try to explore the nature of people’s religious expression over time, as they change and as they stay the same. What is this religious feeling? As we might expect, there are many different interpretations and analyses of the nature of the religious experience. It may mean the capacity of feeling at one with something larger than oneself, which is the definition of ‘mysticism’. It maymean a belief in—a faith in—a supernatural being. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I will simply accept the experience as a capacity humans have to feel awe and reverence (Bellah 2011). This enduring sense of awe—what has been famously called the idea of the holy (Otto 1950)—lies somewhere at the heart of all subsequent religious impulses.

Union and its Challengers in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Michael Keating
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The State ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Over Time

The United Kingdom was created over time without a clear plan. Creation of the state largely coincided with the creation of the Empire so that there was not a clear distinction between the two. The union preserved many of the elements of the pre-union component parts, but was kept together by the principle of unitary parliamentary sovereignty. Within the union, the distinct nationalities developed in the modern period and produced nationalist movements. Most of these aimed at devolution within the state, but some demanded separation. Management of these demands was a key task of statecraft in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the post-World War Two era, the nationalities question appeared to have gone away but it returned in the 1970s. Devolution settlements at the end of the twentieth century represented a move to stabilize the union on new terms.

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