scholarly journals The Global Religious Imagery of the Cult of Duc Cao Ðài

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 299-308
Author(s):  
Niculae Liviu Gheran ◽  

"In 1926, in Tây Ninh province, about 100 km away from present day Ho Chi Minh City, a new spiritual movement was born, aiming at the symbolic unification of all the world’s major religions into one. Its hierarchical structure resembles Roman Catholicism while on the other hand integrating elements from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. Besides worshipping the prophetic figures of the world major religions (Jesus Christ, Buddha and Mohammed), the Cao Đài claim to have communicated in spiritist séances with secular western and eastern literary, historical and political figures such as William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jeanne D’Arc, Sun Yat Sen, Vladimir Lenin and the Vietnamese poet and prophet Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, worshipping some of these (but not all) as saints. Within the present article, I aim at analyzing the syncretic religious imagery of the Cao Đài and discuss the manner in which they construct their religious narrative as well as worldview."

2013 ◽  
pp. 174-183
Author(s):  
Piotr Sadkowski

Throughout the centuries French and Francophone writers were relatively rarely inspired by the figure of Moses and the story of Exodus. However, since the second half of 20th c. the interest of the writers in this Old Testament story has been on the rise: by rewriting it they examine the question of identity dilemmas of contemporary men. One of the examples of this trend is Moïse Fiction, the 2001 novel by the French writer of Jewish origin, Gilles Rozier, analysed in the present article. The hypertextual techniques, which result in the proximisation of the figure of Moses to the reality of the contemporary reader, constitute literary profanation, but at the same time help place Rozier’s text in the Jewish tradition, in the spirit of talmudism understood as an exchange of views, commentaries, versions and additions related to the Torah. It is how the novel, a new “midrash”, avoids the simple antinomy of the concepts of the sacred and the profane. Rozier’s Moses, conscious of his complex identity, is simultaneously a Jew and an Egyptian, and faces, like many contemporary Jewish writers, language dilemmas, which constitute one of the major motifs analysed in the present article. Another key question is the ethics of the prophetism of the novelistic Moses, who seems to speak for contemporary people, doomed to in the world perceived as chaos unsupervised by an absolute being. Rozier’s agnostic Moses is a prophet not of God (who does not appear in the novel), but of humanism understood as the confrontation of a human being with the absurdity of his or her own finiteness, which produces compassion for the other, with whom the fate of a mortal is shared.


2019 ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Иосиф Александрович Фридман

Статья посвящена творческому наследию выдающегося итальянско-еврейского учёного, историка и библеиста Умберто Кассуто (1883-1951). Его основной вклад в науку о Священном Писании - развёрнутая критика документальной гипотезы происхождения Пятикнижия. Основная часть данной статьи представляет собой изложение воззрений Кассуто на первый из «столпов» документальной гипотезы - употребление в тексте Торы Божественных имён. Автор надеется показать, что, используя строго научные методы, Кассуто даёт вполне правдоподобные альтернативные объяснения тем феноменам, на исключительную правоту собственного объяснения которых с момента возникновения претендует документальная гипотеза. Вместо того чтобы опровергать частные аспекты названной теории, Кассуто, последовательно выступая против самого принципа деления текста Пятикнижия на первоначально независимые друг от друга «источники», фактически предложил в библеистике новую научную парадигму, потенциально претендующую на всеохватность и полную замену документальной гипотезы. В последующей статье на эту же тему автор намеревается продемонстрировать подход У. Кассуто ко второму, третьему, четвёртому и пятому «столпам» документальной гипотезы, а также остановить внимание на рецепции идей Кассуто в мире библеистики. The present article is devoted to the scientific heritage left by a major Jewish academician of Italian descent, historian and biblical scholar Umberto Cassuto (1883-1951). His main contribution to this field consists in large-scale criticism of the Documentary Hypothesis of the origin of the Pentateuch. In the main part of our article the author presents an outline of Cassuto’s views on the first of the five «pillars» onwhich the Documentary Hypothesis rests. The author endeavors to demonstrate that, using strictly scientific argumentation, Cassuto gives quite plausible alternative explanations to such phenomena as the Documentary Hypothesis claims its unique right to explain correctly. Instead of attacking and refuting any particular aspects of the hypothesis, Cassutoconsistently argues against the very principle according to which the Torah is divided among a number of «source texts» perceived to have once been independent of one another. As a matter of fact, U. Cassuto has presented a new scholarly paradigm with a potential that would suffice to make it a full-fledged substitution of the Documentary Hypothesis. In a second article on this topic the author intends to demonstrate Cassuto’s approach to the other four «pillars» of the Documentary Hypothesis as well as to devote special attention to the response that Cassuto’s ideas met in the world of Bible studies.


REFLEXE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (60) ◽  
pp. 29-63
Author(s):  
Martin Rabas

The present article has two objectives. One is to elucidate the philosophical approach presented in the so-called Strahov Systematic Manuscripts of Jan Patočka in terms of consciousness and nature. The other is to compare this philosophical approach with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theses on nature, as elaborated in 1956–1961, and to point out some advantages and limitations of both approaches. In our opinion, Patočka’s philosophical approach consists, on the one hand, in a descriptive analysis of human experience, which he understands as a pre-reflective self-relationship pointing towards the consciousness of the world. On the other hand, on the basis of this descriptive analysis Patočka consequently explicates all non-human life, inorganic matter, and finally the whole of nature as life in its own right, the essence of which is also a certain self-relation with a tendency towards consciousness. The article then briefly presents Merleau-Ponty’s theses on nature, and finally compares them with Patočka’s overall theses on nature. The advantage of Patočka’s notion of nature as against Merleau-Ponty’s is that, in Patočka’s view, nature encompasses both the principle of unity and individuality. On the other hand, the advantage of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of nature as against Patočka’s lies in the consistent interconnectedness of the infinite life of nature and the finite life of individual beings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-308
Author(s):  
Laura Laurušaitė

The present article will use the method of literary imagology in order to study the 21st-century Lithuanian and Latvian (e)migration literature and experiences in the context of racial, sexual, and cultural otherness. It will discusses marriage to a foreigner as something more than an official legitimation of one’s love for a person of other ethnicity, the introduction of foreignness into the world of one’s own culture, and the ideological penetration of the other into that which is inherited, ordinary and familiar. Provinciality, intolerance, and inability to admit and accept the Other or perceive oneself as a sexual Other remain an important part of Lithuanian and Latvian identity. In turn, emigrants in the host communities are a minority with counter-negative images, especially social ones.


2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Creutz-Kämppi

Abstract Media representations of Islam mostly appear in the Finnish media in connection with events in other parts of the world. In this context, Islam is often treated as something distant and ascribed the role of the Other. These representations function as definers for collective categorizations, having an impact on which categories for self-identifications are relevant in specific cases. The aim of the present article is to discuss othering discourses on Islam in Swedish-language dailies in Finland on the basis of the debate following the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. These discourses build upon a broader tradition of othering and have a great deal in common with medieval representations, thus the othering of Islam in a historical perspective is also briefly discussed.


Author(s):  
Rafal B. Reichert

En el presente artículo se muestran los avances de una investigación sobre la política de suministros forestales que desarrolló la Marina Real de España a lo largo del siglo XVIII con el fin de demostrar su importancia ante la rivalidad que existía entre las potencias marítimas europeas por el dominio sobre los mares del mundo. Se propone un análisis del sistema de aprovisionamiento para los departamentos navales, en especial en relación con los proyectos de utilización de maderas novohispanas y bálticas en la construcción naval, y su valoración por los oficiales hispanos. Por otra parte, se presenta la dinámica de otorgamiento de los asientos de madera a los criollos novohispanos y, finalmente, se estudia el movimiento marítimo entre el Báltico sur y España para demostrar la valiosa participación de esta región en el sistema de pertrechos navales. A partir de lo anterior se ofrece una visión general del comercio global de suministros forestales de España, que perseguía la recuperación de su poderío naval.AbstractThe present article shows the progress of the research about the policy of forestry supplies, developed during the 18th century by the Royal Navy of Spain, in order to demonstrate its importance in the rivalry between the European maritime powers by the dominion over the seas of the World. For this reason, it is proposed to analyze different aspects of the provision system for the naval departments, with an approach to the projects of use the New Spain and Baltic wood in shipbuilding, and its recognition by the Hispanic officials. On the other side, it is presented the dynamics of granting to New Spain Creoles with wooden contracts and finally is studied the maritime movement between the southern Baltic and Spain to demonstrate their valuable participation in the naval supplies system. All these aspects demonstrate a general panorama of the globalization of forest supplies with only one purpose: the recovery of Spanish naval power.   


1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elton Atwater

At a time when the subject of arms embargoes and arms export control is arousing considerable interest both at home and abroad, it is not untimely to examine the system of control which has developed in one of the chief arms producing and exporting countries of the world—Great Britain. Much attention has been devoted to the alleged evils of the international traffic in arms, and to the desirability of an effective government control over all armaments exports. Little consideration, on the other hand, has been given by writers to the question of how such control should be administered by a government, and what measures are actually involved. Taking the experience of Great Britain as a case study, the writer proposes in the following pages to trace the development of arms export control in that country, to examine the ways in which it has been administered, and to point out some of the difficulties which have been encountered. The present article may be looked upon, therefore, as a case study in the broader subject of national controls over the export of war materials.


1981 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee W. Gibbs

The “judicious” Richard Hooker (1554–1600) gave classic expression to the via media position of Elizabethan Anglicanism. He attempted to steer a middle course, appropriating what he considered to be the truths and avoiding what he considered to be the errors and excesses, between Roman Catholicism and the Magisterial Reformation (Lutheranism and especially Calvinism). It has often been pointed out by scholars that Hooker sometimes inclines more in one direction than the other on certain key doctrines. For example, it has been said many times that his view of the relation of God and the world, of grace and nature, of faith and reason, is characterized by continuity rather than discontinuity, and that in this he was true to the medieval Catholic thought of Thomas Aquinas. But his view of justification has been said to be nearer to that of the Magisterial Reformation than to that of Rome.


2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-107
Author(s):  
Joanneliese de Lucas FREITAS

The present article has the objective of examining how we can understand the therapeutic relationship from the dialogue with the Merleau-Ponty's concept of other. The human interaction and communication in the psychotherapeutic contexts are discussed utilizing the understanding of psychotherapeutic relationship in Gestalt-therapy. The subject of dialog and the encounter are raised from the paradox I-other as well as the understanding of corporeity as part of the man-world field. The article presents the idea that in a therapeutic relationship both psychotherapist and client must encounter with each other in their differences. That being said, the therapeutic stance implies a non-stop search for the comprehension and the availability of the other so that the client may come to grasp himself through the differences that emerges at the therapist-client field. The psychotherapist must act on the field of the relationship and, therefore, operate as an opening between the client and the world as an effort to reach the lived-experience of his client.


Author(s):  
Yvonne Li

Chronicling the lives of the pagan Gods, Metamorphoses was essentially a compilation of stories based on Greek mythology. As the title suggests, the primary theme throughout the work was that of change and evolution. Suggesting that the process was naturally occurring, the stories also sent the message that in spite of any physical transformation, the soul or spirit would remain fundamentally the same. In short, the world was in constant flux but the soul was not. Although this idea ran throughout the epic poem, Ovid’s story was richly layered and comprised of many other aspects, with various themes continuing throughout the book. One reoccurring theme was that of unrequited love, which often involved one character in aggressive pursuit. Jove, otherwise known as Jupiter in Roman mythology, was the supreme God of the Heavens and though he was married to Juno, he often lusted after the most beautiful of mortals in the earthly realm. This presentation proposes that while Ovid’s Metamorphoses provided a starting point for artists, these Ovidian stories were open to interpretation (and reinterpretation). Similar to religious imagery, which was most dominant at the time, they were constantly adapted in art. Examining two different portrayals of the Rape of Ganymede, one by Correggio and the other by Michelangelo demonstrates how Metamorphoses, as the title implies, was able to continually evolve and remain relevant to the changing social values.


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