scholarly journals „Wo Schmutz und Blut zusammenfließen“ Problemzonen eines linken Klassenprojekts

Author(s):  
Peter Bescherer

Over the past few years socialist intellectuals and political activists have stressed the need for an alliance between middle-class groups, wage-workers, and the marginalised underclass. The article seeks to unfold the theoretical background of this rather difficult approach by checking out the lower limits of the claimed alliance. Starting with Marx and Engels’ downgrading of the lumpenproletariat, it examines two controversial lines in critical theory: on the one hand analyses of supposed shortcomings that regard marginalised groups as unable to become subject of social transformation, and on the other hand (e .g . anarchist or operaist and post-operaist) approaches that bring into focus the particular but coequal ways of the poor and excluded in struggling for change. The article argues for an integrated approach.

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syed Afzal Peerzade

In this paper an attempt is made to learn as to how the Islamic shariah defines and measures the phenomenon of poverty. A systematic study of the Qur’an, the traditions of Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the conduct of righteous caliphs, and the writings of early Muslim jurists would make it clear that the poor, indigent, and destitute are given adequate importance. The early Islamic state, where necessary, made serious efforts to assist and rehabilitate the poor and the needy. One of the means of assistance and rehabilitation was zakat. The disbursement of zakat funds required that the poor should be unambiguously and convincingly separated from the non-poor. How was it done in the past? Traditions of the Prophet (the sunnah) throw sufficient light on this issue. When we carefully go through the traditions, it would be clear that the explanation of poverty as given by the Prophet is dynamic. It defies time and space limitations. A deeper probe of the traditions would reveal that, for all practical purposes, the Prophet has stressed on an integrated approach. His explanation is far more comprehensive, integrated, and meaningful than the one expressed today in terms of daily intake of certain minimum calories. Present-day Muslim countries should redefine their approach towards the definition and measurement of poverty to reflect the essence of Islamic shariah.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


Worldview ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
Will Herberg

John Courtney Murray's writing cannot fail to be profound and instructive, and I have profited greatly from it in the course of the past decade. But I must confess that his article, "Morality and Foreign Policy" (Worldview, May), leaves me in a strange confusion of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can sympathize with what I might call the historical intention of the natural law philosophy he espouses, which I take to be the effort to establish enduring structures of meaning and value to serve as fixed points of moral decision in the complexities of the actual situation. On the other hand, I am rather put off by the calm assurance he exhibits when he deals with these matters, as though everything were at bottom unequivocally rational and unequivocally accessible to the rational mind. And I am really distressed at what seems to 3ie to be his woefully inadequate appreciation of the position of the "ambiguists," among whom I cannot deny I count myself.


1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 368-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Payne

In recent discussions of the origins and process of animal domestication (Reed, 1961, Zeuner, 1963), both authors rely on two kinds of evidence: on the one hand, the present distributions and characteristics of the different breeds of whatever animal is being discussed, together with its feral and wild relatives, and, on the other hand, the past record, given by literary and pictorial sources and the bones from archaeological and geological sites. Increased recognition of the limitations of the past record, whether in the accuracy of the information it appears to give (as in the case of pictorial sources), or in the certainty of the deductions we are at present capable of drawing from it (this applies especially to the osteological record), has led these authors to argue mainly from the present situation, using the past record to confirm or amplify the existing picture.Arguing from the present, many hypotheses about the origins and process of domestication are available. The only test we have, when attempting to choose between these, lies in the direct evidence of the past record. The past record, it is freely admitted, is very fragmentary: the information provided by the present situation is more exact, ranges over a much wider field, and is more open to test and control. Nevertheless, the past record, however imperfect it is, is the only direct evidence we have about the process of domestication.


PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”


1943 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Kenneth Scott Latourette

A strange contrast exists in the status of the Christian Church in the past seventy years. On the one hand the Church has clearly lost some of the ground which once appeared to be safely within its possession. On the other hand it has become more widely spread geographically and, when all mankind is taken into consideration, more influential in shaping human affairs than ever before in its history. In a paper as brief as this must of necessity be, space can be had only for the sketching of the broad outlines of this paradox and for suggesting a reason for it. If details were to be given, a large volume would be required. Perhaps, however, we can hope to do enough to point out one of the most provocative and important set of movements in recent history.


2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Jeroen de Ridder

Much of Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies(2011) will contain few surprises for those who have been following his work over the past decades. This —I hasten to add — is nothing against the book. The fact alone that his ideas on various topics, which have appeared scattered throughout the literature, are now actualized, applied to the debate about the (alleged) conflict between science and religion, and organized into an overarching argument with a single focus makes this book worthwhile. Moreover, I see this book making significant progress on two opposite ends of the spectrum of views about science and religion. On the one end, we find the so-called new atheists and other conflict-mongers. Compared to the overheated rhetoric that oozes from their writings, this book is a breath of fresh air. Plantinga cuts right to the chase and soberly exposes the bare bones of the new atheists’ arguments. It immediately becomes clear how embarrassingly bare these bones really are. On the other end of the spectrum are theologians and scientists who envisage harmony and concord between science and religion.


Virittäjä ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildikó Vecsernyés

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan, kuinka Suomen ja Unkarin pääministereitä puhutellaan Facebookissa. Tutkimuksen kohteena on se, mitä puhuttelukeinoja kommentoijat käyttävät kahdessa eri tarkoituksessa: toisaalta sympatian tai samaa mieltä olemisen, toisaalta erimielisyyden tai kritiikin ilmaisemisessa. Kahden sukukielen, suomen ja unkarin, puhuttelukeinot ovat samankaltaisia, mutta niiden käytössä on huomattavia eroja esimerkiksi sinuttelun ja teitittelyn yleisyydessä. Aineistona on viiteen Suomen pääministeri Juha Sipilän ja yhdeksään Unkarin pääministeri Viktor Orbánin vuosina 2015–2017 kirjoittamaan Facebook-päivitykseen tulleita kommentteja. Tarkastelun kohteena on 189 suomenkielistä ja 191 unkarinkielistä puhuttelumuotoa sisältävää kommenttia. Kommentit on jaettu myötäileviin ja vastustaviin ja näitä kahta kommenttityyppiä tarkastellaan kvantitatiivisesti ja kvalitatiivisesti pyrkimyksenä selvittää, mitä eroja puhuttelumuodon valinnassa ilmenee. Tutkimuksen teoreettis-metodisena taustana on aiempi sosiopragmaattinen puhuttelututkimus. Tutkimus osoittaa, että suomessa sinuttelu on hyvin yleistä riippumatta kommentin laadusta, mutta unkarissa sinuttelu on tavallisesti erimielisyyden osoittamisen keino. Tyypillinen kannustavan kommentin kirjoittaja käyttää suomessa sinuttelua ja pääministerin etunimeä, unkarissa teitittelyä, ön-teitittelypronominia ja pääministerin titteliä. Unkarin kielessä puhuteltavan yhteiskunnallinen asema vaikuttaakin puhuttelumuodon valintaan vahvemmin kuin suomessa. Toissijaisena strategiana unkarissa esiintyy jonkin verran myös uudenlaista kunnioittavaa sinuttelua yhdistettynä pääministerin etunimen käyttöön. Suomenkielisen aineiston vastustavissa kommenteissa esiintyy vielä todennäköisemmin sinuttelua kuin myötäilevissä kommenteissa sekä sinä-pronominia ja pääministerin sukunimeä, unkarinkielisessä aineistossa puolestaan sinuttelua, te ’sinä’ -pronominia ja pääministerin etu- tai sukunimeä tai nimenmuunnoksia. Toissijaisena strategiana joissain unkarin vastustavissa kommenteissa hyödynnetään ylikohteliaisuutta ja intentionaalista inkoherenssia. Aineiston perusteella näyttää siltä, että Facebook-kommenteissa käytetään suomessa etupäässä sinuttelua samoin kuin muissakin internetkeskusteluissa; kommentoijien mielipiteen ilmaisemisessa nominaalisilla puhuttelumuodoilla on tärkeä rooli. Unkarissa taas internetin yleisestä sinuttelupainotteisuudesta huolimatta tärkeimpänä keinona on sinuttelun ja teitittelyn vastakkainasettelu.   How to address a Prime Minister? Forms of address in comments to posts from the Prime Ministers of Finland and Hungary This article examines how the Prime Ministers of Finland and Hungary are addressed on Facebook. The aim of the study is to investigate which forms of address are used by commentators expressing, on the one hand, sympathy or consent, and on the other, disagreement or criticism. The repertoires of address forms of these two related languages, Finnish and Hungarian, bear many similarities, but the frequency and status of these forms are different. The data consists of comments on five posts written by Prime Minister of Finland Juha Sipilä and on nine posts written by Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán between 2015–2017, comprising a total of 189 comments in Finnish and 191 comments in Hungarian, all containing forms of address. The comments have been divided into two types: comments showing sympathy and comments showing disagreement or criticism. These two comment types have been analysed quantitatively and qualitatively aiming to determine how the address practices employed differ from each other. The theoretical background of this study is based upon previously conducted socio­pragmatic address research. The article shows that the use of T forms  is very common in Finnish, regardless of the type of comment, but that in Hungarian, T forms are typically used as a linguistic tool to express disagreement. In Finnish, a typical commentator showing sympathy will use T forms and address the Prime Minister by his first name, whereas in Hungarian V forms, the V form pronoun ön, and the title ‘Prime Minister’ are favoured. The social status of the addressee has a stronger effect on the choice of address forms in Hungarian than it does in Finnish. However, some Hungarian comments include a new, respectful type of T form used with the first name of the Prime Minister. In comments expressing disagreement in the Finnish data, writers favour T forms, especially T form pronouns, and the use of the Prime Minister’s surname, whereas in the Hungarian data T forms, the T form pronoun te ‘you’ and the use of the Prime Minister’s first name, surname or nicknames are the most typical address practices. In conclusion, commentators in the Finnish data seem to use mostly T forms on Facebook, thus imitating address practices common in other online conversations. Instead of the T/V opposition, nominal forms of address play an important role in expressing the commentators’ attitude. In the Hungarian data, despite the prevalence of the T forms in online chats, the most important resource in expressing relation to the Prime Minister seems to be the contrast between the T and V forms, reflecting their significant status in Hungarian.


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