Religion, critique of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Lutz-Bachmann
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
Critique Of Religion

During the Enlightenment a new philosophy of religion arose, one which was not connected with metaphysics or philosophical theology. It asked to what extent religion could be legitimated philosophically, to what extent it could be shown to be reasonable. The reasonableness of religion was taken to be significant for the political as well as the confessional clash between Christian denominations in Europe, all of which tried to justify their conflicting religious doctrines by reference to a supernatural revelation. The philosophical debate that began in the Enlightenment with regard to the criteria and arguments for a religion connected either to human nature or to public reason can be called a ‘critique of religion’ (Religionskritik), although the expression is not common before the critical philosophy of Kant and his school. Hegel followed the programme of Kant’s philosophy, maintaining a philosophical concept of religion as falling ‘within the limits of reason alone’. The radical left-wing school of Hegelianism transformed Hegel’s approach, which was a critical legitimation of religion, into its destruction. Presupposing materialism in ontology and atheism, Feuerbach held that religion should be interpreted as a kind of anthropology. Marx claimed that religion is an expression of a certain sort of ideology and a necessary illusion within a class-structured society. In twentieth-century philosophy, the critique of religion can be found in two positions. The first is a rational reconstruction of the practical intentions or semantic content of religious belief; the second is a continuation of the interpretation of religion as ideological or illusory. In addition, we can identify certain other varieties of the critique of religion, including the theological critique of religion (found, for example, in the work of Barth and Bonhoeffer) and the philosophical critique of particular religious traditions (found, for example, in the romantic and postmodern rejections of Christian monotheism by Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Klages and Heidegger).

scholarly journals Origins of the Interpretation and Criticism of Philosophical Foundations of Leninism in Western Marxism

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Alexey E. Savin ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Soviet Marxism ◽  
The Enlightenment

The aim of the article is to discover the nature of the widespread criticism of Leninism in Western countries in the “left communism” or “communism of the Soviets” (Raetekommunismus), which arose in Germany, Holland, and Denmark in the 1920s and 1930s. To understand the general lines of the criticism of the philosophy of Leninism the author analyzes the ideas presented in the work Lenin as Philosopher by Anton Pannekoek, one of the greatest thinkers and politicians of the “communism of the Soviets”. In its philosophical part, the work is devoted to the criticism of Lenin’s main philosophical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. The author also takes into account the articles devoted to this criticism by Karl Korsch and Paul Mattik, other founders of “communism of the Soviets”. The significance of these works is determined by the fact that they constitute the philosophical foundation of contemporary Western “Marxist anti-Leninism”. The author reveals the political presuppositions and the political background of the polemic about the philosophical foundations of Leninism. The background is a polemic about the significance of the Russian revolution and the principles of building the Bolshevik party for the rest of the world and especially for Western countries and their Communist parties. The philosophical polemic with Leninism grows out of a doubt about the universal significance of the experience of the Russian revolution. In particular, Pannekoek and Korsch put forward the thesis of the bourgeois-democratic, not socialist character of the Russian revolution. From this thesis, they conclude that the theoretical basis of the Russian revolution is also of a bourgeois character, i.e. the Russian revolution is based on the ideas of the Enlightenment. The philosophical foundation of the Enlightenment is natural-scientific materialism, not historical materialism, i.e. not Marxism. The article demonstrates the genesis of the concept of Leninism as (1) an anti-democratic tendency in the contemporary liberation movement, (2) an instrument for legitimizing the repressive practices of the bureaucracy in the workers’ parties and in the “catching-up” states of organized capitalism, (3) a naturalistic mishmash of natural-scientific and historical materialism, ultimately suppressing and emasculating the historicity of Marxist thought. The author reveals how this concept was transmitted to tmodern Western left-wing thought through the Frankfurt school, and especially through Marcuse’s work Soviet Marxism (1958), which for many years became the most popular theoretical source for the Marxist criticism of Soviet dialectical materialism in the Western left. Nowadays, this interpretation functions in it in a sedimented form as self-evidence (Selbstverstaendlichkeit) and automatism.

Arte ConTexto

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Socialist Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.

Infusions and Fumigations

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Wilkens
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Point ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Social Acceptability ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Different Types

Written texts, especially sacred texts, can be handled in different ways. They can be read for semantic content; or they can be materially experienced, touched, or even be inhaled or drunk. I argue that literacy ideologies regulate social acceptability of specific semantic and somatic text practices. Drinking or fumigating the Qurʾan as a medical procedure is a highly contested literacy event in which two different ideologies are drawn upon simultaneously. I employ the linguistic model of codeswitching to highlight central aspects of this event: a more somatic ideology of literacy enables the link to medicine, while a more semantic ideology connects the practice to theological discourses on the sacredness of the Qurʾan as well as to the tradition of Prophetic medicine. Opposition to and ridicule of the practice, however, comes from representatives of an ideology of semantic purity, including some Islamic theologians and most Western scholars of Islam. Qurʾanic potions thus constitute an ideal point of entry for analyzing different types of literacy ideologies being followed in religious traditions.

Ideological bases of attitudes towards meat abstention: Vegetarianism as a threat to the cultural and economic status quo

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022110203
Author(s):  
Samantha K. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Economic Status ◽  
Meat Consumption ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Political Right

Those on the political right engage in greater meat consumption and animal exploitation than their left-wing counterparts. Previous research suggests this is because they view vegetarianism as threatening the nation’s dietary customs and economy. Across two studies, I extend this concept of “vegetarianism threat” by showing that it separates into two distinct dimensions of concern: cultural (symbolic) threats and economic (realistic) threats. The resultant multidimensional scale allows a finer grained understanding of the roots of ideology-based threat responses to meat-free movements. Together, results implicate symbolic concerns as the key element of vegetarianism threat contributing to negative attitudes towards meat abstention and its proponents.

GEOGRAPHY, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND IMPROVEMENT Geography and Enlightenment. Edited by David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. viii+455. ISBN 0-226-48720-2 (hb). $52·00. 0-226-48721-0 (pb). $25·00. Nature's government: science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world. By Richard Drayton. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xxi+346. ISBN 0-300-05976-0. £25·00. Enlightenment geography: the political languages of British geography, 1650–1850. By Robert J. Mayhew. London: Macmillan, 2000. Pp. viii+324. ISBN 0-333-79186-X. £45·00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
FELIX DRIVER
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Lecture Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

What is Enlightenment? Few questions in the history of ideas can have given rise to more controversy, sustained over more than two centuries and extending into the furthest reaches of contemporary thought. In comparison, the ‘where’ of Enlightenment – the sites from which philosophes garnered their evidence, the settings in which their ideas took shape, the networks through which they were disseminated, the contexts in which they were interpreted – has received much less attention. It is not that these geographies have been altogether neglected. Distinctions between different ‘national’ Enlightenments (French, Scottish, English, and so on) are familiar, perhaps all too familiar, to historians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At a smaller scale, it is difficult to imagine historical accounts of the Enlightenment world without some sort of tour of those paradigmatic sites – the coffee house, the botanic garden, the lecture theatre. There is a geography here, of sorts: but in truth it is often simply a stage for action, a passive background (sometimes ‘national’, sometimes ‘local’) to the real business of social and intellectual change. In recent years, however, intellectual historians in general, and historians of science in particular, have begun to pay more attention to these and many other sites, not simply as inert contexts but as vital components of the making and communication of new knowledge. Thus is a genuine geography of knowledge in the making.

FACTORS OF THE FORMATION OF THE POLITICAL ELITE IN THE ARAB COUNTRIES IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ASPECT

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-285
Author(s):  
A.Sh. Abhari ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Second World

Antagonism with Western civilization in the course of colonial expansion and the subsequent struggle for independence, had a significant impact on the formation of the political elite of the Arab world. At the level of mass public consciousness and perception of historical reality, a transformation of worldview occurs with the active influence of Islam and its spiritual leaders. how the suppression of communist, socialist and other left-wing and reformist political movements in the region after the Second World War influenced and continue to influence the economic and political development of the region.

Social and demographic image of Jewish revolutionaries (based on materials from the All-Union Society of Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers)

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-179
Author(s):  
Kuzma A. Yakimov
Keyword(s):  
Political Socialization ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Electronic Database ◽  
Social Origin ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Liberation Movement

The work is devoted to the study of the generalized sociographic image of the cohort of Jewish revolutionaries. The participation of Jews in the revolution is seen as an integral part of the all-Russian revolutionary process. In the course of the study, the role and place of Jews in the Rus-sian revolutionary movement in the late 19th – early 20th centuries was clarified and concretized. Thanks to the analysis of a personalized electronic database on Jewish revolutionaries, created on the basis of materials from the All-Union Society of Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers, the structure of social origin, level of education and type of activity of the left wing of politically ac-tive Jewry has been analyzed. The features of the political socialization of Jews, constrained by restrictive articles of Jewish legislation, are shown. We come to the conclusion that such a signifi-cant percentage of Jews in the revolutionary movement is explained both by the long-term devel-opment of the revolutionary liberation movement in the Pale of Settlement, and by the existence of numerous restrictions for representatives of the Jewish nationality.

La Idea de “Razón Publica” (y su Revisión) en el Último Rawls

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Fernando Aranda Fraga ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Public Good ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Key Topics ◽  
Political Philosopher

In 1993 John Rawls published his main and longest work since 1971, where he had published his reknowned A Theory of Justice, book that made him famous as the greatest political philosopher of the century. We are referring to Political Liberalism, a summary of his writings of the 80’s and the first half of the 90’s, where he attempts to answer the critics of his intellectual partners, communitarian philosophers. One of the key topics in this book is the issue of “public reason”, whose object is nothing else than public good, and on which the principles and proceedings of justice are to be applied. The book was so important for the political philosophy of the time that in 1997 Rawls had to go through the 1993 edition, becoming this new one the last relevant writing published before the death of the Harvard philosopher in November 2002.

scholarly journals Redistributing under fiscal constraint: partisanship, debt, inequality and labour market regulation

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lasse Aaskoven
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
The Political ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Government Budget ◽  
Fiscal Constraint ◽  
Labour Market Regulation ◽  
High Government ◽  
Labour Regulation

AbstractLabour market regulation varies significantly, both within and between developed democracies. While there has been extensive research and debate in economics on the consequences of labour market regulation, the political causes for levels and changes in labour market regulation have received less scholarly attention. This article investigates a political economy explanation for differences in labour market regulation building on a theoretical argument that labour regulation can be used as a nonfiscal redistribution tool. Consequently, partisanship, the demand for redistribution and government budget constraint jointly determine whether labour market regulation will increase or decrease. Consistent with this argument, panel analyses from 33 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries reveal that labour market regulation increases under left-wing governments that face increased market inequality and high government debt.

scholarly journals Intelektualiści zachodnioeuropejscy od wybuchu II wojny światowej do współczesności

2015 ◽  
pp. 145-164
Author(s):  
Maria Tomczak
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
World War 2 ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Formula

This study aims to show the forms of political involvement of Western European intellectuals. In doing so, the paper attempts to answer the question about the role they played in Western and Central Europe in the discussed period. The paper also demonstrates the cultural and political causes of their decline.streszczenieFor the intellectuals of Western and Central Europe, World War 2 was an extremely difficult period. The genocidal policies of the totalitarian states induced them to take a position, while at the same time depriving them of the ability to express their views publicly. This engendered a sense of helplessness; also, apart for a few exceptions, only emigrants could actually perform the function of intellectuals. Among those, an important role to play fell to two groups: German emigrants who distanced themselves from their nation, and Jewish emigrants, who addressed the subject of the Holocaust. After the war, the Iron Curtain also restricted the actions of intellectuals. It soon turned out that the tenor of spiritual life was set by left-wing authors, fascinated with the USSR. The fascination petered out after the disclosure of Stalin’s crimes in 1956. It was terminated definitively by the ruthless suppression of the Prague Spring. It was at that time that conservatism and right-wing intellectuals returned to Europe. Their aim was to reverse the trend and prevent Western Europe from drifting leftward. The change of the paradigm served to settle the scores with the leftist intellectuals. They were accused of subversive activities against the state and nation or treason. Also, in the intellectual circles there emerged a conviction that the previous formula had been exhausted. A new formula of activities of intellectuals was considered particularly in France, by authors of such eminence as R. Aron, M. Foucault, or P. Bourdieu. The deconstruction of the figure of the intellectual was completed by J.-F. Lyotard, who pronounced the death of intellectuals. Involvement of intellectuals remained a valid notion only in the countries of the Eastern bloc. In post-Cold War Europe, the decline of intellectuals became even more discernible. This was occasioned by a number of political and cultural factors. In this respect, particular role should be attributed to postmodernism which, by disproving the Enlightenment understanding of culture, undermined the role played by intellectuals.

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