The Study of Religions and Religion in Denmark

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-342
Author(s):  
Tim Jensen

In this article, Tim Jensen, himself a former teacher of Religion in the Danish Grammar School (1981-1995), outlines the history of Religion, a non-confessional obligatory subject in the Danish Grammar School, as well as of the history of its now very close relations to the academic study of religions. Following the historical outline, Jensen draws a picture of the current aims and contents of Religion and of the related university study programmes. Finally, he briefly discusses other formal and less formal ‘intersections’.

2018 ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Katelis Viglas

The article seeks to present an overview of the history of Byzantine philosophy. It takes its point of departure in the most important factors that influenced and shaped the Patristic thought. Subsequently, the paper considers the relative autonomy of Byzantine philosophy and offers a brief profile of major philosophers that contributed to the stream in the period from 9th to 15th century. From the numerous subjects that were taken into account by the most prominent Byzantine philosophers, the article discusses such issues as: the view of God, the problem of ‘conceptual realism’, the relationship between such ‘disci  plines’ as logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and philosophical anthro  pology. Furthermore, such questions as the place of man in the world, the scope of their freedom and the problem of evil are also touched upon here. The paper concludes with some remarks on the develop  ment of Byzantine philosophy after the fall of Byzantium.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 134-140
Author(s):  
Marina Yu. Koreneva ◽  

In the publication V.T. Shalamov’s notes of the early 1970s about the meeting of the famous Austrian poet R.M. Rilke with the peasant poet S.D. Drozhzhin are introduced into academic study for the first time. The meeting took place in 1900 during Rilke’s second trip to Russia. The notes preserved in Shalamov’s archives represent preliminary observations for the future essay, which remained unfinished. The introductory article traces the history of Shalamov’s acquaintance with Rilke’s work and reconstructs Rilke’s image as perceived by Shalamov in the context of his biography and work. It also reconstructs, on the basis of letters and notebooks, the stages of an unrealized plan related to the theme of “Rilke and Drozhzhin”, suggested to Shalamov by B.L. Pasternak, but read by him in the subjective optics of the poet, who considered his main achievement “understanding of nature”. This subjective optics, which distinguishes Shalamov’s text from all subsequent interpretations of this historical and literary plot, is manifested especially clearly in the correlation of the figures of Rilke and Drozhzhin with Soviet writers who were Shalamov’s contemporaries (Tvardovsky, Dzhambul, Stalsky, etc.). The new archival material makes it possible to supplement the picture of the Soviet “Rilkeana” and to expand the understanding of Shalamov’s range of interests.


Author(s):  
Jørn Borup

Abstract The academic study of religion, with its concepts and theories that originate in a Western, Protestant context, has justly been criticized in postmodern and identity-focused discourses, in recent years under the umbrella of decolonization and social justice activism. It has been suggested that allegedly universally-applicable theories and methodologies are relativized and revealed as particularized Eurocentrism in the hegemonic representations of “white” or “Western” power regimes. While acknowledging such reorientations in the philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history of religion, this article also critically investigates and discusses the “critical study of religion.” It is suggested that the revisionist deconstruction emphasized by contemporary identity perspectives, with their discourses of difference and re-essentialized understandings of religion and culture, are not only problematic as theoretical orientations. Radical identity politics also imply methodological constraints on the academic study of religion, where comparison, analytical categories, and reflexive emic–etic distinctions must remain key factors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan M. Strijdom

A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands to decolonise Western models of knowledge production. In Savage Systems (1996) and Empire of Religion (2014), David Chidester has contributed to this project by relating the invention and use of terms such as ‘religion’, ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ by theorists of religion in European imperial metropoles to South African colonial and indigenous contexts. This article intends to take Chidester’s project further by relating Gerardus Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis of ‘primitive mentality’ (particularly in De primitieve mensch en de religie, 1937) to Chidester’s analysis and postcolonial critique of imperial theories of religion. By taking animism and dreams in Chidester’s and Van der Leeuw’s works as example, it is argued that in spite of the latter’s decontextualised use of ethnological material, a fundamental shift occurred in the judgement of ‘primitive’ religion from Tylor’s evolutionary to Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis, which is contrary to claims according to which modern theories are unanimously denigratory of indigenous religions.


Author(s):  
James Midgley

The term “international social welfare” is used to refer both to social welfare policies and programs around the world and to the academic study of international social welfare activities. The entry focuses on the latter meaning and provides an overview of the history of scholarly inquiry into international social welfare, the key topics that have been identified and discussed by international social welfare scholars, and the likely future development of the field.


Author(s):  
Ignacio de la Rasilla

Summary This article examines the long-forgotten first book-length treatise on international law ever published by a woman in the history of international law. The first part places Concepción Arenal’s Ensayo sobre el Derecho de gentes (1879) in the historical context of the dawn of the international legal codification movement and the professionalisation of the academic study of international law. The second part surveys the scattered treatment that women as objects of international law and women’s individual contributions to international law received in international law histories up to the early twentieth century. It then draws many parallels between Arenal’s work and the influential resolutions of the first International Congress of Women in 1915 and surveys related developments during the interwar years. The conclusion highlights the need of readdressing the invisibility of women in international legal history.


1970 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 57-62

The public life of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia, a Viscount of the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was one of the most paradoxical in the history of his native country. Bruce was born in Melbourne on 15 April 1883, of a well-to-do mercantile family. 1893 saw the collapse of a great land boom, the failure of some banks and an acute general depression. The family business, Paterson, Laing and Bruce, was in difficulties. Stanley Bruce’s father sold his mansion in the fashionable suburb of Toorak. Stanley himself had to leave his preparatory school—the fees were not available. His father, who appears to have been a singularly determined man, then proceeded to restore the fortunes of the business. In 1896 the young Stanley went to the well-known Melbourne Grammar School, where he was a most successful all-round student. It has been given to few boys at a great school to be not only captain of football, of cricket, of athletics, and of rowing, but also Senior Prefect (i.e. Captain) of the School.


Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 430-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfons Nehring

Treatises de modis significandi are known to have been a favorite genre of scholastic literature. One of them, by Martinus de Dacia, has lately been made the subject of a thorough study by Father Heinrich Roos, S.J., and will be briefly discussed in these pages. The text of this treatise, and commentaries on it, are found in a fairly large number of manuscripts, of which Fr. Roos presents a list, and which he endeavors to determine in their mutual relation in order to lay the groundwork for a future edition, apparently — as much as any one not himself familiar with the manuscripts can judge — with thoroughness and reliablity (chs. I, II). In some of the manuscripts and in certain other sources the treatise is ascribed to one Martinus de Dacia (Denmark). Very convincingly Fr. Roos demonstrates (ch. III) that this bit of information is correct and that the author was identical with a high-ranking Danish cleric of that name, who at one time was the chancellor of King Eric VI Menved. It is likely that Martinus composed his treatise while he was a professor in the Liberal Arts Faculty of the University of Paris, probably around 1250. The treatise seems to have enjoyed a great reputation, which would be accounted for if Fr. Roos is right in assuming that Martinus set the model for the entire type. In the last two chapters (IV, V) Fr. Roos describes the character and basic ideas of the tractate against the background of the development of scholarship and higher education during the Middle Ages. This historical outline is very interesting and instructive indeed. Nevertheless it provokes criticism regarding two interrelated points, namely, the characterization of scholastic grammar and its position in the history of linguistic studies.


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