Philosophy’s Prejudice Towards Religion

Author(s):  
Hendrik Hart

Religion acquired a bad press in philosophical modernity after a rivalry developed between philosophy and theology, originating in philosophy’s adopting the role of our culture’s superjudge in all of morality and knowledge, and in faith’s coming to be seen as belief, that is, as assent to propositional content. Religion, no longer trust in the face of mystery, became a belief system. Reason as judge of propositional belief set up religion’s decline. But spirituality is on the rise, and favors trust over reason. Philosophy could make space for the spiritual by acknowledging a difference between belief as propositional assent and religious faith as trust, a distinction lost with the mixing of Greek philosophy and Christian faith. Artistic or religious truth disappeared as authentic forms of knowing. But Michael Polanyi reintroduced knowledge as more than can be thought. Also postmodern and feminist thought urge us to abandon autonomous reason as sole limit to knowledge. We have space again for philosophy to look at openness to the spiritual. If spirituality confronts us with the mystery of the existential boundary conditions, religion may be a form of relating to the mystery that confronts us from beyond the bounds of reason. That mystery demands our attention if we are to be fully in touch with perennial issues of human meaning.

2020 ◽  
pp. 002383091989888
Author(s):  
Luma Miranda ◽  
Marc Swerts ◽  
João Moraes ◽  
Albert Rilliard

This paper presents the results of three perceptual experiments investigating the role of auditory and visual channels for the identification of statements and echo questions in Brazilian Portuguese. Ten Brazilian speakers (five male) were video-recorded (frontal view of the face) while they produced a sentence (“ Como você sabe”), either as a statement (meaning “ As you know.”) or as an echo question (meaning “ As you know?”). Experiments were set up including the two different intonation contours. Stimuli were presented in conditions with clear and degraded audio as well as congruent and incongruent information from both channels. Results show that Brazilian listeners were able to distinguish statements and questions prosodically and visually, with auditory cues being dominant over visual ones. In noisy conditions, the visual channel improved the interpretation of prosodic cues robustly, while it degraded them in conditions where the visual information was incongruent with the auditory information. This study shows that auditory and visual information are integrated during speech perception, also when applied to prosodic patterns.


1980 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst B. Haas

Why do nations create institutionalized modes of multilateral collaboration? How can common interests develop in the face of inequalities in power and asymmetries in interdependence? The author explores the role of knowledge in the definition of political objectives and interests. The systematic interplay of changing knowledge and changing objectives results in the redefinition of “issues” and the practice of “issue linkage.” The dynamics of issue-linkage, in turn, tell us something about international regimes for the management of progressively more complex issue areas. An ideal-typical “regime” is described, theoretically applicable to all types of issues. Since the cognitive attributes of the actors who set up such a regime cannot be expected to remain stable, this concept of a “regime” can illuminate cliscussion and analysis, but cannot be expected to provide a clear model for desirable policy. However, it can illustrate the options open to policy makers wishing to choose a mode of collaboration. Regimes dealing with money, the oceans, and technology transfer are used for illustrative purposes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAHIR KAMRAN

AbstractThis article sets out to delineate the process that led to the establishment of Mayo School of Arts in Lahore in 1875. It lays down the context within which the plan to set up art institutions in India was conceived. Contrary to Krishnan Kumar's view whereby the coloniser and the colonised constituted an adult-child relationship the coloniser, in that particular relationship took the role of the adult whereas the native became the child which had been a salient feature of the educational and academic landscape of British India. By challenging Krishna Kumar, this article while drawing on the inferences of Partha Mitter and Hussain Ahmad Khan, argues that in the realm of art instruction the analysis of colonial strategies of adjustment and readjustment provide useful insights about the administrative constraints and cognitive failures of the colonial administrators in the nineteenth-Century Punjab. Challenges like space-selection for MSA campus, appropriate Curriculum for the students and their inadequate language skills stared its founder Principal Lockwood Kipling (1837–19011) in the face. This forms the major focus of the article.


2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER J. WILKINSON ◽  
PETER G. COLEMAN

ABSTRACTAlthough a variety of research projects have been conducted on the benefits of religious coping in older adults, no direct comparison between atheism and religious faith has been published. The study reported in this paper tackled this issue by interviewing two matched groups of people aged over 60 years living in southern England, one of 11 informants with strong atheistic beliefs, and the other of eight informants with strong religious beliefs. Five paired comparisons were undertaken to examine the role of the content of the belief system itself in coping with different negative stresses and losses commonly associated with ageing and old age. The pairs were matched for the nature of the loss or stress that the two people had experienced, but the two individuals had opposed atheistic and religious beliefs. The analyses showed that all the study participants – regardless of their beliefs – were coping well, and suggested that a strong atheistic belief system can fulfil the same role as a strong religious belief system in providing support, explanation, consolation and inspiration. It is postulated that the strength of people's beliefs and how those beliefs are used might have more influence on the efficacy of coping than the specific nature of the beliefs. Further research into the strength of belief systems, including atheism, is required to test and elaborate this hypothesis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 654-690
Author(s):  
RADHA KAPURIA

AbstractThis article focuses on performing artists at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1801–39), the last fully sovereign ruler of the Punjab and leader of what is termed the Sikh empire. After Ranjit's death, his successors ruled for a mere decade before British annexation in 1849. Ranjit Singh's kingdom has been studied for the extraordinary authority it exercised over warring Sikh factions and for the strong challenge it posed to political rivals like the British. Scholarly exploration of cultural efflorescence at the Lahore court has ignored the role of performing artistes, despite a preponderance of references to them in both Persian chronicles of the Lahore court and in European travelogues of the time. I demonstrate how Ranjit Singh was partial to musicians and dancers as a class, even marrying two Muslim courtesans in the face of stiff Sikh orthodoxy. A particular focus is on Ranjit's corps of ‘Amazons’—female dancers performing martial feats dressed as men—the cynosure of all eyes, especially male European, and their significance in representing the martial glory of the Sikh state. Finally, I evaluate the curious cultural misunderstandings that arose when English ‘dancing’ encountered Indian ‘nautching’, revealing how gender was the primary axis around which Indian and European male statesmen alike expressed their power. Ubiquitous in the daily routine of Ranjit and the lavish entertainments set up for visitors, musicians and female performers lay at the interstices of the Indo-European encounter, and Anglo-Sikh interactions in particular.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
Yonatan Alex Arifianto ◽  
Joseph Christ Santo

Social media is actually used to improve social relationships and increase roles in various ways. However, on the one hand, social media is used as an arena for bullying to others and groups. The problem in this research is how the role of Christian faith. Using a descriptive qualitative method with a literature study approach, this research comes to the conclusion that believers must know the era of disruption in human social development, then understand the influence of social media on ethics, and examine how Christian faith views in the face of bullying. Holding on to the view that the Christian existence must be the salt and light of the world means that we must be prepared to live side by side with physical differences, ideas, and all other things.Persoalan yang terjadi dimana media sosial yang sejatinya digunakan untuk meningkatkan hubungan sosial dan meningkatkan peran dalam berbagai hal. Namun dalam satu sisi media sosial dijadikan ajang perundungan (bullying) kepada sesama maupun kelompok. Menggunakan metode kualitatif deskriptif dengan pendekatan studi literatur dapat dicapai tujuan penulisan dengan menyimpulkan bahwa iman Kristen dalam menghadapi perundungan di tengah disrupsi, dimana orang percaya harus mengetahui era disrupsi dalam perkembangan sosial manusia, lalu memahami adanya pengaruh media sosial dalam etika, dan mencermati bagaimana perundungan dalam pandangan iman Kristen untuk diterapkan dalam menghadapi penindasan. Sehingga ada peran orang percaya dalam menghadapi perundungan di era disrupsi. Orang percaya diharapkan mempunyai pandangan dalam menerima segala perbedaan baik fisik, ide, dan segala hal. Serta mau hidup berdampingan untuk terus menjadi garam dan terang seperti yang diinginkan Yesus dalam kehidupan kekristenan


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Vincent Duclert

Elie Halévy provided a profound and lasting critique of a Europe in crisis. In the 1930s, his interpretation was rooted in his reading of the world calamities of 1914-1918, which he delivered for the famous Rhodes Memorial Lectures at Oxford University in 1929. Studying the origins of his thought in the face of the war offers a privileged perspective on one of Halevy’s most important works, The Era of Tyrannies and, in particular, the role of democracy within his work more broadly. Most importantly, at the center of his approach was an attempt to confront this new political and ideological reality, beyond idealism or a religious faith in democracy’s superiority.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-140
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Vidotte Blanco Tárrega

O escravismo colonial, como vetor de um processo de organização do capital e de construção de um sistema mundo, engendra uma perene desqualificação do Negro e o coloca às margens do mundo ocidental, transformando-o, no mundo globalizado contemporâneo, em sujeito de conflitos ecológicos distributivos, na luta por seus direitos. A partir disso e na perspectiva do direito, propõe-se refletir sobre a condição histórica do Negro como agente central e sujeito da luta e da resistência na conformação do capitalismo, para ressignificar o papel desses sujeitos de direito e de suas lutas nos conflitos originários do desenvolvimentismo globalizado. Faz-se uma abordagem analítica na literatura especializada sobre escravidão. Os conflitos ecológicos foram pensados a partir da ecologia política e o racismo foi abordado a partir da filosofia e da história críticas. Dos resultados, têm-se que o regime escravocrata foi central na construção do sistema mundo capitalista e que o direito estatal moderno serviu a instituição desse regime, negando a condição de sujeitos de direito aos escravizados.  O direito moderno legitimou a hegemonia dos senhores de escravos e a inexistência de direitos aos cativos, mas criou as condições necessárias para a insurgência e o devir de resistência do ser escravizado, no âmbito de sua humanidade prorrogada.  Essa resistência é perene diante do avanço das fronteiras do progresso, que invadem os territórios tradicionais ocupados pelos excluídos do direito no sistema capitalista, sobretudo os Negros. Instalam-se conflitos ecológicos distributivos e no âmbito deles as gentes resistem e os massacres acontecem. O racismo, como processo histórico continua. Abstract: The colonial slavery, as a vector of a process of capital organization and the construction of a world system, engenders a perennial disqualification of the Black people and places it on the margins of the Western world, transforming it into a subject of ecological conflicts in the contemporary globalized world distributive, in the fight for their rights. From this and from the perspective of law, it is proposed to reflect on the historical condition of the Negro as a central agent and subject of struggle and resistance in the conformation of capitalism, to re-signify the role of these subjects of law and their struggles in the conflicts originated in the development. An analytical approach is made in the specialized literature on slavery. The ecological conflicts were thought from the political ecology and the racism was approached from the critical philosophy and history. From the results, it is shown that the slave system was central to the construction of the capitalist world system and that modern state law served the institution of this regime, denying the condition of subjects of law to the enslaved. Modern law legitimized the hegemony of the slave owners and the lack of rights to the captives but created the necessary conditions for the insurgency and the becoming of resistance of the enslaved, within the scope of his extended humanity. This resistance is perennial in the face of the advance of the frontiers of progress, which invade the traditional territories occupied by those excluded from law in the capitalist system, especially the Blacks. Distributive ecological conflicts are set up and within them people resist and massacres happen. Racism as a historical process continues.


Author(s):  
John Sullivan

What significance might John Henry Newman have for the university in the twenty-first century? This chapter focuses on four major contributions from Newman. First, he offers a picture of the task that should be at the heart of higher education, the cultivation of intellect. Second, he challenges the modern university to allow for and to facilitate the power of teachers to exercise a beneficent personal influence on their students. Third, at a time when there is a renewed salience of religion in the public domain, his advocacy of the role of religious faith in the university presents a stream of thinking that has to be constructively examined and weighed carefully, inviting neither automatic rejection nor acceptance. Finally, in the face of a range of pressures that threaten the ethos of the university, he provides a strongly counter-cultural source of ideals.


1984 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan A. Nelson ◽  
William P. Wilson

Classical psychoanalysis has stated that religion is a delusion, a view not shared by the majority of the American public. If religion is a delusion, then to share a delusion with a patient or to impose a delusional belief system on a patient would constitute unethical behavior on the part of the therapist. The authors believe that Christianity is not a delusion; therefore, to share the Christian faith with a patient whose ethical belief system is the same as the therapist's is ethical if the patient has indicated a willingness to explore this area of life. The issue of sharing the Christian faith with patients is discussed from a therapeutic and ethical perspective. It is concluded that if therapists are addressing problems that would be aided by spiritual interventions, if they are working within the patients’ belief systems, and if they have carefully defined the treatment contract to include spiritual interventions, then it is ethical to share their faith.


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