Features and Functions of Sŏnwŏnjŏn of the Late Chosŏn Period Reflected in Ritual Foods and Vessels, Interior Setting, and the Enshrined Portraits

Sŏnwŏnjŏn (璿源殿, Hall of Jade Source) stands out from other royal portrait halls within the late Chosŏn period on account of its unofficiality. This comes through in its rites, ritual foods and vessels, interior setting, and the enshrined portraits. Sŏnwŏnjŏn was an informal sacred hall where royal family members could personally present offerings and worship before portraits of late Chosŏn kings in the inner court. Birthday tea rituals (誕辰茶禮), which drew on non-Confucian traditions, were established as the representative rite of this hall. Unlike many other ritual halls at the time, these tea rituals often featured the active participation of royal women including queen dowagers and royal consorts. From the preparation of rituals to acts of veneration, they played an active role. This stands in stark contrast to the rites of Yŏnghŭijŏn (永禧殿, Hall of Eternal Happiness), the representative official portrait hall of late Chosŏn, which were always performed by male officials. Yŏnghŭijŏn primarily used oil-and-honey pastries (油蜜菓) and brass vessels for the offering tables. Conversely, Sŏnwŏnjŏn presented vessels made from the most luxurious materials of the time, such as silver, gold, and even jade. The vessels included delicacies comprised of various kinds of meat and fish dishes for the tea rituals. Objects originally produced for the king’s use in life were also incorporated into Sŏnwŏnjŏn rites. In sum, the ritual foods and vessels for tea rituals echoed the table setting for a king in the inner banquet (內進饌) to commemorate his birthday. The rites as well as the ritual foods and vessels of Sŏnwŏnjŏn seem to have followed the tea rituals of a spirit hall, in which a deceased king’s spirit tablet was enshrined for about two years and royal family members could serve as if the late king was alive. The physical environment of a chamber at Sŏnwŏnjŏn mimicked the interior setting of a spirit hall, and consisted of a baldachin, a three-sided Five Peak screen, a royal bed, and a set of four-panel peony paintings. This interior differs from one of official portrait halls, wherein there was a one-sided Five Peak screen and a royal bed without the use of Peony screens. Indeed, Sŏnwŏnjŏn functioned as a substitute for a spirit hall. In the 19th century, the hall was distinguished from a sprit hall by the more lavish decoration of its inner space with paintings rich in symbolism, additionally including Plum screens and Sea-and-Peaches of Immortality screens. The subject matter of the paintings expressed the royal family’s hope for the eternal life of their ancestors. Portraits selected for worship in Sŏnwŏnjŏn matched the intimate and informal character of this late Chosŏn portrait hall. Unlike Yŏnghŭijŏn in which full-length portraits of late Chosŏn kings in official attire were displayed, a majority of the displayed or enshrined portraits at Sŏnwŏnjŏn presented kings in ordinary attire. Moreover, half-length portraits were enshrined therein. Kings and also the queen dowagers were primarily responsible for deciding what went into it. While ritual requirements were important to these decisions, human feelings for the portrait subjects also influenced the selection.

Vulgar Talk and Learned Reasoning in Berkeley’s Moral and Religious Thought

Berkeley “argues with the learned and speaks with the vulgar.” I use his double maxim to interpret his ethics. My approach is new. The Sermons and Guardian Essays mainly speak to the vulgar and Passive Obedience and Alciphron reason with the learned. The reward of ethics is eternal bliss in a future state: religion and ethics are connected. I study a set of problems: resurrection, eternal life, happiness, benevolence, the goodness of God, and self-love. Divine bliss is unlike any earthly happiness. The idea of law does not support benevolence, even if it is a Christian duty and virtue. God is good, but how to prove it? The learned must study the complex theodicy problem; the vulgar need assurance based on their sensuous experience and fervent hope of eternal bliss. Self-love may be a vital issue to the learned, although the vulgar may not realize their need to overcome it. The main questions concern Berkeley’s two approaches to ethical problems: first, how do their topics differ, and second, are they mutually consistent?

PHILOSOPHY AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

The author sets out to respond to the student complaint that ‘Philosophy did not answer “the big questions”’, in particular the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ The response first outlines and evaluates the most common religious answer, that human life is given a meaning by God who created us and informs us that this life is just the pilgrim way to the next eternal life in heaven. He then discusses the response that, from the point of view of post-Darwinian science and the evolution of the universe and all that is in it, human life on Earth must be afforded no more meaning than the meaning we would give to a microscopic planaria or to some creature on another planet in a distant universe. All things including human creatures on Planet Earth just exist for a time and that is that. There is no plan or purpose. In the last sections the author outlines the view that it is we humans ourselves who give meaning to our lives by our choices of values or things that are worth pursuing and through our resulting sense of achievement or the opposite. Nevertheless the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ can mean quite different things in different contexts, and so merit different if related answers. From one point of view one answer may lie in terms of the love of one human for another.

The Medieval Armenian Symbol of Eternity in the Art of the Twelfth-Century Italian Sculptor Nicholaus: A Veiled Performance

The medieval Armenian symbol of eternity – a whirl sign – is engraved in the forehead of five bull sculptures dated to the first half of the twelfth century, attributable to the workshop of the Italian sculptor Nicholaus. The whirl is an ancient sacred symbol associated with eternal life, not specific to any religion or culture, that has persisted for millennia. The following carvings display a closely resembling geometric whirl engravure: in the apse frieze of Koenigslutter Kaiserdom (Lower Saxony), in the pulpit of Sacra di Carpi (Modena), in the “Creation of animals” panel of S. Zeno Basilica (Verona), in the Verona Cathedral porch, and in the Ferrara Cathedral narthex. This symbol, generally ignored by Western Christian art after the Carolingian period, was revisited by the Nicholaus workshop. We argue that the small, hitherto overlooked whirl engraving made by these artists in the bull head of Koenigslutter, Carpi, Ferrara and Verona was a veiled ornamental performance displaying the symbol of eternity to signify the concept of life in the hereafter. Here the immediate inspiration source was likely Armenian, because in the early twelfth century the geometric whirl symbol of eternity was foreign to Italian religious decorations while it was deeply rooted in Armenian Christian art. Nicholaus and his atelier were familiar with the leaved cross and the whirl – traditional Armenian motifs symbolizing life in the hereafter – and were inspired by them in some of their works. In the decorative reliefs of S. Zeno Basilica façade, Verona Cathedral porch and Koenigslutter Kaiserdom frieze, various examples of the geometric whirl metamorphosis into naturalistic foliate whirl are extant, witnessing the Nicholaus atelier’s versatile sculptural performance in conceptualizing everlasting life.

THE THE CONCEPT OF “HAPPINESS” IN THE WORKS OF AL-FARABI AND THE RELIGIONS OF ISLAM

In this article, we will try to study deeply about the concept of “happiness” based on religious concepts in the Arab-Muslim society and to determine the notion of “happiness”. Analyzing the foundational and theoretical significance of the concept of “happiness” in Islam, quoting from the texts of the Quran and Hadith, thereby we explained the meaning of “happiness” and its role. Also, the article presents the views of Kazakhstani and Arab-Muslim scholars’ about “happiness”. We use methods of comparative theoretical research of the “happiness” concept. According to the verses of the Quran and Hadith in Islam, a Muslim must not only learn and practice in this life but also pray to Allah in the hope of achieving endless happiness in his future life. Believers trust in a new life that begins after worldly life, that is, an eternal life, and they believe real-life and infinite happiness will be found only in the future. In religious texts, the eternal soul is happy only with the sounds of eternal happiness. Hereby, a religious person knows that material happiness cannot make him happy totally.

Dostoevsky's Christianity

The article refutes the widespread view that Dostoevsky's Christian beliefs were strictly Orthodox. It is proved that Dostoevsky's religious and philosophical searches' central tendency is the criticism of historical, ecclesiastical Christianity as a false, distorted form of the teaching of Jesus Christ and the desire to restore this teaching in its original purity. Modern researchers of the history of early Christianity find more and more arguments in favor of the fact that the actual teaching of Jesus Christ is contained in that religious movement, which the church called the Gnostic heresy. The exact philosophical expression of the teaching of Christ was received in the later works of J.G. Fichte, whose ideas had a strong influence on the Russian writer. Like Fichte, Dostoevsky understands Christ as the first person who showed the possibility of revealing God in himself and gaining divine omnipotence and eternal life directly in earthly reality. In this sense, every person can become like Christ. Dostoevsky's main characters walk the path of Christ and show how difficult this path is. The article shows that Dostoevsky used in his work not only the philosophical version of true (Gnostic) Christianity developed by German philosophy (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), but also the key motives of the Gnostic myth, primarily the idea that our world, filled with evil and suffering, is created not by the supreme, good God-Father, but by the evil Demiurge, the Devil (in this sense, it is hell).

The celebration of the lizard:

The aim of this paper is the analysis of the meaning of the iconography of the month of September in Late Antique Roman illustrated calendars. This image alludes to the apotropaic ritual of the grape harvest done through the suspension of a lizard above bunches of grapes or containers of wine. The use of this image attests to the continuity of the Dionysian cult in Late Antiquity, even if only at a popular level, because of the definitive affirmation of Christianity. At the same time, the new religion included this iconographic pattern, which has acquired an eschatological meaning related to eternal life.

A Theological Understanding of Ancestor Veneration in the Bapedi Society as an Expression of Transcendence and Anticipation of Comfort and Hope

In the Bapedi society, ancestor veneration is one area that requires scholarly attention. Historically, in the indigenous Bapedi religion there is far greater acceptance that ancestors are in existence, and ancestor veneration and culture are related. A significant dimension in the role played by the ancestors in the Bapedi culture is how they are believed to transmit and safeguard life. Therefore, an investigation of ancestor veneration as a source of comfort and hope, in the context of Bapedi people’s religious and cultural rituals is inevitable. The present study investigated the Bapedi conception of death, its meaning, the significance of the rituals performed during and after death, and how Bapedi people conceive and deal with ancestor veneration. To achieve this, the study employed direct observations, video recordings, and informal interviews. Three interrelated research questions, therefore, guided this study: 1) Do Bapedi people believe in the resurrection of the dead and eternal life for the individual after death?; 2) Does the continuing relationship of ancestors with their families have medical, financial, moral, biological, and social implications for the living?; and 3) Do Bapedi people believe in reincarnation of a dead individual in the form of another individual still living, and particularly in the powerful spirit or soul of a dead person which still has a potent functional role which affects the still living? Findings of this study have shown that ancestor veneration seems to offer Bapedi people an opportunity to express their faith and confidence in their ancestors. It has become evident from a thorough analysis of the data that music is a societal need and appears to be an expression of the most basic values and feelings of the Bapedi people. It was concluded that ancestors have unlimited powers over the lives of the living, and there are no restrictions to either the chastisement or the blessings that they can confer on their descendants.