Engaged Buddhism

This chapter enters the realm of contemporary moral discourse. It discusses the origins of the 20th- and 21st- century Engaged Buddhist movement, which attempts to construct a new understanding of Buddhism and of Buddhist ethics in a political sphere. The chapter also addresses the degree to which such a modernist movement can be considered Buddhist, the degree of continuity between Engaged Buddhism and earlier Buddhist ethical thought, and the impact of modern Western ethical and political theory on Engaged Buddhism. Special attention is devoted to the work of the 14th Dalai Lama, of Thich Nhat Hanh, and of Sulak Sivaraksa.

From New Spain to Damascus: Ottoman Religious Authorities and the Making of Medical Knowledge on Tobacco

This article examines the translation, circulation, and adaptation of the medical opinion of Spanish physician Nicolas Monardes (d. 1588) on tobacco in the Ottoman Empire. In addition to medical and encyclopedist authors, the spread of new medical knowledge in learned and eventually popular registers was the result of the efforts of religious authorities. These latter authorities, namely jurists, Sufis, and preachers, took an interest in the bodily and mental effects of smoking for its moral implications. In forming their medical-moral discourse, they sought and studied contemporary medical works of both Ottoman and European provenance. Challenging the strict division between learned and popular medicine, this article argues that Ottoman religious authorities, while often excluded from the history of medicine, played significant roles in the circulation, adaptation, and localization of medical knowledge.

Issue of the boundaries between good and evil in theological-moral discourse

Hardly any problem in contemporary theological-moral discourse causes such turbulence as the searching, reflection, and demarcation of the boundaries between good and evil in human acting. A fundamental problem is a criterion or a reference point according to which a person could reliably determine what is good and evil. Divergent theological views in the theological-moral dimension seem to have caused the clear boundaries between good and evil to disappear. Therefore, the crucial question is whether there is still a universal criterion for theological evaluation of a human act, as the situation in theological-moral discourse resembles an areopagus of opinions that have no common point in distinguishing between good and evil. This reflection examines the possibility if the Thomistic ethical analysis of a human act, together with the principle of double effect, may be a reference point for the demarcation of these boundaries.

Promise and devotion: catholicism and Girl Guides in Brazil

This paper attempts to analyze the main justifications for the expansion of Girl Guides in Brazil, a movement that featured a strong expression of female association, a tactic mobilized by certain female Catholic intellectuals to legitimize their circulation in the public space. It indicates education, culture and assistance as important fronts, in a group of actions aimed at securing the Catholic foundations of Brazilian society. Although the elementary principle of Girl Guides wasn’t connected to any one religion or belief, it’s possible to assess that the movement in Brazil was strongly intertwined with a religious and moral discourse in the form of the “good Girl Guide”, who should be pious and devoted to her promise of serving God and country, with clearly Catholic roots.

Scandal of the Church, Prison of the Soul

This article explores “bad custom” (prava consuetudo) in Latin-Christian church law of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Drawing chiefly on papal decretal letters and the statutes of local and regional synods, it discusses the theoretical debates over bad custom, how customs came to be regarded as evil, and what prava consuetudo meant in practice. While many usages were labeled “bad,” especially troubling were those that threatened clerical status by implying lay claims to authority in the church, blurring the distinction between laity and clergy, or humiliating the professed religious. The article also asks whether legal concerns over such collective behavior that brought scandal upon the church may have been provoked by a moral discourse over prava consuetudo as sinful conduct endangering the individual soul.

Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible

In this book, Yitzhaq Feder presents a novel and compelling account of pollution in ancient Israel, from its emergence as an embodied concept, rooted in physiological experience, to its expression as a pervasive metaphor in social-moral discourse. Feder aims to bring the biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence into a sustained conversation with anthropological and psychological research through comparison with notions of contagion in other ancient and modern cultural contexts. Showing how numerous interpretive difficulties are the result of imposing modern concepts on the ancient texts, he guides readers through wide-ranging parallels to biblical attitudes in ancient Near Eastern, ethnographic, and modern cultures. Feder demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary and psychological research can be applied to ancient textual evidence. He also suggests a path of synthesis that can move beyond the polarized positions which currently characterize modern academic and popular debates bearing on the roles of biology and culture in shaping human behavior.

RE-DEFINING CRIME IN MORAL DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL SECURITY

The author connects further study of the problems of social security with the need to redefine crime. The article deals with the transformation of ideas about crime and the appeal of modern researchers to the idea of understanding it in moral discourse. The author supports and develops further the thesis about the need to use the concept of «ethical minimum», which should be used in assessing the activities of the main subjects of social security. Violation of the principle of social justice in its instrumental meaning is considered as the main criterion for assessment. Those norms, laws, measures implemented by various subjects of social security that support the foundations of a decent life for people in society will be socially just. If this principle is ignored, “gray zones” of social security arise, in which there are increased risks of violation of the “ethical minimum”. The article also discusses the issue of separating such violations from completely understandable and explainable errors and management deficiencies that are difficult to avoid in situations of increased risks. Violations of the “ethical minimum” in the “gray zones” of social security, in contrast to a criminal offense, should receive an independent public assessment based on the methodology for studying the social responsibility of all agents important for ensuring the protection of the population.

Kantian Ethics and Utopian Thinking

Is Kantian ethics guilty of utopian thinking? Good and bad uses of utopian ideals are distinguished, an apparent path is traced from Rousseau’s unworkable political ideal to Kant’s ethical ideal, and three versions of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (and counterparts in common moral discourse) are examined briefly with special attention on the kingdom of ends formulation. Following summary of previous development of this central idea, several objections suggesting that this idea encourages bad utopian thinking are briefly addressed: that we cannot count on everyone to follow ideal rules, that even conscientious people disagree in their moral judgments, and that theories that allow exceptions to familiar moral rules create a “slippery slope” to consequentialism.

Social framework of historical responsibility: in search of rational grounds for historical estimates

Автор статьи настаивает на необходимости определения оснований социальной ответственности, чтобы избежать апелляции к эмоциям и моральному дискурсу при оценке исторических событий. Показано, что идеи И. Канта не дают возможности разрешить проблему ответственности вне свободы и концептуализировать коллективную ответственность. Некоторые решения предложены Х. Арендт, осмысляющей политическую ответственность как коллективную. Структурный подход А.М. Янг позволяет перенести акцент на деперсонализацию в условиях большого числа посредников, последствия действий которых невозможно просчитать, и оценивать ответственность в категориях каузальности. Говоря о присвоении коллективной ответственности личностью и оценивая степень ответственности, необходимо учитывать уровень вовлеченности в структуру и качество выполняемых задач. In the proposed article, the author insists on the need to determine the grounds of social responsibility, since this will avoid appeals to emotions and moral discourse when evaluating historical events. At the first step, the author turns to the ideas of I. Kant, showing that the resources of his theory do not allow solving the problems of responsibility outside of freedom and conceptualizing collective responsibility. The author finds some solutions in X. Arendt, conceptualizing political responsibility as a collective one. A.M. Young's structural approach allows us to shift the focus to depersonalization in the conditions of a large number of intermediaries, the consequences of whose actions cannot be calculated, and to assess responsibility in the categories of causality. Thus, the author speaks about the assignment of collective responsibility by an individual; while assessing the degree of responsibility, it is necessary to take into account the level of involvement in the structure and quality of the tasks performed. This allows us to understand the role of historical dynamics actors without emotional and moral assessments.