Celibacy or Marriage? Dilemmas for Buddhist Monks in Korea

Following the Confucian period of the Chosŏn era, which overshadowed Buddhists and confined them to the margins of society, at the beginning of Japanese colonial rule the possibility of monastic marriage typical of Japanese practice emerged as a viable alternative for Korean Buddhists in the early twentieth century. While the repressive memory of Japanese colonial heritage often appears in the relevant literature about clerical marriage today as the main reason for Korean Buddhists to get married, an analysis of contemporary documents presents us with a much more complex picture. Most notably among Korean intellectuals, one of the most significant personalities of the era, Manhae Han Young’un’s (1879−1944) systematically urged the reform of Korean Buddhism, Chosŏn Pulgyo yusinnon 朝鮮 佛 敎 維新 論 (Treatise on the Restoration of Korean Buddhism). In connection with the presentation and circumstances of the thirteenth point formulated to allow polemics and the practice of priestly marriage, we can see that his Confucian education, personality, and life play as important a part in his reasoning as the ideologies of the era, social Darwinism and modernism, and democracy. But primary sources revealing the daily lives and circumstances of the monks also show that thewillingness to marry was also greatly influenced by the new inheritance rules introduced in the Japanese colonial system.

Innovation Elements in Traditional Chinese Culture

The conflict between traditional Chinese culture and Western cultures has long been one between an archaic, outdated culture and a modern, new culture. Traditional Chinese culture is deemed synonymous with backwardness, decrepitude, and decadence and doomed with the passage of time, particularly since social Darwinism swept across the late Qing Dynasty and captured the spiritual world of Chinese intellectuals. Despite differences in culture types, both traditional Chinese culture and Western culture contribute to innovative buildup. It is of great significance to deeply explore the innovative factors in traditional Chinese culture and to explore both the modernization road and innovation modes with Chinese characteristics. This chapter analyzes and explores the innovative factors and values in Chinese traditional culture from the aspects of traditional modes of thinking, traditional ideas and beliefs, traditional organizations and institutions, and traditional implementations and technologies.

Scientific Racism, Social Darwinism, and Global Racial Order

The premise of this chapter is the elucidation of a different ontology of global politics and order of the nineteenth century. International relations theory takes for granted a largely ahistorical state-centric ontology, which reifies a specific Eurocentric state and state system as the embodiment of global politics. Instead this chapter focuses on an alternative ontology of race, racial hierarchy, and racial difference as significant for defining the content of an imperial global politics and order. The chapter places into context the emergence of scientific racism and social Darwinism as key intellectual elements in defining a political imaginary that influenced the politics of difference and violence. The chapter shows that this intellectual history reveals a global order that was fundamentally racialized and that global violence was understood and practiced as race war.

Marx and Spencer

The chapter opens with the exploration of the thought of Karl Marx and of his contemporary, Herbert Spencer, and efforts to derive scientific models of social development. Discussion of Spencer leads to discussion of social Darwinism and eugenics, and then to the way these theories influenced politics in the early twentieth century, especially the behaviors that led to the outbreak of the First World War. The outbreak of the war draws us into the collapse of Russia and the emergence of the Bolsheviks as a powerful force, able to take over the state (aided by the massive errors of their political adversaries and the transformation of Marxist thought by Lenin). Social Darwinism and eugenics return with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, stressing both his ability (like Lenin) to dominate media and make his movement seem acceptable to German political society.

The counter argument against environmental reductionism in Latinx immigration debates: Tracking the discussion and empirical evidence

This article discusses the debate and empirical bases of the environmental argument against Latinx immigration to the United State (US) since the 1980s decade. The environmental argument against immigration states that the level of immigration (undocumented and legal) has a statistical impact on the CO2 emissions, quality of air, and pollution. The argument also declares that immigrants exceed the emissions if they remained in their country of origin since the 1980s decade, and that immigration rapidly consumes environmental resources such as water, air, land, and increases biodiversity loss. This argument has neo-Malthusian, social Darwinism, and racist biases. This paper presents the core debates around the primary premises, the evolution inside the environmental movement in the US. This paper argues that the environmental argument against Latinx immigration lacks generalizable studies, objective data, and scientific validity. The environmental argument evolution has not present enough academic to support to its main claim that connects immigration with environmental degradation. Instead, we argue that immigration it is not the only cause of population growth, the environmental argument denies the strong evidence and studies that linkage environmental degradation with industrialization levels, emissions, economic development, and consumption levels of the US citizens.

Despising the weak

In Germany, paediatrics evolved at the end of the 19th century in an atmosphere of social Darwinism and nationalism which paved the way towards elimination of handicapped infants. Killing handicapped children was organized in Hitler’s Chancellery from 1939, targeting infants with idiocy and mongolism, micro- or hydrocephaly, malformed limbs, head, or spine, and palsies. A system of reporting and rating such infants was established, leading to their admission to one of 30 ‘Special Children’s Departments’. There, sedatives were applied in a dose depressing respiration which led to a slow death disguised as natural. A hundred physicians were directly involved in killing, and many more including eminent paediatricians in reporting infants. After the war, court trials were initiated, but usually discontinued. Physicians involved in murdering children continued to teach and to conduct research on the victims’ brains. Their textbooks conveyed little compassion for the weak, malformed, and handicapped. There was widespread unwillingness to keep preterm infants alive. When from 1960 artificial ventilation of neonates became possible, opposition against it persisted. Despising the weak was an enduring legacy of Nazism that may have delayed the introduction of modern neonatology in Europe.

Giant Bug or Monstrous Vermin? Translating Kafka's Die Verwandlung in its Cultural, Social, and Biological Contexts

Since it would have been feasible for Kafka to call his story ‘Die Metamorphose’, the article first considers why most translators render Die Verwandlung as (The) Metamorphosis and not literally as The Transformation. Given the widespread impact of Darwinism and Social Darwinism when Kafka wrote the work in 1912, particular attention is paid to socio-biological factors that may have influenced his choice of title. The article further considers the possible impact of Yiddish theatre and Nietzschean philosophy upon Kafka's decision. It then examines how translators have tackled the story's opening sentence, given the difficulties of rendering the phrase ‘ungeheures Ungeziefer’ (literally ‘monstrous vermin’) in a way that does justice to the sentence's original structure and vocabulary. Finally, the article offers a possible solution to this problem.

DARWINISME SOSIAL DAN KEAMANAN INTERNASIONAL: SEBUAH ANALISIS RINGKAS

The development of socio-biology science brings changes to the security of humansocial life. The biological theory about evolution made discussion that was identified as Social Darwinism. This thought was based on assumptions that human life through natural selection and always in conflict by competition to fight for life, keep the existence, and also survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism in its history produced ideology like Fascism and has made tragedies in the eras of World Wars I and II. As a thought, Social Darwinism still continues today.The competition between countries in the new Millennium era, both in the arms race and economic competition, are reflection of Darwinist thougt.