ANGELOLOGY IN THE RUSSIAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY. SEVERAL PAGES

Reflections on the nature of angels in Russian religious philosophy are inseparable from political theology and reflection on scientific and technical achievements. Based on the works of N. Boldyrev, A. Losev and S. Averintsev, the article proves that the doctrine of angels was to spiritualize technical progress and not less to preserve humanitarian culture in the field of symbolic-mathematical speculation. Therefore, Russian angelology is dialogical and controversial: it relies on the hermeneutics of a symbol, while symbolism is considered as part of intellectual production parallel to technical invention. It is proved how exactly the reception of ideas related to the parameters of perception and a certain style of intellectual reasoning made it possible to single out questions about angels into a separate area of philosophical problematization. Accordingly, the study of how exactly the questions were thought of as autonomous, makes it possible to clarify how Russian thought could assert the autonomy of orders of philosophical reasoning

Findes der skønhed i leksikografi?

Loránd-Levente Pálfi, Karin Wolgast & Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen: Towards an aesthetics of lexicography In this paper, we examine a subject which has apparently never before been the object of research or published intellectual reasoning. The question is if such a thing as a beautiful dictionary or encyclopedia exists, i.e. if we can address lexicographic beauty conceived of as the sum of various inner qualities of lexicographic reference works while stripping our concept of the external properties of books such as bindings, cover, the quality of paper and print, layout, user-interface, etc. After investigating aesthetic qualities as established in other academic fields, of which mathematics and literature have been selected as representative for the purpose of developing a complementary paradigm, the article undertakes a tentative definition of lexicographic beauty.

Homo cantans : On the Logic of Liturgical Singing

Why does it seem that humans are in need of ritual and contemplative practices, such as singing, for their intellectual reasoning on theological matters? First of all, this study introduces Liturgical Theology as an endeavor to establish liturgy as an activity that connects physical and intellectual dimensions of faith. Secondly, insights into the dialogue between theology and the natural sciences will provide a framework for the engagement with research on singing. Finally, selected studies on singing from different fields of human sciences can unearth evidence for mutual influences between singing and human thinking as a prerequisite for academic theology.

Encouraging Upward Ethical Dissent in Organizations: The Role of Deference to Embodied Expertise

This article demonstrates that when supervisors encourage subordinates to defer to their embodied expertise, subordinates are more likely to voice explicitly moralized upward dissent to an unethical business request. Working adults ( N = 312) were randomly assigned to respond to an unethical business request from their boss in one of three scenarios that varied by how much the supervisor was known for encouraging deference to (a) embodied knowing, (b) intellectual reasoning, or (c) neither (i.e., a baseline control condition). Analyses revealed that participants were more than twice as likely to voice their private moral concerns explicitly with their boss when the supervisor was known for valuing subordinates’ embodied expertise (e.g., “going with your gut feelings”). In addition, participants also reported feeling significantly less communication anxiety in that same condition. Implications for leading organizational ethics conclude the article.

Afterword

The Afterword offers a personal confessio to underline what the book argues, namely, that rational considerations alone, in isolation from the intensities of personal experience, do not take us as far as we might like in philosophical-theological inquiry. Comparative debates in philosophical theology—like aesthetic appraisal, and also like judgments of relative plausibility more generally, including the courtroom rulings of skilled judges—often trade in unspoken and even unconscious preferences. We can all too easily rationalize such preferences but rational discipline requires something other than mere rationalistic evasion: we must analyze them in order to gain control over their influence in our intellectual reasoning.

The Ghazālian Alchemy of an Islamic Nation

Since the dawn of intellectual reasoning, religious and spiritual leaders, philosophers, academics, writers and thinkers have been asking the same fundamental question of what is ‘happiness’. Aristotle describes ‘happiness’ as the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. In a different era, across space and time, Mahatma Gandhi asserts that “…happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”. Contemporary perception views ‘happiness’ as having all material wants and needs in abundance, but it is only recently that a United Nations study contends otherwise. Material well-being has correlations to ‘happiness’ but it is not the cause of happiness. Abu Hamid al-Ghāzali, in his Alchemy of Happiness, articulated the essence and path, not to mere happiness, but to true happiness. This paper examines this timeless masterpiece by al-Ghazāli and seeks insights and relevance for the Islamic nation.

LATE SPANISH DOCTORS ON USURY, AND THE EVOLVING SCHOLASTIC TRADITION

The scholastic intellectual tradition was the dominant scientific paradigm for nearly five centuries in western Europe. That the economic issues of interest to these scholars were similar throughout the period is undisputable, but were the individual views on these issues also similar? This is a pertinent question, upon which an evaluation of the evolution of this intellectual tradition, which often has been considered as monolithic, can be based.This paper focuses on the analysis of the so-called “natural law case” against usury, and tracks how the lines of intellectual reasoning subtly evolved between early and late scholastics. While the issues, methods, and purposes of scholastic thought remained the same in this period, there also was a systematic evolution within this tradition that makes the essence of the scholastic doctrines conformable to economic realities.

نقد المتن وعلاقته بالحكم على رواة الحديث عند علماء الجرح والتعديل

يبرز البحث جهود علماء الجرح والتعديل في نقد المتن باعتباره من أهم ركائزهم في نقد الرواة والحكم عليهم. كما يهدف إلى تسليط الضوء على جملة من النصوص التطبيقية التي لم تتعرض لها الدراسات السابقة، والكشف عن التنوع الاجتهادي في التعامل مع نقد المتن عند علماء الجرح والتعديل، وبيان الأسباب الموجبة لنقد المتن، وأثر ذلك في الحكم على رواة الحديث. وقد جاء البحث بصورة أسئلة محددة مثل: ما الأسباب الموجبة لنقد المتن؟ ما أثر تلك الأسباب في الحكم على الرواة؟ وما هي حدود نقد المتن؟ وما مسوغات الحدود المذكورة؟ وقد أُجيب عن كلّ سؤال بالتتالي. Al Dries highlights the efforts of scholars who critique hadith texts in order to discredit (jarh) or endorse (ta‘deel) them in their attempt to critique and judge narrators. He sheds light on applied texts that have been left out of previous studies, analyzes the variations in ijtihad (intellectual reasoning) vis-à-vis critiquing hadith texts as utilized by such scholars, explains the factors necessitating such critique and delineates its implications on judging hadith narrators. It also answers specific questions, such as: What are the justifications for critiquing the text? What are the implications of such justifications as regards judging hadith narrators? What are the limitations on critiquing the text? What are the pretexts for those limitations?

Building Artificial Life for Play

Playthings are often engineered to replicate the character of real organisms. In the past, inventors lavished great expense on their lifelike automata, their constraints being typically related to the mechanical technology they employed and the amount of time and effort they were able to commit to the enterprise. The devices that are currently produced are usually intended for the mass market. The cost of production therefore is a major concern, even though the technology is more sophisticated and highly automated than in the past. Consequently, toymakers and engineers, as well as artists, of the past and present alike have had to think abstractly about living systems in order to construct their simulacra economically. This essay examines a number of lifelike toys to discover the properties of real organisms that their designers have attempted to recreate. That we, as users of these devices, so readily recognize in them a degree of lifelikeness demonstrates the extent to which intuition may sway our intellectual reasoning about real biology. As a result, an innovative toymaker or artist is able to manipulate us to zoomorphize even the most extreme abstractions—at least momentarily—despite our rational reluctance to accept the trickery.