Voegelin, Eric (1901–85)

Throughout his career, Voegelin was concerned with modernity; unlike his contemporaries he sought the explanation of its character and deformities (especially totalitarianism) in the restoration of ‘political science’ as Plato and Aristotle understood it. He therefore explored order in the individual’s soul, political society, history and the universe, and its source in God. He did so by studying the representation of order in philosophy (Eastern as well as Western) and in revelation and myth. Voegelin concluded that ‘gnosticism’, the misinterpretation of the insights of myth, philosophy and revelation as descriptions of some future perfected society, and the wilful denial of transcendence and human limitation, represented the essence of modernity.

Muamma (conundrum) of Riba (Interest and Usury) in Major Religions in General and Islam in Particular

Author did courage to undertake this project with his limited knowledge of Religion, therefore, he seek apology in advance with the readers if any mistake has been committed. This paper has no religious relevance rather author has strived to uplift the pride of Interest and rent by making study in different major religion. The paper entitled, “Muamma (conundrum) of Riba (Interest and Usury) in Major Religions in General and Islam in Particular” It is an attempt to study the indication given by the religion that why it is haram. Interest is a very interesting thing; almost in all major religion Riba (Interest and Usury) is Haram including Judaism, however one side in Judaism, the Torah and Talmud encourage the granting of loans if they do not involve interest, on the other hand the halakhah [applicable Jewish law] regarding free loans apply only to loans made to other Jews but it is permissible to make loans with Riba (Interest and Usury) to non-Jews. Yet Riba (Interest and Usury) is Haram in most of the major religion because it disturbs the social fabric, it perturbs the connection which people share, which can facilitate to form an ethnically rich and in a social context cohesive community, Honestly speaking Riba (Interest and Usury) is not only the perpetrator for it, but Riba (Interest and Usury) is one of the cause for it. On the other hand, where the purpose is for utilization when one has for some cause or other gone astray his earnings, to insist a fixed return where no homecoming is produced is frequently considered as iniquitous. Especially so if the collateral demanded is the house in which the borrower lives or land from the prospect turn out of which he expects to pay back the loan. All the way through the era, currency providers have used the first type of case to defend their business. Ironically it is their appliance of it to the second set of circumstances that twisted the ground for the second type of spat. Nevertheless, by the last part of the thirteenth century a number of causes emerged which greatly destabilized the influence of the Orthodox Church. In due course, the reformist faction, led by Luther (1483-1546) and Zwingli (1484-1531), approved to the charging of Riba (Interest and Usury) on the entreaty of human limitation

Liberalism

Beginning with debates in the 1940s between progressive liberals and New Liberals, this chapter argues that Richard Chase adapted the ideals of collective sympathies, social critique, and hopeful idealism central to a previous generation’s liberalism while adapting them to the changing conditions of early Cold War America. In so doing, Chase transformed a politics originally understood as a revolution in material conditions into a psychological struggle toward a social ideal that looked surprisingly progressive. That transformation is most evident in Chase’s discussions of allegory, which became in his handling a demonstration of simultaneous alienation and idealism, of human limitation and social aspiration. Melville’s allegories, in Chase’s analysis, combine a critique of a culture of conformity and a vision of how that society might be revitalized. By shaping Melville into a writer capable of critique and idealism, critique as idealism, Chase made Romanticism an effective critical practice of hope. The particular hope Melville’s allegories offered Chase centered on same-sex countersocialities that exemplified anti–Cold War ideals. Representing both the historic formation of sexual subcultures and the idealist vision of a radical countersociality, same-sex intimacy was at the core, for Chase, of the genre of allegory.

Imperfection in Paradise: Reading Genesis 2 through the Lens of Disability and a Theology of Limits

Genesis 2 has been interpreted from many angles, but rarely through the lens of disability studies. Such a reading, however, provides a necessary corrective to interpretations that import into the text idealistic notions of bodily perfection and thereby inadvertently disenfranchise those with disabilities. By attending to the range of bodily experiences and the fluidity of embodied existence, this article seeks to shed new light on Genesis 2 and on the wider task of theological anthropology. More specifically, reading Genesis 2 with and for those with disabilities lifts up three essential themes in the text that all express human limitation as a good aspect of God’s creation: embodiment, imperfection, and relationship.

Inverse Correlation: Comparative Philosophy in an Upside Down World

Kitarō Nishida introduces the concept of “inverse correlation” (Jp. gyakutaiō 逆対応) in his final work, The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview, which he uses to illuminate the relation between finite and infinite, human and divine/buddha, such that the greater the realization of human limitation and finitude, the greater that of the limitless, infinite divine or buddhahood. This essay explores the applicability of the logic and rhetoric of inverse correlation in the cases of the early Daoist Zhuangzi, medieval Japanese Buddhist Shinran, and modern Protestant Christian Kierkegaard, as well as broader ramifications for contemporary philosophy of religion.

Theories of Power, Poverty, and Law: In Commemoration of the Contributions of Peter Bachrach

When I reflect upon Peter Bachrach's political theorizing from the perspective of the heated primary battles of 2008, I am struck by the unusual character of his political insights and commitments—and of how relevant and compelling they are in the current political climate. Peter might be appropriately considered a radical liberal democrat—who focused very sharply on the tensions between radicalism and liberalism as political ideologies, but sought to maintain a close and continually flowing circuit between radicalism and liberalism as bodies of philosophical understanding that could mutually nurture and sustain each other. Under his hermeneutical gaze, Hobbes was not only the father of modern philosophical liberalism but the theorist who instigated the formation of participatory democracy. By clarifying for us the extent to which we lacked foursquare rational props to support our judgments across a whole spectrum of human experience from everyday practical affairs to science, religion, and metaphysics, he cleared a tremendous space for human beings to actively participate in structuring their own lives and shaping their own destinies. In addition to his explicit statements concerning human equality (whose political payoffs would be mostly unusable by a contemporary democrat), there was implicit in Hobbesian theorizing a massive re-inflection of human limitation and possibility that could make participation seem like a plausible complement to his theorizing.

NATURAL HISTORIES: LEARNING FROM ANIMALS IN T.H. WHITE'S ARTHURIAN SEQUENCE

This paper examines the changes T.H. White made to The Sword in the Stone between its first publication in 1938 and subsequent appearance as the first part of the Once and Future King in 1958. These changes are related to the immediate historical context of World War II, and also to the wider context of children's literature dealing with the relationship between the child and the ''natural world''. Rather than seeing White's texts as reflecting a post-Enlightenment idealisation, placing both child and nature beyond the bounds of culture and human limitation, the essay argues that even in the first version White's medieval worldview is constructed from a sophisticated and deliberately anachronistic medley of discourses including medieval codes of hunting and chivalry, Renaissance tragedy and Victorian natural history. These combine to create an exclusively male world, which is analysed as part of the ideological construction of a masculine relationship to the environment based on a ''natural'' nstinct to hunt and kill. White's growing pacifism leads to the insertion in the later version of episodes replacing this relationship with models of cooperative animal behaviour, and even introducing a female mentor for the hero.