Plato, fetters round the neck, and the Quran

I analyze fi gures and themes of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” evident in chapter thirty-six of the Quran. I argue that the two texts share (1) a neck fetter fixing the head; (2) a spatial organization of barriers before and behind and covering above; (3) a theme of failure to see the truth and assault upon those who tell the truth, and (4) a theme of transcendent reality as a context of meaning. I argue that the Quran displays an inheritance of some Platonic thought in Arabic at least two centuries prior to any known translation of Plato.

Persona in spe. Anthropological and Theodical Aspects of Hope

I intend to reflect on three phenomena that are revealed in the personal experience of hope: (1) hope distinguishes a person from the natural context, but it does so through nature, i.e., based on desires rooted in human nature; (2) hope is not only inscribed in the existential situation of human being, but also expresses the very meaning of human transcendence: the person transcends themself, because they live the hope of fulfillment in the transcendent reality; hope is a foretaste of a higher, more perfect life; (3) hope is a person’s deeply experienced expectation of love, that is, of someone who loves. The above phenomena require a justification, which is the answer to the question “what is the reason for experiencing hope?”. Carrying out analyses on the basis of the modernized metaphysics of the person, I refer primarily to the concept of personal acts, to the concept of religiosity as an essential property of the person and to elements of the concept of love. The conclusions of these analyses indicate the necessity of accepting the real existence of the object of human hope, since personal life essentially goes beyond contingency, towards wholeness in the form of union with Someone who loves.

Display of the Ancient Religious Bone Cults in the Late Acheulean–Mousterian Art

The relevance of research. One of the most important unsolved problems of cultural studies, religious studies, art history, and history is to determine the time of the origin of religious ideas: that of the beginning of the spiritual evolution of the mankind, which at a certain stage of development begins to master not only the material world but also tries to comprehend the supernatural transcendent reality. The views of scholars regarding the time of the birth of religious beliefs is divided into two opposing points of view. According to one of them, expressed in the works of R. Marett, F. Ratzel, V. Kabo, A. Zubov, religious representations were inherent in the primitive man since the beginning of existence. A serious argument against this version is the fact that art the site of Olduvai culture no object was found that did not have a utilitarian purpose and that could be interpreted as a cult object. However, this fact can be explained by the fact that the rational awareness of the highest supernatural power was preceded by its subconscious (intuitive) sensation, which did not require objectivation in cult objects. Religious ideas were primitive so that they did not need any cult objects. According to other scholars, one can speak of the emergence of religious ideas only from the moment when the cult artefacts appeared; the pre-religious period had lasted until the end of the Mousterian era. However, the discovery of a number of archaeological sites in the second half of the 20th century at the beginning of the 21st century makes it possible to move the beginning of the appearance of Religious beliefs back until the period of the late Acheulean–beginning of Mousterian era.The purpose of the article: to establish the time of the origin and evolution of the earliest religious beliefs associated with the cult of bones, based on the analysis of the most ancient artefacts currently known, which testify to the ritual activities of the primitive man. The considered artefacts lead to the conclusion that the most ancient evidence of the cults of bones belongs to the era of the late Acheulean and Mousterian. Animal bones were among the first objects that the primitive man singled out from the environment as sacred, and endowed with a supernatural ability to revive the lives of animals and humans. Symbolic compositions of bones and signs carved in them became sacred attributes used for magical rites. The first acts of the ritual symbolization marked the emergence of sacred art and magic, which, radically different from the directly useful work, passed into a special plane of connection of men with the supernatural force. The earliest monuments (Torralba, Ambrona, Azykh), which testify to magical actions with bones, date back to about 400–200 thousand years BC. Thus, more than 2 million years passed from the appearance of man (ca. 2.7 million years ago) to the emergence of religious ideas, which required objectification in cult items and the performance of certain rituals. Although it cannot be denied that the intuitive subconscious sense of the supernatural power has been inherent in man since the beginning of his existence, purposefully by cultic magical actions that called on higher powers for help, he began to practice from the period of the late Acheulean. In the Mousterian era, in addition to the cult of bones, the cult of the skull arose as a container of special energy capable of renewing human life. Despite the fact that there are only a few examples of skull burials in the Mousterian period, apart from Mount Circeo, in Zhoukoudian (1929), Ngandonga (1931–1933) and Steingheim (1933), it can be assumed that about 70–50 thousand years ago, along with burials, an undissected body could be another rite of separation of the skull, which as a container of a special vital energy of man was buried in some parts of the caves on piles of bones and stones, just as at about the same time separately buried the skulls of bears in stone boxes and niches in caves of Regurdu, Azykh, Drachenloh, Wildenmannlisloch, and others. Later, with the development of ideas about the soul, the cult of skulls is further developed, based on the realization of the power of the extracorporeal spiritual essence of the revered dead (= ancestors), the concentration of which requires a magical container.

Afterword

This Afterword attempts to summarize the main ways of interpreting revelation in this book. One group takes ‘revelation’ as a term which describes revelation as something which a group of people ‘believe’ happened, where this belief shapes the religiosity of the group. A second way of interpreting revelation sees it as actually given to the group from beyond itself, but as also expressive of a society. Thirdly, we find philosophical interpretations of revelation, as the self-disclosure of a reality or being which transcends individuals and social groups, but where reason rather than faith is pivotal in receiving the revelation. Fourthly, revelation is interpreted theologically, as the objective disclosure of a transcendent reality which can only be received in faith. It is claimed that the first three frameworks for understanding revelation depend upon the fourth, since it grounds their otherwise circular assumptions, such as the receptiveness of the human mind or the self-giving quality of being.

The terms of a theoretical approach of the natural and divine world in George Pachymeres

In this article, we are investigating the methods in which George Pachymeres, the commentator of the De divinis nominibus of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, epistemologically approaches the natural and the divine reality. It becomes clear that every judgement on God starts from the sensible world, so a reversed induction is revealed. Although the existence of God is never questioned, no final conclusion about his self-founding way of existing can be drawn. Considering the substantial difference between the two levels, two are the ways in which the natural world and the divine transcendent reality are approached. In the first case, the thinking subject functions mostly in natural-empirical terms, while in the second one it follows a mystical-intuitive course. Nevertheless, the context is consistently realistic.

MELANGKAH KE DALAM DUNIA MISTIKNYA WILIAM JAMES

Mystical experience has become a new discourse and has been resounded in the midst of our world which has lost the feel of its religiosity due to modernism and secularism. Though modernism gives advance in human life but it is undeniable that somehow it affects to the very core of human thirst for a deepest spiritual growth and improvment. So, in this part William James has become one of the most known philosophers in nineteen century and in the same time as a psychologist who tries to bring back the mystcal experience as a vessel for every individual to find the true meaning of their spirituality need. James is going to re-present this encountered-experience with the transcendent reality into the midst of human being’s world day to day. By deepest reflection of knowledge, James tries to understand the mystical experience by giving the comparison of mystical experience with some psychology aspect. In other hand, he favors to let people know how the rasionalism deals with this kind of spiritual encounters. And he explains too, how the mystical experience comes to human’s life. Further, James also gives the understanding of mysticalexperience as far as it useful for the personal growth and the growth of social relationship in human being’s life. Â

Mystifying Kabbalah

The book offers a study of the genealogy of the concept of “Jewish mysticism.” It examines the major developments in the academic study of Jewish mysticism and its impact on modern Kabbalistic movements in the contexts of Jewish nationalism and New Age spirituality. Its central argument is that Jewish mysticism is a modern discursive construct and that the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as forms of mysticism, which appeared for the first time in the nineteenth century and became prevalent since the early twentieth, shaped the way in which Kabbalah and Hasidism are perceived and studied today. The notion of Jewish mysticism was established when Western scholars accepted the modern idea that mysticism is a universal religious phenomenon of a direct experience of a divine or transcendent reality and applied it to Kabbalah and Hasidism. The term Jewish mysticism gradually became the defining category in the modern academic research of these topics. Mystifying Kabbalah examines the emergence of the category of Jewish mysticism and of the ensuing perception that Kabbalah and Hasidism are Jewish manifestations of a universal mystical phenomenon. It investigates the establishment of the academic field devoted to the research of Jewish mysticism, and it delineates the major developments in this field. The book clarifies the historical, cultural, and political contexts that led to the identification of Kabbalah and Hasidism as Jewish mysticism, exposing the underlying ideological and theological presuppositions and revealing the impact of this “mystification” on contemporary forms of Kabbalah and Hasidism.

THE ISSUE OF THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSION OF HUMAN NATURE

This text is an attempt to answer the question of whether human nature needs religion. The author begins by presenting two concepts that are key in this discourse. These are the terms: religion and human nature. Then he undertakes an analysis of the problem, referring to the thoughts of religious experts: Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade and the philosopher Max Scheler. The subject of reflection is the definition of man as 'homo religiosus'. Questioning God's existence has a negative effect on human nature. This situation is illustrated by the views of two known philosophers, existentialists - Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. Their vision of the world was marked by unbelief in God. Life experience teaches that human nature strives for transcendent reality, longs for God. Any departure from this tendency does not, however, invalidate the religious nature of man, but certainly falsifies it. It results in the conversion of an authentic sacrum into its substitutes. In conclusion, the author draws attention to the mystery of man and God, which should be recognized. It is only in this perspective that the problem indicated in the title can be considered. The inspiration for such thinking is the famous phrase of Saint Augustine of Hippo: 'The human soul is restless until it rests in God'.

Crossroads of forgiveness: a transcendent understanding of forgiveness in Kierkegaard’s religious writings and immanent account of forgiveness in contemporary secular and Christian ethics

This paper is an attempt to clash the problem of forgiveness as formulated in contemporary secular and Christian ethics with Kierkegaard’s considerations concerning this issue. Kierkegaard’s thought is increasingly used in the modern debate on forgiveness. It is therefore worth investigating whether Kierkegaard’s considerations are really able to overcome in any way contemporary disputes concerning this problem or enrich our thinking in this area. The main thesis of this paper states that there is a fundamental, ontological difference between Kierkegaard’s understanding of forgiveness and that of modern thinkers. While the Danish philosopher refers to the transcendent reality of spirit, where the act of forgiveness is always performed by God, in contemporary ethical and Christian thought, forgiveness is first and foremost formulated from an immanent point of view that appeals to the world of human values. This difference is demonstrated by analyzing the four main themes corresponding to the most important issues taken up in the contemporary debate on forgiveness. These are: the victim-offender relation, the conditionality and unconditionality of forgiveness, the issue of condonation, and the problem of the unforgivable. As a result of the analyses presented herein, the impossibility of directly applying Kierkegaard’s transcendent theses to ethical thought of the immanent variety will be shown.

Stanisław Przybyszewski’s and Tadeusz Miciński’s Literary-Philosophical Discovery of the Infernal Nature of the Internal World

The article examines the intersection of literature with philosophy and religion as illustrated by the theme of the discovery of the infernal nature of the inner human world on the basis of selected texts by Stanisław Przybyszewski and Tadeusz Miciński. The two writers strive to explore not only a transcendent reality, but also an infernal one.