Did Chinese mysticism vanish after its first appearance in ancient Taoist philosophy, to surface only after a thousand years had passed, when the Chinese had adapted Buddhism to their own culture? This first integrated survey of the mystical dimension of Taoism disputes the commonly accepted idea of such a hiatus. Covering the period from the Daode jing to the end of the Tang, Livia Kohn reveals an often misunderstood Chinese mystical tradition that continued through the ages. Influenced by but (...) ultimately independent of Buddhism, it took forms more various than the quietistic withdrawal of Laozi or the sudden enlightenment of the Chan Buddhists. On the basis of a new theoretical evaluation of mysticism, this study analyzes the relationship between philosophical and religious Taoism and between Buddhism and the native Chinese tradition. Kohn shows how the quietistic and socially oriented Daode jing was combined with the ecstatic and individualistic mysticism of the Zhuangzi, with immortality beliefs and practices, and with Buddhist insight meditation, mind analysis, and doctrines of karma and retribution. She goes on to demonstrate that Chinese mysticism, a complex synthesis by the late Six Dynasties, reached its zenith in the Tang, laying the foundations for later developments in the Song traditions of Inner Alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the “Introduction” to Method in Theology and examine the presuppositions of this importanttext. These are concepts that Lonergan deemed necessary for introducing his work on functional specialization. I focus on mediation as a two-way process and the empirical notion of culture. It is interesting how these two significant ideas make their way into the brief introduction, which Lonergan wrote last when composing the text.

Over the last decade, digitalisation has been a subject of increasing attention among scholars and practitioners. The effect of culture and religion on advertisements, consumerism and marketing, is deniable. The main goal of this research is to present a comprehensive conceptual model based on cultural and religious diversity in digital marketing. This research mainly includes introduction creolisation concept and the elements (religion, music, clothes and custom) as the most important factor in digital advertisement and branding. In this (...) regard, this study examines Instagram consumer products users from five different subcultures in Iran (Lor, Kurdish, Baluch, Arab and Azeri) and considers the impact of creolisation elements on digital advertising, brand identity and brand globalisation. Data were collected by sending 1200 questionnaire via email to subcultures and then analysed using LISREL software.Contribution: The results demonstrated that Islamic religion between participants affects their brand loyalty, therefore the Islamic worth in advertising is necessary. It was suggested that creolisation elements significantly affect digital advertisement, brand identity and brand globalisation. Consequently, all hypotheses were accepted. On the other hand, the impact of brand identity and digital advertisement on the brand globalisation was also confirmed. Discussion and managerial implications concerning creolisation were explained. (shrink)

On psychoanalysis and culture with relations to works by Sudhir Kakar, Indian psychoanalyst and writer; contributed articles in his honor.

This article describes a challenge to the cultures and religions of the world that the author believes is the greatest challenge that has confronted the human race in its entire history. Modernity's search for unity and postmodernity's affirmation of pluralism reflect aspects of our current situation, but more needs to be recognized. We must acknowledge that East and West must face the current challenges together. Multiculturalism and unity encompass all world cultures, and we cannot be content to read our present (...) history only through the lens of western developments. Karl Jaspers's theory of the First Axial period of history, 800‐200 B.C.E., in which all the present world religions have their roots, is useful. It reveals that our present flowering of culture and spirit in the Western world, including our science, is not so much a product of the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment, as it is rooted in cultural events that belong to East and West equally. We are now in the Second Axial Period, which challenges the world religions to allow their energies to move toward convergence, just as in the previous millennia they moved toward differentiation. Teilhard de Chardin's thought is a guide for us, in his vision of a complex convergence of consciousness, in which differences will not be abolished but will be transformed in their coming together. This convergent perspective will also join with the perspective of rediscovering our roots in the earth, and it will repossess the spirituality of the primal peoples, in its understanding of the entire human race to be one tribe. The world religions are faced with the task, therefore, of encountering each other in “dialogic dialogue,” and channeling their spiritual resources toward the solution of real‐world global problems. (shrink)

Ho Chi Minh City is a city which has received and accumulated many cultures and religions from around the world, from Oriental culture to Western civilization, from West Asian and East Asian cultures to South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures. The cultures of some African and Latin American countries have also arrived recently. Most world religions, regional religions, national religions and even new religions are present in the city. The characteristic of religions and cultural identities of Ho Chi Minh (...) City is in the process of transformation, receipt and selection of the cultural and religion elements of those cultures. Based on the research results of a scientific research on the topic, “Cultural and religion life in Ho Chi Minh City in the era of international integration”, we would like to share some opinions about the characteristics of culture and religions in the process of cultural exchange, acculturation and accumulation of Ho Chi Minh City from traditional to modern stage. (shrink)

The Other Freud undertakes an exciting and original analysis of Freud's major writings on religion and culture. James DiCenso suggests that Freud's texts on religion are unjustifiably ignored or taken for granted, and he shows that Freud's commentary on religion are rich, multifaceted texts, and deserve far more attention. Using concepts derived primarily from Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, DiCenso draws an unparalleled critical portrait of the "other Freud". This book is rich with new ideas and (...) fresh interpretations. (shrink)

The 2017 story of Charlie Gard is revisited. Upon the British High Court’s ruling in favor of the physicians that the infant should be allowed to die without the experimental treatment, the view of the public as well as the opinions of bioethicists and Catholic bishops are divided, interestingly along with a cultural line. American bioethicists and Catholic bishops tend to believe that the parents should have the final say while British/European bioethicists and Catholic bishops in general side with the (...) court’s decision. The paper explores the place of culture in bioethical reasoning between the UK/Europe and the US while claiming that cultural differences are more important than geopolitical or religious differences to understand the bioethical positions of a group. In addition, the authors introduce a decision-making program for handicapped neonates which is developed by the American Jesuit Bioethicist, Richard McCormick, and modified further by the contemporary American Jesuit Bioethicist, Peter A. Clark, in an attempt to see if the program’s normatizing categories can contribute to the culture-laden ethical discussions on Charlie’s case. However, it is admitted that the McCormick-Clark device is borne out of the American and Catholic theological context. (shrink)

This collection of essays covers the classical heritage and Islamic culture, classical Arabic science and philosophy, and Muslim religious sciences, showing continuation of Greek and Persian thought as well as original Muslim contributions to the sciences, philosophy, religion, and culture of Islam.

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas. Edited by Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, vol. 83. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xii + 493. $221, €161.

Publication date: 14 June 2017 Source: Author: Muhammad Hussein Oroskhan, Sayyed Mohammad Anoosheh By the 1930s, the Iranian society was driven toward modernization. Consisted with the concept of modernization, feminism ushered a whole new era in Iranian history. Besides, the outbreak of World War II and the consequent abdication of Reza Khan afforded women a golden opportunity to fight for their rights and emancipations. This movement was also supported by the famous male writers of the time among whom Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (...) marked a prominent place. He was keen enough to properly explore women's situation in his works and notice the drastic effect of modernization upon women's situation. Hence, in this study, we try to investigate Al-e-Ahmad's short story entitled “Pink Nail Polish” 1948 with respect to Bakhtin's Carnivalesque's theory. Furthermore, it is shown how Bakhtin's new literary mode can create the excellent chance of studying Iranian women's situation properly. Finally, we explain that due to the drastic change of Iranian women's situation towards modernity, they may lead a double life if their rights are not respected. This can lead to a disproportionate relationship between the husband and the wife as the marital infidelity becomes rampant. (shrink)

This masterful work on Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason explores Kant's treatment of the Idea of God, his views concerning evil, and the moral grounds for faith in God. Kant and Religion works to deepen our understanding of religion's place and meaning within the history of human culture, touching on Kant's philosophical stance regarding theoretical, moral, political, and religious matters. Wood's breadth of knowledge of Kant's corpus, philosophical sharpness, and depth of reflection sheds (...) light not only on Kant, but also on the fate of religion and its relation to philosophy in the modern world. (shrink)

We live in a culture which, while largely dependent on science for its material welfare, is largely ignorant of the new ideas and perspectives on which science is based. This book examines the true significance of science and technology for society over the last three hundred years. Professor Hanbury Brown's insight and experience have resulted in a novel approach to the discussion of the cultural role of science. After reviewing the history of how science grew to be both useful (...) to, and feared by society, the book traces the same period in the context of new ideas and concepts in scientific research. Later chapters deal with society's current view of science and the need for attitudes to be changed, and then a discussion of the religious dimensions of science. This book aims to clear away some of the popular misconceptions about science and to put in their place a wider and deeper understanding of the nature of science and its value to society. (shrink)

In the fifteenth century, idolatry could be understood as one in a diversity of religious rites. Nicholas of Cusa and subsequent Platonists emphasized that no rite was necessary, only love, and drew on prisca theologia to understand religion throughout the world. By the turn of the sixteenth century, cosmographers such as Peter Martyr Anglerius incorporated these ideas into descriptions of religious and cultural practice. Early Reformation concerns about removing superstitious rites and images, and the Counter-Reformation response to that critique, (...) led to a vilification of heterodox religion as idolatrous and the increasing location of idolatry in cultures outside of Europe. (shrink)

This study examines the role of both religion and culture [as measured by the cultural clusters of countries in the GLOBE study of House et al. (Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, 2004)] on the levels of perceived corruption. Covering the period from 2000 to 2010, the study uses three different measures of perceived corruption: (1) the World Bank’s Control of Corruption measure, (2) Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and (3) Heritage Foundation’s Freedom (...) from Corruption Index. A system of three simultaneous equations is used, with the jointly endogenous variables being (a) perceived corruption, (b) perceived government legitimacy, and (c) perceived government effectiveness. The results show that both cultural and religious differences are incrementally related to perceived corruption, even after controlling for other economic and political factors. Specifically, relative to the Protestant Christian religion, the non-Protestant Christian religion, the Islamic religion, and Other Religion/no Religion are positively associated with higher corruption (or negatively with anti-corruption), but the Buddhist and Hindu religions appear to be not significantly different from the Protestant Christian religion. On the cultural side, compared to the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition, the other European clusters are incrementally positively associated with higher corruption, but this tendency is offset by more effective political governance, thus leading in the case of the German and Nordic cultures to levels of corruption not statistically different from the Anglo cluster. All the non-European cultural clusters are associated with significantly higher corruption tendencies, but the overall effect is mitigated partially by either greater perceived political legitimacy (Latin-American, Middle-Eastern, Caribbean, and Pacific Islander), or greater political effectiveness (Confucian and South-East Asian). (shrink)

Jens Zimmermann suggests that the West can rearticulate its identity and renew its cultural purpose by recovering the humanistic ethos that originally shaped Western culture. He traces the religious roots of humanism, and combines humanism, religion and hermeneutic philosophy to re-imagine humanism for our current cultural and intellectual climate.

Mircea Eliade, the renowned scholar of Romanian origin, wrote that Lucian Blaga was the greatest Romanian philosopher of all time. Blaga was intensely interested in both culture and religion as areas of philosophical investigation. Blaga’s philosophy proposes a metaphysics that explains the origin of culture and its unrivaled significance to humanity. His philosophy also endeavors to explicate the relationship between culture and religion. Blaga finds that religion is a cultural product, but does not view (...) this as a detriment to religion. On the contrary, according to Blaga, it is the very fact that religion is an expression of cultural creativity that gives religion its beauty. This article will introduce Blaga’s philosophy of culture and his philosophy of religion, explain the relationship between them, and show that Blaga accorded high honor to both. (shrink)

This is a review of a book which is unique in the history of contemporary ideas --- the authors make explicit the religious imperative in a connected world which is glocal.

Two hundred years ago, Friedrich Schleiermacher took critical issue with Immanuel Kant's intellectual notion of intuition as applied to human nature (Wellmon 2006). He found it necessary to modify—"hermeneutically," as he said—Kant's notion of anthropology by enabling it to include as human the new and strange human tribes Captain Cook found in the Pacific South Seas. A similar hermeneutic move is necessary if physics is to include the local contextual empirical syntheses of relativity and quantum physics. In this hermeneutical revision (...) the synthesis is formed around the notion of a Hilbert Vector Space as the universal grammar of physics, adding to it the dynamic of the Schrödinger equation, and representing empirical "observables" by projection operators that map the subspaces of definite measurable values. Among the set of observable projection operators, some pairs share the same subspace, commute with one another, and share a common laboratory setting. Other pairs do not share this property and are described as being mutually complementary. Complementary symmetries introduce into the discursive language of physics the commonsense notion of contextuality. The new synthesis, proposed by Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and (in his own way) Paul Dirac, brought physics into the community of common language and established it as a work of general human achievement. 1. (shrink)

The main intent of this paper is to give an account of the relationship between bio-cognition and culture in terms of coevolution, analysing religious beliefs and language evolution as case studies. The established view in cognitive studies is that bio-cognitive systems constitute a constraint for the shaping and the transmission of religious beliefs and linguistic structures. From this point of view, religion and language are by-products or exaptations of processing systems originally selected for other cognitive functions. We criticize (...) such a point of view, showing that it paves the way for the idea that cultural evolution follows a path entirely autonomous and independent from that of biological evolution. Against the by-product and exaptation approaches, our idea is that it is possible to interpret religion and language in terms of coevolution. The concept of coevolution involves a dual path of constitution: one for which biology (cognition) has adaptive effects on culture, the other for which, in turn, forms of culture have adaptive effects on biology (cognition). This dual path of constitution implies that religion and language are (at least in some aspects) forms of biological adaptations. (shrink)