In the verse (2:31) of the Qur’ān, it is mentioned that all names were taught to Adam (PBUH). This verse indicates that revelation is decisively the source of language. On the other hand, it is a common fact that people have been constantly producing symbols to express new ideas and concepts. This situation makes it necessary to associate the utterance (muṭlaq) and static with the relative (al-muqayyah) and dynamic between language and reality in religious thought. In the historical process, Mutakallims (...) have undertaken the responsibility of understanding and interpretation between the transcendent dimension of the religion (ad-Dīn) indicated in the Qur’ān and the innovative and dynamic dimension of life. The Mutakallims’ responsibility continues today. However, to establish the relationship among language, thought, and existence in today’s kalâm, it is necessary to identify the roots of this subject in kalām’s classical sources. In our study designed for this purpose, the truth and value of naming divine meanings in the context of ta‘līm al-asmā’ are examined. On the other hand, since dealing with such a large subject in a limited study is not possible, it is just focused on the research of linguistic theories, the relationship between language and thought, and the issue of whether the names used in the main sources to indicate the meanings are divinely determined (tawqīfī). In fact, it has been determined that the subject of ta'līm al-asmā’ is overshadowed by the vehement debates over the createdness of the Qur’ān (Khalq al-Qur’ān) and the relationship between Allāh’s essence and His attributes, although it is a Qur’ān-centered issue. As can be seen in the study, the approach of the Mutakallims to the issue of ta‘līm al-asmā’ is parallel to their understanding of Allāh’s essence and His attributes. As stated in this research, if the divine names were determined by Allāh, then Allāh’s names will be eternal. Besides, if the names expressed in human languages are the same as the essence of Allāh, this will lead to the problem of eternality. If it is said that the names are separated and unrelated from Allāh’s essence, there will be also more than one independent and eternal being. The idea of multiple eternal beings is against the principle of tawḥīd. However, in cases where the distinction between attributes and essence of Allāh is separated from each other in the mind, it causes attributes to be considered as something existing independently of the essence of Allāh. Therefore, as stated in the study, Mu‘tazilite theologians, who were very sensitive about this issue, attached great importance to the concept of eternity (qadīm) while transcending the essence of Allāh from the attributes of the created. As they appealed to tanzīh by which they transcend Him from all the originated things in time, they were focused on His eternality (qidam). In this regard, all His actions concerning the universe are regarded as temporal, in other words, originated in time (ḥādith). From this point of view, according to them, Allāh’s names specified in the Qur’ān are created just like the Qur’ān itself. Although their meanings are within the boundaries of the Divine Knowledge, their wordings (lafiẓ) belong to humans. Therefore, these names (asmâ’) that people use to describe Allāh in their speech, as Abū ‘Alī al-Jubbā’ī argues, are determined by the convention of the human. It has been determined by people via consensus, like other words of the language, to indicate the essence and attributes of Allāh in a language because of communication. Then, Allāh has sent down His message to people with these words. The conclusion that Mu‘tazilite theologians have regarded the connection of names with the meanings in Allāh’s knowledge as a linguistic use, while Sunnī theologians have addressed this issue based on the creative act (Khalq) of Allāh. There is another explanation which is known as the theory of faculty or habitus as an alternative way. Some Ash‘arî and Māturīdī theologians supported this theory. Today, the importance of this new perspective is clear, which appears another association of both ideas. In this context, it has been determined that the views of Māturīdī, who attributes the content (or meaning) of revelation (waḥy) to Allāh while arguing that its wordings belong to humans, are more appropriate to the theory of the faculty (malakah). (shrink)

On September 11, 2001, many of us experienced life as what it is not: we lived an extreme instance of the spectacle, of the sublime outside the realm of ethics. Starting with a few compelling questions that the media representations of the attack on the New York World Trade Center inevitably raise, this paper explores a series of similarities, continuums, and extrapolations of the aesthetic in different types of discourse from Friedrich Schiller to Guy Debord. My assessment of the individual‘s (...) dissolution in the ritual (former dissident and present Czech President Václav Havel‘s phrase) rejects the bleak Marxist theories of manipulation, without overlooking, at the same time, the potential dangers of unfreedom that the process of surrendering to the spectacle implies. Living life as show time may ultimately, and oxymoronically, prove to be the only option toward an infinitude of choices. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to reveal the role of religious, political and cultural factors on the way of understanding the concept of Ahl al-ḥaqq, one of the most important theopolitical concepts of Islamic thought, and to identify the projections of the semantic traansformatinon that concept of Ahl al-ḥaqq has experienced. In the comparative study with the group of "Ahl al-Shirk", "Ahl al-Kitāb", "Ahl al-Bid'at" and "Ahl al-Hawā", it has been determined that the concept of Ahl al-Haq has a (...) multi-layered spectrum of meaning. A number of critical periods can be mentioned in the formation of this multi-layered meaning structure. The first of these periods is the founding period in which a conception is constructed through the description of the superstitious actions of the "Ahl al-Shirk" and "Ahl al-Kitâb" groups in belief and practice, even though the term "Ahl al-haqq" is not mentioned in the Qur’ān. In this context, it can be said that all Muslims who confess and recite the shahada or the word tawhid with the intention of illa'l-haqq in faith and deeds are included in the category of Ahl al-haqq. After the first semantic period in which the opposition between Islam and un-Islam was decisive, the socio-political issues that emerged among Muslims moved the debate on who could be included in the scope of Ahl al-haqq to the intra-Islamic plane. In the second semantic period, in which every sect considered itself to be right, the scope of Ahl al-Haq was mostly described through the nass-centered references of the Salafiyya and the superstitious practices in belief and practice of Muslims included in the Ahl al-Bid'at category. The third semantic period was shaped relatively by the encounter with philosophical traditions. This is the period in which theologians defending the Islamic faith tried to keep dynamic the outward/objective epistemological aspect of the concept. In the fourth semantic period, which coincided with post-modernism, Ahl al-Haq returned to the socio-political meaning of the opposition between Islam and un-Islam in the founding period as an anti-imperial attitude against colonization activities. As a result, considering all these definitions, it is concluded at the present time that, it would be more accurate that the concept of Ahl al-Haq is better defined to include all Muslims who have accepted the principles of Islamic belief and declared their adherence to the Qur’ān and Sunna. (shrink)

Steven Spielberg‘s filmed representation of the Holocaust dares its viewers to experience, as secondary witnesses, atrocities committed by the Nazis in Poland. The film is yet another form of testimonial narrative (audio-visual but lacking a full historical context, except for a few on-screen titles) which aligns the survivors, who have come to be known as the Schindler Jews, and their descendants, on the one hand, and Spielberg‘s cameraman (comparable to an internalized narrator), Spielberg the film director (an external, omniscient narrator), (...) and the film-theater audience, on the other. We are all turned into witnesses in the same process and at the same time in which the real witnesses, the survivors, testify to the horror of the Holocaust. (shrink)

Artikeln tar sin utgångspunkt i två aktuella exempel på krav på historisk rättvisa efter kolonialismen: forna Mau-Mau-kämpars krav på gottgörelse för britternas övergrepp på 1950-talet och hererofolkets krav till Tyskland på gottgörelse för det folkmord som ägde rum 1904–1907. Dessa exempel aktualiserar frågan om historisk rättvisa. Vad innebär historisk rättvisa? Vilka krav på historisk rättvisa är berättigade att ställa? Hur lång tid efter övergrepp och våld finns det skäl att kräva gottgörelse? Kan kraven ärvas till efterkommande generationer? Vem bör gottgöra (...) dem som drabbats? Dessa frågor måste besvaras för att man skall kunna ta ställning till krav på gottgörelse och rättvisa. Syftet med denna artikel är att identifiera och söka besvara en rad frågor som krav på gottgörande rättvisa efter kolonialismen ställer. Avslutningsvis diskuteras kraven från Mau-Mau-kämparna som var internerade i brittiska läger och hererofolkets krav på kompensation från Tyskland.Nyckelord: Gottgörande rättvisa, kompensation, kolonialism, herero, Mau-Mau, global rättvisa, historisk rättvisaEnglish summary: The Meaning of Historical Justice after ColonialismRecently, four Kikuyus and former Kenyan Mau-Mau fighters claimed compensation for castration, torture and rape committed in the British detention camps in the 1950s. Also recently, representatives of the Herero people went to Berlin to bring home skulls that Germans brought to Berlin after the genocide at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The detentions and abuses of Kikuyu and the genocide of the Herero people are just two examples of offenses carried out by European nations during colonialism. Do these offenses have any reverberations today? Should we simply forget about the deeds that happened such a long time ago or do they raise any legal or moral questions?The concept of justice has two dimensions, distributional and rectificatory. This article focuses on the meaning and implication of rectificatory justice for historical wrongs. The simple idea that if A is harming B, A has to correct her act, i.e. the basic idea of rectificatory justice, presupposes a line of complicated assumptions when it is applied to specific historical incidences, for example colonialism.A model provides a basis for an explication of rectificatory justice. It is then applied to a discussion of rectification after colonialism. The questions of who can rightly claim rectification and who owes rectification, if there are temporal limitations to rectification and what rectification after colonialism would imply are discussed. The article ends with an explication of the meaning of rectificatory justice, an argumentation for why rectificatory justice is commendable and an assessment of the demands of the Mau-Mau-fighters and the Herero. (shrink)

In an earlier paper it was argued that in the famous chariot simile at the end of the first Georgic, Virgil imitates a passage from the Choephoroi of Aeschylus describing the onset of Orestes' madness. It was also suggested that Virgil may have been intentionally drawing a parallel between Octavian and the son of Agamemnon. Orestes avenged his father by murdering his mother Clytemnestra, but in so doing he deepened the guilt that afflicted Argos and thus gave new life to (...) the curse that lay on the house of Tantalus. So too, perhaps, Virgil is warning Octavian that in seeking to avenge his ‘father’ Caesar by killing his murderers at Philippi he is precipitating civil war, and so continuing the cycle of blood-guilt which similarly afflicts the Roman people. If such a suggestion seems fantastic it can now be supported by analogy from an explicit parallelism of Octavian and Orestes in a passage of Claudian. The first part of the passage in question reads as follows: Maurusius Atlas Gildonis Furias, Alaricum barbara Peuce nutrierat, qui saepe tuum sprevere profana mente patrem. Thracum venienti e flnibus alter Hebri clausit aquas; alter praecepta vocantis respuit auxiliisque ad proxima bella negatis abiurata palam Libyae possederat arva. (shrink)

For the senseless inira some manuscripts have inire or in arva, and the latter stands in the text of Baehrens . The attempts at emendation may be divided into two groups, those altering only inira and those tampering with ibat as well. I pass over the latter group, as Robinson Ellis, in his commentary, p. 125, has defended ibat sufficiently by reference to the frequent ñει in Babrius, Avianus’ model. The former group is represented by Withof and Robinson Ellis himself (...) ; and the editors of the Loeb text of the Minor Latin Poets, in 1934, had the verse printed with this in ora. Nobody seems to have seen that the verse-maker had to express the idea of the panther's pride. Therefore I propose ibat in (astra, a metaphorical phrase for the animal's conceit. For this metaphor cf. Horace's famous feriam sidera, for ibat Virg. Aen. 9. 641 sic itur ad astra, for in astra at the same place of the pentameter after a verb of motion Prop. 3. 18, 34 cessit in astra; Ov. Fast. 2. 478 and 3. 186 venit in astra. Avianus himself has this in astra before the last word of the pentameter in two more passages, 15. 8,19. 6. (shrink)