Building on a model first proposed by Gary Johnson, it is hypothesized that religious institutions demanding celibacy and other forms of altruism from members take advantage of human predispositions to favor genetic relatives in order to maintain and reinforce these desired behaviors in non-kin settings. This is accomplished through the institutionalization of practices to manipulate cues through which such relatives are regularly identified. These cues are association, phenotypic similarity, and the use of kin terms. In addition, the age of (...) recruits and their contact with actual kin are factors that relate to kinship recognition and that are similarly manipulated by institutions in order to reinforce altruistic behavior directed toward non-kin. Support for this set of predictions is presented from historical and ethnographic sources on monastic life in Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, as well as Islamic dervish groups, the Essenes, Shakers, and others. Potential implications of the model for understanding the development of religious institutions are preliminarily explored by reviewing Joachim Wach's model of religious developmental stages as well as some of the literature on the relationship between individualism and communalism in incipient religious organizations, in light of the kin-cue manipulation model. (shrink)

This paper connects celibacy to autonomy, which is derived from economic, emotional, and sexual self-determination. Although society attempts to control and define women's sexuality, the celibate woman who masturbates can retrieve her sexuality without the massive social rearrangements which are necessary for economic and emotional liberation. Because masturbation is accessible and singular, sexual autonomy is available to a woman who chooses celibacy, regardless of the other exigencies in her life, as illustrated in the example here from popular literature.

This article explores issues surrounding celibacy that have been amplified by the exposure of the sexual abuse crisis within the Catholic Church, which, for some, has called such a lifestyle into question. Taking the view that celibacy can be healthy and life-giving, provided that it is discerned well, the authors consider the ways in which an unintegrated celibate life can and does cause harm and has contributed to the scandal, though not the cause of it in and of (...) itself. Moreover, when celibacy is a gift of the Spirit, it can help to bring about a renewed, deepened understanding of sexuality needed for the Church and the world. (shrink)

Causes for celibacy, divorces and successful marriage are discussed in the article. Absence of true love and inability to build and keep it are the main reasons for family disruption. Amorousness, immature love and various forms of false or flawed love substitute the true feeling. It is caused by increased women’s independence, loss of mutual understanding and trust (due to infidelity or jealousy), incompatibility of characters or values. Celibacy is often conditioned by physical disability, revaluation of freedom and (...) independence, huge requirements to partners, consumer attitude to life, infertility, alcohol and drug abuse, abnormalities in personality and sexuality. (shrink)

The bliss of freedom from all sexual impulses. This book has come forth to give people an understanding about all the dangers of sexuality and all the benefits of brahmacharya. With the exact understanding of the vast benefits of brahmacharya, one would be inclined to follow the path of brahmacharya and would oppose sexuality from all aspects. Everyone agrees that brahmacharya should be practiced. But how should it be done? No one has every shown the way. In this book you (...) will find the precise clear road. People will be shocked to read the horrors of current and future dangers of sexuality and would say, 'We never knew this!'. (shrink)

Zimmerman, Brandon I teach philosophy at Good Shepherd Seminary in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. My specialty is ancient philosophy and the reception of pagan philosophy by Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This paper is my attempt to use ideas from ancient philosophy to respond to a serious problem that the Catholic Church faces today in Papua New Guinea. All my students are young PNG nationals discerning a call to the priesthood within the (...) Catholic Church. Unlike the other Christian denominations, the Catholic Church requires its priests to be celibate, that is, to remain unmarried and to abstain from sexual relationships. I myself am a married layman with three young children, and I steadfastly support my students in their development of a celibate lifestyle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist and Catholic Monks Talk about CelibacyThomas Ryan, CSPThe electronic sign at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport was flashing "Orange Alert" as a dozen Buddhist monks arrived in their burnt orange robes from around the country for three days of dialogue on celibacy with a similar number of Catholic monastics come together from various monasteries at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. As he opened the October 26–29, 2006, (...) meeting, Rev. William Skudlarek, executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), said, "You (Buddhists) have been at this for some five-to-seven hundred years longer than we have. We have something to learn."This was the second Monks in the West interreligious dialogue. The first took place in 2004 at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in northern California. On the Catholic side, the participants came from the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Camaldolese monasteries. On the Buddhist side, they came from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan traditions. Through the event, participants began the day with an hour of quiet sitting in meditation and joined the monastic community at St. John's for their rhythm of daily prayer.The first session dealt with theory, the "why" of celibacy. Buddhist participants explained that their teachings focus on seeing how suffering is created and cured. Attachments give rise to suffering, so advancement in the spiritual life requires letting go of one's attachments. Attachment to desires, among which are sexual desires, is a hindrance to spiritual progress. "Raging desire takes away choice, freedom," said Rev. Kusala Bhikshu, a Buddhist chaplain at UCLA, in his opening presentation. "The senses must be controlled in order to be free."Brother Gregory Perron from St. Procopius monastery in Indiana spoke of how monastic life demands a profound understanding and acceptance of solitude. "Celibacy is a tool," offered Perron, "a skillful means like intentional simplicity of life, by which our heart is burrowed out and the core of our being laid bare. By embracing it, the monk accepts the aloneness that characterizes every human being."In response to Buddhist reflections on the illusory nature of the body, Catholic participants pointed out Christianity's remarkably positive evaluation of the [End Page 143] body in the doctrines of the Incarnation, the bodily Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Both sides acknowledged balancing points of reference as well, such as, in Christianity, Paul's "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24). Though humankind ranks eighth from the bottom in Buddhism's thirty-two-realm cosmology, that level is the only one where spiritual growth can happen. Thus human form is in the end praised by the Buddha.In the second session, the participants moved from theory to practice. Rev. Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in California said that "the whole thrust of training is not to give in to desire that arises." He described the Buddhist method of accepting sexual feelings without either acting on them or repressing them, but just letting them pass through. "The right use of will is willingness, not willpower—the willingness to sit there and let that feeling pass through," he said.Fr. Skudlarek expressed appreciation for this Buddhist approach to transforming the sexual energy. "I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it. You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!"Rev. Heng Sure, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, presented celibacy as the first step in a three-step process that goes from celibacy to stillness to insight. "It should not be seen just as a difficult adjunct to the spiritual path, but as essential to it," he said. The practice of meditation represents daily periods when the senses are stilled and not allowed to pursue sense objects. "Something happens to the energy in the stillness; the pressure goes away." In married life, he explained, spiritual practice is "partial and piecemeal," making celibacy a more effective means to move toward insight and the peace and happiness that flow from it. In the discussion, Benedictine Fr. Mark... (shrink)

In this article the author argues against the dominant trend in Kierkegaardian scholarship by claiming that the primary reason for the break-up of Soren Kierkegaard's engagement to Regine Olsen was his conviction that God was calling him to celibacy. He explores the nature of this call, the struggles associated with it, and asks what exemplary value it possesses.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist and Catholic Monks Talk about CelibacyThomas Ryan, CSPThe electronic sign at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport was flashing "Orange Alert" as a dozen Buddhist monks arrived in their burnt orange robes from around the country for three days of dialogue on celibacy with a similar number of Catholic monastics come together from various monasteries at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. As he opened the October 26–29, 2006, (...) meeting, Rev. William Skudlarek, executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), said, "You (Buddhists) have been at this for some five-to-seven hundred years longer than we have. We have something to learn."This was the second Monks in the West interreligious dialogue. The first took place in 2004 at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in northern California. On the Catholic side, the participants came from the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Camaldolese monasteries. On the Buddhist side, they came from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan traditions. Through the event, participants began the day with an hour of quiet sitting in meditation and joined the monastic community at St. John's for their rhythm of daily prayer.The first session dealt with theory, the "why" of celibacy. Buddhist participants explained that their teachings focus on seeing how suffering is created and cured. Attachments give rise to suffering, so advancement in the spiritual life requires letting go of one's attachments. Attachment to desires, among which are sexual desires, is a hindrance to spiritual progress. "Raging desire takes away choice, freedom," said Rev. Kusala Bhikshu, a Buddhist chaplain at UCLA, in his opening presentation. "The senses must be controlled in order to be free."Brother Gregory Perron from St. Procopius monastery in Indiana spoke of how monastic life demands a profound understanding and acceptance of solitude. "Celibacy is a tool," offered Perron, "a skillful means like intentional simplicity of life, by which our heart is burrowed out and the core of our being laid bare. By embracing it, the monk accepts the aloneness that characterizes every human being."In response to Buddhist reflections on the illusory nature of the body, Catholic participants pointed out Christianity's remarkably positive evaluation of the [End Page 143] body in the doctrines of the Incarnation, the bodily Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Both sides acknowledged balancing points of reference as well, such as, in Christianity, Paul's "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24). Though humankind ranks eighth from the bottom in Buddhism's thirty-two-realm cosmology, that level is the only one where spiritual growth can happen. Thus human form is in the end praised by the Buddha.In the second session, the participants moved from theory to practice. Rev. Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in California said that "the whole thrust of training is not to give in to desire that arises." He described the Buddhist method of accepting sexual feelings without either acting on them or repressing them, but just letting them pass through. "The right use of will is willingness, not willpower—the willingness to sit there and let that feeling pass through," he said.Fr. Skudlarek expressed appreciation for this Buddhist approach to transforming the sexual energy. "I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it. You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!"Rev. Heng Sure, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, presented celibacy as the first step in a three-step process that goes from celibacy to stillness to insight. "It should not be seen just as a difficult adjunct to the spiritual path, but as essential to it," he said. The practice of meditation represents daily periods when the senses are stilled and not allowed to pursue sense objects. "Something happens to the energy in the stillness; the pressure goes away." In married life, he explained, spiritual practice is "partial and piecemeal," making celibacy a more effective means to move toward insight and the peace and happiness that flow from it. In the discussion, Benedictine Fr. Mark... (shrink)

This article explores the ascetic tendencies of Naḥmanides as reflected in his oeuvre as a whole, including his halakhic, kabbalistic, exegetical, and philosophical output. A close examination of Naḥmanides’s kabbalistic commentary to a talmudic sugiya concerning the differences between oaths and vows uncovers the austere and ascetic ethos in his teaching and its central place in his religious world. This perspective is linked to the nature of human beings and the human soul, the relationship between body and psyche, the meaning (...) of life and the overcoming of death, and the status of the Torah and the connection between observance of the commandments and the voluntary hasidic ethos. (shrink)

This paper responds to a piece of dialogue from Flora Nwapa’s novel Women are Different, in which Comfort mockingly says, “They took up the job voluntarily. Now you will soon tell us that they are celibate because of us.” There are two different interpretations of the use of “because,” and the claim is obviously false on only one of these.

This study examines the socioeconomic and familial background of Irish Catholic priests born between 1867 and 1911. Previous research has hypothesized that lack of marriage opportunities may influence adoption of celibacy as part of a religious institution. The present study traced data from Irish seminary registries for 46 Catholic priests born in County Limerick, Ireland, using 1901 Irish Census returns and Land Valuation records. Priests were more likely to originate from landholding backgrounds, and with landholdings greater in size and (...) wealth than the local average. Priests were found to originate from families with more sons than the national average, but with similar numbers of daughters. These findings are discussed in relation to competition for resources and lineage survival strategies. (shrink)

Foucault’s sodomite’: Damian’s Liber gomorrhianus (1049) reopened. Taking Michel Foucault’s famous statement about the difference between the ‘Medieval sodomite’ and the heteronormative ‘19th century homosexual’ as its cue, this article surveys the discursive source of that statement in the work of Peter Damian (1007–1072) with regard to his obscure, yet consequential text, Liber gomorrhianus (presented in 1049 to Pope Leo IX, preceding the Council of Reims). Drawing on the recent research by Ranft and because Damian is such an understated figure (...) in the corpus of Medieval philosophy, an overview of Damian’s life and work is presented, especially in terms of Damian’s 11th century reforming labour ethics. Only then the article proceeds to reopen Damian’s text, indicating that the ‘Medieval sodomite’ is far removed from an elementary precursor to the modern scientia sexualis homosexual, but is indeed presented by Damian as a complex and gender-inclusive licentious person, within the context of the disintegration of sexual morality (especially within the domains of celibacy and confession) in the middle to late 11th century church and monasteries. Cross-referencing the own translation of the Latin text with the translation of Payer, the article disseminates and critiques the key concepts in Damian’s argument for the summarily deposition of lapsi [fallen priests] and the expulsion of promiscuous monks (and nuns) from the orders, especially with regard to Damian’s concepts of contra-natural and irrational fornication. Pope Leo’s deeply pastoral and insightful answer to Damian ( Ad splendidum nitentis ) is presented in the last part of the article, including his sanctioning of Damian’s complex concept of sodomy, which on that ground, became the conceptual source for the council of Reims (1049), and subsequent Medieval councils dealing with the ‘problem of sodomy’ in the church and monasteries. The canons of those councils were indeed the source of Foucault’s analysis of Medieval sexuality – yet the more fundamental source was Damian’s obscure text. (shrink)

Today's academia is obsessed about writing and speaking gobbledygook. At least most of the time. It has little time in sitting still and actually reading fiction, poetry and say, Wittgenstein. One pretends to say fancy things about these authors but one does not actually read books anymore. COVID 19 Lockdown prompted this author to answer queries from students and peers about a reading list. So prepare a wide ranging list he did which covers everything from the version of Mahabharata one (...) ought to read to novels on celibacy. But then he chose to publish at Prabuddha Bharata over all other platforms because the Ramakrishna Mission has the finances to keep this list alive 200 years hence. This was written during COVID 19 Lockdown in India at the end of April, 2020. Nirad C Chaudhuri insisted on making a good bibliography in his magnum opus. This author follows Nirad C Chaudhuri in quietly speaking about how Harold Bloom plagiarised the Late Professor John Senior's reading list. The list also comments on Romanticism and the art of writing itself. The list on Hinduism is truly contrarian. One hopes that this list survives when GoodReads and other Listopias are no longer. -/- Today's academia is obsessed about writing and speaking gobbledygook. At least most of the time. It has little time in sitting still and actually reading fiction, poetry and say, Wittgenstein. One pretends to say fancy things about these authors but one does not actually read books anymore. COVID 19 Lockdown prompted this author to answer queries from students and peers about a reading list. So prepare a wide ranging list he did which covers everything from the version of Mahabharata one ought to read to novels on celibacy. But then he chose to publish at Prabuddha Bharata over all other platforms because the Ramakrishna Mission has the finances to keep this list alive 200 years hence. This was written during COVID 19 Lockdown in India at the end of April, 2020. Nirad C Chaudhuri insisted on making a good bibliography in his magnum opus. This author follows Nirad C Chaudhuri in quietly speaking about how Harold Bloom plagiarised the Late Professor John Senior's reading list. The list also comments on Romanticism and the art of writing itself. The list on Hinduism is truly contrarian. One hopes that this list survives when GoodReads and other Listopias are no longer. -/- These COVID 19 days, while the First world is mooning over syllabi for their kids and third and fourth world folks like me are tackling Umphan; I chose to prepare a new kind of syllabus. A syllabus which is not merely a list. In these days of incessant and meaningless webinars which my students can only spread memes about and only the poor and doctors will actually travel to white nations which are killing their own; here's a list which ends with Hindu classics which are contrarian. Nirad C Chaudhuri, a much maligned man in India and a forgotten polyglot in white privileged academia said we must first prepare a bibliography. So, Figure it out. I used some of the Hindu resources on recognition mentioned here and tried to work on Stephen King; a privileged white tenure track person from Trumpland just snowballed me. Now, this list is syllabi and also just a list of a bunch of books to read during Lockdowns which will be more common in the future because COVID 19, as Dr Fauci tells us; is here to stay. Even if one COVID 19 person is there; then along with Ebola, my white privileged tenure track fiends; off you go to gagaland. We in India already know these diseases. Go figure it out. (shrink)

In the study of Buddhism it is commonly accepted that a monk or nun who commits a pārājika offence is permanently and irrevocably expelled from the Buddhist monastic order. This view is based primarily on readings of the Pāli Vinaya. With the exception of the Pāli Vinaya, however, all other extant Buddhist monastic law codes (Dharmaguptaka, Mahāsāṅghika, Mahīśāsaka, Sarvāstivāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda) contain detailed provisions for monks and nuns who commit pārājikas but nevertheless wish to remain within the saṅgha. These monastics (...) are not expelled. Rather, they are granted a special status known as the śikṣādattaka. In this paper I explore the rules. concerning pārājika penance and the śikṣādattaka with specific regard to monastic celibacy. Given that five out of six extant law codes recognise this remarkable accommodation to the rule of celibacy, I argue that we must look to Vinayas other than the Pāli Vinaya if we are to arrive at a nuanced and representative view of Indian Buddhist monasticism. Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.). (shrink)

ArgumentUntil the fifteenth century, celibacy was the rule among Christian scholars of northwestern Europe. Celibacy was a major element of the codified cultural representation of the scholar and his specific way of life, sustained by peculiar institutional arrangements and daily routines. Founding family households implied therefore a major reorganization of the scholar’s way of life. Broadly speaking, this involved refashioning the scholarly habitus, redefining social relations, and developing the necessary material infrastructure. The paper focuses on three aspects of (...) this process during a period characterized by uncertainty and experimentation. It discusses the structure of scholars’ families, arguing that at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, received models still persisted, while new viable models for articulating family reproduction with the transmission of scholarly dispositions had not yet crystallized. It then turns to the reorganization of domestic space, focusing on the different uses of the study to manage social distance and regulate domestic relations. Finally, among the different manifestations of the scholarly habitus, it argues that the emotional detachment of learned men was itself a learned habit. The well-documented discussion of competing options for organizing scholars’ family households and cultivating an acquired nature in academic settings provides an exceptional occasion to examine the way a group habitus is reshaped and, explore the cultural work involved in this process. (shrink)

Asexuality is overlooked in the philosophical literature and in wider society. Such neglect produces incomplete or inaccurate accounts of romantic life and harms asexual people. We develop an account of asexuality to redress this neglect and enrich discussion of romantic life. Asexual experiences are diverse. Some asexual people have sex; some have romantic relationships in the absence of sex. We accept the common definition of asexuality as the absence of sexual attraction and explain how sexual attraction and sexual desire differ (...) by giving an affordance‐like account of sexual attraction. Armed with that distinction, we show that asexuality is clearly different from celibacy or disorders of desire and that some existing philosophical theories of sexual desire struggle to accommodate asexual sexuality. We then build on asexual testimony about the diversity of non‐sexual attractions to answer two common objections levelled at asexual romance: that romantic relationships require sexual attraction or that sex in the absence of sexual attraction is insufficiently focused on someone as an individual. Finally, we describe some of the ways asexuality has been erased or denigrated in society, and the specific injustices and harms that result. (shrink)

A preoccupation with technology has helped bury the philosophical question: What is the point of education? I attempt to answer this question. Various answers to the question are surveyed and it is shown that they depend upon different conceptions of the self. For example, the devotional-self of the 12th century (which was about becoming master of the self) gave way to the liberal-self (which was to facilitate social change). Education can only be satisfactorily justified, I argue, by appeal to transcendent (...) values such as mastery of the self, which is incipient in liberal education. (shrink)

The Catholic Church proscribes methods of birth control other than sexual abstinence. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes abstinence as an acceptable method of birth control in research studies, some pharmaceutical companies mandate the use of artificial contraceptive techniques to avoid pregnancy as a condition for participation in their studies. These requirements are unacceptable at Catholic health care institutions, leading to conflicts among institutional review boards, clinical investigators, and sponsors. Subjects may feel coerced by such mandates to (...) adopt contraceptive techniques inconsistent with their personal situation and beliefs; women committed to celibacy or who engage exclusively in non-heterosexual activities are negatively impacted. We propose principles to insure informed consent to safeguard the rights of research subjects at Catholic institutions while mitigating this ethical conflict. At the same time, our proposal respects the interests of pharmaceutical research agencies and Catholic moral precepts, and fully abides by regulatory guidance. (shrink)

In a study drawing from both evolutionary biology and the social sciences, evidence and argument is assembled in support of the comprehensive appli- cation of selfish gene theory to the human population. With a focus on genes giving rise to characteristically-human cooperation (“cooperative genes”) in- volving language and theory of mind, one may situate a whole range of pat- terned behaviour—including celibacy and even slavery—otherwise seeming to present insuperable difficulties. Crucially, the behaviour which tends to propa- gate the cooperative (...) genes may be “at cost” to the genes of some who may be party to the cooperation itself. Explanatory insights are provided by Trivers’ parent-offspring conflict theory, Lack’s principle, and Hamilton’s kin selec- tion mechanism. A primary observation is that cooperation using language and theory of mind is itself interdependent with full human conceptualization of a world of objects and of themselves as embodied beings. Human capaci- ties inhering in, or arising out of, the ability to cooperate are also responsible for a vitally important long-term process, the domestication of animals and p- lants. The approach illuminates the difference between animal and human sexual behaviour, and the emergence of kinship systems. Again, recent pat- terns of population growth become much more explicable. It is argued that the gene is the single controlling replicator; the notion of the meme as a sec- ond independent replicator is flawed. (shrink)

This volume contains the editions of polemical texts by Erasmus against Martin Luther and Pierre Cousturier, of his defence against attacks on his oration on matrimony (and celibacy), and of his immensely popular ‘pocket’ edition of the _Disticha Catonis_.

In Moral Formation and the Virtuous Life, volume editor Paul M. Blowers has translated and gathered several key texts from early Christian sources to explore the broad themes of moral conscience and ethics. Readers will gain a sense of how moral formation was part of a process sustained by pastoral instruction and admonition based on ritual practice (baptism, eucharist, and liturgy) as well as learned ethical behaviors related to moral issues, such as sexual ethics, marriage and celibacy, wealth and (...) poverty, pagan entertainment, military service, and more. (shrink)

On rivers, mountains and secrets : an introduction to the study and its subjects -- Talking to God-- and God talking back -- Mind embodied : spiritual practice and consciousness -- Place and the making of religious practice -- The spirit of the work : challenging oppression, nurturing diversity -- Conscious sex, sacred celibacy : sexuality and the spiritual path.

The character of Hippolytus, as it is drawn by Euripides, usually receives but half-hearted praise. His coldness, inherited, no doubt, from his Amazon mother, and his consciousness of virtue, inevitably allied to priggishness in the eyes of a society which tolerates any extreme of self-depreciation, are not attractive. It is, perhaps, more surprising that no surprise seems to be provoked by the dramatic portrayal of a disposition unique in Greek literature. The association of holiness with a life of celibacy (...) is so familiar from the history both of Christianity and of other faiths that it seems natural to us that one who aspires to the highest purity, like Hippolytus, should allow no place in his life for sex. Hippolytus is pure, we are apt to imagine, for the same reason that a monk is pure, because such purity is pleasing to the god whom he serves and favourable to the life of the spirit. (shrink)

The church's response to the gay and lesbian community: a brief history -- Same-sex relations in ancient Jewish and Christian thought -- Key arguments in today's debate on same-sex relationships -- Fifty shekels for rape? Making sense of Old Testament laws -- What is ethical? Interpreting the Bible like Jesus -- The question of celibacy for gay and lesbian people -- Is it Adam's fault? Why the origin of same-sex attraction matters -- Imagining a new response to the gay (...) and lesbian community. (shrink)

The existence of superstition and religious beliefs in most, if not all, human societies is puzzling for behavioral ecology. These phenomena bring about various fitness costs ranging from burial objects to celibacy, and these costs are not outweighed by any obvious benefits. In an attempt to resolve this problem, we present a verbal model describing how humans and other organisms learn from the observation of coincidence (associative learning). As in statistical analysis, learning organisms need rules to distinguish between real (...) patterns and randomness. These rules, which we argue are equivalent to setting the level of α for rejection of the null hypothesis in statistics, are governed by risk management as well as by comparison to previous experiences. Risk management means that the cost of a possible type I error (superstition) has to be traded off against the cost of a possible type II error (ignorance). This trade-off implies that the occurrence of superstitious beliefs is an inevitable consequence of an organism’s ability to learn from observation of coincidence. Comparison with previous experiences (as in Bayesian statistics) improves the chances of making the right decision. While this Bayesian approach is found in most learning organisms, humans have evolved a unique ability to judge from experiences whether a candidate subject has the power to mechanistically cause the observed effect. Such “strong” causal thinking evolved because it allowed humans to understand and manipulate their environment. Strong causal thinking, however, involves the generation of hypotheses about underlying mechanisms (i.e., beliefs). Assuming that natural selection has favored individuals that learn quicker and more successfully than others owing to (1) active search to detect patterns and (2) the desire to explain these patterns mechanistically, we suggest that superstition has evolved as a by-product of the first, and that belief has evolved as a by-product of the second. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that health plays a special role in the promotion of well-being within the capabilities approach framework. I do this by first presenting a scenario involving two individuals, both of whom lack access to only one capability. The first cannot secure the capability of bodily health due to an unhealthy lifestyle, whilst the second lacks access to bodily integrity due to a life of celibacy. Second, I explore these scenarios by assessing the nature of disadvantage (...) suffered in both instances. I suggest that corrosive disadvantage (or the type of disadvantage that adversely impacts one’s ability to secure other valuable things) is what leads us to conclude that health is of special moral importance in the promotion of justice and the endorsing of well-being. (shrink)

NADOT M. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 118–127The world’s first secular autonomous nursing school against the power of the churchesSecular healthcare practices were standardized well before the churches’ established their influence over the nursing profession. Indeed, such practices, resting on the tripartite axiom of domus, familia, hominem, were already established in hospitals during the middle ages. It was not until the last third of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Church imposed its culture on secular health institutions; the Protestant church followed (...) suit in 1836. In reaction to the encroachment of religious orders on civil society and the amalgam of religious denominations favored, for example, by the devout Florence Nightingale (supported, in 1854, by Sir Sidney Herbert, the influential Puseyite), it is on 20 July 1859 that the great Swiss nineteenth century pedagogue and recipient of the Académie française Gold Medal, Valérie de Gasparin-Boissier (1813–94), proposed a model of secular healthcare training for nurses that would become a counter-model set in opposition to religious health institutions. Forerunner of later schools, the world’s first secular autonomous Nursing School was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its mission was to bring decisive changes to the statutes of nurses’ training, which were then still based on six principles not far removed from those of religious communities at the time: commitment for life, the Rule of St Augustine, obedience, celibacy, the renouncement of salary, and the uniform. (shrink)

The philosophical origins of the concept of supererogation can be found in medieval discussions of actions that deserve extraordinary merit. These discussions focus primarily on the evangelical counsels of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, which Christian tradition has recognized as non-obligatory and especially efficacious ways of reaching perfection and salvation, ever since its early centuries. This chapter will provide a history of supererogation and the related counsels, primarily within the context of the Roman Catholic Church. It starts with the New (...) Testament, where the counsels first appear, and the commendation of the counsels by the early Church Fathers. It then moves to St. Thomas Aquinas and discusses the main features of his understanding of supererogation, keeping an eye on how Aquinas’ account relates to important theological challenges of his times. The chapter concludes by examining the Protestant rejection of the idea that some actions can possess superabundant merit, the Catholic response to this rejection, and the moral philosophical developments that came as a result. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXV, Numbers 1 and 2, April/November 1999, pp. 139-153 Hume on Monkish Virtues WILLIAM DAVIE In the second Enquiry1 Hume denounces the "monkish virtues," saying that men of sense will regard them as vices because they "cross all... desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper" (EPM 270). He includes under this heading, "Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, (...) self-denial, humility, silence, solitude." No doubt Hume's stance regarding the "monkish virtues" does fit into a particular vision of the desirable life, but it may be questioned whether it fits his philosophy with full consistency. In this paper, I will argue that Hume's explicit formula for identifying virtues fails to justify his rejection of the monkish virtues if it is followed without prejudice. I. Identifying Virtues Our whole comprehension of virtue, and our competence to identify it in any community, ultimately derives from our perception of virtue in particular instances. The edifice of morality reaches into the thin air of abstractions and general rules, but it does not begin there and it is always grounded in the concrete experience of human individuals. In the most basic case, what we perceive is not (say) the trait of kindness as embodied in George.2 We rather perceive the whole phenomenon of George in his particular situation. We pick up information about the person and the surroundings, including bits about motivation, moods, temptations, complications of all sorts, plus the general William Davie is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, 1295 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1295, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 140 William Davie background understanding we have of human nature. We ascertain whether the man's character is useful or agreeable, for himself or others. All this is needed to "pave the way" for the activation of moral sentiment. Then we get an impression (not an idea) of the man's virtue; we feel the warm glow of George's kindness on this particular occasion. How does language figure in our experience of moral differences? We know that as any individual's time on earth mounts up, and as one gains a few years of experience, he or she will gradually acquire abstract ideas and the words which signify them. Here in brief is Hume's account of the formation process (T 17-25). The first order of business is to notice a resemblance among certain objects of experience; we apply the same word to all of them. Thus, we would gather indefinitely many instances in which the word 'kind' is applied to something, or where somebody speaks of 'kindness.' The word becomes associated with a certain custom, or habit of mind, which custom is evoked whenever we hear or speak that word, or at least whenever the word is used wrongly. In that event, the custom fires up some relevant counterexamples for our attention. If somebody asserts, "True kindness is always well-planned and fully reflective," our mind instantly lights upon cases of spontaneous or impulsive kindness. If we should overhear, "She is a very kind person, so people don't like her," we know that something is amiss. Our competence in handling abstract ideas clearly underwrites the catalog that Hume confidently envisions at the start of his second Enquiry. We can make two lists, one for virtues and one for vices. In this process, Hume thinks, "The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly" (EPM 174). We can easily appreciate why it should be so. Our moral epithets are mounted on items of direct perception. Our understanding of a particular word is really a custom of associating certain elements of our own experience. He offers some concrete guides, each of which can be used from one's armchair : 1. A philosopher can "enter into his own breast" for a moment, and consider whether or not he should desire to have this or that quality ascribed to him. 2. He can consider whether the attribution of a particular quality to him would come from a friend or an enemy. 3. He can consider whether a quality, if ascribed to any person, "implies... (shrink)

Controversially, psychologist and public intellectual Jordan Peterson advises “enforced monogamy” for societies with high percentages of “incels.” As Peterson’s proposal resonates in manosphere circles, this chapter reconstructs and briefly evaluates the argument for it. Premised on the moral importance of civilizational sustainability, advocates argue that both polygamous and socially monogamous but sexually liberal mating patterns result in unsustainable proportions of unattached young men. Given the premises, monogamous societies are probably justified in maintaining their anti-polygamist social and legal norms. The case (...) for imposing stricter sexual norms on socially monogamous but sexually liberal societies is weaker, however, as male involuntary celibacy in those places isn’t as directly caused by male intrasexual competition, and since less intrusive social interventions are more likely to ameliorate “the incel problem.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Our Fathers Fall:A Thomistic-Confudan Approach to Lay Moral Correction of ClergyJoshua R. BrownIn this article, I seek to draw upon the resources of Thomas Aquinas and early Confucian philosophy in order to answer the following question: what are the responsibilities of lay Catholics to our priests and bishops as regards their personal moral rectification? This justifiably provokes two questions in reaction: why is this question worth pursuing, and (...) why pursue it via a comparative reading of Aquinas and Confucian philosophy?As to the first of these, the question I pose here is a specification of the larger responsibilities that fall to Christians according to the Scriptures. Galatians 5:1–2 puts the matter this way: "Brothers, even if a person is caught in some transgression, you who are spiritual should correct that one in a gentle spirit, looking to yourself, so that you may also not be tempted. Bear one another's burdens and so you will fulfill the law of Christ."1 In the theological tradition, "bearing one another's burdens" has been neatly and aptly represented in the principle of fraternal correction. The question I am focused on here, then, is how is fraternal correction properly offered from laity to clerics.Ultimately, articulating the shape or form of virtuous lay correction of clergy is actually a rather knotty problem. This is because the manner of the relationship between laity and clergy is not simply understood in terms [End Page 1025] of the bonds of Christian fraternity. Certainly, all Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ, for through His grace we have been adopted into the inheritance of the Kingdom of God as children of God (see Eph 5:1–5; 1 John 3:1–3). Yet the Church also recognizes that priests and bishops possess not simply a fraternal but also a paternal relationship to laity. As St. Paul again puts it to the church in Corinth, "I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you, be imitators of me" (1 Cor 4:15–16).I propose here that, although fraternal correction is a still useful concept for understanding how laity can morally correct clergy, it has an obvious weakness in that it corresponds to a particular relational analogy, that of fraternity, within which the difference in authority is not as great as the parent–child bond. Thus, fraternal correction is exceptionally useful for understanding how relationships with more or less equal rank of authority can function in terms of moral remonstration, such as how a lay Christian might fraternally correct another lay Christian, or a cleric fraternally correct a cleric. However, when it comes to clergy–laity relations, the shape of fraternal correction is far less clear, for there is a just and genuine disparity between them in the order of ecclesial, magisterial authority underlying the relationship, even if there is equality in other important respects.I argue here that lay responsibilities for correcting clergy can be fruitfully understood in terms of filial remonstration as understood by the Confucian philosophical tradition. Of course, there is one tremendous dissimilarity between Confucian views on the responsibilities for filial remonstration and those pertaining to the laity–clergy relationship: the former occur within and flow from the natural foundation of the parent–child bond, while the latter are not based on blood relations and natural duties. Yet, the same can be said about the language of fraternal correction, which draws upon the analogous duties of blood-kin applied to the spiritual fraternity of the Christian life. And so, it must be admitted that although the father–child relationship is used only analogously to describe the priest–laity relationship, it also accurately depicts the reality of that relationship. As John Paul II observed, priestly celibacy entails "a singular sharing in God's fatherhood and in the fruitfulness of the Church."2 The call of the priest to the celibate life is thus a call to fatherhood, indeed, a call to imitate and participate in the paternity of the triune God in a special and spiritual way. It seems clear that only a materialistic conception of things that denies the spiritual its proper... (shrink)

My Guru and His Disciple is a sweetly modest and honest portrait of Isherwood's spiritual instructor, Swami Prabhavananda, the Hindu priest who guided Isherwood for some thirty years. It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in Isherwood's own life. Sexual sprees, all-night drinking bouts, a fast car ride with Greta Garbo, scriptwriting conferences at M-G-M, intellectual sparring sessions with Berthold Brecht alternated with nights of fasting at the Vedanta Center, a (...) six-month period of celibacy and sobriety, and the pious drudgery of translating the Bhagavad-Gita. Seldom has a single man been owed with such strong drives toward both sensuality and spirituality, abandon and discipline; out of the passionate dialectic between these drives, My Guru and His Disciple has been written. (shrink)

: The thesis put forth in this study is that, while coitus interruptus was known to the early Muslims, it was not practiced for reasons that were primarily theological. For ʿazl is in obvious conflict with the rule that prevailed until the third/ninth century, that of enjoining the believer to marry and procreate without trying to curb one’s fertility. A careful examination of the oldest traditions on the subject leads us to conclude that only about the end of the first/seventh (...) century some religious authorities spoke in favor of resorting to this contraceptive method, in a limited context – the relationship between a master and his slave girl. And it is probably during the same period that the controversy over coitus interruptus arose. This is why it is anachronistic to see traditions in favor of coitus interruptus as testimony on how long this type of birth control has been practiced in the Islamic world. In addition to relying on textual criticism, the study uses prosopographical information to show that the first Muslims often had many children with concubines. Some Muslim authorities encouraged believers to resort to coitus interruptus, not in order engage in «birth control» but because of the negative reputation of slave girls. To avoid having children with them was to avoid having «illegitimate» children – who were considered evil – and especially to avoid increasing their number so as not to hasten the end of the world. Later, when the rule that believers must marry and produce offspring ceased to be a dogma, allowing for celibacy to be an option, albeit for a tiny minority, coitus interruptus came to be permitted as a means of limiting births, but only if the purpose was religious in nature. Birth control for strictly economic reasons continued to be strictly forbidden. (shrink)

This work examines the relationship between the endings chosen for musical works based on the biblical story of Jephtah's daughter and broader currents of European thought. Because the biblical story leaves the fate of Jephtah's daughter unclear, commentators have offered two interpretations: Jephtah's daughter is either sacrificed or consecrated to God. The examination of these two interpretations in the various commentaries and artistic works throughout the ages suggest a possible correlation between a given artist's religious affiliation and the type of (...) ending he composed for the story. Although Catholics would appear more likely to choose consecration as promoting the ideal of women's celibacy, no such correlation is seen in practice. Rather, the determining factor in the choice of the musical ending of the story is the dominant artistic convention of the time. This finding is in line with Curt Sachs's cultural theory of a universal pendulum of styles in Western civilization. Thus, the specific choice of the ending of the story of Jephtah's daughter in various artistic media may serve as a paradigm for broader trends of European thought. (shrink)

The essay investigates the philosophical infancy of the idea that some actions are morally praiseworthy while not being morally obligatory. It focuses on Thomas Aquinas’s distinction between commandments and counsels, the early Christian idea that some acts go beyond nature, and the Stoic notion of circumstantially appropriate actions. I discuss the Christian and Stoic justification of acts of self-denial, such as celibacy, poverty, and martyrdom, and attempt to find a unitary source of goodness and moral obligation that allows for (...) such supererogatory acts. Nature provides such a unitary source in the early Christian theologian Athanasius and the Stoics. I discuss how nature determines one’s duties while also allowing for praiseworthy acts outside the scope of these duties, and in seeming contrast with them. (shrink)

This paper examines the way in which divine law and divine command have in cases been commandeered for the purposes of demonstrating fidelity to religious orthodoxy. It takes the example of one theologian’s investigation into the tradition and asks whether, in the very name of producing an orthodox theology of sexual difference, the debate does not end up being cast in contemporary, sexualised terms. It then takes the example of how contemporary understandings of sexual difference can be read back into (...) ancient texts by examining a reading of Parmenides, and by comparison with Aristotle’s reading of sexual difference shows how that reading can be questioned. It concludes with an examination of a reading of a text of St. Augustine to show (1) how the traditions of celibacy and marriage have not been commensurate in the Christian tradition and (2) what goes wrong when they are asserted to be commensurate. (shrink)