The history of the environmental philosophy carries with it the effort to overcome the medieval anthropocentric morality. Here, nature is seen from the instrumental value which they give. The instrumental value here shows the existence of things as important only as they are useful to man. The contemporary environmental ethics bring a novelty showing these environmental bodies as possessing an intrinsic value showing that they have an ethical value. The medieval ethical system which denies intrinsic value to the environment and (...) thus posits man as being at the center of any moral system leads to the over possession of the environment by man. This over possession by man has led to the destruction of environment by man who exploits the environment in his service. This work looks at the African scenario which seems to be facing more environmental degradation in the contemporary times. The reason for this is surmised by this paper as a damaging evolution of the African history from traditionalism which seems to respect the environment to modernism which demystifies the mysteries accorded the environment and hence putting the environment into excessive use through some actions like deforestation, burning of fossil fuels and so on. This paper suggests a crusade against these damaging effects of modernism for a better preservation of the environment. (shrink)

The inability of traditional Shi’a jurisprudents to respond to the challenges in the field of human rights and the rights of religious minorities, which is rooted in the denial of human dignity and the emphasis on religious dignity, has led to the emergence of a new discourse among contemporary Shi’a jurisprudents in Iran in recent years. This group of jurists known as reformist jurists seeks to re-evaluate the jurisprudential laws, re-interpret the Shari’a and find a way out of the religion (...) to reduce the existing conflict with the universal human rights standards. The opinions of this group of jurists, albeit criticized by the traditional scholars, have been welcomed by young clerics. To understand the main aspects of this jurisprudential dispute, two main questions have been considered by the researchers: What are the main principles of human rights in the thoughts of traditionalist and reformist jurists in Iran? And how differently have the reformist jurists conceptualized the subject of human rights? To answer these questions, the impact of traditional jurisprudents on the formulation of the current constitution of Iran is studied and the main differences between the views of traditional and modern jurists are evaluated. (shrink)

The issue of traditionalism versus modern subjectivism in the light of the conflict of Edmund Burke`s conservatism with the Enlightenment as the ideological basis of the French revolution was not discussed or studied sufficiently in our political and philosophical theory. In this paper we are reconsidering a theoretical debate between arising modern rationalism of Enlightenment and European traditionalism. The text further explains on the reasons for choosing this subject and course the research will take subsequently. An overview is (...) provided of the most important topics as well as a preliminary conception of the problem structure in this research. Considering the importance and overwhelming influence exhorted by French revolution it is only logical that the event of such magnitude met not only with approvals but with challenges and disputes as well, and all of it contributed to the theoretical considerations of the historical sense and purpose of this event. The aim of the project is to provide explanations and evaluations of the origins Enlightenment on one hand side and theoretically reconsidered traditionalism on the other. Looking at the dawn of modern era and evaluating these events would cast sharper light on the spirit of times of this crucial moment of history, and it would provide new basis for reconsideration of the achievements and implications of the fundamental ideas of Moderna. Pitanje odnosa tradicionalizma i moderne subjektivnosti, posebno u konkretnom kontekstu suceljavanja konzervativizma Edmunda Berka i prosvetiteljstva kao idejna osnove Francuske revolucije, i pored svog neospornog znacaja, kod nas ni izdaleka nije dovoljno razmotreno i osvetljeno. Radi se, dakle, o teorijskom suceljavanju starog evropskog tradicionalizma i nastupajuceg modernog prosvetiteljskog racionalizma. U tekstu se obrazlaze zbog cega je ova tema uzeta za predmet istrazivanja, kao i u kom smjeru ce se u osnovi istrazivanje kretati. Takodje, dat je pregled najvaznijih problemskih mjesta, relevantnih parametara, i kako je preliminarno zamisljena problemska struktura ovog istrazivanja. Posto Francuska revolucija predstavlja epohalni dogadjaj koji je opredijelio prelaz iz tradicionalne Evrope u moderno doba, sasvim je prirodno da je dogadjaj od takvog znacaja izazvao ne samo odobravanja, vec i reakciju i osporavanja, koja su sa svoje strane uticala na dalju teoretizaciju svrhe i smisla ovog istorijsko-drustvenog preokreta. Osnovni cilj istrazivanja je da se rasvjetli fundamentalna ravan nastanka kako prosvetiteljstva tako i teoretizovanog tradicionalizma, cime se umnogome doprinosi da se jasnije razaznaju svi slojevi prosvetiteljskog teorijskog koncepta, kao i teorijska utemeljenost konzervativizma, koji je u vidu tradicionalizma veoma dugo i bez razvijene teorijske podloge predstavljao neupitanu vladajucu formu za ukupan drustveni i politicki zivot. Ovakav pristup doprinosi da se jasnije osvjetli duh vremena na prelazu u moderno doba, u kome je doslo do radikalnog preokreta u svim sferama zivota. Neophodno je, dakle, da se i iz ove perspektive reaktualizuje promisljanje dometa i implikacija fundamentalnih ideja moderne. (shrink)

Drawing on Connell's notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of men's headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals (...) may maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening men's material and emotional ties to their families. (shrink)

Environmentalism is usually thought to be a liberal political position, but the two primary schools of thought within the conservative intellectual movement support environmentalism as well. The free market perspective has received considerable attention for its potential contributions to environmental protection, but the traditionalist perspective has not. In this essay, I consider several important principles of traditionalist conservatism. The traditionalists are not materialists and are highly critical of our consumer culture. They reject ideology and stress piety toward nature, the intergenerational (...) character of society, and prudence in political and social action. These basic principles are a solid foundation for environmentalism. (shrink)

Traditionalism is a shadowy philosophy that has influenced much of the twentieth century and beyond: from the far-right to the environmental movement, from Sufi shaykhs and their followers to Trump advisor and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon. It is a worldview that rejects modernity and instead turns to mystical truth and tradition as its guide. Mark Sedgwick, one of the world's leading scholars of Traditionalism, presents a major new analysis, pulling back the curtain on the foundations of Traditionalist philosophy, (...) its major proponents-René Guénon, Julius Evola, and Frithjof Schuon-and their thought. One of Traditionalism's fundamental pillars is perennialism, the idea that beneath all the different forms of religion there lies one single timeless and esoteric tradition. A second is the view that everything is getting worse, rather than better, over time, leading to the Traditionalist critique of modernity. Sedgwick details Traditionalism's unique ideas about self-realization, religion, politics, and many other spheres. Traditionalism provides an expansive guide to this important school of thought-one that is little-known and even less understood-and shows how pervasive these ideas have become. (shrink)

David Estlund and Massimo Renzo argue that, given the right background conditions, combatants are obligated to obey orders to fight in unjust wars, a thesis they put forward even as they recognize that this involves committing serious moral wrongs. Their views, then, fall between traditionalism and revisionism in the theory of just war. We argue that both Estlund and Renzo fail to adequately distinguish between binding and nonbinding serious morally wrong orders, that their views are incompatible with their assumed (...) fact‐relative understanding of morality, and that they fail to establish that combatants are obligated to obey orders to fight in unjust wars. We conclude that just as untenable as these two middle‐ground positions is the traditionalist view. (shrink)

Environmentalism is usually thought to be a liberal political position, but the two primary schools of thought within the conservative intellectual movement support environmentalism as well. The free market perspective has received considerable attention for its potential contributions to environmental protection, but the traditionalist perspective has not. In this essay, I consider several important principles of traditionalist conservatism. The traditionalists are not materialists and are highly critical of our consumer culture. They reject ideology and stress piety toward nature, the intergenerational (...) character of society, and prudence in political and social action. These basic principles are a solid foundation for environmentalism. (shrink)

There are certain leading ideas in the philosophy of Collingwood which can be unmistakably identified, despite the ambiguities and inconsistencies found in his thought. One such idea is progressive traditionalism, which has as a key component the idea of cumulative change, explained by Collingwood in the notion of "scale of forms" elaborated in An Essay on Philosophical Method. Progressive traditionalism sprang from the dialectic between philosophy, dealing with the eternal and immutable, and history, meaning change. Philosophy somehow deals (...) with thought and thought is progressive by its very nature, while tradition is the vehicle of cumulative change. The progress of philosophy lies in the increasing degrees of understanding of the fate of absolute presuppositions and of the prospects of human civilization; the absolute presuppositions lying at the foundation of human civilization are the basic elements of tradition. Return to healthy traditions is one of the elements of Gorbachev's "new thinking," which reinforces the necessity of conserving something of the old which is living in order to create more satisfying social conditions. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the political perspective of corporate social responsibility disclosures and, drawing on Weber’s notion of traditionalism, seeks to explain what motivates companies to make such disclosures in a traditional setting. Annual reports of 23 banking companies in Bangladesh are analysed over the period 2009–2012. This is supplemented by a review of documentary evidence on the political and social activities of corporations and reports published in national and international newspapers. We found that, in the banking companies over the (...) period of study, apparently neutral, corporate, philanthropic activities disclosed and promoted in CSR reports are inextricably linked to powerful leaders’ personal projects and the ruling party’s agendas. We have demonstrated elements of traditional societies, including personal loyalty and the public display of loyalty, the master–servant relationship, and obedience to personal rather than formal authority, provide an understanding of why banks have employed politically charged CSR disclosure strategies. The paper contributes to disclosure studies where political motivations of corporate disclosure rarely discussed. The paper extends the debate on political CSR by demonstrating that the role of family and familial values at the organisational and national levels may be much more important when it comes to CSR disclosure and activities. (shrink)

The last couple of decades has brought a renewed interest in American conservatism among historians. Yet most recent studies have focused on the emergence of neoconservatism after World War II and virtually no recent scholarly work has pursued the history of conservatism before the 1920s. Both Richard Hofstadter and Clinton Rossiter agreed that the late nineteenth century was an important watershed in the evolution of American conservative thought. Hofstadter argued that the new laissez-faire conservatism that became dominant during the Gilded (...) Age was remarkable in that “it lacked many of the signal characteristics of conservatism as it is usually found.” Yet some conservatives refused to accept key features of what Clinton Rossiter once branded this new “contradictory conservatism.” This essay focuses mostly on Protestant clerical intellectuals who dissented from the new orthodoxy and attempted to preserve older conservative principles. Against the laissez-faire conservatives' hyperindividualism, these dissenting conservatives stressed an organic view of the social order and the importance of mediating institutions such as family and church. To the others' secularism, they offered a social theory suffused with evangelical Protestantism. This analysis highlights where these dissidents differed from their fellow conservatives and seeks also to elucidate their alternative conservative vision of the American republic. Such a study serves to clarify just how profound an ideological shift occurred among conservatives during the Gilded Age and illuminates some of the persistent tensions within American conservatism still evident today. (shrink)

The book presents the two conflicting positions within Christian thought--traditional and radical--as they developed through some of the most important periods of church history. Simut traces traditional Christian thought through Late Antiquity, Early Modernity, and Post Modernity in specific works written by Gregory Nazianzen, Jean Calvin, and Ion Bria. He analyzes Radical Christian thought as it gradually developed in Post Modernity, particularly during the twenty and twenty-first centuries through authors such as Erich Fromm, Paul Ricoeur, and Vito Mancuso.

Recent advances in biomedical technology and therapeutic procedures hace generatad a moral crisis in modern medicine. The cast strides made in medical science and technology have creatred options which only a few decades earlier would have been relegated to the realm of science fiction. Man, to a significant degree, now has the ability to exercise control not only over the stages of disease but even over the very processes of life and death, With the unfolding of new discoveries and techniques, (...) the sceintific an dintellectual communities have developed a keen awareness of the ethical issues which arise out of man's enhanced ability to control his destiny. In response to the concern over questions of this nature, there has emerged the rapidly developing field of bioethics. Jews, to whomall such questions are quests not only for applicable humanitarian principles but for Divine guidance, must, of necessity, seek answers in the teachings of the Torah . "The Torah of God is Perfect" ( Psalms 19:8), and in its teachings the discernign student will find eternally-valid answers to even newly-formulated queries. As Physicians and patients turn to Rabbinic authorities for answers, Jewish scholars seen to elucidate and expound the teachings of the torah in these vital areas of concern. The present essay hgihlights some of the ethical issues faced by the Jewish physician who faithfully observes his tradition in all matters including his daily practise of medicin. Although more questions are raised than answered, the aim of this essay will have been achieved if the reader is stimulates to pursue these issues in the extensive writings on the subject now available in English CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Obscurantism, return of the Middle Ages, fascism, clericalism …. Utter nonsense has been written on the return of religion in the Muslem world, reflecting the old Western phantasm about Islam. In fact, the phenomena grouped under the rubric of “fundamentalism” are quite heterogenous and belong to different catagories, of which only one — Islamicism — is really new. Islamic revivalism must be understood not in terms of recent Western history, emphasizing the emergence of the modern state from the secularization of (...) society, but in the historical and social context of the Muslem world. We shall call “traditional” the will to freeze society according to the memory of a past one: the society of which grandfathers speak. (shrink)

Taking a critical view of the dominance of postcolonial studies by South Asian and Latin American scholars and intellectuals, this article presents a newly emerging discourse among young Indonesian Muslim intellectuals, known as ‘Islamic Post-Traditionalism’. The specific question addressed in the present investigation is to establish to what extent this strand of Muslim thought can be considered a contribution to the engagement with postcoloniality and an application of deconstructionist discourse critique developed by postmodern philosophers within the context of rethinking (...) religion, and Islam in particular, in Indonesia. Identifying a vivid interest among Indonesian Muslim intellectuals in the work of pioneering and controversial contemporary Arab-Islamic thinkers such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, and Mohammed Arkoun, this article will interrogate the influences exercised by these Arabophone and Francophone Muslim intellectuals on the formation of Indonesia's Islamic Post-Traditionalism and how this is reflected in this discourse. An illustration will be provided by a précis of the writings of a key exponent of the Islamic Post-Traditionalist discourse and an examination of a number of other contributors. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of the construction and deployment of the ideas of ‘the West’ and ‘tradition’ in the social commentary of Ashis Nandy. It argues that Nandy's ‘critical’ defence of tradition is framed and animated by occidentalism and renders tradition into a paradoxical space of redemption and innocence. The first part of the paper shows that Nandy's nativist narratives of loss and his suspicion of political ideologies place him both in and against post-colonial cultural politics. The second section (...) examines and illustrates the mutually defining nature of occidentalism and traditionalism. It is shown that Nandy's stereotypes of authentic Indian culture undermine the critical capabilities of his ‘critical traditionalism’. Part three explores Nandy's dilemmas further by reference to his attempts to align tradition with reflexivity. (shrink)

The traditional conception of self-deception takes it for an intrapersonal form of interpersonal deception. However, since the same subject is at the same time deceiver and deceived, this means attributing the agent a pair of contradictory beliefs. In the course of defending a deflationary conception of self-deception, Mele [1997] has challenged traditionalists to present convincing evidence that there are cases of self-deception in which what he calls the dual belief-requirement is satisfied. Levy [2009] has responded to this challenge affirming that (...) there is at least one real cases of self-deception that meets this requirement, namely, that of anosognosia. In this family of conditions, the patient apparently believes that there is nothing wrong with her while, at the same time, providing behavioral cues that indicate that the patient is somehow aware of his disease. If Levy is right, then traditionalism about self-deception could be vindicated, after having been widely abandoned due to its need to postulate exotic mental processes in order to make sense of the attribution of contradictory beliefs. In this paper, I assess whether Levy’s response to Mele’s challenge is successful by analyzing his interpretation of the empirical evidence to which he appeals. Finally, I attack the cogency of the underlying commitments about the nature of folk psychology to which one is required to defer in order to draw from conflicting evidence the attribution of contradictory beliefs. (shrink)

The post-New Order Indonesian politics has provided a political opportunity structure for the state towards democratization. It has a double-edged sword whatsoever: on the one hand democratization could lead to the civic engagement, but on the other hand, it provides a hot bed for the flourishing of anti-civic organization. As for the latter, following the fall of authoritarian regime of new Order in 1998, Indonesians have also witnessed the birth of transnational Islamist and radical organizations threatening the state’s integrity and (...) peaceful coexistence of the citizens. Amid the public appearance of these radical organization, an issue of ideological infiltration and sabotage of radical organization upon mainstreaming moderate Muslim organizations, such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah do exist. This article tries to reveal the impacts of a such infiltration practices and the extent that radical narratives win the minds and hearts of important Muslim leaders. Taking a closer a look to Muslim leaders in Sampang district in the island of Madura, the centrum of traditionalist Muslim in Indonesian Islamo-landscape, finds out that intolerant and radical ideologies do resonate clearly among the leaders. This finding resort as an alarm and counter-narrative to the long-admired Islamic traditionalism as an important backbone for moderate Islam in Indonesia. (shrink)

Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct the (...) Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (shrink)

The concept of "religious identity" is now the most popular term in terms of frequency of use. Actualization of religious identity as a problem is considered in science, politics, journalism, literature and other spheres of life. The complexity and at the same time the importance of the problem under study requires an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religious identity. The development of the concept of religious identity is associated with scientific disciplines. But one can not imagine the consideration of (...) this phenomenon without taking into account the theological approach, without which the study of religious identity would be one-sided. One of the most important aspects of religion and theology, which determines the state of religiosity in modern society, is the contradiction between traditionalists and reformers. In our time, they are considered as important factors influencing the formation of the religious identity of the individual. (shrink)

Empirical studies show that though there is more room for improvement, much progress has been made toward gender equality since the second wave of feminism. Evidence also suggests that women’s advancements have been more dramatic in the public sphere of work and politics than in the private sphere of family life. We argue that this lopsided gender progress may be traced to uneven changes in gender attitudes. Using data from more than 27,000 respondents who participated in the General Social Survey (...) from 1977 through 2016, we show that gender attitudes have more than one underlying dimension and that these dimensions have changed at different rates over time. Using latent class analysis, we find that the distribution of respondents’ attitudes toward gender equality has changed over the past 40 years. There has been an increase in the number of egalitarians who support equality in public and private spheres, while the traditionals who historically opposed equality in both domains have been replaced by ambivalents who feel differently about gender equality in the public and private spheres. Meanwhile, successive birth cohorts are becoming more egalitarian, with Generation-Xers and Millennials being the most likely to hold strong egalitarian views. The feminist revolution has succeeded in promoting egalitarian views and decreasing the influence of gender traditionalism, but has yet to convince a substantial minority that gender equality should extend to both public and private spheres of social life. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the deep theological faultline generated by divergent understandings of the divine attributes among two early antagonistic Muslim groups – the traditionalists (main...

The traditionalist interpretation of Kant's idealism reads his Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism, à la Berkeley. By contrast, a revolutionary account of Kant will assert the threefold distinction between states of mind, external objects of the world and things in themselves, and will reject the attempt to reduce external objects to states of mind. In this paper, I argue that, while Caird's interpretation is clearly not traditionalist, nor is it obviously revolutionary: he is critical of Kant's threefold (...) distinction, although he fully acknowledges Kant's attempt to uphold this distinction. While arguing for this claim, the paper will examine several classical objections to Kant's Critical philosophy, including the view that things in themselves should be rejected and that Kant's system lacks the unity necessary to account for the variety of distinctions he introduces, including the distinction between phenomena and noumena. (shrink)

Implementation of the Peace Program propounded by the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU is substantially furthered by the struggle against bourgeois ideology in a field directly related to interpretation of the principal problems of contemporary foreign policy - the field of the theory of international relations. Naturally, the success of this struggle depends in large degree on the depth and care with which one analyzes the conditions and tendencies characteristic of bourgeois studies of international politics.

Recent discussions in Just War Theory have been framed by a polarising debate between “traditionalist” and “revisionist” approaches. This debate has largely overlooked the importance of an applied account of Just War Theory. The main aim of this essay is to defend the importance of this applied account and, in particular, a nonideal account of the ethics of war. I argue that the applied, nonideal morality of war is vital for a plausible and comprehensive account of Just War Theory. A (...) subsidiary aim of the essay is to show that once we appreciate the importance of the applied, nonideal account, it becomes clear that the positions proposed by revisionists and traditionalists are, in fact, much closer than often presumed. (shrink)

Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in Michael (...) Walzer's work to the revisionist critique of Walzer and the subsequent revival of traditionalism. I discuss central questions of methodology, as well as consider the morality of resorting to war and the morality of conduct in war. I show that although the revisionists exposed philosophical shortcomings in Walzer's arguments, their radical conclusions should prompt us not to reject the broad contemporary consensus, but instead to seek better arguments to underpin it. (shrink)

This book is a first attempt to examine the thought of key contemporary Jewish thinkers on the meaning of tradition in the context of two models. The classic model assumes that tradition reflects lack of dynamism and reflectiveness, and the present’s unqualified submission to the past. This view, however, is an image that the modernist ethos has ascribed to the tradition so as to remove it from modern existence. In the alternative model, a living tradition emerges as open and dynamic, (...) developing through an ongoing dialogue between present and past. The Jewish philosophers discussed in this work—Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman, and Eliezer Goldman—ascribe compelling canonic status to the tradition, and the analysis of their thought discloses the tension between these two models. The book carefully traces the course they have plotted along the various interpretations of tradition through their approach to Scripture and to Halakhah. (shrink)