scholarly journals A Historical Survey of Evolution in the Concept and Status of “Man” Greek to Modern Times

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (101) ◽  
pp. 235-254
Author(s):  
Muhammad Awais Shaukat ◽  
Humaira Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Status ◽  
Analytical Research ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Special Creation ◽  
Divine Guidance

Study of human nature has been one of the most important questions to which man has come across. Right from the period when man started thinking rationally, because of his curious and enquiring nature, he meditated about Universe, existence and nature of Man and his ultimate reality. The religious tradition claims that when Man first came to earth, he knew the answer to these questions in the light of divine guidance. It declared “Man” as the crown of all the creations and all the other things are created to serve him. The civilizations that didn’t have the luxury of divine guidance developed mythological explanations. It were the Greeks who for the first time developed an intellectual discourse to answer the basic question about the reality of Man and the Universe. The medieval period was dominated by religious traditions. All these traditions, though different from one another, seem to agree to the point that Man is a special creation and the center of the Universe with some amount of divinity attributed to him. But after Renaissance, this view changed radically and the status of “Man” shrunk to an animal only who was thought-to-be guided by his own instincts and who was through and through a profane creation. This research aims at studying the concept of “Man” in different civilizations and explores the evolution of this concept from Greek to Modern times through analytical research method.

scholarly journals Cosmogenesis, Complexity, and Neo-Natural Faith in the Context of Astrobiology

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 659
Author(s):  
Kelly C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Western World ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
The Status ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Potential Use

It is fair to say that religion, and in particular the ways in which some Christian and Islamic thinkers have again begun to encroach on the domain of science (e.g., global warming, the teaching of evolution), has caused a great deal of consternation within the scientific and philosophical communities. An understandable reaction to these developments is to reject out of hand even the slightest taint of religion in these fields—a position that has now attained the status of orthodoxy, at least in the western world. This is curious on its face, given the fact that religion has clearly provided a sense of meaning and purpose for most of our fellow humans as long as there have been humans pondering such things. Moreover, it is probably not necessary, provided one is very careful what sort of faith one endorses. Thus, the basic question I wish to address here, albeit in a very preliminary fashion, is whether it may be possible to delineate a form of faith that can inspire and guide humanity without the metaphysical baggage that causes conflict with epistemically conservative disciplines like science. To that end, I examine one recent thread within cosmology that views the universe as creative in the sense that it is biased towards the production of ever-increasing complexity at its edges. If that is true, it gives those so inclined permission, as it were, to view the creation of complexity (including human culture and its products) as a moral good (perhaps even an imperative) without the assumption of supernatural entities with mysterious motives and goals. After arguing that there is indeed logical space for such a faith that does not impinge on the essential commitments of either science or philosophy (properly conceived) I will examine its potential use in framing some of the emerging debates concerning space exploration. The prospect of humanity venturing beyond our homeworld in the near future offers an excellent case study of this “neo-naturalism” in action for two basic reasons. First, it seems likely that such a massive and complex undertaking needs a motivational source beyond mere discovery and expansion. Second, a neo-natural faith may influence how we go about this, and not always in ways those steeped in more traditional approaches to religion would predict.

Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Branch Davidians ◽  
The Status ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Self Immolation

Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, and self-immolation is mired in controversies regarding religious roots, nomenclature, motives, and valor. Although the admiration ebbs and flows, at least some idealization of such elective deaths is discernible in every religious tradition treated in this volume. Traditional support ranges from tales of ascetic heroes who conquer personal passions to save others by dying, to tales of righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. While the lionization of elective death is a persistent theme in world religions, just as persistent are disputes about the core notions that justify it, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. This volume offers critical analyses by renowned scholars with the literary and historical tools to tackle the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three chapters treat contemporary phenomena with disputed classical roots (chapters on Salafist Jihadists, on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, and on the Branch Davidians and Heavens' Gate), while eleven focus on classical religious literatures which variously celebrate and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of corporeal death (chapters on Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Sikh, Tamil, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Daoist traditions, as well as on their diverse branches and special expressions). Overall, the volume offers astute scholarly insights which counter the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.

scholarly journals The Status of Conditional Syllogism in Syllogistics

Studia Humana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-18
Author(s):  
Yagoubi Mahmmoud ◽  
Moussa Fatahine
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Mixed Structure ◽  
History Of Logic ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time

AbstractThe form of the conditional syllogism resembles that of the categorical syllogism, while its subject matter is at least a conditional premise, but its conclusion is always conditional conjunctive or disjunctive. This mixed structure to which we apply the rules of the categorical syllogism, is a structure of which Aristotle did not have an idea, and which the Stoics did not conceive, and which the non-Arabian logicians did not know until in modern times. But what we have to notice here is the putting of a conditional matter in the form of the categorical syllogism, and it is this kind of hybridization, if we dare to say, which generated this mixed structure which appeared for the first time in the history of logic in the treatise on the logic of Ibn Sina and which can be considered a discovery by this author until proof to the contrary, and that the ancient Arabian logicians have taken the habit of exhibiting in their treatises.

scholarly journals Life and Evolution in Terms of Maximum Entropy Production Principle

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonid Martyushev
Keyword(s):  
Entropy Production ◽  
Maximum Entropy ◽  
Equilibrium Problems ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Maximum Entropy Production ◽  
Important Principle ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Universe

Maximum entropy production principle (MEPP) has been formulated in the mid-twentieth century, and today it has acquired the status of an important principle of science, which is extremely effective in considering various non-equilibrium problems. In this study, for the first time, definition of life is based on an easily measurable physical quantity that is entropy production. Life and evolution are discussed from the point of view of MEPP and the Universe, but not a human

scholarly journals Life and Evolution in terms of maximum entropy production principle

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonid Martyushev
Keyword(s):  
Entropy Production ◽  
Maximum Entropy ◽  
Equilibrium Problems ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Maximum Entropy Production ◽  
Important Principle ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Universe

Maximum entropy production principle (MEPP) has been formulated in the mid-twentieth century, and today it has acquired the status of an important principle of science, which is extremely effective in considering various non-equilibrium problems. In this study, for the first time, definition of life is based on an easily measurable physical quantity that is entropy production. Life and evolution are discussed from the point of view of MEPP and the Universe, but not a human.

scholarly journals FIQH AL-AQALLIYYAT AS AN AMERICAN VERSION OF LOCAL WISDOM

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Abas Mujiburohman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
American Muslim ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
The Status

Abstrak: Artikel ini membahas suatu bentuk kearifan lokal dalam kajian budaya hukum Islam yang berkembang di kalangan Muslim di Amerika Serikat, negara di mana mereka menjadi warga minoritas. Mengikuti Clifford Geertz dan ahli-ahli lain yang memahami hukum sebagai bagian dari kebudayaan, artikel ini berpendapat bahwa tradisi keagamaan sebuah komunitas pada akhirnya akan tumbuh dari konvergensi bermacam-macam tradisi yang dibawa oleh para individu Muslim dari kebudayaan asal mereka masing-masing. Malalui sebuah proses yang disebut dengan teritorialisasi, berbagai interaksi budaya dalam sebuah komunitas akan mengarah pada pengelompokan tiga macam tradisi: tradisi yang terus berlangsung, tradisi yang disesuaikan, dan tradisi yang disimpan. Praktek lokal sebagaimana yang disaksikan oleh penulis dalam penelitian lapangannya di kalangan Muslim kota Lansing, Michigan dapat dikategorikan sebagai tradisi kelompok kedua. Lebih jauh, kearifan lokal semacam ini telah ditemukan juga oleh para sarjana Muslim yang lain di Amerika. Di antara sarjana dimaksud, adalah Taha Jabir Al-Alwani yang mengajukan tawaran fiqh al-aqalliyyat, yang berisi himpunan praktek-praktek ajaran Islam yang mengalami penyesuaian terkait dengan status warga Muslim yang merupakan minoritas di negara tersebut.Abstract: This article discusses a type of local wisdom in the field of Islamic legal culture that is developing among Muslims of the United States as they are minority in the country. Using Clifford Geertz’ and others’ understanding of law as part of culture, this article is arguing that the eventual religious tradition of a local community will grow from the convergence of varied traditions brought by individual Muslims from their cultures of origin. Following a process called territorialization, cultural interactions within a local community will result in the production of three religious traditions: the continuing, the improvised, and the suppressed traditions. Local practice as witnessed by the writer in his field research among Muslims of Lansing, Michigan is categorized as part of the second tradition. Further, this kind of local wisdom has been observed among American Muslim scholars. Among them is Taha Jabir Al-Alwani who has proposed the term fiqh al-aqalliyyat for the collections of new practices of Islamic teachings that are related to the status of Muslims being minority in the country. 

Islamic and Jewish Religious Feminists Tackle Islamic and Jewish Oral Law: Maintenance and Rebellion of Wives

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Ruth Roded
Keyword(s):  
State Policy ◽  
Political System ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Parallel Case ◽  
First Time

Beginning in the early 1970s, Jewish and Muslim feminists, tackled “oral law”—Mishna and Talmud, in Judaism, and the parallel Hadith and Fiqh in Islam, and several analogous methodologies were devised. A parallel case study of maintenance and rebellion of wives —mezonoteha, moredet al ba?ala; nafaqa al-mar?a and nush?z—in classical Jewish and Islamic oral law demonstrates similarities in content and discourse. Differences between the two, however, were found in the application of oral law to daily life, as reflected in “responsa”—piskei halacha and fatwas. In modern times, as the state became more involved in regulating maintenance and disobedience, and Jewish law was backed for the first time in history by a state, state policy and implementation were influenced by the political system and socioeconomic circumstances of the country. Despite their similar origin in oral law, maintenance and rebellion have divergent relevance to modern Jews and Muslims.

Victorian Pain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
First Time

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.

Imaginings

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Kelly James Clark
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
First Order ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Group Violence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe

In Branden Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican’s challenging and provocative essay, we hear a considerably longer, more scholarly and less melodic rendition of John Lennon’s catchy tune—without religion, or at least without first-order supernaturalisms (the kinds of religion we find in the world), there’d be significantly less intra-group violence. First-order supernaturalist beliefs, as defined by Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican (hereafter M&M), are “beliefs that claim unique authority for some particular religious tradition in preference to all others” (3). According to M&M, first-order supernaturalist beliefs are exclusivist, dogmatic, empirically unsupported, and irrational. Moreover, again according to M&M, we have perfectly natural explanations of the causes that underlie such beliefs (they seem to conceive of such natural explanations as debunking explanations). They then make a case for second-order supernaturalism, “which maintains that the universe in general, and the religious sensitivities of humanity in particular, have been formed by supernatural powers working through natural processes” (3). Second-order supernaturalism is a kind of theism, more closely akin to deism than, say, Christianity or Buddhism. It is, as such, universal (according to contemporary psychology of religion), empirically supported (according to philosophy in the form of the Fine-Tuning Argument), and beneficial (and so justified pragmatically). With respect to its pragmatic value, second-order supernaturalism, according to M&M, gets the good(s) of religion (cooperation, trust, etc) without its bad(s) (conflict and violence). Second-order supernaturalism is thus rational (and possibly true) and inconducive to violence. In this paper, I will examine just one small but important part of M&M’s argument: the claim that (first-order) religion is a primary motivator of violence and that its elimination would eliminate or curtail a great deal of violence in the world. Imagine, they say, no religion, too.Janusz Salamon offers a friendly extension or clarification of M&M’s second-order theism, one that I think, with emendations, has promise. He argues that the core of first-order religions, the belief that Ultimate Reality is the Ultimate Good (agatheism), is rational (agreeing that their particular claims are not) and, if widely conceded and endorsed by adherents of first-order religions, would reduce conflict in the world.While I favor the virtue of intellectual humility endorsed in both papers, I will argue contra M&M that (a) belief in first-order religion is not a primary motivator of conflict and violence (and so eliminating first-order religion won’t reduce violence). Second, partly contra Salamon, who I think is half right (but not half wrong), I will argue that (b) the religious resources for compassion can and should come from within both the particular (often exclusivist) and the universal (agatheistic) aspects of religious beliefs. Finally, I will argue that (c) both are guilty, as I am, of the philosopher’s obsession with belief. 

The Legal Status of Local Government in South Africa under the New Constitutional Dispensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mbuzeni Mathenjwa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First Time

The history of local government in South Africa dates back to a time during the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. With regard to the status of local government, the Union of South Africa Act placed local government under the jurisdiction of the provinces. The status of local government was not changed by the formation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 because local government was placed under the further jurisdiction of the provinces. Local government was enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa arguably for the first time in 1993. Under the interim Constitution local government was rendered autonomous and empowered to regulate its affairs. Local government was further enshrined in the final Constitution of 1996, which commenced on 4 February 1997. The Constitution refers to local government together with the national and provincial governments as spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated. This article discusses the autonomy of local government under the 1996 Constitution. This it does by analysing case law on the evolution of the status of local government. The discussion on the powers and functions of local government explains the scheme by which government powers are allocated, where the 1996 Constitution distributes powers to the different spheres of government. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the legal status of local government within the new constitutional dispensation.

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