Journal articles on the topic 'Secular Humanistic world'

Peace on earth is not to be expected. First, at least in its subhuman form, the law of nature is survival of the fittest, not self-deferential cooperation. Second, a philosophical consensus to provide needed epistemological agreement and ethical criteria for peace is nonexistent in the postmodern world. Third, conflicting beliefs among the world’s religions and a sharp decline in religious affiliation incapacitate the traditional agencies of support for transcendent values, including peace. Thus, the daunting challenge has become the nonreligious and even nontheological spiritualization of secular society. Only this hope remains as history forces humanity to mature: Elaborate and rely on a humanistic basis for lofty values. In evocative terms, philosophers and humanistic psychologists have narrated that hope. More incisively, Bernard Lonergan has detailed the humanistic basis of that hope: distinctively human consciousness or spirit, the self-transcending dimension of the human mind, a bimodal, quadrilevel, epistemologically and ethically normative dynamism. But no agency exists to implement this hope, and peace still, depends ultimately on elusive human goodwill. Still the empirical specification of a philosophical foundation at least provides needed guidance, which, coupled with today’s scientific, medical, psychological, and sociological technology, does sustain hope for peace.

In his book A secular age, Charles Taylor rejects the view that modernity must lead to a steady decline of religion and argues that although the conditions of belief changed, causing a destabilization and recomposition of religious forms, our modern world still can and should be open to the transcendent. I attempt to give a general overview of A secular age by describing shifts in worldview with respect to nature, self, society and God. Finally, I discuss how Taylor’s message relates to that of Reformational thinking. Taylor’s description of motivations to regard the world as closed to the transcendent corresponds well with the Reformational analysis of the humanistic ground motives of freedom and nature. Taylor, however, seems to consider our current worldview as a neutral basis and religion as an optional add-on.

The article analyzes the specifics of Japanese religious syncretism, which managed to adapt with great efficiency the norms of the Buddhist-Confucian complex and the autochthonous religion of Shinto. Japan is a vivid example of the harmonization of national identity, based not only on the high level of homogeneity of society, but also on the high degree of tolerance and ability to adapt and to adopt. In the political sphere, the Japanese post-secular system demonstrates the capacities of the Komeito party (Party of Pure Politics), which was created on the basis of Soka Gakkai Buddhist organization, which professes the humanistic ideas of Nichiren (1222–1282), set forth in the Lotus Sutra. Now the Komeito party plays an important role in shaping Japanese politics, coalescing with the dominant Liberal Democratic Party. The Komeito party, in particular, is effectively advocating the preservation of the 9th ‘pacific’ article of the constitution. The movement of laic Buddhists Soka Gakkai International (SGI), operating in 93 countries around the world, is widely known for cultural and educational activities and its struggle to ban nuclear weapons. Thus, Japan provides a pointed example of the combination of humanistic philosophy of human dignity and empowerment with political activity, which determines the nature of Japanese post-secular society.

My findings are tentative and subject to further research. This presentationrests on three paradoxes of great relevance to Muslims in the West.The first paradox is that, from the point of views of Muslims in the West,western secularism might be good news and western materialism might bebad news. In other words, western secularism is perhaps a blessing in disguisefor Muslims, whereas western materialism is a curse. The secondparadox is that recent Republican, rather than Democratic, foreign policyhas been more friendly to Muslims, wherea Democratic, rather thenRepublican, domestic policies are probably more friendly to Muslims. Thethird paradox concerns the two Islams in the United States: indigenou andimmigrant. In the United States, western secularism has protected minorityreligious groups by insisting on the separation of church and state. Thisis as major reason why American Jews have been among the greatestdefenders of the separation of church and state, for any breach could leadto the imposition of some practices of the religious majority, such as forcingJewish children to participate in Christian prayers at school.The secular state permits religious minorities to practice their religionsin relative peace. Of course, like all doctrines, secularism has its fanaticwho sometimes want to degrade, rather than protect, the sacred. But at itsbest, a secular state is a refuge of safety for minority religions. It is in thissense that western secularism is a friend of Muslims living in the West.But while secularism represents a divorce from formal religion, materialismis a dilution of spirituality. One can be without a formal religion andstill be deeply spiritual in a humanistic sense. John Stuart Mill and BertrandRussell, for example, had no formal religion, yet each had deeply spiritualvalues. Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Laureate for Peace and an eventualagnostic, remained deeply committed to the principle of reverence for life,even to the extent of protecting the lives of insects in Africa ...

ABSTRACTThis article is a critical response to a short book by John C. Lennox entitled Where is God in a Coronavirus World? in which he rejects atheism as a world-view equipped to deal with an event such as the coronavirus crisis and makes a case for the Christian outlook as the best way to meet such a crisis. The aim of this article is not to affirm or deny theism, but to examine critically the key arguments put forward for Christianity and against atheism by Lennox. Because of the centrality of the appeal to free will by Lennox in his article, some time is spent considering the free will response to the problem of evil, in which some close examination of the Bible is undertaken. The article finishes by outlining a personal, humanistic, secular response to the coronavirus crisis, and addresses solace and hope, two things Lennox denies atheism can provide.

Western psychology tends to be divisive in dealing with human personality and has been responsible for the nature-versus nurture controversy. On the one hand, it contends that certain corrupt behavior is predetermined by psychological or biological factors from conception—while on the other, it explains behavior as a simplistic series of reinforcements from contingencies and conditioned responses to environmental stimuli. This secular humanistic outlook has produced an ethical relativism that is the current trend in today’s world. This stance is not condemned only by Islam, but also by most religions of the world. This shows that the human nature (fitrah) is still vibrant and dynamic. This article attempts to highlight the importance of the Islamic belief system—which is an integrated and comprehensive way in dealing with human behavior—especially by means of the interaction of nature, nurture, and the spiritual factor in the formation of human behavior.

Western psychology tends to be divisive in dealing with human personality and has been responsible for the nature-versus nurture controversy. On the one hand, it contends that certain corrupt behavior is predetermined by psychological or biological factors from conception—while on the other, it explains behavior as a simplistic series of reinforcements from contingencies and conditioned responses to environmental stimuli. This secular humanistic outlook has produced an ethical relativism that is the current trend in today’s world. This stance is not condemned only by Islam, but also by most religions of the world. This shows that the human nature (fitrah) is still vibrant and dynamic. This article attempts to highlight the importance of the Islamic belief system—which is an integrated and comprehensive way in dealing with human behavior—especially by means of the interaction of nature, nurture, and the spiritual factor in the formation of human behavior.

The article discusses the relations between humanism and humanitarianism through the prism of rationality, which allows to identify the significant contradictions between their essences and methods of implementation as well as to reveal the subtleties and differences in the relationship between them. The author demonstrates the interrelation of the idea of rationality as reasonability with the theory of humanism and its practices; it is shown that the charges of inhumanity against rationality can be addressed mainly to instrumental reasonability, which occupies a dominant position in the society of Modernity. The inconsistency of the development of humanism in recent years is examined. On the one hand, first organizationally formed humanistic movements emerged in the 20th century and humanism gradually became a common social practice. On the other hand, starting from the second half of the 20th century, representatives of the postmodern and religious-conservative traditions more and more clearly pronounce statements about the crisis of humanistic ideology. It is determined that the classical concept of secular humanism has lost its representativeness to social realities because its model of a person becomes outdated and requires rethinking and renewal. It is emphasized that the role of humanitarian technologies is increasing under the new conditions of the science functioning in modern society, in which any knowledge, including natural and technical, acquires a humanitarian dimension. Therefore, the humanitarian component is a necessary part of any science today since the humanitarian component offers a pragmatical and axiological comparison of the scientific achievements with the life-world of men and their needs. The author concludes that rational strategies for overcoming the crisis of humanism (transhumanism and posthumanism) are associated with new ontologies and represent attempts to understand the transformations of humanistic values in the technoscientific world.

AbstractBeginning in the 1920s, American religious liberals borrowed language from the social sciences to describe the social experience of religion. Wishing to foster tolerance at a time when ethnic hatreds increasingly controlled world politics, they tried to drop the word “race” as the equivalent for a religious community and instead depict religions as cultural units by substituting terms like “group.” This was part of a broad intellectual transition in the free West. Long-standing biological models of society, assuming racial differences, gave way to explanations of human behavior emphasizing acquired traits. In this way, democratic cultures, confronting fascism, reaffirmed the malleability and equality of peoples and rejected determinism and hierarchy. American religious liberals of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish backgrounds, committed to ecumenism and attentive to secular ideas, readily appropriated the new idiom. By the 1940s, talk of Nordic, Celtic, and Jewish races, among others, was rare, and the three mainstream religions, pictured as bearers of values, were praised as democracy's building blocks. Yet, because religion serves private needs and transcendent aspirations as well as society, this romance with social-science functionalism was short-lived. It was a small step from lauding religions as comparable and compromising to missing their distinctiveness, and a mood of traditionalism, expressed in humanistic, often biblically informed words, gained ground after World War II. This was not a simple speech revolution, however. Rhetoric that cast religions as social equivalents had enhanced the climate of freedom, to the point that religious minorities re-explored their heritages with unprecedented confidence. Social-science words set stage for their own subversion. This account of linguistic borrowing suggests the utility of considering religion as one language system among others in a complex culture. In this view, religious rhetoric is a public embodiment of values situated to interact with secular speech, making word use a sensitive meter of religious transformation.

Aim: The Aim of this article was to compare the lifestyle of Islamic and Western students based on the school of secularism. Lifestyle is a category that has been attended by scientists from different schools in the new age. Western scholars from the Renaissance later on have provided many articles on this subject and considered it a new category. Western scholars differed in their worldview and ideology, of which, including the secular school of thought. The secularist insight, which is a special and evolved form of nouns such as materialist and humanistic, has been devoted to the world and its followers. Methodology: The research method was a field study and a library study. By expressing concepts related to lifestyle by Western scholars, students turned into a particular lifestyle that they considered desirable according to their type of thinking. Because the kind of insight and type of ideology plays a very important role in choosing a lifestyle. But in traditional and religious societies such as Islamic society, Islamic lifestyle is based on Islamic worldview and ideology, and it has conflicts and differences with Western lifestyle and secularism. This article tries to "compare the lifestyle of Islamic and Western students based on the secularist school". Results and conclusion: western Secular Student Involves Four Characteristics in Lifestyle: 1) The human-centered worldview 2) A wise man in the world 3) Man is limited to the material world 4) Originality of consumption in determining lifestyle. But the characteristics of the student lifestyle from the perspective of the Quran and hadith are as follows: 1) Godliness and belief in the position of human caliphate on earth 2) Sense, Reason and Revelation, Elements of Human Knowledge 3) The close relationship between the individual and the community 4) The Origin of Spirituality and Humanity in Determining the Lifestyle 5) Component Science for Evolution. The principles of difference in these two are: 1) Differences in the type of worldview 2) Differences in the source and factors determining the type of lifestyle 3) Differences in anthropology 4) Difference in attitude towards science.

Kamal Hassan, fondly known as Prof. Kamal is a symbolic academician in a well-versed personality of virtue, adab (good manners), and hikmah (wisdom). He has been accredited as one of the intellectual leaders of Madarasah al-Wasatiyah or movement of moderation and ideologue of Islamization of knowledge in the contemporary Malay world. He is also one of the leading figures in the area of contemporary Islamic thought and Malay civilization. His literature is vocal on the issue of Islam and modernity, Wasatiyah or Islamic moderation, Islamicization of human knowledge, Integrated Islamic education, secularism and secular education, the relationship between East and West, human rights and civil society. His metaphysical views have been often quoted in the literature of Muslim intellectuals and activists in Southeast Asia. Moreover, his philosophical thought of a justly balanced approach of Wasatiyah is also worth mention. The noteworthy highlights in his literature and speech promote Muslim leaders and scholars to examine: what collective moral responsibility they have, as a moderate nation or Ummah Wasat, to build a better world and a better nation—Khaira Ummah. There were many reasons for the intellectual decline of Muslims and the Muslim world. One of the reasons by moving away from the moderate and comprehensive understanding of the Qur’an. There is undoubtedly an urgent need to retract the philosophy of Ummah Wasat based on divine knowledge rooted in humanistic and societal life. Hence, Kamal Hassan fetched the thoughts in his lectures, articles, and books to relevantize the philosophy of moderation in Islam. Keywords: Wasatiyah, Moderation, Justly Balanced Path, Islamization of Knowledge, Kamal Hassan and Malay World.

AbstractWith the possible exception of Old Testament scholars, who reads Old Testament scholarship today? Not other scholars in the humanities or social sciences. Not the oft-discussed "cultivated lay person." Not the average Jewish/Christian Homo Religiosus, nor the various representatives of those religious orthodoxies for whom the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament stands as a foundational text. What, then, accounts for the marginality of a discipline whose object of scrutiny is, most likely, the most widely read text in the history of the species and one of the taproots of humanistic inquiry? This essay presents one possible set of answers to this question. It is argued that the marginality of Old Testament research is - whether rightly or wrongly - a dividend of its intellectual strangeness, its epistemological difference from both the academy and the Church. As for the academy, it is suggested that the ideation (i.e., the not-necessarily conscious manner in which a community of researchers thinks the world) of our field distinguishes us sharply from all others within the comity of (secular) academic disciplines. It is contended that the intellectual foundations of modern Old Testament research comprise something of an epistemological hybrid. Its practitioners have, somehow, managed to combine a modern, secularizing, rational ethic with the fundamental conviction that an existing God is a legitimate analytical variable. Having been expelled from the ideation of nearly every other academic discipline, the latter conviction renders biblical scholarship anomalous in the contemporary university. As for the Church, it is this same hybrid ethic which creates a certain degree of tension between rationalizing biblical researchers on the one hand, and pious laypeople and orthodoxies on the other. Yet as singular and marginal as it may be, biblical scholarship makes a crucial, albeit unintended, contribution to the world: the existence of an authoritative body of religious intellectuals who are at peace with the notion that sacred scriptures are inspired but not infallible has served to safeguard the modern Occident from some of the more deleterious tendencies of organized religion.

The article poses a research question, important not only in the studies on (neo-)gnosticism, concerning the relationship between the gnostic strategies of interpreting the world (and especially its typical rules of classifying people, based on the externalization of evil) and the tendency to construct a figure of “hylic” as a person embodying evil, and thus “unworthy of life”. In this context, the author is interested in the dynamics of the relationship between the religious worldview declared by the authors, the one they actually profess, and their attitude towards the so-called Jewish question. Bulgarian material, which is a case of a particular kind of aporia, cognitive dissonances emerging due to tension between the pressure of cultural stereotypes, pragmatic (economic), religious, parareligious and humanistic thinking, has been analyzed on the basis of post-secular thought. The investigator posits that Bulgarian culture, despite the “economic” anti-Semitism that exists within it, did not produce a figure of a Jew the hylic that absorbs all evil and that could be inscribed (as is the case in popular Polish culture, among others) in every troublesome local political and symbolic context.

Apparently, there is no connection between artificial intelligence and literature, but at closer scrutiny, it is discernibly clear that a link-up is quite possible in a harmonious manner because both the subjects do have commonalities dotting them one end to the next. Literature is a journey through the trajectories or pathways of imagination, illusion, fantasy, and dreamlike situations. The world of artificial intelligence does have virtual realities taking place in an imaginative plain. Artificial intelligence is a repetitive, perennial and a crucial current topic in science fiction, whether unworldly, stressing the capacity advantages, or dystopian, emphasizing the possible risks and insecurities. The belief of machines with human-like intelligence dates lower back to the talented writer Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon. Buoyant or positive perceptions of the destiny of artificial intelligence are feasible in science fiction. The artificial intelligence facilitates the quick and robust operational efficiency of the world and literature fulfills this role through its crucial ingredient imagination running riot to beautify the world. The literary works of Jose Saramago do sublimate in their scope the role of artificial intelligence fair and square. John McCarthy, the founder of the idea of Artificial Intelligence, conveys the idea that ‘Artificial Intelligence is the technology and designing of making sensible and brilliant machines, particularly intelligent packages’. For me, Jose Saramago acts as an intelligent machine to check and reformulate the fundamental ethical values which are considered as universal, secular and scientific. His Scepticism goes beyond all pessimistic worldviews and his humanistic ideology surpasses all notions of illogical and unreasonable thought patterns. Through this paper, I intend to present his literary contributions packed with ecstasy, prophetic pronouncements and visionary ability. I call his intelligence as artificial intelligence that represents his ideology, prophetic activity, and reasoning power.

This article presents a new look at the problem of updating the use of active teaching methods in the educational process of higher education; the socio-psychological foundations of the actualization of this problem in the system of higher education are highlighted; the prospects and possibilities of using active teaching methods in the educational practice of a modern university, etc. are shown. It is shown that at the present stage of the development of society, in the process of developing new «amendments» to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, on the way to a new look at the nature of man, at his rapidly changing world, at the significance of the level of development of his literacy and professionalism, the awareness of the requirements for the education system in whole - inexorably increase. Education in modern Russia is becoming strong, responsible, creative, socially active, patriotic-minded, legally-economic, politically-socially literate, with a high position, ready and able to live and work in a democratic society-oriented state, in a secular society, with highly moral and spirituallyoriented ideals. To cope with this practice is possible only if there is a generally accessible strategy of a humanistic strategy in education, reliable and active approaches, as well as an individually-oriented training paradigm in solving professional problems using practical teaching methods.

The article raises the question of the interaction of ancient Russian scribes and individual samples of the epistolary genre. A connection is established between the message of Fedor Karpov to Metropolitan Daniil and the scribe “The beginning of the messages...”, created, like the mentioned message, in the 16th century. Both the message and the scribe actualize the intention of business writing, teaching message and secular friendly writing. The first introduces a respectful and complementary tone (the addressee is lower than the addressee), the second — the educational one (the addressee is higher than the addressee), the third is actually friendly (they are “equal”). This allows Fedor Karpov to flexibly conduct an epistolary conversation with the correspondent: to attract him to himself, to inspire confidence, then, already having this trust, contrast his point of view with his own and present it as authoritative, finally, boldly affirm the “equivalence” of both points of view. This is a completely secular, humanistic position inherent to Fedor Karpov, a secular man, a diplomat, one of the early Russian Europeans. He begins to speak with Metropolitan Daniel in the language familiar to Metropolitan Daniel, in the traditions of ancient Russian epistolary communication: he self-abases and exalts his interlocutor, introduces the antithesis “addressee-sinner / addressee-righteous”. His correspondent is characterized as was done in the scribbler “The beginning of the messages...” through his high position, wisdom, enlightenment, purity and beauty of the soul, metaphors of flowering, fragrance and light. Myself — by the principle of contrast. Introduces, like the author of the scribe, the traditional medieval motif of sailing and the image of the ship, raises the question of “helmsman”. But if in the scribe, which focuses mainly on the epistolary communication of the subordinate with the boss and the establishment of relations, promotion on the career ladder, the boss was given the honorary role of «helmsman», then in the message of Fedor Karpov the aforementioned motive and image are reinterpreted in a secular way. The point is that for monks the path lies to the heavenly harbor and “helmsman” is Christ, while the secular man “swims” in the earthly world and hardly needs a “helmsman”, he chooses the path. Supporting his judgments with quotes from the Holy Scriptures (strictly selected and arranged in the text, of course, exactly as the author needs it), Fedor Karpov remains in the Old Russian tradition, approved by the scribe for the epistolary genre. But he is not limited to this tradition. Quotes from ancient literature are adjacent to quotes from the Holy Scriptures in the epistle to Metropolitan Daniel, and the judgment of Aristotle turns out to be much more authentic for Fedor Karpov than, say, the apostle Paul. Thus, from a sphere close to the addressee, the author transfers epistolary communication into his sphere. This secular quotation plan was completely absent from the scribe, but the scribe, offering users, in accordance with the title, only the “beginning” of the messages, provided great opportunities for experimentation. Fedor Karpov, to whom the European individual beginning was so dear, could not help but use them. Based on the scribe, he created, on the one hand, a modern, flawlessly “correct” letter written “according to the rules of rhetoric”, as befits an educated person, and on the other hand, a letter that is very independent, very personal, reflecting his personality. However, there is a likelihood of feedback: perhaps the scribe did not form the basis of the creative experiment of Fedor Karpov, but the epistolary text of Karpov formed the basis of the scribe.

Education has rightly been understood as fundamentally good for man. In this regard, education is taken in the correct sense both of information and of formation of man, especially of the younger generations. It helps them to achieve the utmost good, individually and societally. Therefore, education concerns the proper nature and good of man. Once these are misunderstood, education will be ill-conceived and ill-delivered. Man's sexuality as the sum total of what makes him male or female in each case is an important component of his nature – physical and metaphysical. It deserves study and education. That aspect of man's sexuality that has to do with physical genital intercourse constitutes a mere 10 to 15% of his sexuality. 1 It is, however, the most emotive, delicate, and educationally troublesome aspect of man's sexuality. There has, therefore, been continuing concern that education in this aspect of man requires the most careful and culturally correct environment, tools, and methods. Some societal value systems understanding of man is exclusively physical and organic (in other words, merely materialistic), denying the metaphysical and seeing the purpose of life as nothing more than pleasure. Secular humanism is one such. For this system to take hold of sex to “educate” on it is surely a prescription for disaster, that is, for man as a created “Homo sapient.” Overcoming the problem of the current secular humanist sex education onslaught should be facilitated by a proper understanding of the value base and value indoctrination of secular humanism. With that, there can be healthy efforts to limit secular humanism to the circles where it rightly belongs, in a free and multicultural world. But the other value systems, particularly Christianity, should make more meaningful progress by going beyond mere objection to secular humanism. Christianity should develop its own educational materials for both home and internal group education. Furthermore, it should also develop programs for an entire public education in these matters, with content that presents their own theistic ideal together with the secular humanist one in a factual and balanced manner. Since the days of Marie Stoops. Bertrand Russell, Havelock Ellis, and Margaret Sanger, the secular humanists have imposed unethically on everyone through the media (and eventually the schools). Christians should find the resources and personnel to promote their ideals, much as the secular humanists have done for nearly a century. Without them doing so, it will be nearly impossible to overcome the secular humanists, in my humble opinion. The theists’ appropriate sexuality education will surely not be a weapon of mass destruction, as the secular humanist model has been, but indeed a most needed service in the present world.

In German-speaking lands until the 1580s, Italian secular vocal music was mainly cultivated by a narrow elite of aristocrats and merchants who valued its exclusivity. Yet some German patriots – teachers, clergy and humanists – regarded such foreign imports as emasculating luxuries that would corrupt their national character. This article examines four collections of contrafacta of Italian villanellas and madrigals that were published in Erfurt and have been neglected by modern scholars: the Cantiones suavissimae (1576 and 1580), Primus liber suavissimas praestantissimorum nostrae aetatis artificum Italianorum cantilenas (1587) and Amorum filii Dei decades duae (1598). According to the prefatory material of these anthologies, their editors were motivated by a patriotic agenda of purifying Italian secular song and by a Lutheran belief in the intrinsic holiness of music. This article provides the first comprehensive identification of the originals of the contrafacta, showing that the latest Italian secular repertory travelled as speedily to Thuringian towns as to the better-known publishing centre of Nuremberg. The process of transformation in the contrafacta is discussed, including examples where church officials ruled that the change of text was insufficient to cleanse the tunes of their lascivious connotations.

The subject of this research is determination of the peculiarities of competitive running in the medieval sociocultural situation. The relevance of this article is substantiated by the importance of cognizing the socio-historical context of desacralization of athleticism (and running as its component), as well as the grounds and manifestations of its transition into the sphere of secular, humanistically oriented bodily practices. The author sets the following tasks: compare the sacred and profane components of running athleticism in the Antiquity and the Middle Ages; identify of the reasons for desacralization of running in this period, as well as new manifestations and trends of transformation of its profane component. The methodological framework is comprised of the laws and principles of dialectics, analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction, and analogy. The author reviews competitive running from the perspective of binary opposition sacred/profane. The acquired results can be applied in social philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of sports. The novelty of this research lies in identification of causes and consequences of the medieval desacralization of running and absence of institutionalization of running competitions; consideration of the peculiarities of running practices in the elite circles and commoners; examination of specificity of running competitions in the carnival culture; outlining the reasons of the applied use of endurance running in economic activity; as well as indication of the unique for theocentric Middle Ages humanistic orientation of running as a separate type of competition and the basis of athletic activity overall.

Rousseau inaugurated the counter-Enlightenment—that attack on secular rationalism and quest for “re-enchantment” that has, in one form or another, been with us ever since (and which, if the postmodern age has really arrived, now enjoys its heyday). The crowning expression of this event was Rousseau's effort to revive (while transforming) Christianity. Yet, paradoxically, it is also in Rousseau that the polemical core of the Enlightenment—the critique of Christianity—reached its fullest development. This strange co-presence of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment suggests an unsuspected continuity between the two. Rousseau, by pursuing more radically the underlying goal of the Enlightenment critique of Christianity—the restoration of human wholeness—was led to extend that very critique to Enlightenment rationalism itself and thence to propose a return to religion, but to one that, rooted in sincerity, would not only avoid the dangers of traditional Christianity but also better fulfill the Enlightenment's own humanistic goal.

Thomas Albrecht, “‘That Free Play of Human Affection’: The Humanist Ethics of Walter Pater’s The Renaissance” (pp. 486–521) This essay aims to refute received, persistent misconceptions of Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), and of aestheticism generally, as an asocial and amoral sensualism, and as a deliberate separating of art from human lives and the world. Contrary to these misconceptions, it finds a humanist ethical vision in The Renaissance, specifically in the essays Pater devotes to Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. Drawing on an established post-Enlightenment, post-Romantic tradition of Victorian secular humanism, Pater defines this vision in terms of human sympathies for the feelings and suffering of other persons. And he defines it in aesthetic terms, in terms of art’s unique capacity to depict human feelings and suffering, and thereby to arouse sympathies in the viewer. At the same time, the essay contends that Pater in The Renaissance also defines his ethical vision in a more unprecedented, radical way. Beyond the solicitation of human sympathies, he frames it in terms of a fundamental uncertainty and unpredictability, a fundamental freedom and singularity, of human ethical relationships and responses. For Pater, this uncertainty and freedom are the qualities that make an ethics genuinely ethical. Pater finds these qualities, and this kind of genuine ethics, epitomized in the unpredictability and freedom of human aesthetic responses, including his own, to art and beauty.

The subject of the research is the relationship between the phenomena of religion and migrations. The problem of their interaction has been inherent in human society since the ancient times; this problem is relevant one in nova days too. The consequences and prospects of development of this complex phenomenon in contemporary society are not sufficiently examined in science yet, especially in Sociology. In the paper, the role of religion in migration processes is studied based on the analysis of various sources, synthesis, induction, analogy, and abstraction. In course of research were analyzed numerous religious treatises, fiction works and classical sociological works, as well as works by foreign and Russian contemporary academic authors. The paper notes that the migration discourse has now shifted from the geographic and demographic to the socio-political domain. Religion has begun to play an important role at all stages of migration, both from the perspective of neoliberal and humanistic approaches. The paper aims to identify the role of the religious factor in the migration process and the role and logic of migration not only in inter-faith but also in intra-faith relations. It is shown that migration either serves as a catalyst for religious feelings and behavior or it strengthens the existing religious identity of migrants and enhances the quality of their religious feelings. The study highlights the need to improve the legislative framework of religious freedom, but also raises the question of how far religious communities can go in the process of advancing religious practice. In this regard, migrations often become a challenge for a secular state. Therefore, it is concluded that only an integrated approach would contribute to solving this problem.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the role that mindfulness meditation can play in supporting people with dementia to live well. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reviews the literature in a structured way, focussing first on the general effectiveness on mindfulness and then going on to assess its role in attention, emotion regulation, cognitive decline, physical changes in the brain, prevention, and quality of life. Findings – Spirituality has been defined as a process of personal transformation which in many cases can involve a blend of humanistic psychology and esoteric traditions. Meditation, even if practised in a secular fashion can be said to fit within this definition of spirituality. The paper reviews the evidence for the relevance of mindfulness meditation in supporting people to live well with dementia. Research limitations/implications – The evidence is not yet conclusive; however, there is nevertheless a growing body of evidence which suggests that this is a fruitful area for further research. Practical implications – There are numerous implications for practice: if sufficient self-reported benefit from the application of mindfulness to people with dementia to warrant this being offered more generally. If further research substantiates the quality of life benefits then this could be an important development to accompany early diagnosis of dementia. If mindfulness were found to have a preventative effect then that would be of huge practical importance. Social implications – Mindfulness gives people more control of their emotional and thought processes and therefore this could be a significant development for empowering people with dementia and their carers. Originality/value – This is one of the first times that the literature regarding mindfulness and dementia has been reviewed in a systematic way.

Grundtvig and Golden Age CopenhagenBy Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenThe article has originally been given as a public lecture at the University of Copenhagen during the Golden Days in Copenhagen festival in September 1994. By way of introduction the question is posed to which extent Grundtvig belongs to the Golden Age period in Danish cultural and artistic life. Though he lived in the capital for 65 years, he never orientated himself towards the places that interested most other educated Copenhageners. The University rejected his applications for a professorate, and he in return vehemently attacked the dead learning of the institution. He hardly ever went to the Cathedral or other of the city churches, since he was at odds with most of the clergy. The art of acting he considered to be organized hypocrisy and accordingly avoided the Royal Theatre. He had good relations to the Kings (and Queens!), but did not involve himself in the affairs of the Royal Court. Unlike most contemporary writers and artists, he never took the Grand Tour of the Continent, in fact apart from four journeys to England (1829-31 and 1843) and one to Norway (1851), he stayed at home in his study, travelling in time through his comprehensive readings rather than in actual space. As he grew older, he got quite popular among his younger followers and ended up becoming one of the tourist attractions of the city, as witnessed 1872 by the young English poet Edmund Gosse briefly before Grundtvig’s demise.Grundtvig cared little for the kind of elite culture that dominated Copenhagen for most of his life. Though singing of national ballads was inaugurated during his 1838 lectures and since then has been a part of Danish tradition for public meetings, he had no ear for music at all and never communicated with the fine composers who set music to his texts. Sculpture and painting he rejected as base materialistic arts, only acknowledging the Danish sculptor of European fame, Bertel Thorvaldsen, because of his unassuming and genial personality, not on account of his reliefs and statues. Even his fellow poets he in general criticized harshly, excepting a few works by B.S. Ingemann. On the whole he did not think that, the first third of the 19th century constituted any Golden Age: it was a period filled with drowsiness and shallow entertainment, devoid of anything but sensualistic or even materialistic pleasures.Inspired by writers from Classical Greece and Rome, older humanists such as professor K.L. Rahbek nourished a hopeless longing for a lost Golden Age. Modem romanticists, however, such as the philosopher Henrich Steffens, the poet Adam Oehlenschl.ger and the above mentioned Thorvaldsen strove to regain or recreate a true Golden Age in the near future. Spurred on by Norse mythology as well as by his Christian belief, Grundtvig from around 1824 increasingly came to share this attitude. He distinguished between Guld-Alder (Golden Age) as a thing of the past, and Gylden-Aar (literally: Golden Year) as a state of earthly and heavenly happiness soon to be achieved or even existing in the present moment-the word refers to the Biblical Year of Jubilee as rendered in a medieval Danish translation of the Old Testament. Unfortunately no all-encompassing examination of Grundtvig’s use of these terms has been executed, but from his secular poetry a series of instances are given in the following, starting with a somewhat overlooked poem called »Gylden-Aaret« from January 1834, celebrating three moments in the life of King Frederik VI: his recovery from a serious illness in Schleswig and his triumphant return to Copenhagen in August 1833, hisbirthday in January 1834 and his 50 years’ jubilee as a ruler in the following April. The modem Gylden-Aar is defined as happiness for all of the people through enlightenment about life, procured by the king and all the fine poets surrounding him. Thus Grundtvig gives a unique priority to the art of poetry. No matter what occurred to Denmark in the rest of Grundtvig’s life-time, he managed to interpret the events as pains of child-birth heralding the approaching Gylden-Aar rather than as death throes. Instead of confining himself to the refined small-scale topics of most contemporary poets, he time and again energetically prophecied about the expected Gylden-Aar as a solid historical fact. In a period where elitist art according to the doctrines of romantic poetics was literally idolized, he maintained that the highest form of art consists in organizing society and the lives of common people so that all innate talents and latent possibilities are being developed in the due course of time. He believes this to be happening under the benevolent reign of the present Danish kings, among others things because the Danes have been reared to pay attention to each other and are generally uninterested in pursuing power and glory, honour and greatness. Grundtvig deduces this attitude partly from the role played by the peasants in the formation of the modem Danish national character, partly from the influence of the exeptionally loving, loveable and lovely Danish womanhood. Even the geographical position of Copenhagen between the Sound (the scene of the heroic battle against Lord Nelson in 1801) and the impressive beeches of Charlottenlund Forest (a beautiful and peaceful idyll of nature) becomes symbolic of Denmark’s state of mind, demonstrating a harmony between nature and history, reality and dream, simplicity and majesty, people and royalty. Though Grundtvig remained much of an outsider in Golden Age Copenhagen, his interest in the common citizen, in family and home and everyday life, relates him to the then current concept of ’cozy’ (hyggelig) Biedermeier art after all. Because of his view of universal history, he was able to give depth and significance even to the smallest and most trivial elements in his environment. Grundtvig simply could not help converting the exclusive Golden Age of the poets and artists into a fruitful Gylden-Aar for the whole nation.

In this paper I consider how Edward Said elaborates his concept of exile—as both a physical displacement and as a hermeneutical situation or mode of critical activity—in a transhistorical dialogue with Erich Auerbach. In his efforts to delineate the interrelation between cultural discourses and historical ‘regimes of knowledge,’ Said shows intellectual exile (which gives rise to secular criticism) to be the preliminary step in a concrete act of cultural recuperation: namely the re-appropriation and mobilization of texts, through an exilic will to interpretation and synthesis. Through a close examination of Auerbach’s ‘Philology and Weltliteratur’ and Said’s ‘Secular Criticism’ I compare the writers’ consciousness of their worldly socio-political situations, their humanistic goals, and their readings of cultural history—which they evaluate in the form of literary representations and interpretations of reality. Said locates agency in the exile’s liminal situation, his ‘unhomely’ un-belonging, which affords him a unique perspective and a certain mobility of critical thought. He believes that Auerbach, in his cultural alienation as a Jew exiled to Istanbul during World War II, adopted such a threshold position and could thus exercise precisely this exilic will to criticism as he wrote his magisterial Mimesis. Through a ‘worldly self-situating’ between inside and outside and a refusal of all binding filiations or affiliations that would limit his ability to move freely between the two spaces, the secular critic following the model of Auerbach, can mediate contrapuntally between dominant and minority culture, challenge authority, and indeed, redistribute cultural capital to produce ‘non-coercive knowledge in the interests of human freedom.’ Exilic readings thus become a tool and weapon of resistance, which simultaneously enable a critical recovery of one’s lost world and a reconstitution of the cultural mythos of ‘home,’ to impart historical, or at least aesthetic, coherence to the traumatic experience of loss.

Much recent scholarship has shown just how indebted the secular sciences of religion were to the Protestant world from which they grew. Yet this “Protestant world” is typically described schematically, as if Protestantism offered a coherent worldview or even a consistent set of doctrines. A different picture emerges if we deepen our historical horizon, and explore the reflexes, aspirations, and norms that have found a home in the Christian (in this case, Protestant) theological imagination. This “Christian archive” was a heterogeneous place, with room for many things that we would now call secular or even profane. Protestant reform in fact began by condemning this heterogeneity, insisting that much of what the church had come to see was sacred was, at best, only and all too human. Yet centuries of conflict in Europe over the truth of Christianity only pluralized this archive further. The nineteenth-century history of religion grew less out of “Protestantism,” in other words, than out of the sedimented mixture of theological, historical, philological, and anthropological materials inherited from these earlier moments. It was, moreover, also an intellectual project that discovered new uses for these materials and thereby opened new horizons of humanistic inquiry. This article makes this argument with reference to sacrifice—a theological challenge for Christian thinkers from the outset of the tradition, but especially for Protestants; a magnet for diverse historical, anthropological, and theological reflections; and a productive zone of inquiry for the nineteenth-century German philosophers, philologians, and “higher critics” of the Hebrew Bible who together helped create the modern history of religion.

After a deep scientific and cultural hibernation throughout the Middle Ages, during which politicized religious domination suppressed the creative freedom of humankind in all areas of life, the European Renaissance in the fifteenth century brought scientific and human prospects and discoveries that played a vital role in enriching culture and art and modernizing their structure and philosophy. This would not have been possible without the help of humanistic scientists and other thinkers who emerged during the Renaissance and the later Baroque era and developed new perspectives including a scientific approach to addressing life’s challenges, exploring them in a spirit that reconciled the holy with the secular. One of the most prominent of those scientists was Galileo Galilei, who is today considered the father of modern science. Galileo was also an artist, and his art incorporated the scientific ideas developed during this time. Among these ideas was the spirit of observation and experimentation, which was incorporated into the studies of nature, the world and the universe. This in turn was reflected in the visions of Renaissance and Baroque artists, whose work was characterized by the desire to simulate reality and to depict it in a simultaneously scientific and human spirit, and of subsequent artistic schools. This study will examine examples of the important works that illustrate the most prominent features of Galileo's influence on visual art - particularly representational art - and the aesthetic value of that influence. Keywords: Galileo, Art, Science, Astronomy , Space .