Philosophy Commons^™

A Newcomer's Guide To Kabbalah, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Kabbalah is a mystical and highly spiritual form of Judaism. Popularized by its endorsement by high-profile celebrities like Madonna, the average layperson knows enough about Kabbalah to recognize it as a vaguely familiar term, but not much else. This article strives to serve as an entry-point for both an intellectual and a popular audience to help familiarize readers with core components of Kabbalah and to help to begin fostering an appreciation for this very sophisticated faith. Matters of history, philosophy, science, doctrine, and more pertaining to Kabbalah will be discussed in this article

The Presbyterian Enlightenment: The Confluence Of Evangelical And Enlightenment Thought In British America, Brandon S. Durbin

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Eighteenth-Century British American Presbyterian ministers incorporated covenantal theology, ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment, and resistance theory in their sermons. The sermons of Presbyterian ministers strongly indicate the intermixing of enlightenment and evangelical ideas. Congregants heard and read these sermons, spreading these ideas to the average colonist. This combination helps explain why American Presbyterians were so apt to resist British rule during the American Revolution. Protestant covenantal theology, derived from Protestant reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, emphasized virtue and duty. This covenant affected both the people and their rulers. When rulers failed to uphold their covenant with God, the …

Sr. Holy: A Calling From The Lord, Caitlyn Schaffer

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes a portion of an interview with Sr. Holy, a woman religious missionary who belongs to the congregation of Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, where her theological beliefs are enacted by her service to others. Within the congregation of Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, she is focused on directing the novitiate, giving spiritual direction, volunteering with the aid for women, networking with the aid for women, and taking part in a life learning center making disciples. She uses her gifts that Jesus has given her to employ her virtues in the service of others. Throughout her life she mentioned the …

Sr. Sarah Grace: The Common Good, Caleb Wright

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes part of an interview with Sr. Sarah Grace from January 2, 2018. She is a women religious who has worked in education for 25 years. This paper includes a portion of the interview where she shared her perspective on the common good.

A Website Supporting Sensitive Religious And Cultural Advance Care Planning (Acptalk): Formative And Summative Evaluation, Amanda Pereira-Salgado, Patrick Mader, Clare O'Callaghan, Leanne Boyd

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

Background: Advance care planning (ACP) promotes conversations about future health care needs, enacted if a person is incapable of making decisions at end-of-life that may be communicated through written documentation such as advance care directives. To meet the needs of multicultural and multifaith populations in Australia, an advance care planning website, ACPTalk, was funded to support health professionals in conducting conversations within diverse religious and cultural populations. ACPTalk aimed to provide religion-specific advance care planning content and complement existing resources.

Objective: The purpose of this paper was to utilize the context, input, process, and product (CIPP) framework to …

The“Specialness” Of Religious Conscience: An Egalitarian Response, Joseph Marsden Dunne

Wayne State University Dissertations

Religion is often singled out for special legal treatment in Western societies. This is certainly true in the United States where religion enjoys a special place in the First Amendment to the Constitution via the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses. Through Free Exercise guarantees, for example, the Supreme Court held in Wisconsin v. Yoder that Amish children were entitled to an exemption from compulsory school attendance laws after the eighth grade, emphasizing that this was a uniquely religious exemption that did not apply to everyone. Moreover, those conscientiously objecting to contemporary vaccination laws may find themselves with varying protections depending …

Denominational Incompatibility And Religious Pluralism: A Non-Pluralist Response To A Pluralist Critique, Matthew Stinson

Global Tides

Religious Pluralism is the view that no one religion is correct, and no religion enjoys special status in relation to the Ultimate. Recently, Samuel Ruhmkorff has defended Religious Pluralism from what we'll call 'The Incompatibility Objection': many religions appear to make incompatible claims about ultimate reality, and therefore they cannot all be true. Ruhmkorff defends Religious Pluralism from the incompatibility problem by applying a “subsets of belief” defense that non-pluralists may use in response to denominational differences within a religion. He argues that non-pluralists are faced with denominational incompatibility within whatever religion they are asserting is uniquely true. He further …

(2018) Philosophy For/With Children, Religious Education And Education For Spirituality. Steps Toward A Review Of The Literature, Maughn Gregory, Stefano Oliverio

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

The authors describe the organization of a review of research literature on the relationship between Philosophy for/with Children (P4/wC) and religious education/education for spirituality (RE-EfS). They summarize a debate about whether the two are mutually enhancing or incompatible. They explain delimiting the scope of the project and present a grid of research questions used to analyze the literature. They summarize findings on how P4/wC is relevant to five categories of aims of RE-EfS: hermeneutical, cultural, socio-political, moral/spiritual, and epistemological. Many papers in the latter category promote P4/wC as a method for children’s epistemic agency in constructing their religious beliefs. Some …

Faith Development Beyond Religion: The Ngo As Site Of Islamic Reform, Nermmen Mouftah

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Anthropological field studies of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in their unique cultural and political contexts. Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs serves as a foundational text to advance a growing subfield of social science inquiry: the anthropology of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Thorough introductory chapters provide a short history of NGO anthropology, address how the study of NGOs contributes to anthropology more broadly, and examine ways that anthropological studies of NGOs expand research agendas spawned by other disciplines. In addition, the theoretical concepts and debates that have anchored the analysis of NGOs since they entered scholarly discourse after World War II …

Adopting A Third Gender In The United States, Anna K. Self

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The United States should consider adopting a third gender in order accommodate all of its citizens comfortably. The concept of a third gender has existed in past societies such as the Inuit and the Yoruba, but has not been accepted in Western societal structures. By examining how the third gender was integrated into other societies, the United States will be able to learn how to properly adapt the idea for modern times including deciding which aspects are important for modern use. The United States must also consider how to classify its intersexed individuals, as they do not fit within either …

Determinism And The Role Of Moral Responsibility, Justin Edward Edens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to solve the apparent incompatibility between moral responsibility and determinism, it is necessary to understand moral responsibility in terms of the function it plays within moral systems, which is highly similar to the role played by laws within judicial systems. By showing that a conception of moral responsibility based upon desert is metaphysically untenable, a function-based conception will be showed to be much more likely. Furthermore, by considering why the desert-based conception has proven so resilient, insight into the moral responsibility/determinism debate may be possible. Lastly, this paper considers whether the problems with this conception can be solved, …

Relational Power, Music, And Identity: The Emotional Efficacy Of Congregational Song, Nathan Myrick

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Relational Power, Music, and Identity: The Emotional Efficacy of Congregational Song

The power of congregational song to unify (or divide) people along various lines is well documented. Yet, how this process of uniting or dividing is accomplished has proven necessarily difficult to document. This paper examines the complex and polyvalent factors that contribute to the meaningfulness of congregational music making, seeking to offer a synthetic, conceptual framework with which to engage this often murky milieu.

Employing interdisciplinary research techniques drawn from sociology, ritual studies, and ethnomusicology, I construct a conceptual framework with which to understand the profoundly formative power of …

The Negotiation Of Racial, Ethnic, And Religious Identification In American Heathenry, Thad Nathan Horrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an investigation of religious, ethnic, and racial identification in the social "field" of Heathenry. Heathenry is a reconstructionist religious movement attempting to reconnect with or revive the pre-Christian traditions of the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. Often articulated as an "ethnic religion," Heathenry has also been frequently tied to white supremacist violence and hate crimes. Applying Anthony Wallace's model of revitalization movements, I attempt to make sense of what it is contemporary Heathens are trying to accomplish in today's society: What is it Heathens are trying to revitalize?

As a field of contestation over common-sense meanings …

Windows To The Divine: The Development Of Byzantine Art, Sam Klein

Tenor of Our Times

Byzantine art took significant inspiration form its Greco-Roman heritage but then distinguished itself through a shift in focus away from Hellenic realism and towards formal abstractions of Christian motifs. These conventions developed alongside political and theological turbulence to eventually influence a vast area of Asia Minor and Eastern Europe.

Books: Suggestions For Further Reading, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Is Bodily Resurrection Compatible With Materialism?, Lucienne Altman-Newell

Scripps Senior Theses

It is widely known that at least three of the major world religions—Christianity, Islam, and (more controversially) Judaism—embrace the theory of bodily resurrection, or an event in which a person or people are brought back to embodied life after death. But is this theory compatible with materialism, or the philosophical doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications? In other words, if my “self” is identical with and nothing more than my body, could my unique and particular “self” come to exist again on Earth after my death? This thesis examines theories of compatibility from ancient times …

Spiritual Journeys: A Study Of Ifá /Òrìṣà Practitioners In The United States Initiated In Nigeria, Tony Van Der Meer

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the culture of one of the newest branches of traditional Yorùbá Ifá/Òrìṣà practice in the United States from practitioners born in the United States that were initiated in Nigeria, West Africa.The epistemology of the Ifá/Òrìṣà belief system in the United States has been based on the history and influence of Regla de Ocha or Santeria that developed out of Cuban innovation and practice.This is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study that pulls from participant observation, field notes, interviews, and photos as data.The central question of this dissertation is what are the challenges and …

Book Review: The Question Of The Animal And Religion: Theoretical Stakes, Practical Implications, A. G. Holdier

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Sacred Time In Hinduism, Netty Provost

Open Access Dissertations

In this work, I examine the nature of sacred time in religious experience. Applying the methodology of phenomenology of religion, I inspect the ways in which human beings experience sacred time in Hinduism and present an argument against Mircea Eliade’s understanding of the nature of sacred time in Hinduism. Eliade asserted that all sacred time in Hinduism is fundamentally circular in nature and that the experience of sacred time is an experience of the original act of creation being made consciously present to the individual.

I will scrutinize Eliade’s arguments on two fronts. Firstly, I argue against Eliade’s claim that …

Bearing Witness: The Sight Of A Sacrifice In Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills, Megan Girdwood

Journal of Religion & Film

Drawing on the theories of sacrifice advanced by Sigmund Freud (1913) and René Girard (1972; 1982), this article interprets the exorcism depicted by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu in Beyond the Hills (2012) as a sacrifice. Explicating Girard’s defence of Freud, I use his framing of sacrifice as a function of religion to reassess scholarship addressing the parallels between liturgical and cinematic forms of representation. If, as some scholars propose, the practices of the cinema-goer and the worshipper mirror each other, then the sacrificial witness portrayed by Mungiu constitutes a third pillar in this discourse. I argue that Mungiu dramatizes the …

Perceived Patient Control Over Personal Health Information In The Presence Of Context-Specific Concerns, Prabhashi A. Nanayakkara

Doctoral Dissertations

Information privacy issues have plagued the world of electronic media since its inception. This research focused mainly on factors that increase or decrease perceived patient control over personal health information (CTL) in the presence of context-specific concerns. Control agency theory was used for the paper's theoretical contributions. Personal and proxy control agencies acted as the independent variables, and context-specific concerns for information privacy (CFIP) were used as the moderator between proxy control agency, healthcare provider, and CTL. Demographic data and three control variables— the desire for information control, privacy experience, and trust propensity—were also included in the model to gauge …

The Influence Of Consumer Freeloading Behavior On An Observer's And Perpetrator's Affective Commitment, Mohamad A. Darrat

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation explores the relationship between customer affective commitment and freeloading behavior. Consumer freeloading results when a consumer takes advantage of a system or market procedures in a way that allows him or her to obtain benefits from a value proposition with no or reduced monetary costs. Thus, the freeloading consumer works the value equation in his/her favor at the expense of the marketer and/or other consumers. In addition to examining the point of view of the consumer performing the unethical behavior, the dissertation also examines the impact of such behavior on a third party observer. How do loyal consumers …

“Recognizable Goodness” A Response To Beversluis’ Understanding Of God’S Goodness, Emily Mccarty

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

In her rebuttal to John Beversluis’ C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, Emily McCarty makes the following arguments. Lewis maintains throughout these three works that God’s goodness is recognizable. In The Problem of Pain, what seems unlike or even not good to us, is upon reflection, good. In fact, there are similar human examples that show God’s goodness is not so very unlike our own. In “The Poison of Subjectivism,” Lewis does not empty good of meaning: rather he sources that meaning in the divine so that our morals have enduring meaning. In A Grief Observed …

Dorjé Tarchin, The Mélong, And The Tibet Mirror Press: Negotiating Discourse On The Religious And The Secular, Nicole Willock

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Much scholarly attention has been given to the importance of the Mélong, the first Tibetan newspaper, in the discursive formation of Tibetan nationalism; yet in claiming the Mélong as ‘secular’ and ‘modern,’ previous scholarship has also evaded the press’s Christian and colonial roots. This paper investigates the secularization of the Mélong and the Tibet Mirror Press as an historical project, and as a corollary demonstrates the emergence of a vernacular project of secularism that aligned pan-Tibetan national identity with religious pluralism against the threat of communism. As a Tibetan Christian intellectual, the Mélong’s founder Dorjé Tarchin (1890-1976) creatively responded to …

Centralization And Its Discontents: Exploring The Relationship Between Measures Of Moral Development, Happiness And Technology Driven, Centralized Ways Of Being, Kirsti Svendsen

Ph.D. Dissertations (Open Access)

This interdisciplinary, qualitative dissertation offers an exploration into possible intimate relationships between recently expanding, technology driven forms of centralization of our social institutions and a supposed decline in moral development and happiness among Americans today.

According to Jacques Ellul, technology in itself is not the problem. Instead, he believes the tragedy is that the new idea or spirit of technique , technical efficiency and economic progress, which may have started with the Industrial revolution, and has become the western world s new "religion", the new salvation for humanity. Ellul and other thinkers suggest that the single-minded focus on material progress …

Life At The Meridian: The Subjectivity Of Ethics In The Works Of Albert Camus And Friedrich Nietzsche, Clancy E. Robledo

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper endeavors to respond to the questions: can ethics can be unbound from its traditional rootedness in religious systems? If so, what contributions did Nietzsche make to liberate value from the shackles of Western morality? To what degree is Camus one of the “new philosophers” Nietzsche calls for in On the Genealogy of Morals?

In an attempt to demonstrate that ethics can and do exist vividly in the realm of the non-religious, this paper will begin by illustrating the metaphysical door Nietzsche opens through his use of aphorisms in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his investigation of the history …

Eliciting Acts As Cultural Reflectors In Wole Soyinka's Childe Internationale, Moji A. Olateju

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

The Plight Of Aesthetics In Iran, Majid Heidari

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Richard Rorty believes that philosophy in the West is the result of a conflict between religion and science. In fact, philosophy seeks to clarify the border between religion and science, so neither of them would be able to overstep its explanatory or predictive potentialities. He remarks that we do not have such a thing as philosophy in the East. This paper intends to ask two questions: what is the nature of the comparable conflict in an Eastern country, Iran, and what are its effects on aesthetic studies? I will draw on the idea of the conflict between theology and mysticism. …

Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis And The Charge Of Error Against Fermat And Leibniz", Richard Samuel Lamborn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to defend Pierre Fermat and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz against the charge of error made against them by Pierre Maupertuis that they errantly applied final causes to physics. This charge came in Maupertuis’ 1744 speech to the Paris Academy of Sciences, later published in different versions, entitled Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible. It is in this speech that Maupertuis lays claim to one of the most important discoveries in the history of physics and science, The Principle of Least Action. From the date of this speech up until the end …

Syllabus: Faith And Science, Nicanor Austriaco

Spring 2015, Faith and Science

No abstract provided.