Comparative Philosophy Commons^™

Legacies Of Freedom: Tracing Theories Of Freedom Into The Contemporary Conversation On International Intervention, Sarah Bello

Senior Theses and Projects

This paper presents an exploration into the lineage of freedom, investigating the historic structures configured in an attempt to distribute freedom in an equalizing fashion. This text will outline the intricate relationship between freedoms and liberties, by surveying the prominent political philosophies, and forms of governance within their respective temporalities. By taking up the ideas of enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, decolonial voices like Fanon, and comparing them to the current neo-liberal framework we find ourselves in, we are faced with the incompatible realities of liberalism and capitalism. This text will consequently call for a revolution of our current structures …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Mexica Monism And Daoist Ethics In The Philosophy Of Gloria Anzaldúa, Saraliza Anzaldúa

Comparative Philosophy

Critical scholarship regarding the philosophy of Gloria Anzaldúa has proliferated in recent decades, especially in the fields of feminist theory, phenomenology, and epistemology. However, there is little analysis of the metaphysics which undergird their work and make possible their views on identity, experience, and community politics. First, this article will explore the significance of Anzaldúa’s ‘nos/otras’ and its relation to Mexica (Aztec) monistic metaphysics. Such a concept resists an us/them construction of the world because it situates the other as us: the Spanish word for ‘we’ is ‘nosotros’ and holds the ‘other/otros’ as its …

Plurality, Precarity, Nos/Otras: Searching For A New Guarantee Of Dignity In The Contemporary World, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

One cannot comprehend the topography of our contemporary globe without seeing the chain-link lines that fractalize sand, sea, and soil. Contemporary global politics is marked by a refugee crisis of colossal proportion. At its core, the contemporary refugee crisis is perpetuated by the fact that there is no framework to apprehend the personhood of the refugee, let alone an organized and attentive global process for directing the flow of vulnerable persons toward safety.

I argue that in order to ease the burdens placed on vulnerable people we must return to philosophy and look at the refugee crisis for what it …

Comparative What? Latin American Challenges To Philosophy-As-Worldview, Manuel Vargas

Comparative Philosophy

Attention to the details of putatively obvious examples of philosophy-as-worldview within Latin America give us reasons to be skeptical about the taxonomy that gives us the category of philosophy-as-worldview. Among the examples that suggest difficulties for this way of thinking about the philosophical enterprise are 19^th century Mexican ethnolinguistics, contemporary efforts to reconstruct historical and contemporary Indigenous thought, and 20^th century efforts to articulate regional ontologies within Latin America. However, reflection on these cases also point to a different project worth considering, namely, a taxonomy of wisdom- and knowledge-focused practices that might allow a different way of drawing …

Manila’S Black Nazarene And The Reign Of Bathala, Antonio D. Sison

Journal of Global Catholicism

A consideration of how the dynamics surrounding Manila's Black Nazarene express crucial themes in the Filipino psyche. The article specifically addresses the importance of "felt-experience" (pagdama) in devotion to the Black Nazarene as well as its connections to indigenous Filipino religion.

Some Lessons On A Chronology Of 20th Century Philosophy In Mexico, Carlos Pereda

Comparative Philosophy

The paper begins by criticizing the usual division of Latin America philosophy into three stages: founders, forgers and thecnicians. Then the history of philosophy in 20^th in Mexico is narrated with the help of four maps that indicates the main positions and names. Towards the end, two kinds of lessons are drawn. The first is to promote the destruction of the vices of such a philosophy to regain its virtues. The second lesson comes from interpreting the metaphors of the previous maps: we are victims of shipwreckes living in archipielagos and thus we may explore their transitions.

Contemporary Brazilian Catholicism And Healing Practices: Notes On Environmentalism And Medicalization, Juliano F. Almeida

Journal of Global Catholicism

Anthropological studies on Brazilian Catholicism traditionally focused on popular variants of this religious practice and their relationship with the official Catholicism. Encouraged by recent anthropological perspectives, which highlight the relevance of devoting researches not only on the margins, but also on the center of social practices, this paper analyzes contemporary practices of Brazilian Catholic friars and priests on health promotion. The analysis of their publications (books that include practices and tips on health and that became best sellers etc.), as well as interviews, allows us to perceive a process of environmentalization on the contemporary Brazilian Catholicism. This process seems to …

Editor's Introduction, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Ecocide Is Genocide: Decolonizing The Definition Of Genocide, Lauren J. Eichler

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

I demonstrate how the destruction of the land, water, and nonhuman beings of the Americas constitutes genocide according to Indigenous metaphysics and through analysis of the decimation of the American buffalo. In Genocide Studies, the destruction of nonhuman beings and nature is typically treated as a separate, but related type of phenomenon—ecocide, the destruction of nonhuman nature. In this article I follow in the footsteps of Native American and First Nations scholars to argue that ecocide and the genocide of Indigenous peoples are inextricably linked and are even constitutive of the same act. I argue that if justice is to …

Creating An Indigenous Multicultural Faith: The Russian Orthodox Mission In Alaska And The Centrality Of Cosmology, Niklaus Von Houck

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper applies letters, journals, history interviews, government-company contracts, international treaties, theological works, and images to examine the convergence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Alaskan Indigenous shamanism cultures to explicate the harmonizing of an Indigenous multicultural Christian faith in nineteenth-century Russian Alaska. Central to this examination is the evaluation of effects of Orthodox Christian missiology on native Alaskans and the Indigenous religio-cultural response to Russian missionaries. Not merely a historical overview of contact between natives and missionaries in Russian Alaska, this paper harmonizes the commonality of cosmology between native Alaskan shamanism and Orthodox Christianity. It analyzes the impacts of comparatively …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Don't Call King A 'Civil Rights' Leader: Toward Abolishing Poverty And War By Correcting Our Fatally Inadequate Remembering Of Mlk Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Remembering Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—primarily as a domestic “civil rights” leader—is inadequate, and sometimes harmful. The term “civil rights” fails to embrace King’s abolitionist movements toward the global abolition of poverty and war. Moreover, King was a Baptist preacher called by God. He advanced an optimistic realism (including a “realistic pacifism”) that improves upon pessimistic-cynical versions of political realism. And King went beyond advancing “civil rights” to advancing economic justice, economic rights, and human rights. He prescribed adding a social and economic bill of rights to the US Constitution, plus full-employment supplemented by “guaranteed income,” …

Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

When Christians in Zambia struggle with witchcraft, they also struggle with African cultural and religious concepts that deal with life’s ambiguities and that require discernment. It is not by working against the cultural and religious heritage, but by working with it, as far as possible, that the pastor can identify the broken relationships towards which many witchcraft discourses point. However, before we place the concepts of witchcraft into the realm of superstition (as are the trends of mission Christianity) or the demonic (as are the trends of charismatic Christianity), the Church has the duty to look at the concepts, stay …

The Ecclesiology Of Pope Francis And The Future Of The Church In Africa, Bradford E. Hinze

Journal of Global Catholicism

A consideration of the future of African Catholicism in light of the ecclesiology of Pope Francis. The article explores how themes in Francis's ecclesiology work together to challenge centralization, clericalism, and triumphalism in the church by promoting practices of synodality and how these elements support the church’s mission to work against forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the most fundamental matrix of colonial power by advancing radical democracy in society

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview of African Catholicism. Part Two: Retrospect and Prospect, third issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism. A summary of the work of Bradford Hinze, Mary Gloria Njoku, Matthias Scharer, Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu, and Bernhard Udelhoven. Among the topics considered: African ecclesiology, African wellness and quality of life in Africa, interreligious dialogue in Africa, African Biblical scholarship, witchcraft and the Catholic Church.

Stewards Of God’S Mercy: Vocation And Priestly Ministry In Africa, Jordan Nyenyembe

Journal of Global Catholicism

A reflection on the tasks of priestly ministry in Africa with specific reference to the example and exhortation of Pope Francis. Among the issues addressed and critiqued are Western “cultic” understandings of the priest and the, the “Igwe Syndrome" which likens the priest to a chief.

Editor's Introduction, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction to African Catholicism: Contemporary Issues: Volume: 1, Issue 2 of the Journal of Global Catholicism

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Poetic Witness In A Networked Age, Jerome D. Clarke

Student Publications

When online videos mobilize protestors to occupy public spaces, and those protestors incorporate hashtags in their chants and markered placards, deliberative democratic theory must no longer dismiss technology and peoples historically excluded from the arena of politics. Specifically, political models must account for the role of repetition in paving the way for unheard and unseen messages and people to appear in the political arena. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the Performative and Hannah Arendt’s Space of Appearance, this paper assesses that critical and generative role of iteration. Repeating unheeded acts performs the capacity for those acts to be entered …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …