The Religio-Philosophical Journal is neither religious nor philosophical

The Religio-Philosophical Journal is neither religious nor philosophical
Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2021-04-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

The most venomous monsters bred by calumny, envy, hatred, and revenge are former Theosophists. They, whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. The Religio-Philosophical Journal is neither religious nor philosophical. As the Indian spirit of patriotism and independence had been numbed, Colonel Olcott called upon the Japanese not to prostrate themselves at the shrine of foreign civilization.

Between Naturalism and Religion

Between Naturalism and Religion
Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0745694608

Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.

A Confusion of the Spheres

A Confusion of the Spheres
Author: Genia Sch?nbaumsfeld
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 700
Release: 2010-03-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191614831

Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship of their ideas. Genia Sch?nbaumsfeld closes this gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. In chapter four, Sch?nbaumsfeld develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism' and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.

Truth is exiled from the press because it is not as beguiling as falsehood

Truth is exiled from the press because it is not as beguiling as falsehood
Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
Total Pages: 17
Release: 2021-04-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Truth is systematically boycotted and exiled from the Press because truth is not as sensational as falsehood — it fails to tickle the reader’s bump of gossip and love of slander as effectually as a cock-and-bull story. Colenso’s insults, shielded under the cloak of anonymity, are cowardly and contemptible acts of moral violence. Human sacrifice is being offered to public prejudice by editors who know next to nothing about Theosophy, and yet each has to propitiate his subscribers, hence to besmear with literary mud all men and things unpopular in the sight of his readers. Truth pure and simple, dearly beloved Knights-errant of the quill and pencil, is often stranger than fiction. The venomous Billingsgate of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, having poisoned but itself, it is now reduced to a clawless and toothless drivelling idiot. Ignorance goes hand in hand with malevolence. A bullying descendant of Ananias, in the Agnostic Journal, pontificates that the theosophical doctrines are “phallic worship.” Can an Atheist be a Theosophist? The Theosophical Society is an international and unsectarian body of kindred souls. While showing respect for every religion and school of thought, it prides itself on belonging to none, save to the Spirit of Truth or Theosophy. In other words, our Society is a brotherhood of men and women in search of Absolute Truth — an uncompromising Republic of Conscience. Narrow-mindedness, scepticism, and worldly philosophy have no room in it. Gautama Buddha is the pre-eminent Theosophist of all ages. Haweis and Headlam transformed their pulpits into oratorial tribunes similar to those in ancient Athens, where feminine beauty in general, and Aspasia and Company in particular, were defended. There are two Jesuses: The real Jesus, a Master of Wisdom, and Jesus travestied by pseudo-Christian fancy and clad in pagan robes borrowed from heathen gods. Thus the exalted Christianity of Jesus has been degraded to “Church” Christianity.

But Not Philosophy

But Not Philosophy
Author: George Anastaplo
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780739102909

George Anastaplo has written brilliantly and persuasively about ancient and modern Western political philosophy and literature and about American Constitutional history and law. With his latest book Anastaplo turns away from his areas of admitted expertise to offer, in his own words, "the explorations of a determined amateur with some practice in reading." The essays contained in this volume were originally conceived as a set of seminars, each culminating in a public lecture, which in turn formed the basis for contributions to Encyclopedia Brittanica's 1961-1998 series The Great Ideas Today. Gathered in this one volume, But Not Philosophy provides useful and thought-provoking introductions to seven major "schools" of non-Western thought: Mesopotamian, ancient African, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, Islamic, and North American Indian. Anastaplo studies ancient literary epics and legal codes and examines religious traditions and systems of thought, providing detailed references to authoritative histories and commentators. Movingly and thoughtfully written, the essays encourage readers to bring their own Western traditions under similar scrutiny, to study our own grasp of the divine, reliance upon nature and causality, and dependence on philosophy-to learn about what we are from what we are not.

Hell and Divine Goodness

Hell and Divine Goodness
Author: James S. Spiegel
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532640951

Within the Christian theological tradition there has always been a variety of perspectives on hell, usually distinguished according to their views about the duration of hell’s torments for the damned. Traditionalists maintain that the suffering of the damned is everlasting. Universalists claim that eventually every person is redeemed and arrives in heaven. And conditional immortalists, also known as “conditionalists” or “annihilationists,” reject both the concept of eternal torment as well as universal salvation, instead claiming that after a finite period of suffering the damned are annihilated. Conditionalism has enjoyed somewhat of a revival in scholarly circles in recent years, buoyed by the influential biblical defense of the view by Edward Fudge. However, there has yet to appear a book-length philosophical defense of conditionalism . . . until now. In Hell and Divine Goodness, James Spiegel assesses the three major alternative theories of hell, arriving at the conclusion that the conditionalist view is, all things considered, the most defensible position on the issue.

Philosophy and the Turn to Religion

Philosophy and the Turn to Religion
Author: Hent de Vries
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 506
Release: 1999-07-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780801859953

Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day.--Richard Rorty, Stanford University "MLN"

Oxford don and self-proclaimed Rishi profanes Vedic Hymn

Oxford don and self-proclaimed Rishi profanes Vedic Hymn
Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
Total Pages: 13
Release: 2022-11-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

A 13-point criticism of Max Müller’s “Matsya Sukta” by H.P. Blavatsky 1. How an Oxford Orientalist and chief defender of Hinduism makes fun of the First Avatara of Vishnu, for the sole purpose of amusing his friends. 2. Max Müller’s parody is clearly intended to corrupt the Vedas. 3. There is nothing more ridiculous than a self-proclaimed Rishi. 4. Though the Vedic Mantras are not creations of any existing being, Müller had the audacity to call his ludicrous poem a Sukta. 5. Bereft of Viniyoga, Müller’s grossly irreverent little poem serves no other purpose than insolent self-conceit. 6. And his poking infantine fun to deity cast an indelible stain on his legacy. 7. The great Vedic scholar of his day not only used the Vedic form of the Gayatri Metre in his poem, he also failed to mark his words with their proper accents. 8. Since, in every creation, the Vedas are revealed to the same men only, there is no room for new Rishis; and Müller, as his travesty of the first Avatara of Vishnu shows, is most unwise if not actually foolish. 9. His “Matsya Sukta” exposes an undistinguished scholarship in Sanskrit learning, and a marked deficiency in Sanskrit grammar. 10. The poem consists of eight lines only, but even in these few lines, passages from the Rigveda have been plagiarised. 11. For a Sanskrit poet nothing is more disreputable than to “borrow” passages from another’s works. 12. Lakshmi, the Hindu Venus-Aphrodite, is the goddess of wealth, not of happiness. 13. More! Neither the Rishis of modern nor of ancient times were acquainted even with the name of the fish. How then could it be praised by them?

Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion

Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion
Author: Jim Kanaris
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438469101

This collection addresses, as it exemplifies, an identity crisis in contemporary philosophy of religion. It represents a unique two-way dialogue between philosophers of religion and scholars of religion and broaches issues pertaining to the philosophy of religion and the philosophical tradition, on the one hand, and religious studies, theology, and the modern academy on the other. While each author manages the current challenges in philosophy of religion differently, one can nonetheless discern a polyphony of interests surrounding a postcritical, postsecular appreciation of religion. In part 1, contributors ask how philosophy of religion can accommodate both the strengths and weaknesses of Western analytic and continental traditions; incorporate developments in ideology critique, gender studies, and Asian philosophies; and negotiate the perceived stalemate in philosophy of religion. Part 2 addresses these questions in terms of a philosophy of religion that is postcolonial in intention and multidisciplinary in orientation and features scholarship from the fields of both religion and theology. An underlying theme is the importance of ushering philosophy of religion into a postphenomenological era of religious studies and theology. This is a neglected dimension in many laudable discussions about philosophy of religion that this volume hopes to emend.