Dialogue and Universalism

The demons of racism, bigotry, and prejudice found in society at large are also found in the Christian Church. Despite the very nature of Christianity that calls on Christians to be a counter voice in the world against evil, many have capitulated to various strains of racism. Some Christian denominations have begun to explore racism in the Church and have developed responses to addressing the issues in both the Church and the world. This article examines the historical context of race and religion in the Christian Church, and addresses the current efforts of some Christian denominations to become proactive in the struggle against racism. Jesus, in His Word, calls believers to pursue peace and oneness. The paper holds that racial harmony and racial unity are possible, but there are many false, old and d beliefs that will have to be crushed under the hammer of God's Word in order to get to a place of real peace.

In this article, we will describe two theistic modes of “paradoxical detachment” from the Presence of the Infinite, implying the coexistence of attachment and detachment. We will analyze two forms of Christianity-based paradoxical detachment: (a) being dependent on the Ground of soul, while being detached from the representations of the Infinite (Master Eckhart); (b) being absolutely dependent on the Infinite, while being detached from any religious morality (Friedrich Schleiermacher). The nontheistic mode of detachment from the Presence of the Infinite requires an absolute detachment. We will examine two forms of absolute detachment towards the Presence of the Infinite: on one hand, the all-encompassing emptiness in the Kagyü and Gelug lineages of Tibetan Buddhism; on the other hand, the Heideggerian notion of “groundless abyss.” In the Kagyü and Gelug lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, being absolutely detached is searching for the Enlightenment, while being detached from all concepts. Heideggerian notions of “groundless abyss” and “de-hominization” allow us to reach absolute detachment, while remaining in a non-theistic way of thinking.

This paper links the beginnings of anarchism to the works of some ancient Greek Cynic philosophers. Its reflections are also visible in the Chinese Daoist civilizational paradigm, so comparatively relevant ideas developed by the Greek Cynics are analysed in relation to the Chinese Daoists ideas. Basing on the surviving works by the representatives of the above-mentioned schools or only fragments of these works, the author of the paper draws attention to the aspects of social behaviour and social activities of the thinkers of the civilizational paradigms in question. These aspects are discussed in the light of the idea of anarchism, which helps to reveal distinctive contents of values. These contents are fundamentally different from the models of anarchism of the New Ages that are oriented towards the transformation of social structure or its individual systems. The radical idea of social revolution was not important to the Greek Cynics and the Chinese Daoists, although, in the course of time, there have been attempts to link these ideas with revolutionary attitudes. However, due to the ideological divide and the divide in values, the author of the paper sees no basis for a more detailed comparative analysis of the ideas of anarchism of the New Ages and ancient anarchism.

The article examines and criticizes Paul Karl Feyerabend’s seminal work entitled, “How to Be a Good Empiricist—A Plea for Tolerance in Matters Epistemological” which persuasively argued for a pluralistic view of scientific knowledge and theoretical truth. Throughout the article, a number of polemical points, analytic elaborations, and broader philosophical concerns are raised regarding the notions of consistency condition, meaning invariance, theoretical alternatives, and the very principle of theoretical pluralism. The article concludes that Feyerabend’s call for a plurality of theories as the surest path to the progress of science is in need of numerous conceptual qualifications, provoking the reader into critical thinking about the deeper underpinnings of science while providing very few ready-made answers to the problems enunciated.

The majority of theologians, philosophers, and religious leaders have, during the past five decades, either argued or taken it for granted that the primary aim of interreligious dialogue is mutual understanding and that the purpose of realizing this aim is mitigation of alienation, hatred, and violence between the religions and cooperation on worthwhile projects. On the contrary, the author of this paper argues that the primary aim of interreligious dialogue should be to create a bond of friendship between the various religions of the world. In his attempt to establish the validity of this proposition, the author, first, advances a concept of "collective subject" as a condition for the possibility of friendship primarily because friendship is viewed as a relation between two human subjects; second, he introduces a general concept of friendship whose main elements are good will, mutual affection, and social service; and, third, he argues that religions can, qua collective subjects, establish a bond of friendship between them.

This essay explores significant affinities with respect to the humanism of the Marxian and Confucian Ways. Although orthodox Marxism suppresses the humanistic dimensions of Marx’s thought, they are foremost in his earlier writing, and were never abandoned in his later thought. All varieties of Confucianism recognize its humanism. The essay argues that both perspectives involve process modes of understanding; that both have a convergent understanding of abstract general terms; that both view the human being as a community being; that both advocate similar ideal modes of becoming; and that both are concerned with the problems of human alienation.

The quest for a decent political order in many societies is imperative today because of the heterogeneous nature of our social existence and the complexity of our ever increasing socio-economic and political experiences. Since the public sphere is a domain of freedom exemplified by dialogical engagements, the outcome of such encounter must involve the intelligible thoughts of all discussants with the sole aim of dealing with the concerns and commanding the commitment of all to the decisions reached. In this study, it is argued that Deweyan democracy as an alternative theory of rational inquiry is relevant for engaging the present sordid condition of many Africans democratic practice and policy outcomes. As a rational procedure, it is averred that John Dewey’s emphasis on epistemic properties of democratic discourse makes the proceduralist account of democracy superfluous and exposes the weakness of the content of democratic discourse in political actions and decisions. The study also contend that given the consensual state of Dewey’s epistemic thought, Jürgen Habermas theory rather than expanding the space of epistemic democracy stifled it because of his insistence on the force of a better argument in the resolution of conflicting concerns of dialoguers. The study therefore, argues for Dewey’s democracy as an alternative mode of political order since it does not undermine the views of the citizens but gives room for the activation a certain set of attitude that can challenge prevailing opinions and accepts the views that do not embrace conventional wisdom—a procedure that is necessary for the growth and development of our democratic space.

This article aims to reconstruct Max Scheler’s conception of three types of knowledge, outlined in his late work Philosophical Perspectives (1928). Scheler distinguished three kinds of knowledge: empirical, used to exercise control over nature, eidetic (essential) and metaphysical. The author reviews the epistemological criteria that underlie this distinction, and its functionalistic assumptions. In the article’s polemic part he accuses Scheler of a) crypto-dualism in his theory of knowledge, which draws insufficient distinctions between metaphysical and eidetic knowledge; b) totally omitting the status of the humanities in his classification of knowledge types; c) consistently developing a philosophy of knowledge without resort to the research tools offered by the philosophy of science, which takes such analyses out of their social and historical context (i.e. how knowledge is created in today’s scientific communities).

In this article I ask about the theoretical-methodological consistence between research sub-disciplines, which their creators see as discourses or paradigms that correspond on a general philosophical level. I will base this analysis on the historical-philosophical examples of certain sociology of knowledge and philosophical anthropology conceptions developed by Max Scheler as part of a broader philosophical theory. Scheler’s intention, which he often articulated in his writings, was to show philosophical anthropology in its role as the categorial foundation of the sociology of knowledge, a reservoir of the philosophical assumptions that underlie sociocognitive theories. The interpretative hypothesis in this article is that a) some parts of Scheler’s sociology of knowledge (the so-called class idol conception) would be very difficult to see as "grounded" in the conceptual model of philosophical anthropology he proposed, and b) that there exists an anthropological standpoint that differs from Scheler’s—Helmuth Plessner’s—and is more logically coherent with the "class idol" idea.

The object of my inquiry is Max Scheler’s cognitive subjectivity conception, which in particular addresses the problem of subjectivity in science. Scheler introduces two kinds of subject: the first is the standard cognitive subject encountered in epistemological theories—an individual subject which really carries out cognitive acts. The second, collective subject, controls the first, imposing upon it the cognitive forms it has developed; I call this subject the creating subject. In Scheler’s theory, the creating subject is represented by the ethos of groups that initiate cognition, which determines the validity criteria of cognition. Therefore, Scheler’s cognitive subject is dual; both its forms have different attributes and functions in cognition: the individual cognitive subject is nonautonomous and determined by a superior collective one. The Schelerian creating subject can be seen as a detranscendentalised equivalent of Kant’s transcendental subject, insofar as both shape cognitive forms and thereby determine the cognitive acts of the individual subject.

The article explores a special mode of the human mind outlined in the writings of Max Scheler under the notion of the functionalization of essential (a priori) knowledge. While the concept of a priori was given its profound elaboration in the writings of Immanuel Kant, Scheler applies it with a number of significant modifications. Along with the a priori of objective reality, which is the mind’s first step in grasping the autonomous world, Scheler comes to posit a species of a priori that is subjective. A person’s exposure to an objective essence exercises a special kind of influence on that person’s mind: what was once an objective a priori is appropriated as a subjective a priori, the thing thought becomes a “form” or pattern of thinking, the thing liked becomes a “form” or manner of liking. “Functionalization” characterizes precisely the mind’s ability to transmute the essential knowledge of autonomous reality into subjective a priori forms of knowing and anticipating that reality. This transmutation unfolds on three intuitive planes: that of meaning which is known, that of value which is perceived or apprehended, and that of existence which is encountered in the resistance of objects to the will of the percipient.

The essay provides arguments and the disclosure of principles which are at the base of the modern Western understanding of the world and the human role in it. The principles are ontological, i.e., the conception of nature as a sum of material, atomic parts, and metaphysical, i.e., mathematics as a basis of scientific theories and methods. The conjunction of these principles constitutes what is known as “instrumental reason,” resulting in the universal technological globalization and nomadic civilization. The latter is composed of detached, technical experts, capable of residing anywhere without any cultural or ethnic commitments. The results of their activities are a global network of technical means both for global nomadic tourism and anonymous associations without personal involvement.

The paper explores the significance of the Chinese concept of harmony (he, xiehe) for establishing a stable and efficient global governance. The author assumes that to meet demands of the emerging global community this concept should be assessed in the context of two other important notions: “commonality” (yong) and “similarity” or “sharing” (tong). The merging of these concepts has been a real basis of the Chinese tradition and it can serve as a foundation of a new global order based on the principle of synergy.

Humanity is moving towards a new world order, a “meta-civilization” with common values, processes, and organization, where cultural, national, and religious conflicts based on cultural differences are so easy to ignite and difficult to put out. In a world like this it is necessary to trace the origins of such differences (similarities as well), and study the conditions of their appearance. It is important to raise the awareness of the representatives of diverse civilizations and to encourage them to look for common grounds to foster intercultural understanding. With regard to the newly emerging world, philosophers do not keep aloof, they do rise from their cozy armchairs and confront the factual world where it is most problematic. “Innovative” ideas put forward today by the experts of international relations who emphasize the role of different civilizations in the global world, in fact were generated by the Honolulu movement of comparative philosophy much earlier. The members of the movement were already aware of the vital need to bring together foreign, often conflicting, civilizations and search for common intellectual footage between them. As a response to the problem they proposed the idea of a “world philosophy.” The article presents a typology of six distinguishable meanings of a “world philosophy” that were developed and circulated by the Honolulu movement of comparative philosophy, with a brief critique of each meaning.

The heritage of civilizations in geopolitics is progressively used to consolidate the vision of a multipolar world and, thereby, to establish its important place in the arena of international affairs. Civilizational heritage and civilizational imagination become increasingly important geopolitical factors which begin to shape the relations between China, Russia, Turkey, the United States and the European Union. In global politics during the last decades, in one way or another, Samuel Huntington’s ideas of the interactions between civilizations and their development externalised with the stress on the increase of civilizational conflicts. These ideas made great impact on political elites of main world powers. The author of this article—drawing attention to the importance of cultural and especially religious factors for civilizational processes and the interactions between civilizations, which were also raised by Huntington—examines the peculiarities of the Russian and Turkish civilizational and geopolitical discourses, and connects to those discourses the current geopolitics pursued by the political elites of these countries. The promotion of the current role of the civilization and its geopolitical legacy highlights the uniqueness of civilizations and creates an effort to strengthen the civilizational imagination and to use the civilizational imperial experience and its cultural heritage in current political events. The Russian discourse is characterised by the historical anti-Western and anti-European attitude of Eurasian Messianic civilizational distinctiveness, while the Turkish rhetoric is characterised by the elevation of the imperial Ottoman Islamic cultural and political heritage. Both the discourses are linked by an imperial mentality, orientation towards a multi-civilizational and multi-polar world as well as the demand to create a new world order in line with such an emerging worldview. The article also discusses some of the ideas prevailing in the European Union that underpin the policy of creating a post-national European cosmopolitan community. However, such discourse lacks a cultural, civilizational as well as religious heritage, which brings people together and can form a long-lasting sense of civilizational community.

Early and later Confucians, known in Chinese as the “ruists” school of ancient origins, perceived the idea of “harmony” as a fundamental concept that lies at the basis of self-cultivation, society and governance. In modern times this idea still plays in one or another form a dominant note in Chinese politics and social life. The article attempts to search for causes of the significance of “harmony” by focusing on analyzing two pivotal Confucian texts compiled in the Han dynasty, namely, Records of Music [Yue ji 樂記] and Divination of Music [Yue wei 樂緯]. The analysis shows that ruists belonging to Zhou dynasty’s imperial class of music officials, gradually developed the aesthetics of music into a complex idea of "harmony" that contains the highest aesthetical way—“Dao”—which guides both the whole universe as well as the evolution of human society.

Daśapadārthī is a text of Indian philosophy and the Vaiśeṣika school only preserved in the Chinese translation made by Xuánzàng 玄奘 in 648 BC. The translation was included in the catalogs of East Asian Buddhist texts and subsequently in the East Asian Buddhist Canons (Dàzàngjīng 大藏經) despite clearly being not a Buddhist text. Daśapadārthī is almost unquestionably assumed to be written by a Vaiśeṣika 勝者 Huiyue 慧月 in Sanskrit reconstructed as Candramati or Maticandra. But is that the case? The author argues that the original Sanskrit text was compiled by the Buddhists based on previously existing Vaiśeṣika texts for an exclusively Buddhist purpose and was not used by the followers of Vaiśeṣika. That would explain Xuanzang’s choice for the translation as well as the non-circulation of the text among Vaiśeṣikas.

The living world is expanding thanks to the rapid and massive expansion of new technological capabilities. At the same time, paradoxically, it has been narrowed as thinking itself has become narrower and impoverished. Thinking has been pushed away by knowledge in almost all areas of the living world. Instead of thinking, modern man is becoming more and more curious. The acquisition of massively produced knowledge has become a form of consumption or even of entertainment. New theories that appear every day and reveal the failures of the previous ones only emphasize the limitations and fragmentation of the attitude itself. Although such knowledge is useful in solving practical local tasks, its universal validity is unfounded. What is needed is a more open consciousness which is able to reconcile different modes of experience. The rejection of ancient spiritual contemplating traditions and desacralization have impoverished the ability to express reality. This paper presents—as an attempt to recreate contemplative thinking—the conceptions of Martin Heidegger and Shinichi Hisamatsu, two thinkers living in different cultures. The paper pays a special attention to the way of being. The articulation of the state and the posture of the thinker and his/her attitudes uses concepts, that are often ambiguous, multidimensional, but already capable of articulating phenomena that could not otherwise be named. Such a stance paves the way for creative thinking capable of extending and overstepping the limits of the strict causal Western way of thinking.