Universalism

NATIVE MESSENGERS OF GOD IN CANADA?:
A TEST CASE FOR BAHA’I UNIVERSALISM (1996)

*** Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in Canada?: A Test Case for Baha’i Universalism.” Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 97–133.

*** Award for Excellence in Baha’i Studies. Association for Baha’i Studies, 1994.

EPILOGUE

Thereupon Tekanawitaˀ [Deganawida, the Peacemaker] stood up in the center of the gathering place, and then he said, “First I will answer what it means to say, ‘Now it is arriving, the Good Message.’ This indeed, is what it means: When it stops, the slaughter of your own people who live here on earth, then everywhere peace will come about, by day and also by night, and it will come about that as one travels around, everyone will be related. …

Now again, secondly, I say, ‘Now it is arriving, the power,’ and this means that the different nations, all the nations, will become just a single one, and the Great Law will come into being, so that now all will be related to each other, and there will come to be just a single family, and in the future, in days to come, this family will continue on.

Now in turn, the other, my third saying, ‘Now it is arriving, the Peace,’ this means that everyone will become related, men and also women, and also the young people and the children, and when all are relatives, every nation, then there will be peace as they roam about by day and also by night. …

Then there will be truthfulness, and they will uphold hope and charity, so that it is peace that will unite all the people, indeed, it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means that there will be unity.” …

When they are functioning, the Good Message and also the Power and the Peace, moreover, these will be the principal things everybody will live by; these will be the great values among the people.”

– Chief John Arthur Gibson, Concerning the League: The Iroquois League as Dictated in Onondaga, newly elicited, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury in Collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry Webster on the Basis of A.A. Goldenweiser’s Manuscript. Memoir 9 (Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 1992): 36–41. 

ABSTRACT

Academic and popular interest has lent prestige to native spirituality and has brought it into prominence. The United Nations proclamation of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous People gave native peoples international recognition. A corresponding interest in native culture has “valorised” (brought respect to) native spirituality.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada took a position of advocacy on behalf of First Nations Canadians in its formal submission to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the fall of 1993. The strong native presence in Canadian Bahá’í community life raises the question of the place of native spirituality within a Bahá’í worldview.

Homefront “pioneers” have extended Bahá’í universalism to a recognition of the richness and authenticity of native cultural values. Such recognition has been supported by local Bahá’í policy, as attested in teaching pamphlets addressed to native peoples, in which the concept of First World messengers of God has been validated. Although theoretically acknowledged, explicit recognition of native messengers of God has yet to be formalised in Bahá’í doctrine.

This study discusses the possibilities of incorporating the principle of “Messengers of God to Indigenous Peoples” within formal Bahá’í doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Bahá’í belief in the North American context. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá establishes the principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible.

The problem of historical attestation remains. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Bahá’í principle of “Progressive Revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a provisional status with Bahá’í prophetology, and still affirm Bahá’u’lláh’s unific role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions.

https://www.academia.edu/36294314/_Native_Messengers_of_God_in_Canada_1996_

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PART 1: The hope of the faithful, and the grave from which we are dug. The traditional (patristic and early Reformation) doctrine of heaven and hell.
PART 2: The “Larger Hope” and lesser grave taught in the 1894 Revised Version. The assault on the doctrine of eternal retribution and re-definition of the Hebrew 'sheol.'
PART 3: The treatment of 'sheol' in the 1537 Matthew Bible. Comparing the Geneva Bible, Revised Version, and modern Bibles. The problems with the modern translations.

questo file è allegato all'articolo "La controversia fra integristi universalisti e antirazzisti" pubblicato qui: https://www.lavoroculturale.org/la-controversia-fra-integristi-universalisti-e-antirazzisti/; in questo file sono tradotti in italiano i 6 articoli pubblicati da Médiapart à proposito delle "controversie sulla questione della razza"

Philosophers disagree whether Composition as Identity entails mereological universalism. Bricker (2016) has recently considered an argument which concludes that Composition as Identity supports universalism. The key step in this argument is the thesis that any objects are identical to some object, which Bricker justifies with the principle of the universality of identity. I will spell out this principle in more detail and argue that it has an unexpected consequence. If the universality of identity holds, then Composition as Identity not only leads us to universalism, but also leads to the view that there are no mereological atoms.

This article defends the thesis that, in light of the postulates of liberal ethics, it is not possible to put forward universal arguments in support of any form of marriage. The existing forms of marriage should be either deemed unjust or founded on specific arguments recognized within a particular political community and determining the understanding of justice in a particular society. It defends the thesis that the requirement of universality, and consequently of impartiality, is not met, since behind every form of marriage there is a certain " minimum " anthropological approach. Marriage is discussed as a privilege granted to particular groups by the political community. The comments are made with reference to the discussion between Krzysztof Saja and Tomasz Sieczkowski concerning the problem of discrimination against same-sex couples in Polish legislation.

Der Ruf nach Freiheit, wie sie auch in der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Men-schenrechte (AEMR) definiert wurde, scheint universal zu sein . Die Freiheits-rechte sind in die AEMR eingebettet, die mit der Verwendung der Begriffe ›Freiheit‹, ›Gleichheit‹, ›Brüderlichkeit‹ direkten Bezug nimmt auf die französi-sche Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte von 1789. In Artikel 1 der AEMR heißt es: »Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren.  Sie sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt und sollen einander im Geist der Brüderlichkeit begegnen«. Die wesentlichen Freiheiten sind demnach: Artikel 3 (Recht auf Leben und Freiheit), 18 (Gedanken-, Gewissens-, Religi-onsfreiheit), 19 (Meinungs- und Informationsfreiheit), 20 (Versammlungs- und Vereinigungsfreiheit).

Rabindranath Tagore's opposition to imperialism and national chauvinism was manifest long before the series of lectures he delivered that came out in 1917 with a very misleading title, Nationalism. In Naibedya, poem no. 64 (1901) he had already denounced, not only the imperialist powers but also the poets who tried their best to whip up jingoism. Despite occasional backslidings Rabindranath remained firmly opposed to both imperialism and narrow nationalism. The transformation of his school, Santiniketan Brahmacharyasram, to Visva-Bharati is a pointer to his transition from revivalist patriotism to his aspiration to be a citizen of the world.

This paper (in Dutch) places Alexander's universalism in the context of the tradition of universal empire that was current in the Ancient Near East. It is argued that Alexander's pothos, especially his urge to reach the edges of the earth and "to go where no man has gone before", was a Greco-Macedonian rendering of a rather genuine, and age-old, ideology of empire: the claim to world unity in a single, peaceful empire protected by a single benevolent emperor. Tarn may have been right after all when he postulated that Alexander aimed at creating a "Unity of Mankind", as this was indeed a central notion in the contemporaneous Macedonian ideology and propaganda of empire.

The paper presents an epistemology of the assumption of the values of universalism and relativism. Though the main interest is to understand the present attitudes of intellectuals towards these values, the historical origin of this interesting social stratum is emphasised, as well as its ideology. This ideology may be described with the metaphor of esprit de corps. As ideology of a special social body, it is analysed from the standpoint of the concept of identity, which is not essentialist, but relational. As a result, esprit de corps appears as imagined identity, negotiated and fragmented, reflecting historical moments and social structures and relations. Those assuming this identity reject the universalistic values, and the paper highlights the present tendency of the dominant bodies to promote particularistic values.

Since making headlines as the first Moroccan woman to be awarded the Goncourt prize in 2016, best-selling author and official face of “Francophone Affairs,” Leïla Slimani, has quickly become one of the most influential figures on the French literary scene. Noted for her ground- breaking departure from the predictable genre of “ethnic autobiography” and her incisive gaze on French bourgeois banality, Slimani has emerged as something of a poster-girl for post-racial society – a vocal proponent of Republican ideals such as freedom and equality and the “borderless” world of Francophone literature, Slimani appears to embody French “universalisme.” Yet, as Joan Wallach-Scott observes, such a concept is itself rooted in a very particular history of French nationalism and imperialism, whereby (especially Arabo-Muslim) societies cast as “anti-freedom” or “anti-equality” emerge not just as “anti-French,” but “anti- human” – even as this rhetoric is effectively deracialised.
This paper analyses the effects of de/racialisation and the negotiation of French racial/cultural anxieties in Slimani’s celebrated killer-nanny novel, Chanson douce [Lullaby]. Working from Sara Ahmed’s notion of racial dis/orientation in Queer Phenomenology, I ask to what extent the invisibilisation of race in the novel functions as a critique of “white space,” denaturalising the racial dynamics ordinarily concealed by universalist rhetoric, and as a mode of strategic assimilation on the part of the author herself – How does Slimani’s ability to “pass” expose “passing” as a technology of the State? And to what extent does the French public’s delight at her “passing” point to its own inability to get “past” race?

A major theme of the current “Haitian turn” has been what I call a “universality-analysis”, which stresses that the Haitian Revolution, in contrast to the American and the French, once and for all abolished slavery. The chapter investigates the intervention into the Haitian Turn by two scholars specialized in the history of human rights: Lynn Hunt, who advocates a universality-analysis of the Haitian Revolution; and Samuel Moyn, who defends what I call a “universality-skeptical” analysis. It is argued that a theory of universal political forms, understood as contradictory and limited by the social content of power they mediate, can reveal that Hunt presuppose the effectivity of the political form independent of social content and a theory of historical continuity connecting the Haitian Revolution to our own age, and that Moyn presuppose emptiness of the political form reducible to intentions of actors and outcomes of events and a theory of discontinuity.

Au nom de l'universel, la plupart des philosophes font abstraction de notre ancrage local : ils appréhendent l'homme comme être au monde en général, comme être-là. C'est pourtant toujours dans des lieux particuliers que nous nous trouvons, avec leurs contingences topographiques, historiques et matérielles : c'est toujours ici que nous sommes là. Mais qu'est-ce qu'un lieu, et qu'est-ce que la philosophie peut en dire ? En mobilisant la géographie, la littérature, l'anthropologie et l'histoire pour comprendre cet objet négligé de la philosophie occidentale, Étienne Helmer montre combien les lieux sont bien plus que les simples cadres physiques de nos existences : tout à la fois matrices identitaires et formes événementielles, ils engagent le rapport politique que les individus et les groupes entretiennent avec l'universel dans ses aspects théoriques et pratiques.

The incorporation of Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica’s welfare arrangements is polemic, especially because the country’s ‘exceptional’ social policy regime and its flagship healthcare institution are under (financial) pressure, and the principle of universalism is in erosion. In this context, this research analyses the ways in which migration and social policy interact, and migrants’ access to social services, specifically healthcare. It constitutes an important empirical contribution to a public policy debate in the country centred around the idea that Costa Rican health services constitute a welfare magnet for Nicaraguan migration, through which the legitimacy of their claim to health services is questioned. It is argued, however, that there is little empirical foundation for this idea. At the same time, it speaks to larger debates on social exclusion and universalism. It discusses institutional processes of exclusion, in the form of restrictive state reactions to migrant inclusion in the context of the social security crisis. Despite acknowledgement of human rights frameworks, the state finds inventive ways to circumvent these and restricts migrants’ access to healthcare by giving a central role to healthcare institutions in (internal) migration management. This research then argues that such state reactions correlate to negative perceptions of migration, migrant incidence and the legitimacy of migrant healthcare demands of officials of crucial institutions for migrant inclusion. However, such perceptions are not backed by empirical data. Finally, the research strongly argues the need to go beyond the recognition of formal social rights and look at the extent and ways in which migrants actually access social services. Based on focus  group discussion with migrants and primary survey data, this document contains an elaborate discussion of the factors that determine mi-grants’ access to public health insurance, health services and medicine. The findings suggest that regularization is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for social integration, thereby questioning the state’s limited understanding of integration, which focuses exclusively on the regularization of ‘illegal’ migrants. More importantly, however, it shows that universalism in social policy does not apply equally to nationals and migrants, and is in fact, stratified.

Lebanon is often described as having a "vibrant" civil society. While such a description sounds promising, it presents drawbacks that equally affect women's rights and feminist organizations. The number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the country has boomed since the 90s post-civil war era and has continued to increase every year since. As much as this may sound like a good sign for freedom of speech and engagement, it contributes to the depoliticization of structural issues and the inhibition of mass mobilization (Jad, 2003). Moreover, NGOs often depend on international donors, who influence their programmatic and budgetary choices. The geographical and sociopolitical distance between the donors and the field deflects fund allocation and project implementation from the actual needs on the ground. In other words, donors define their own goals, which might not match the needs on the ground (AbiYaghi et al., 2019). The resulting tensions, as I will show in this article, came to the surface during the first International Feminisms Festival that took place in Beirut in February, 2020. While internal debates are necessary for a political movement to be fruitful, I argue that, for some feminist branches, these "debates" are not so much debates, but rather indicate the reproduction of oppressive and internalized structures such as colonial, racial, and classist domination.

WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel (2008). L'universalisme europeu. La retòrica del poder. Traducció de Maite Insa. València: Publicacions de la Universitat de València. Col·lecció: Assaig, 128 p.
WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel (2007). Universalismo europeo. El discurso del poder. Traducción de Josefina Anaya. Madrid: Siglo XXI, 123 p.
La verdad es que nos ha tocado vivir una época de grandes transformaciones. En apenas dos décadas hemos pasado del canto triunfal del liberalismo político y económico de Fukuyama ante el derrumbe de la URSS a la constatación de otro derrumbe, esta vez el de la propia hegemonía estadounidense. En estos momen-tos nos hallamos inmersos en una grave crisis económica mundial que puede arras-trar consigo al modelo de liberalismo vigente durante la última época. Y es que en un espacio de tiempo muy breve, la teoría económica oficial ha quebrantado sus propios dogmas y ha pasado a defender el gasto público, las nacionalizaciones y el proteccionismo. No obstante, es un buen momento para un tipo de filosofía política: aquella que dialoga con otras disciplinas aparte de la suya, y esto es así porque estas transformaciones producirán importantes cambios en nuestras representaciones del mundo. Por ello no es de extrañar que autores de variado signo, como John Gray en un reciente texto, comiencen a advertirnos de la magnitud del cambio que se avecina: «Estamos ante un giro geopolítico de dimensiones históricas que está alterando el equilibrio de poder en el mundo de manera irrevocable. La era del liderazgo mundial de Estados Unidos, que comenzó en la II Guerra Mundial, ha terminado.» (Gray, J. «Mucho más que una crisis financiera», El País, 11/10/2008). Un poco más cerca, Fernando Vallespín nos da pistas sobre el tipo de giro de que se trata: «Frente a la prioridad que en la anterior fase posmoderna acabó teniendo lo cultural -en un sentido lato-, se alza ahora lo económico como el factor central de la actividad humana.» (Vallespín, F. «¡Bienvenidos a la neomoderni-dad!», El País, 23/11/2008).

This essay considers virtue ethics and universalism in the wisdom literature of Musharrif al-Din Muṣliḥ Saʿdī (d. ca. 690/1291). Published in Renovatio, Spring (2018). If possible, please use this link to access: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-secret-of-the-morality-tale

The version uploaded here is a proof with minor errors.

Citation: Zargar, Cyrus Ali. “The Secret of the Morality Tale: Saʿdī on What It Means To Be Human.” Renovatio 2:1 (Spring 2018), pp. 81-88.

A.W.E. - Abbreviated form of: Ancient Wisdom Everlasting.

AWE: The all-knowing, divine knowledge within oneself; the voice of the soul.

This is not a book about religion. The conversations in this book have been purposely written in a non-sectarian, universal style to appeal to everyone. It doesn’t matter what religion, race or nationality you associate yourself with. It doesn’t matter if you’re agnostic or atheist, male or female, married or single, 13 years old or 95. It doesn’t matter if you’re white collar or blue, republican or democrat, unemployed or retired, extrovert or introvert, healthy or ill, rich or poor. All you’ll need is an inquisitive mind to enjoy this book. If you’re searching for answers to life’s most difficult questions, you’ve come to the right place.

TESTING THE UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The universality of human rights is tested through a cross confrontation between the legal conception and the ethical and political conception of legal rights. In this perspective three misunderstandings are discussed: the wrong identification between the origin and the value of something, that of a concept and its use in social practices, that of the concept of human rights and their conditions of practicability. As a fourth wrong position a strong separation between fundamental values and their legal implementation is refused. The argumentative dimension of human rights supports a reasonable compatibility between universalism and relativity of cultures.

The philosophical concept of apocatastasis denotes a return to the beginning, restoration of the primal order of things, restitution of the ideal unity, which on the basis of the law of necessity or the original sin has been lost. In philosophical thought, it is possible to indicate two basic levels on which the return is considered, the level of macro-scale of cosmos and the level of the creation, especially the level of human beings. Thus, it is possible to define a cosmological and personal aspect of the philosophical concept of apocatastasis. In order for the concept to take place, there have to be met certain conditions, such as e.g. an idea of the perfect nature of the beginning and the degradation of the cosmos in the course of history, the cyclical nature of time, the concept of cosmological justice, the evil taken as a lack of good or the idea of kinship between human and god. The article describes the main modes of the concept of apocatastasis in philosophical thought and analyses major requirements that are and have to be met on the way to the concept of eternal return.

Within the realm of modernizing the humanities, the aspiration of art history to transform into a universal discipline and modern science manifests itself as a cultural, anthropological, and spatial orientation toward world art and universal history. The ground for this modern shift was prepared by the universalization of art as based on the concept of mutual cultural influences and historical transfers. At the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, art history joined forces with subbranches of history such as universal history and cultural history. Through these interdisciplinary linkages, it also opened to a new self-definition and revaluation as image history.

บทความชิ้นนี้ได้ทำการสำรวจเชิงวิพากษ์ตัวแบบพื้นที่สาธารณะแบบท้าทายของอาเรนด์และตัวแบบพื้นที่สาธารณะแบบปรึกษาหารือของฮาเบอร์มาส โดยผู้เขียนเสนอว่าข้อแตกต่างระหว่างตัวแบบทั้งสองนั้น สืบเนื่องมาจากภววิทยาที่แตกต่างกันของนักคิดทั้งสองท่าน ในขณะที่อาเรนด์อาศัยภววิทยาแบบพหุนิยม ที่ยกย่องเชิดชูเสรีภาพใน ‘การเอ่ยวาจา’ และ ‘การกระทำ’ ของปัจเจกบุคคลที่แตกต่างหลากหลายซึ่งเข้ามามีปฏิสัมพันธ์กันในพื้นที่สาธารณะว่าเป็น ‘จริยศาสตร์’ หรือความดีงามในตัวของมันเอง ฮาเบอร์มาสกลับใช้ภววิทยาสากลนิยมแบบรุสโซ่ ที่มองว่าการถกเถียงแลกเปลี่ยนโดยใช้เหตุผลเชิงวิพากษ์ของปัจเจกบุคคลที่เข้าสู่พื้นที่สาธารณะด้วยแรงผลักดันจากผลประโยชน์ทางเศรษฐกิจส่วนบุคคล สามารถนำไปสู่การสร้างฉันทามติสากลร่วมกันได้ และความเห็นสาธารณะอันเป็นผลลัพธ์จากการปฏิสังสรรค์ของปัจเจกบุคคลในพื้นที่สาธารณะเหล่านี้ ท้ายที่สุดแล้วจะนำไปสู่การต่อต้านและท้าทายอำนาจรัฐ อย่างไรก็ตาม บทความชิ้นนี้ได้เสนอว่าเราสามารถก้าวข้ามข้อจำกัดอันเนื่องมาจากภววิทยาแบบสากลนิยมของตัวแบบพื้นที่สาธารณะแบบปรึกษาหารือฮาเบอร์มาสได้ ก็ด้วยการกลับไปหาแนวคิดพื้นที่สาธารณะแบบท้าทายของอาเรนด์

In this course, we will focus on the relationship between everyday uses of culture and analytical approaches to 'culture' and related concepts. Following the PBL-model of learning, we start with specific stories and events in which multiple cultural meanings and understandings play a crucial role. Principles of cultural analysis are then introduced by adding layers to our understanding and explanation of the stories and the stories about the stories. By drawing on different approaches and theoretical assumptions in anthropology, cultural studies, human geography, sociology and multiculturalism, the course teases out the different meanings of the terms 'culture' and 'cultural' with the principles of hermeneutic and dialective methods. The course is divided into nine different lectures, each of which will approach and provide means of analysis for various aspects of culture.

Lecture 1 - Collective culture, cultural contagion: In the first lecture in Cultural Analysis, we will ask the question “What is Culture?”, how can it be defined and understood. We will discuss the culture as a thing – a kind of collectively agreed phenomena associated with certain kind of spaces and systems but also culture as an interpersonal, shared understanding and as something that is ‘contagious’ in our everyday lives. The lecture will also illustrate the use of the concepts of emic and etic in cultural analysis.

Lecture 2 - Storying culture, claiming narratives: In the second lecture in Cultural Analysis, we will try to understand how cultures are made, how they are understood, narrated and claimed. Culture in this sense becomes real when it is interpreted, noticed and discussed about – interpretations thus have real, material and world-constituting implications. The lecture will also tease out the major differences between positivist sciences and hermeneutic approaches.

Lecture 3 - Cultural relativism, particularism, universalism: In the third lecture in Cultural Analysis, we will look more closely to the emic-etic natures of culture, the particularity-universality debates and the idea of cultural relativism. The lecture will also think through parochialism as a cultural condition and what it means to be local. In addition, we will discuss cosmopolitanism in Nigel Rapport’s terms of anyone as a post-cultural phenomenon.

Lecture 4 - Cultural heritage and social time: The fourth lecture in Cultural Analysis takes upon the issue of time.  We will discuss the basic foundations of time through Heraclitus, Parmenides, Aristotle, Heidegger, Bergson and Deleuze to grasp the difference time makes. How the cumulation of meanings contribute to our understanding of cultures, how tradition become a culture in itself, how cultural heritage is made and maintained and how we read through the different legacies of the past to construct our contemporary image of ourselves.

Lecture 5 - Nature as culture: Starting with the idea that nature, as we know it, is socially produced and that nature has not been ‘natural’ for a long time, the fifth lecture deals with the cultural differences in perceiving nature. These differences tell their own story about the cultures that frame them and prompt a question where the boundary between culture and nature can be found. We will also discuss the Anthropocene as a cultural condition, changing perceptions of the ‘blue marble’ or the whole Earth and the need for natural sciences to understand cultural knowledge to promote social and global change.

Lecture 6 - Regionalism, (neo)nationalism, tribalism: The sixth lecture tackles questions of tribalism, divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and the different shades of group behaviour. Key ideas for the lecture are how a shared knowledge base constructs ‘imagined communities’ and the polarization of group behaviour where the identity of a community is based on the difference from an other. We will also discuss the positive and negative effects of regionalism, how othering as a cultural phenomenon relies more on the suspicion and fear of the unknown rather than in trust of within one’s group and how nationalist ideas are more often based on cultural ideals than actual cultures.

Lecture 7 - Cultural politics: Continuing from the topics of lecture 6, this lecture deals how culture becomes politicized as identity struggles within nations and as geopolitical problems of cultural representation. We will discuss cultural appropriation, politics in describing what culture should be and how culture has in different countries contributed into ideas of communities and how these ideas have changed. This lecture will use tangiable examples of how cultures are defined, discusses and used in power struggles.

Lecture 8 - Digital and networked culture and cultures at play: The eight lecture deals with issues of digital and networked culture and how we are socialized into different cultures. This setting of ideas makes the lecture divided in two. First, we will discuss some ideas related to network analysis, spread of information and spread of culture as well. More and more the world is seem to be divided within nations, what Fukuyama would call tribalism, and part of the idea of the lecture is to understand how digital culture spurs and elevates contested ideas and polarizes discussion. We will also discuss a bit algorithmic mediascapes, where your earlier interests control what you will be shown in the future. Network thinking is also a useful means to understand not only the spread of ideas but also spread of viruses resulting into epidemics. In this you have two readings you can choose from that at the same time might help to understand culture as contagious given that cultural knowledge increasingly grows from imitating our peers.

The second part of the lecture deals with how we are socialized into different cultural understandings and regimes in the first place. Through a discussion of children's play the lecture deals with how different moral codes are produced and what kind of ludic practices reconstruct future cultures. With the animation or digitalization of different toys and plays, hegemonic cultural understandings are regenerated.

Lecture 9 - Futures of culture(s): The last lecture in this lecture series develops on issues of time and culture especially on the ways our dreams and fears, utopias and dystopias are related to our culture. We will discuss some of the basic ideas in futures studies, John Urry's concerns of What is the future? and debate whether the scenarios and future visions tell more about the culture that developed them than of actual trajectories. Futures thinking is also a form of use of power and thinking who is creating those visions can reveal that such thinking can be more provincial and particular than universal. Part of the lecture takes note on David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas in thinking the absence of time, relationality and different cultural legacies that all contribute to interpretation and cultural analysis.

In The Ticklish Subject, Žižek argues that the Hegelian concrete universal is not the organic comprehensive totality that it is often assumed to be. Rather, he argues that Hegel's concrete universality is defined in its very concretion by an irreducible rupture, gap, or trauma that not only neither closes it off from otherness nor assimilates otherness within the same, but forever opens it to otherness, constituting it as such exposure. However, by understanding the function of negativity in Hegel's argument in a foundational way, Žižek posits as final what is merely a transitional stage. As a result, he not only misconstrues concrete universality and substitutes for it a particularized universal which, as such, remains abstract, but in doing so he passes by the implications in his own account that could lead to a positive conception of concrete universality above and beyond the strictly negative and empty formality he takes it to be. By avoiding Žižek's foundationalist way of framing the category of universality we can thereby articulate a logic of implications in it that leads us out of the still abstract shape, to which Žižek limits it, to its truly (in Hegel's view) concrete form. Furthermore, the latter contains political implications that are lost in Žižek's version.

Gre za prvo celovito monografijo v slovenskem jeziku s področja teološke etike po Drugem vatikanskem koncilu. Zavest o nujnosti etičnega diskruza je tudi znotraj naše družbe čedalje večja in tudi
teologija se želi dejavno vključiti v razmišljanje, kaj je dobro za človeka kot posameznika, za človeško družbo in za celotno stvarstvo. Monografija predstavlja velik prispevek tako k opredelitvi etične metodologije kot tudi k uvajanju izrazoslovja na tem področju. Vsebina knjige je na ravni zadnjih dognanj na tem področju v svetovnem merilu.

Uses Social Identity Theory (SIT) to study the Didache community’s identity formation, including showing an instance of “group polarization.” The group holds on to a symbolic Jewish identity, but evinces its Christian identity in its practice of Eucharist, baptism in the name of the Trinity, and affirmation of Jesus as Messiah. Notably, however, there is no atonement teaching , nor any mention of Jesus’ death.

The paper examines the nexus between two allegedly contesting objectives of international children's rights law: protection and empowerment. It focuses on child labour movements as a case study to examine this tension. The paper shows that when children's make demands that exceed imaginary boundaries of protection, these demands are ignored, and their voices is dismissed on the bases of immaturity. Therefore, the paper argues that the failure of international children's rights law to acknowledge the ways childhood can unfold in more than one-way results in domination of paternalistic approaches to children's agency. This inherently limits this body of law from achieving its main objective: providing comprehensive rights protection for every child.

Com'è noto, l'impero romano e la religione cristiana esprimono entrambi un'ideologia universalistica ovviamente di contenuto diverso (quella cristiana non tende ad un dominio ovviamente spirituale sulle genti, ad una conversione universale, ma solo ad una predicazione universale 9e realizzata però in tempi diversi: al futuro il cristianesimo (il messaggio di Cristo sarà annunciato a tutte le genti alla fine della storia prima della seconda venuta del Cristo), già al presente l'impero romano fino dall'impero augusteo che pretende di estendere il suo dominio o almeno la sua egemonia sull'orbis terrarum. Per entrambi all'affermazione ideologica non corrisponde evidentemente, non compiutamente almeno, la realtà. Anche ad una sommaria conoscenza geografica dell'estensione dell'ecumene questa discrepanza non può non risultare evidente. Questo contributo intende occuparsi, soprattutto in età tardoantica, dell'evoluzione del rapporto fra le due ideologie universalistiche ed insieme della consapevolezza dei loro limiti reali. All'inizio dell'impero l'ideologia universalistica augustea, che riprende e corona consapevolezze orgogliose diffuse nella cultura e nello stato romano nella tarda repubblica è sostenuta da una ricognizione analitica dei rapporti con i territori ed i popoli al di là dei confini dell'impero. Nelle Res gestae Augusto dichiara di aver assoggettato l'orbis terrarum all'impero del popolo romano. Al di là della cintura degli stati vassalli, nel testo augusteo, popoli e regni riconoscono la superiorità dell'impero romano e ne cercano l'amicizia e la protezione. I Parti avevano restituito le insegne catturate agli eserciti di Crasso e di Antonio e il re Fraate gli aveva affidato come ostaggi figli e nipoti. Ambascerie erano giunte da re indiani e l'amicizia era stata richiesta da Bastarnae, Sciti, Sarmati e dai re di Albani, Iberi e Medi. Al di fuori di un dominio territoriale diretto e prescindendo da progetti espansionistici come la conquista della libera

El primer evangelio presenta algunos rasgos que parece referirlo sólo a Israel, excluyendo de su horizonte a los paganos; estos pasajes están en tensión con otros en los que con claridad se formula la misión universal. En estas páginas mostramos cómo estas dos dimensiones de la misión de Jesús y la Iglesia, no sólo no se oponen, sino que se necesitan mutuamente.