Ethics, Religion, and Politics

ماکس وبر (1846-1920)، جامعه‌شناس و اقتصاد سیاسی‌دان شهیر آلمانی در مقاله کلاسیک خود، ”سیاست به مثابه یک حرفه“،  به بررسی رابطه اخلاق و سیاست از منظر جامعه‌شناسانه پرداخته است. به گمان نگارنده، در حالی که گوهر مدعای وبر در این باب پذیرفتنی است، صورت‌بندی این مدعا در قالب اصطلاحات مبهم و نامناسب از سوی او زمینه مساعدی برای سوء تفاهم فراهم آورده است. در این مقاله می‌کوشم در حد مقدور صورت‌بندی‌های متنوعی را که وبر از آنها برای تقریر مدعای خود سود جسته است مرور کنم و صورت‌بندی دقیق و قابل دفاعی از مدعای او بدست دهم.

In his extant letters and speeches, Emperor Constantine often referred to God. However, these references were seldom theological elaborations on the concept of God. Instead, they were usually limited to the use of certain ambiguous titles of God. Accordingly, this article examines the emperor’s concept of God with the help of the so-called title-theology. Arguably, Constantine’s understanding of God developed from inclusive “pagan” henotheism to a qualified Christian monotheism, yet so that it retained the promise of accommodating various views of God. Vagueness in theological matters served the purpose of establishing the widest possible religious consensus in the Roman Empire. At the same time, this calculated vagueness also enabled different interpretations of Constantine’s theological utterances and perhaps contributed indirectly to the Trinitarian controversies within the Christian church. A comparison between Constantine’s concepts of God and that of Nicaea shows both a significant agreement and the existence of different underlying incentives.

Disgusted with ISIS, some Kurds turned away from Islam following the fall of Mosul in 2014. Many became atheists, while others sought comfort in Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism, according to converts, was the “original” religion of the Kurds before they embraced Islam. In 2015, two Zoroastrian centers opened in Sulaimani, both of which are recognized by the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. Notably, neither has tried to recreate Zoroastrianism the way it is currently and has been historically practiced in Iran and South Asia. Instead, they have created their own versions of Zoroastrianism, which is nationalist, postmodern, and liberal. Kurdish Zoroastrians argue that the reason Kurds are “backward” is Islam. They seek to rectify the present situation through a Kurdish “authenticated” and “original” form of Zoroastrianism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at these two centers, the present article examines this new religious movement in Sulaimani, an important city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It analyses the rise and distinctiveness of Kurdish Zoroastrianism looking at how Zoroastrian Kurds articulate their views on Islam, women’s rights, human rights, and Kurdish independence.

این روزها کم‌تر کسی از جویندگان گفتارها و گفت‌وگوهای روشنفکری در ایران است که نام مصطفی ملکیان را نشنیده باشد. کوشش‌های علمی او در دهه‌های اخیر از هر جهت که بنگریم، نشانه‌ی دگرگونی بزرگی در طرح و پیشبرد مسئله‌های اندیشگی در سرزمین ماست.[1] چه‌بسا ارزنده‌ترین اثرگذاری ملکیان همانا تربیت و پرورش نسلی از دانش‌آموختگان کهن‌ترین نهاد معرفت در ایران است که چیرگی همهنگام خود را بر پاره‌هایی از سنت اسلامی و اندیشه‌ی غربی به رخ می‌کشند. اکنون ثمره‌ی جهاد فکری ملکیان را در گوشه و کنار می‌توان آشکارا دید. ما امروز با گونه‌ی نادری از طلاب و روحانیان روبروییم که روشن و دقیق سخن می‌گویند، بایستگی بازاندیشی در سرچشمه‌های معرفت دینی را به‌ژرفا فهم کرده‌اند و روشمندانه بدان دست یازیده‌اند و به‌فرجام غرب‌ستیزی را با شناخت کنشگرانه‌ی سنت باخترزمین جایگزین ساخته‌اند. اینها همگی به‌جای خود شایسته‌ی شناسایی و ستایش است. با اینهمه، این میان مصطفی ملکیان خود به مسئله‌ای در میان گره‌های ناگشوده‌ی روشنفکری ایرانی بدل شده است.

هدف این نوشتار بازشناسی این مسئله و به‌دست دادن تحلیلی درخور از سویه‌های آن است. درونمایه‌ی این سنجشگری از آنجا که به شخصیت یک اندیشمند یا رفتارهای فردی او نیز می‌پردازد، بر زمینی لغزنده ره می‌سپرَد که هم حساسیت‌برانگیز است و هم نیازمند سامان‌دهی در خور، مبادا که نیکویی‌های کنش روشنگرانه‌ی ملکیان در چنبره‌ی پاره‌ای از نتایج پی‌آیند آن نادیده انگاشته شود. با اینهمه، آسیب ادعاشده در سپهر عمومی نشانه‌هایی بالینی یافته است که هر نگرنده‌ای را نگران عملکرد «روشنفکری معنوی» در سرزمین ما می‌کند. امید آنکه این متن به‌عنوان صرف مقدمه‌ای نگریسته شود که دلنگران بازآفرینی اطاعت و عصبیت سنتی در وادی روشنفکری مدرن ماست.

This publication is really the product of both the work of Positive Muslims and the ideas that led to its formation. While it challenges some of our traditional thinking on many things, it does not do so because we are keen ‘to stir things’. We have
been deeply moved by the prevalence of this disease among Muslims and others. It is the urgency of this pandemic and the hurt felt by those who are stigmatized by it that force us to raise sometimes uncomfortable issues. This is the first publication in a series of three produced by Positive Muslims. The other two are a manual on running workshops for Muslims on HIV&AIDS and
Islam (Also available of Academia.edu), and a more scholarly collection of Academic Articles theological challenges that this
pandemic presents to Muslims and to Islamic thinking.

Published in: Robert W. Jensen and Eugene Korn editors, Swords into Plowshares:  Reflections on Religion and Violence (Essays from the Institute for Theological Inquiry).  Center for Jewish and Christian Understanding and Cooperation (Kindle Edition 2014).


ABSTRACT


 
Don Seeman, the author of the chapter

“Violence, Divine Honor and the State,” has published a number

of studies touching on the relationship between the idea of divine honor and religious violence in different Jewish intellectual settings and he has also written as an anthropologist on the relationship between honor and political violence in modern Israel. Here, for the first time, he offers a synthetic reading that attempts to account for the close relationship between the anthropological and theological registers and to account in a systematic way for differences in approach between Jewish thinkers as diverse as Maimonides, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Rav Kook, Moses Mendelssohn and Emmanuel Levinas. He begins with a phenomenological critique of the way honor and shame have been treated in recent

social science literature. He argues that honor and shame are “bridge concepts” that are applied in

classical conceptions to human beings as well as to God and that they therefore help to condition theological as well as political or anthropological conceptions of ethics and violence. After brief analyses of key biblical and rabbinic texts, Seeman argues that Jewish approaches to divine honor and violence can be divided into three dominant paradigms: vernacular, mystical and philosophical. The vernacular paradigm treats divine honor in anthropomorphic terms that are indistinguishable from those used to explain human social relations and recourse to violence. The mystical or kabbalistic paradigm builds, in a sense, on this robust vernacular sensibility, but adds a distinctive and subtle metaphysics of divine presence. This is the context in which the utter rejection of the vernacular sensibility by philosophical Judaism

—

exemplified by Maimonides and by modern thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn

—

takes on such importance. Seeman argues that the very shape of Jewish modernity has been conditioned by arguments over the nature of divine honor and by the political ramifications of those differences. The rejection of vernacular divine honor is a central theme of

Mendelssohn’s



Jerusalem

to which contemporary Jews are still implicitly or explicitly responding. We cannot understand the complex relationships between religion, violence and the state without a much better understanding of these dynamics.


"

The intertwinement between religious and political discourses in European modernity, book chapter in    Γεώργιος Ν.  Γκότσης, Θρησκεία, νεωτερικότητα και σύγχρονη πολιτισμική ταυτότητα  (George Gotsis, Religion, modernity and contemporary cultural identity). Athens A. N. Sakkoulas Publications,  1996, PP. 47-95.

Il libro analizza il tentativo operato dal pensatore fiammingo Giusto Lipsio (1547-1606) di costruire un ponte tra etica e politica sul quale il principe, destinatario di ambiziosi progetti pedagogici, possa far transitare in pace e sicurezza una società civile. Sul filo di una rinnovata lettura dei grandi antichi, in particolare di Seneca e di Tacito, come dei più coinvolgenti dei contemporanei, Lipsio si manifesta ‘profeta del passato’ e insieme augure di una equa modernità la cui difficoltà di realizzazione nulla toglie al grande respiro del progetto teorico.

The book investigates Justus Lipsius’s attempt to bridge the gap between ethics and politics in order to help the ruler to ensure social stability and prosperity in his kingdom. Matters touched upon in a wide-ranging account of both philosophical and political issues include ways of governing, the power of the state and sovereignty, obedience of subjects, dissembling of princes, tyranny, the right to wage war and religious tolerance, together with – more generally – the relationship between politics and ethics as a matter of constant concern over the generations to come.

La situación actual de la sociedad española está pidiendo mayor claridad en la visión de la relación entre ética y política. Esta nueva visión debe huir del simplismo de basarlo todo en la virtud personal así como de reducir la política a manipulación amoral. Paul Valadier nos ofrece un esquema para ver la integración de ética y política partiendo de casos concretos, pasando por la discusión en grupos humanos, y llevándonos a la toma de decisiones concreta. En este esquema, la fe del político interviene como motivación especial, como fuente de una imaginación nueva así como fuente de una vida comunitaria que ayuda a mantener los valores.

In a recent "Eco-Preacher" blog post, "Religion and Science Can be Besties," (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/04/religion-science-besties/), pastor, professor, and activist Dr. Leah Schade claims that "the narrative of Christianity opposing science is neither helpful nor true." She argues that "[i]nsights from science inform Christian ethics, and Christian ethics can help us understand the implications of science." She then proposes to utilize Dynamic Systems or "Chaos" Theory as a lens through which to examine and thereby support these claims--leading the reader to believe she understands both the science of dynamic systems and the moral substance and motives of Christianity. 

Unfortunately, however, Rev. Schade makes it clear she understands neither science nor ethics. If she did, she'd see that science no more needs Christian ethics to show us the mechanics of physics, chemistry, or biology than being a moral person requires having faith, as Bertrand Russell put it, in an "ally in the sky." Indeed, if we're going to mount a successful campaign against the "starvation" budgets proposed by the Trump regime for the National Institute of Health (cuts of 20%), the Department of Energy's Office of Science (20%), the Environmental Protection Agency (50%), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($250 million dollar budget cut), and the $100 million from NASA, there could be no better time to make an uncompromising defense of reason unmuddied by the efforts of religion to imprison us in the very fear and uncertainly autocratic charlatans like Trump and his mercenary cronies are all too eager to exploit.

It's time, in other words, to not be suckers.

Political Theology 4 (2008), 455-475.
This article analyses examples of remembering, forgetting and falsifying experiences of victim-victimiser relationships during the Communist regimes. With the help of J.B. Metz‘s political theology it investigates how and what kinds of remembering the past may help a more truthful understanding of the present and more hopeful relationship to the coming future.

Contemporarily there is a resurgence of religion as a major phenomenon in politics across the world. This research examines the different theoretical lenses from which this phenomenon is viewed. In this research we use the terms religion and tradition interchangeably, as most traditions in the developing countries are religious traditions. Currently there is the

در بخش اول و دوم این مقاله پس از (1) طرح بحث، پرسش‌های زیر را بررسی کردیم: (2) موضوع حکم اخلاقی در باب اهانت چیست؟ (3) آیا اهانت از نظر اخلاقی مطلقاً نارواست؟ (4) استدلال‌های اخلاقی به سود ناروا بودن اهانت کدام‌اند؟ (5) نسبت «نارواییِ اهانت» و «حقِ اهانت کردن» چیست؟ (6) نسبت «ناروایی اهانت» با «حق آزادی بیان»، و «حقِ ناحق بودن» چیست؟ و (7) معنای «مقدس» و «تقدس» چیست؟ در این بخش به (8) نقد ادلۀ منکران خواهیم پرداخت.

This program explores the interaction and mutual influences between theological ideas, religious beliefs and practices, and modern (secular) society and the contemporary globalization processes. Approaching these phenomena from an Eastern Christian perspective, the courses in this program will help students learn about how theology and Church practice relate to the ever changing social and political environments, how ideology (both within the Church and in society) structures our perception of the social sphere, and how one can engage with social and political contexts and democratic processes in a constructive and creative way. The program equips students with theoretical knowledge, critical analysis and writing skills necessary for future work as professionals (e.g., educators, ministers, public servants, analysts, NGO personnel and activists) or for an academic career and further research (at Ph.D. level).

This paper looks at the way in which Craveirinha’s aesthetic representation in Karingana-Ua-Karingana, Xigubo and Cela 1 helped gather a shared repertoire near the longings, desire and wishes of many Mozambicans (the organic civil religion) into a coherent political project (instrumental civil religion). That is, how through eschatological symbolism and imagery Craveirinha’s poems created an aesthetic platform for the emergence of a Mozambican civil religion, known as Moçambicanidade. José Craveirinha is known to be the godfather of poets and short story writers in Mozambique, a towering figure in the literary world who, in life, dreamed of and projected an image of a just and modern southeast African nation at the end of twentieth century. In key International Award Winner poems from Karingana-Ua-Karingana, Xigubo and Cela 1, he evoked old Nguni warriors and larger-than-life figures, such as Maguiguana and Mahazul; and Bantu deities and spirits, such as Jambul, and Ngungunhane, the Nguni emperor. He summoned the powers of mother Africa, brother Zambezi and ultimately the Nkulukumba (the Ronga word for the Greatest Supreme Creator or God); he also painted images of young men melting in the sounds of Xipalapala and bare-chested young Negroes raising their arms to the light of sister moon and dancing the war dance of ancient tribes of the river. There are plenty of drumbeats, war songs danced in circles around the fire. He uses eschatological symbolism and imagery to construct an ideal group (communal in Anderson’s meaning of the word, tribal or national) identity to which he wants to be part and names it Moçambique.

Levinas did not write all that much about concrete political issues but he does write about hospitality, about welcome, about ethics, about the ethical responsibility of each of us for the other, for all the others. Levinas reminds us that this is what we are here for, that we are only here so that we might be here for the other, that this is our calling as human beings, that this is indeed what truly matters. For Levinas, the meaningful life is a life of service to the other.  But must this service take a political form? In this paper I argue that, owing to the fact that each of us are unable to do perfect justice unto the singularity of all the others for whom each of us is ultimately responsible, it is ethically incumbent upon each of us to extend the range of our ethical praxis from the sphere of face to face interactions to the sphere of political action.  Only by acting with others politically does the individual have any possibility of bringing about the changes in the totality’s laws, policies and practices, changes which are required if justice is to be done for each and everyone. Ergo, political engagement is ethically obligatory.

Why is it OK to insult women, our bodies, and our sexuality in ways that it is no longer OK to insult other groups?

The recent controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s rant about Sandra Fluke would not be so important if Limbaugh were not the “voice” allowed to say things that Republican politicians cannot say in public. Republican politicians wish to appeal to men who would say exactly what Rush said, while watching Fox News or over a beer with their buddies.

The Virgin-Whore split is alive and well in our culture. Sandra Fluke  finally did get to testify in a hearing called by Nancy Pelosi.  She  assumed a woman’s right to choose when and with whom we have sex and whether and when we will have children, but she did not focus on sexual freedom. One of her examples was a married woman who could not afford birth control and another was a woman who needed birth control pills for reasons having nothing to do with sex or sexual activity. She did not appear in Congress in a mini-skirt (though she should have had every right to do so) but in a business suit. Yet she was called a slut and a prostitute and asked to post porno films of herself on the internet.