Rajeev Bhargava
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199827978
- eISBN:
- 9780199933020
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827978.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter begins with a discussion of the crisis of individualistic, diversity-resistant secularism and why both these forms of western secularism have become part of the problem. It then turns to ...
More
This chapter begins with a discussion of the crisis of individualistic, diversity-resistant secularism and why both these forms of western secularism have become part of the problem. It then turns to the Indian model of secularism, which meets the needs of deeply religiously diverse societies and also complies with principles of freedom and equality. In India, the existence of deep religious diversity has ensured a response not only to problems within religions but also between religions. Although not available as a doctrine or theory, such a conception was worked out jointly by Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent, and can be found loosely in the best moments of inter-communal practice in India; and in the country's constitution appropriately interpreted. The chapter elaborates on two features of Indian secularism: principled distance and contextual secularism.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of the crisis of individualistic, diversity-resistant secularism and why both these forms of western secularism have become part of the problem. It then turns to the Indian model of secularism, which meets the needs of deeply religiously diverse societies and also complies with principles of freedom and equality. In India, the existence of deep religious diversity has ensured a response not only to problems within religions but also between religions. Although not available as a doctrine or theory, such a conception was worked out jointly by Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent, and can be found loosely in the best moments of inter-communal practice in India; and in the country's constitution appropriately interpreted. The chapter elaborates on two features of Indian secularism: principled distance and contextual secularism.
William Franke
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759106
- eISBN:
- 9780804779739
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759106.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book seeks to find the premises for dialogue between cultures, especially religious fundamentalisms—including Islamic fundamentalism—and modern Western secularism. It argues that in order to be ...
More
This book seeks to find the premises for dialogue between cultures, especially religious fundamentalisms—including Islamic fundamentalism—and modern Western secularism. It argues that in order to be genuinely open, dialogue needs to accept possibilities such as religious apocalypse in ways which can be best understood through the experience of poetry. The author reads Christian epic and prophetic tradition as a secularization of religious revelation that preserves an understanding of the essentially apocalyptic character of truth and its disclosure in history. The usually neglected negative theology that undergirds this apocalyptic tradition provides the key to a radically new view of apocalypse as at once religious and poetic.Less
This book seeks to find the premises for dialogue between cultures, especially religious fundamentalisms—including Islamic fundamentalism—and modern Western secularism. It argues that in order to be genuinely open, dialogue needs to accept possibilities such as religious apocalypse in ways which can be best understood through the experience of poetry. The author reads Christian epic and prophetic tradition as a secularization of religious revelation that preserves an understanding of the essentially apocalyptic character of truth and its disclosure in history. The usually neglected negative theology that undergirds this apocalyptic tradition provides the key to a radically new view of apocalypse as at once religious and poetic.
Yael Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759021
- eISBN:
- 9780804777360
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759021.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book is a history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting ...
More
This book is a history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting “primal scene” of sacrifice—the near-sacrifice of Isaac—as evidenced in wide-ranging sources from the domains of literature, art, psychology, philosophy, and politics. By placing these sources in conversation with twentieth-century thinking on human sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, this study draws a complex picture that provides multiple, sometimes contradictory, insights into the genesis and gender of national sacrifice. Extending back over two millennia, it unearths retellings of biblical and classical narratives of sacrifice, both enacted and aborted, voluntary and violent, male and female: Isaac, Ishmael, Jephthah's daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus. The book traces the birth of national sacrifice out of the ruins of religious martyrdom, exposing the sacred underside of Western secularism in Israel, as elsewhere.Less
This book is a history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting “primal scene” of sacrifice—the near-sacrifice of Isaac—as evidenced in wide-ranging sources from the domains of literature, art, psychology, philosophy, and politics. By placing these sources in conversation with twentieth-century thinking on human sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, this study draws a complex picture that provides multiple, sometimes contradictory, insights into the genesis and gender of national sacrifice. Extending back over two millennia, it unearths retellings of biblical and classical narratives of sacrifice, both enacted and aborted, voluntary and violent, male and female: Isaac, Ishmael, Jephthah's daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus. The book traces the birth of national sacrifice out of the ruins of religious martyrdom, exposing the sacred underside of Western secularism in Israel, as elsewhere.