The Idea of Tradition in the Late Modern World

The Idea of Tradition in the Late Modern World PDF Author: Thomas Albert Howard
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532678894
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Our late modern era is marked by the rapidity of change; waxing pluralism; focus on the future, not the past; the elevation of personal choice over communal obligation; and, for some, a sense of spiritual and intellectual disorientation that can lead to resentment, fear, nostalgia, and/or a disordered desire for absolute certainty and rigid authority. How can religious traditions be maintained and even thrive in such an environment? How do they negotiate the fluidity of it all and transmit their beliefs and practices to future generations? What should be the role of academic authorities vis-à-vis religious authorities in this process? Finally, what can different religious traditions learn from one another on the general topic of tradition? This volume invites readers to participate in a candid ecumenical and interreligious conversation involving Christian, Jewish, and Muslim voices. The editor and contributors alike contend that the “Abrahamic” faiths, while having honest differences, face common challenges from contemporary culture, which often fosters incomprehension about the depth, breadth, and intellectual rigor of religious traditions. At the same time, traditions can become disengaged and moribund without attending to them with careful reflection, discernment, and conversation with others who hold different points of view. With contributions from: David Novak James L. Heft, S. M. David Bentley Hart Ebrahim Moosa Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

The Idea of Tradition in the Late Modern World

The Idea of Tradition in the Late Modern World PDF Author: Thomas Albert Howard
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532678894
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Get Book

Book Description
Our late modern era is marked by the rapidity of change; waxing pluralism; focus on the future, not the past; the elevation of personal choice over communal obligation; and, for some, a sense of spiritual and intellectual disorientation that can lead to resentment, fear, nostalgia, and/or a disordered desire for absolute certainty and rigid authority. How can religious traditions be maintained and even thrive in such an environment? How do they negotiate the fluidity of it all and transmit their beliefs and practices to future generations? What should be the role of academic authorities vis-à-vis religious authorities in this process? Finally, what can different religious traditions learn from one another on the general topic of tradition? This volume invites readers to participate in a candid ecumenical and interreligious conversation involving Christian, Jewish, and Muslim voices. The editor and contributors alike contend that the “Abrahamic” faiths, while having honest differences, face common challenges from contemporary culture, which often fosters incomprehension about the depth, breadth, and intellectual rigor of religious traditions. At the same time, traditions can become disengaged and moribund without attending to them with careful reflection, discernment, and conversation with others who hold different points of view. With contributions from: David Novak James L. Heft, S. M. David Bentley Hart Ebrahim Moosa Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Revolt Against the Modern World

Revolt Against the Modern World PDF Author: Julius Evola
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620558548
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world. As a gadfly, Evola spares no one and nothing in his survey of what we have lost and where we are headed. At turns prophetic and provocative, Revolt against the Modern World outlines a profound metaphysics of history and demonstrates how and why we have lost contact with the transcendent dimension of being. The revolt advocated by Evola does not resemble the familiar protests of either liberals or conservatives. His criticisms are not limited to exposing the mindless nature of consumerism, the march of progress, the rise of technocracy, or the dominance of unalloyed individualism, although these and other subjects come under his scrutiny. Rather, he attempts to trace in space and time the remote causes and processes that have exercised corrosive influence on what he considers to be the higher values, ideals, beliefs, and codes of conduct--the world of Tradition--that are at the foundation of Western civilization and described in the myths and sacred literature of the Indo‑Europeans. Agreeing with the Hindu philosophers that history is the movement of huge cycles and that we are now in the Kali Yuga, the age of dissolution and decadence, Evola finds revolt to be the only logical response for those who oppose the materialism and ritualized meaninglessness of life in the twentieth century. Through a sweeping study of the structures, myths, beliefs, and spiritual traditions of the major Western civilizations, the author compares the characteristics of the modern world with those of traditional societies. The domains explored include politics, law, the rise and fall of empires, the history of the Church, the doctrine of the two natures, life and death, social institutions and the caste system, the limits of racial theories, capitalism and communism, relations between the sexes, and the meaning of warriorhood. At every turn Evola challenges the reader’s most cherished assumptions about fundamental aspects of modern life. A controversial scholar, philosopher, and social thinker, JULIUS EVOLA (1898-1974) has only recently become known to more than a handful of English‑speaking readers. An authority on the world’s esoteric traditions, Evola wrote extensively on ancient civilizations and the world of Tradition in both East and West. Other books by Evola published by Inner Traditions include Eros and the Mysteries of Love, The Yoga of Power, The Hermetic Tradition, and The Doctrine of Awakening.

Tradition Through Modernity

Tradition Through Modernity PDF Author: Pertti J. Anttonen
Publisher: Studia Fennica Folkloristica
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
When studying social practices that are regarded as traditional, 'tradition' is usually seen as an element of meaning. Whose meaning is it? Is it a meaning generated by those who study tradition or those who are being studied? In both cases, particular criteria for traditionality are employed, whether these are explicated or not. The individuals, groups of people and institutions that are studied may continue to uphold their traditions or name their practices traditions without having to state in analytical terms their criteria for traditionality. This cannot, however, apply to people who make the study of traditions their profession, especially those engaged in the academic field of the 'science of tradition,' a paraphrase given to folklore studies. Traditions call for explanation, instead of being merely described or used as explanations for apparent repetitions, reiterations, replications, continuations or symbolic linking in social practice, values, meaning, culture, and history. In order to explain the concept of tradition and the category of the traditional, scholars must situate its use in particular historically specific discourses -- ways of knowing, speaking, conceptualisation and representation -- in which social acts receive their meanings as traditional. This book argues that since the concepts of tradition and modern are fundamentally modern, what they aim to and are able to describe, report and denote is epistemologically modern, as that which is regarded as non-modern and traditional is appropriated into modern social knowledge through modern concepts and discursive means. Modernity cannot represent non-modernity without modern mediation, which therefore makes the representations of non-modernity also modern. Accordingly, the book deals with the modernness of objectifying, representing and studying folklore and oral traditions. The first section focuses on modern and tradition as modern concepts, and the conception of folklore and its study as a modern trajectory. The second section discusses the politics of folklore with regard to nationalism, and the role of folk tradition in the production of nation-state identity in Finland.

Boston Confucianism

Boston Confucianism PDF Author: Robert C. Neville
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791447178
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Argues that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary, global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context.

Religion in Late Modernity

Religion in Late Modernity PDF Author: Robert Cummings Neville
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 079148825X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
A well-known theologian and philosopher offers a late-modern perspective on religion, one opposed to the received truths of postmodern religious thought. Religion in Late Modernity runs against the grain of common suppositions of contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. Against the common supposition that basic religious terms have no real reference but are mere functions of human need, the book presents a pragmatic theory of religious symbolism in terms of which the cognitive engagement of the Ultimate is of a piece with the cognitive engagement of nature and persons. Throughout this discussion, Neville develops a late-modern conception of God that is defensible in a global theological public. Against the common supposition that religion is on the retreat in late modernity except in fundamentalist forms, the author argues that religion in our time is a stimulus to religiously oriented scholarship, a civilizing force among world societies, a foundation for obligation in politics, a source for healthy social experimentation, and the most important mover of soul. Against the common supposition that religious thinking or theology is confessional and inevitably biased in favor of the thinker’s community, Neville argues for the public character of theology, the need for history and phenomenology of religion in philosophy of religion, and the possibility of objectivity through the contextualization of philosophy, contrary to the fashionable claims of neo-pragmatism. This vigorous analysis and program for religious thinking is straightforwardly pro-late-modern and anti-postmodern, a rousing gallop along the high road around modernism. Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University and Dean of the School of Theology. His most recent books include Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World and the three edited volumes of The Comparative Religious Ideas Project: The Human Condition, Ultimate Realities, and Religious Truth, all published by SUNY Press.

Religion in Late Modernity

Religion in Late Modernity PDF Author: Robert C. Neville
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791454237
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Religion in Late Modernity runs against the grain of common suppositions of contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. Against the common supposition that basic religious terms have no real reference but are mere functions of human need, the book presents a pragmatic theory of religious symbolism in terms of which the cognitive engagement of the Ultimate is of a piece with the cognitive engagement of nature and persons. Throughout this discussion, Neville develops a late-modern conception of God that is defensible in a global theological public. Against the common supposition that religion is on the retreat in late modernity except in fundamentalist forms, the author argues that religion in our time is a stimulus to religiously oriented scholarship, a civilizing force among world societies, a foundation for obligation in politics, a source for healthy social experimentation, and the most important mover of soul.

The Brahma Kumaris as a ‘Reflexive Tradition’

The Brahma Kumaris as a ‘Reflexive Tradition’ PDF Author: John Walliss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351742450
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2002. Drawing on primary research on the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, a millenarian New Religious Movement of Indian origin, this book examines the status of tradition in the contemporary world through a critical engagement with the recent social theory of Anthony Giddens on the emergence of a post-traditional society. Wallis examines both the ways in which forms of tradition not only persist but also flourish in the contemporary world and also the manner in which such traditions are drawn on and (re)created by individuals in their ongoing construction of self-identity. Illuminating some of the difficulties encountered when social theory is applied to 'the real world', this book also offers a way of theorising about the status of contemporary religiosity that does not refer directly to the notion of secularisation.

Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World

Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World PDF Author: Thomas O. Hueglin
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889203229
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Johannes Althusius (1557-1638) was a political theorist and a combative city politician who defended the rights of small communities against territorial absolutism. This work places Althusius in the context of his times, explains the main features of his political thought, and suggests why his theories continue to resonate today. Contends that Althusius' theory belongs to a countertradition in Western political thought, and that it applies to today's search for a post-sovereign system of politics. The author teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Tradition and Apocalypse

Tradition and Apocalypse PDF Author: David Bentley Hart
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 1493434772
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
In the two thousand years that have elapsed since the time of Christ, Christians have been as much divided by their faith as united, as much at odds as in communion. And the contents of Christian confession have developed with astonishing energy. How can believers claim a faith that has been passed down through the ages while recognizing the real historical contingencies that have shaped both their doctrines and their divisions? In this carefully argued essay, David Bentley Hart critiques the concept of "tradition" that has become dominant in Christian thought as fundamentally incoherent. He puts forth a convincing new explanation of Christian tradition, one that is obedient to the nature of Christianity not only as a "revealed" creed embodied in historical events but as the "apocalyptic" revelation of a history that is largely identical with the eternal truth it supposedly discloses. Hart shows that Christian tradition is sustained not simply by its preservation of the past, but more essentially by its anticipation of the future. He offers a compelling portrayal of a living tradition held together by apocalyptic expectation--the promised transformation of all things in God.

Tradition in the Twenty-First Century

Tradition in the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Trevor J. Blank
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457184087
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century, eight diverse contributors explore the role of tradition in contemporary folkloristics. For more than a century, folklorists have been interested in locating sources of tradition and accounting for the conceptual boundaries of tradition, but in the modern era, expanded means of communication, research, and travel, along with globalized cultural and economic interdependence, have complicated these pursuits. Tradition is thoroughly embedded in both modern life and at the center of folklore studies, and a modern understanding of tradition cannot be fully realized without a thoughtful consideration of the past’s role in shaping the present. Emphasizing how tradition adapts, survives, thrives, and either mutates or remains stable in today’s modern world, the contributors pay specific attention to how traditions now resist or expedite dissemination and adoption by individuals and communities. This complex and intimate portrayal of tradition in the twenty-first century offers a comprehensive overview of the folkloristic and popular conceptualizations of tradition from the past to present and presents a thoughtful assessment and projection of how “tradition” will fare in years to come. The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in folklore and will contribute significantly to the scholarly literature on tradition within the folklore discipline. Additional Contributors: Simon Bronner, Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, Merrill Kaplan, Lynne S. McNeill, Elliott Oring, Casey R. Schmitt, and Tok Thompson