日本武士信仰的特征

日本武士从登上政治舞台到完全掌握政权的过程中拥有了自己的信仰。武士的信仰不是为了拯救灵魂在死后得到一个安宁的去处,而是为了在自己生活的现实世界获得利益。武士的信仰不是单纯的本土信仰,而是吸收了异文化的营养,并使之融合在一起。因此可以说,武士信仰具有现世主义和兼容并包的特征。武士信仰的特征反映了武士与传统的贵族统治者的区别,也代表了日本人信仰的普遍特点。这些特点同样体现在当今日本人的信仰中。     

犹太名人会议研究

为削弱法国境内犹太人的民族性,拿破仑帝国政府召开了犹太名人会议。会议讨论的内容是拿破仑确定的,主要包括:犹太人要与非犹太人通婚;要视法兰西为自己的祖国;削弱拉比(Rabbi)权力;禁止放高利贷等。这些问题的实质是要以法兰西民族为蓝本,从而对犹太人进行法兰西式的改造,体现出强烈的文化种族主义倾向。     

稻盛经营哲学中的文化印迹辨析

稻盛和夫1997年退出经营第一线后,愈发活跃于国内外的财界、学界乃至政界,不断地著书立说,登台演讲。主题大都是谈自己的经营之道。有人说稻盛的哲学思想深受中国传统文化影响,也有人说,稻盛的哲学博采众长,是吸收多种文化的产物。这些说法哪种更贴近现实,抑或都存在片面性?本文将通过对稻盛和夫的著述、演讲以及个人访谈中所引用的中国古典、哲学以及宗教等内容的比较,分析中国古典在稻盛经营哲学中所处的地位以及发挥的作用。     

从离婚权的演变透视中世纪欧洲犹太妇女的婚姻地位

犹太教允许离婚.在<圣经>时代,犹太男子可以随心所欲地休妻,犹太妇女没有任何话语权.到了<塔木德>时代,犹太社会尽管对男子的单方面休妻权利有所限制,但是并没有从根本上改变婚姻的男权制结构,犹太妇女在离婚问题上依然处于完全被动的地位.这种局面在中世纪的欧洲有了质的改变,而且,这种改变通过犹太社团最具权威的"市集大会"颁布的法规条例而不断地强化,从而使得犹太妇女的婚姻地位在附属中有了改善.     

20世纪初英国的社会改革及其影响

20世纪初,在英国自由党的支持和推动下,英国政府进行了一系列旨在减少贫困、缓解矛盾的社会改革,推出了养老金条例和国民保险法案,调节了社会各阶层之间的关系,打下了社会保障的基础,从而对20世纪英国社会的发展产生了深远的影响.     

Orthodox violence: “Critique of Violence” and Walter Benjamin's Jewish political theology

This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far more problematic than has hitherto been assumed, and poses a serious challenge, which has not been fully examined in its historical context. Second, this essay claims that the subversive elements that many have supposedly found in Benjamin's text and the attempts to link these elements to messianic traditions are also unconvincing. Third, the paper contextualizes Benjamin's thought within the framework of the Jewish political–theological debate of the period. It contends that Benjamin's theory of law and justice should be understood not as a revolutionary, anti-republican text, as has been generally accepted, but as a secularized conservative orthodox one. In doing so, it seeks to shed light not only on Benjamin's early thinking and its influences, but also on the neglected element of Jewish orthodoxy within the broader topic of political theology.     

Eruvim: Talmudic places in a postmodern world

Lodged in the heart of Western urban space, eruvim are religious enclaves important to Orthodox Jewish culture. Eruvim enable acceptable behaviours on the Sabbath as defined by Talmudic theological dogma. Work, and the carrying of all objects associated with work, is prohibited in public spaces on the Sabbath by the Talmud, yet within the boundaries of the eruv, many such restrictions are relaxed, facilitating social interaction and community cohesion. This paper examines the religious and spatial dimensions of eruvim, including the obsessive detail paid to the demarcation of their boundaries, which serve as metaphorical walls and doorways. It also explicates the local politics through which private space is effectively extended into public space. Conceptually, the paper situates the topic within broader concerns about diasporic Jewish identity, which is threatened by assimilationism, slow demographic growth and secularization. It invokes recent theories concerning the spatialization of consciousness and subjectivity, noting the recent growth of eruvim as part of the global surge in ethnic identity that has emerged as a backlash to postmodern capitalism.     

Sacred Geography,Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible

The final volume of the Polyglot Bible, edited by Benito Arias Montano and printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin, was published in 1571–1572. Forming part of the Bible's Apparatus, the volume contains a number of essays, illustrations and maps by Montano relating to questions raised by the biblical text. Montano's maps were a product of his philological training in Oriental languages and exegesis, his profound interest in antiquarianism and geography and his practice of visualizing and tabulating knowledge. He designed his maps both as study aids and as devotional‐meditative devices. Moreover, the maps reflect his wider philosophical outlook, according to which Holy Scripture contains the foundations of all natural philosophy. Montano's case encourages us to re‐examine early modern Geographia sacra in the light of the broader scholarly trends of the period.     

The Ruini system and ‘Berlusconismo’: synergy and transformation between the Catholic Church and Italian politics in the ‘Second Republic’

This article aims to correlate the political rather than the pastoral action of Cardinal Camillo Ruini with the rise and consolidation of the politician Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 2007, set in the context of the major changes that occurred in the Catholic Church and in Italian republican politics during the 1980s and 1990s. The main theme is an ‘instrumental interaction’ between the two systems, Ruinismo and Berlusconismo, which only coincided at the level of political opportunity and gave rise to important synergies between two men who otherwise had nothing in common.     

Rethinking the global heritage discourse – overcoming ‘East’ and ‘West’?

This article illustrates how Japan’s involvement in international heritage discourse, in particular since the Nara Conference in 1994, played an important role in the development of a global understanding of heritage and what it constitutes. It explores the way the Ise Shrine came to be represented as an iconic example of an ‘Eastern approach’ to heritage to become central in the paradigm shift within global heritage discourse towards acknowledging cultural diversity. In this article, however, I argue that the presentation and understanding of the Ise Shrine has perpetuated a number of misconceptions about an Eastern approach to heritage conservation. In particular, its presentation and interpretation as a cultural site devoid of its distinct religious and political significance, limits what can be learned from it. This article argues that without full recognition of the religious beliefs intimately embedded in the traditional social structures, practices and attitudes related to heritage sites, recognition of cultural diversity would remain limited.