Diogenes articles from February 2005

Diogenes archives from February 2005

The concept of religion in China and the West.
February 1, 2005... The religious question in China, which is today marked by various conflicts between the state and unrecognized confessional organizations, can be understood only in a historical perspective. In particular the adoption early in the 20th century...

Orthodox Christianity, soviet atheism and 'animist' practices in the Russianized world.
February 1, 2005... In Russia a monotheism--Orthodox Christianity--and atheism in its Marxist version have succeeded each other as state systems of rites and representations. Rather than contrasting one with the other, term with term, this paper proposes to bring...

On the appearance of a monotheism in the religion of Israel (3rd century BC or later?.
February 1, 2005... Monotheism: the word indicates a system of thought that proceeds from a recognition of the divinity of a single god to the exclusion of all other. This exclusivity distinguishes monotheism from henotheism or monolatry and explains why...

Paul and the Athens Epicureans: between polytheisms, atheisms and monotheisms.
February 1, 2005... The paradoxical affinities that research has managed to identify between the Epicurean philosophical 'sect' and the Christian sect in the early centuries of our era are recalled, then examined in detail in relation to the first document that...

The Buddhist refusal of theism.
February 1, 2005... Early Buddhism was not interested in questions about existence and the nature of God, considering these unimportant in relation to the question of the release from earthly suffering which is at the heart of Buddhist soteriology. Later Buddhist...

'Standing upright before the heavens': metamorphoses of customary Christianity.
February 1, 2005... The methods employed by structuralist anthropology in the European area to free lived Christianity from its categorization as a popular religion steeped in 'pagan relics' also facilitate the analytical description of social practices and...

Visions of suffering and death in Jewish societies of the Muslim west.
February 1, 2005... The author encountered evocations of suffering and death in all the studies and research he devoted, over 40 or so years, to the intellectual, social and religious life of western Muslim Judaism, and indeed the whole of traditional Jewish...

Death in folk tales (a brief note).
February 1, 2005... A dramatic image of death is reflected from a cycle of folktales (Aarne-Thompson Types 505 to 508) in which a man dying in debt is refused burial, until the hero of the tale pays the ransom and fulfills the ancestral funeral ritual. Then the...

The message of Islam.
February 1, 2005... Islamic culture may be labelled a 'superculture' on account of its richness, whose living message goes from the peasants of the Indian subcontinent to Africa, for instance, dating back fourteen centuries in time. The author contrasts with an...

Reflections on cultural diversity.
February 1, 2005... A dialectical interaction exists between cultural unity and diversity. These two factors can operate for good or ill. In order to strengthen the positive factor and limit the negative, it is important to have a good conceptual grasp of the...

Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2001), 100 mots pour dire l'Islam.(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2001), 100 mots pour dire l'lslam, Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose This is a book for the wider public. As we read it we learn a lot about the religion itself, about history, geography, the culture of peace that is...

Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2001), Islam et societe ouverte: la fidelite et le mouvement dans la pensee de Muhammad Iqbal.
February 1, 2005... Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2001), Islam et societe ouverte: la fidelite et le mouvement dans la pensee de Muhammad Iqbal, Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose Through this essay we discover a thinker imbued with the idea of his own inner joy. But...

Philippe Borgeaud (2004), Aux origines de l'histoire des religions.(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Philippe Borgeaud (2004), Aux origines de l'histoire des religions, Paris, Seuil (La Librairie du XXI siecle) Unlike the question of the origin of religions (or rather 'religion' in the singular), a cul-de-sac or precipice down which the...

UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.(Appendix I)
February 1, 2005... The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity was unanimously adopted in a very particular context. It was on the day after the events of September 11, 2001, and the UNESCO General Conference, meeting at the time in its 31st session,...

UNESCO programme for inter-faith dialogue.(Appendix II)
February 1, 2005... The aim of the UNESCO programme for inter-faith dialogue (launched by Morocco under the title of 'Roads to Faith' and approved in 1995 by the General Conference) is to promote dialogue between the different religions and spiritual traditions in...