Liberal Way Research Articles

An Islamic concept of education

The paper begins by exploring the problematic nature of philosophy in Islam. The second section examines the resources that are available for a systematic exploration of the principles of Islamic education. The third section discusses three dimensions of education in Islam, one focusing on individual development, one on social and moral education and one on the acquisition of knowledge. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of differences between Islamic and liberal ways of understanding education and of the possibility of future dialogue with western philosophies.

Reconciling Human Rights and Traditional Practices: The Anti-TrokosiCampaign in Gnana

RésuméUne abondante littérature documente de nombreux exemples de tentatives d'abolir ou de réformer des pratiques traditionnelles allant à l'encontre des droits humains dans différentes sociétés, mais peu de cas de succès ont été rapportés. Celui de la campagne récente contre le systèmetrokosiau Ghana, qui implique la servitude rituelle de femmes, est une exception notable. Jusqu'en août 2000, 59% de toutes lestrokosisavaient été libérées, et en 2004, on estimait leur nombre à moins de 200. La campagne antitrokosi, menée d'abord sous la bannière d'une croisade chrétienne contre la pratique religieuse traditionnelleEwe, avait suscité l'hostilité et peu de coopération auprès les propriétaires des temples et les pratiquants. Ce n'est qu'en changeant la stratégie, à partir de 1995, en campagne internationale pour les droits humains que la voie s'ouvrit pour une première libération massive detrokosis, en 1996. L'auteur soutient que le succès de la campagne est surtout dû à l'approche particulière des droits humains fondée sur l'éducation, le dialogue, la sensibilité culturelle et le respect mutuel.

Dayglo Koans and Spiritual Renewal: 1960s Psychedelic Rock Concert Posters and the Broadening of American Spirituality

This article focuses on the influence of Eastern “ways of liberation” such as Buddhism and Taoism on the creative activity of a vibrant visionary subculture in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district from 1965–1969. Part of a larger study of psychedelic rock concert posters, this paper addresses the particular influence of Eastern mystical philosophy on the visual rhetoric of these San Francisco posters and its cultural impact as it radiated outwards from there. In addition to visual elements such as iconography and visual style, the posters are seen as attempting visually to represent the paradoxical logic central to the “enlightenment” experience of those and other mystical religious traditions.

The Notion of "Form" and the Ways of Liberation in Daoism

Dans certains textes taoïstes et des sources liées à la cosmologie classique, la « forme » (xing) est représentée comme étant le seuil entre le Dao et les objets. Elle est non seulement considérée comme une étape ontologique et cosmogonique se situant entre les « images » (xiang) et la matière (zhi), mais aussi comme le sanctuaire de l'esprit (shen). C'est à ce propos que l'appendice Xici au Yijing dit : « Ce qui est au-dessus de la forme s'appelle le Dao ; ce qui est au-dessous de la forme s'appelle l'objet ». D 'autres textes décrivent pareillement la forme comme une phase intermédiaire dans le processus ontologique allant du Sans-forme (wuxing) aux « dix mille êtres ». Parmi ces textes figure un apocryphe de la période Han sur le Yijing qui décrit ce processus comme se produisant en quatre étapes dans lesquelles la première est réprésentée par le chaos indifférencié (hunlun), tandis que les autres trois sont représentées respectivement par le souffle (qi), la forme, et la matière. A la fin de ce processus, la forme revêt encore son rôle d'intermédiaire en tant qu'à la fois contrepartie et sanctuaire de l'esprit. De cette façon, comme l 'indique le Huainan zi, la forme est, avec l 'esprit et le souffle, l'un des trois constituants principaux de la vie. Sur cette base, le neidan et d'autres traditions soutiennent que le lieu de la sublimation alchimique n 'est pas le corps matériel (ti) mais la « forme », et que c'est en dépassant cette forme qu'on atteint le Dao. Se différenciant de ces traditions, le neidan a formulé ses propres doctrines en puisant à d'autres sources anciennes. Un exemple est ce qu'on appelle la « libération de la forme » (xingjie). Cette notion apparaît pour la première fois dans un manuscrit de Mawangdui, le Shiwen (Dix questions), où l 'on dit que « ce qui coule dans la forme (liuxing) produit la vie ; mais lorsque par cet écoulement on engendre un corps [...], la mort se produit ». Le Shiwen distingue ainsi la forme du corps en disant que, si par l'engendrement de la forme, la vie se manifeste, c'est par l'engendrement du corps que la mort apparaît. Pour inverser cette séquence, l'on se doit de cultiver son souffle afin de remplir la forme grâce à « l'essence culminante du Ciel et de la Terre ». La personne qui est capable de faire ceci obtient la « libération de la forme ». En tant qu'exemple de « métamorphose » (bianhua), la « libération de la forme » est également associée à la « libération du cadavre » (ou « du corps mortel », shijie). La relation entre ces deux notions est explicite dans certaines sources taoïstes des Han et des Six Dynasties où la forme est l'objet de la sublimation après la mort. Dans la voie des Maîtres Célestes (Tianshi dao), le lieu indiqué pour cette purification post mortem est le Palais du Taiyin (Grande Obscurité), que le commentaire Xiang'er du Daode jing décrit comme « le palais où ceux qui ont accumulé le Dao subliment leur forme » avant d'obtenir une deuxième naissance (fusheng) après la mort. Dans le corpus Lingbao on trouve la description d'un rite permettant aux morts de sublimer leur forme dans la Grande Obscurité et leurs âmes célestes (hun) dans le palais méridional (Nangong). Après quelques années d'une telle sublimation du corps et de l 'âme, l'on revient à la vie. Pour les adeptes taoïstes du Shangqing ceci peut aussi être offert aux ancêtres par des pratiques de méditation. Grâce à ces pratiques, les ancêtres, baignés dans « l'eau du raffinage », peuvent sublimer leur forme avant de « recevoir un nouvel embryon ». La réalisation par le dépassement du corps constitue le concept fondamental de ces différents courants de pensée et de pratique. La « forme » fournit ainsi la médiation nécessaire dans ce processus vers la libération. Le neidan dans ce cas, comme dans beaucoup d'autres, hérite et développe des idées et des notions qui proviennent de divers contextes allant des textes taoïstes fondateurs, de la cosmologie, des traditions religieuses des Han et des Six Dynasties, jusqu 'aux pratiques du rituel et de la méditation.

Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: Assessing the Buddhist influences on their conceptions of ethics

In the first part of this essay, the author discusses certain aspects of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophical and religious conceptions that could have made some impact on the European ethics before Schopenhauer. In the second part, he deals with various channels of possible Buddhist influence on Schopenhauer's ethical thought. Finally, in discussing Buddhist-Wittgenstein relationship, one is confronted with convergent, yet independent, responses to similar sets of problems. Independently, and less systematically than Buddhist philosophical schools, Wittgenstein indicates the way of liberation that cures from the "metaphysical pain " emerging from inappropriate use of language. His own project, however, was not metaphysical, but meta-linguistic in a very specific sense. The philosophical "cure" from the language disease leads ultimately to the "purification " and "decontamination " of thought: in turn, the mind rests in peace and silence before the senseless, paradoxical questions of the moral, esthetical religious or metaphysical character.

The Digital Trade Agenda of the U.S.: Parallel Tracks of Bilateral, Regional and Multilateral Liberalization

It seems to be the U.S. administration's intention to use the newly enacted Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to pursue a parallel track of preferential and multilateral trade negotiations, alongside the ongoing Doha negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). A central innovation of the new fast-track authority is its instruction to the USTR to conclude trade agreements that anticipate and prevent the creation of new trade barriers that may surface in the digital trade environment. Hence, the U.S. digital trade policy has four sub-strategies: (i) to make sure that WTO principles and commitments apply to e-commerce and to resolve the classification issues in the most liberal way for digital trade; (ii) to use the following negotiation opportunities to secure improved market access commitments for digital products; (iii) to create a regulatory trade discipline for e-commerce; and (iv) to update trade agreements so that new treaties deal with trade-related aspects of intellectual property protection in the digital trade age. Both the U.S.-Chile and the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement manage to almost completely satisfy all U.S. digital trade objectives. What the U.S. has not yet achieved on digital trade multilaterally, it now plans to seed in a tight net of gradually increasing bilateral agreements that are negotiated sequentially. The digital trade negotiations on the bilateral front help the U.S. to build coalitions of like-minded trade partners that will make it easier to converge to a consensus that strongly resembles the U.S. approach on the regional or even the multilateral level. But the U.S. negotiators will be likely to face the same problems as in the WTO when the U.S. starts to approach partners for preferential trade agreements that are economically more important and that are also very inclined to rank cultural diversity high on their agenda. With respect to other elements, however, (e.g. IPR protection, service liberalization, and general awareness of free digital trade) the U.S. multi-track initiative for digital trade remains a very promising undertaking that may also foreshadow how majorities can be found among an increasingly heterogeneous WTO membership.

Thoreau's Critique of Democracy

Most commentators see Henry David Thoreau's political essays as an endorsement of liberal democracy, but this essay holds that Thoreau's critique of majoritarianism and his model of civil disobedience may intend something much more radical: when his criticisms of representative democracy are articulated in more formal terms of political and moral obligation, it becomes clear that the theory and practice of democracy fundamentally conflict with Thoreau's conviction in moral autonomy and conscientious action. His critical examination of the way in which a democratic state threatens the commitments that facilitate and give meaning to the practice of morality intends to reorient the focus of politics, away from institutions and toward the people such institutions were ostensibly in place to serve. His critique stands as a warning that becoming complacent about democracy will inhibit the search for better (perhaps more liberal) ways to organize political life.

The Five Factors of Action and the Decentring of Agency in the Bhagavad Gītā

I will here analyse the five factors of action given in the Bhagavad Gītā, paying specific attention to the implications of this account for the Gītā's moral and soteriological psychologies. I argue that the Gītā's account of action constitutes a decentring of agency which paves the way for liberation. Further, while the ethics and moral psychology of the Gītā are often seen as similar to Kant's, I will argue that the decentring of agency in the Gītā places the liberated person beyond autonomy, and so also beyond virtue in Kant's sense.

The Principle of Respect for Autonomy in the Care of Nursing Home Residents

Respect for autonomy is well known as a core element of normative views on good care. Most often it is interpreted in a liberal way, with a focus on independence and self-determination. In this article we argue that this interpretation is too narrow in the context of care in nursing homes. With the aim of developing an alternative view on respect for autonomy in this setting we described four interpretations and investigated the moral intuitions (i.e. moral judgements) of caregivers regarding these approaches. We found that these caregivers seemed to value different notions relating to respect for autonomy under different circumstances. There was no significant difference in moral judgements between men and women or between doctors and nurses. We conclude that a multidimensional understanding of this principle would best fit this context. We end this article with a description of a modest theory of respect for autonomy in nursing homes.

The Principle of Respect for Autonomy in the Care of Nursing Home Residents

Respect for autonomy is well known as a core element of normative views on good care. Most often it is interpreted in a liberal way, with a focus on independence and self-determination. In this article we argue that this interpretation is too narrow in the context of care in nursing homes. With the aim of developing an alternative view on respect for autonomy in this setting we described four interpretations and investigated the moral intuitions (i.e. moral judgements) of caregivers regarding these approaches. We found that these caregivers seemed to value different notions relating to respect for autonomy under different circumstances. There was no significant difference in moral judgements between men and women or between doctors and nurses. We conclude that a multidimensional understanding of this principle would best fit this context. We end this article with a description of a modest theory of respect for autonomy in nursing homes.

Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists

In this ground-breaking study, Professor Azar Gat examines how the theories of mechanized war developed throughout the industrial world in the first decades of the twentieth century. He explains why the most famous pioneers of these theories were asssociated with proto-facscism. Professor Gat then drastically re-evaluates B.H. Liddell Hart's contribution to strategic theory, overturning much of the criticism recently levelled against him. He argues that, in the wake of the trauma of the First World War, and in response to the Axis challenge, Liddell Hart developed the doctrine of containment and cold war long before the advent of nuclear weapons. He reveals Liddell Hart as a pioneer of the modern western liberal way in warfare which is still with us today.

Palliative care versus euthanasia. The German position: the German General Medical Council's principles for medical care of the terminally ill.

In September 1998 the Bundesärztekammer, i.e., the German Medical Association, published new principles concerning terminal medical care. Even before publication, a draft of these principles was very controversial, and prompted intense public debate in the mass media. Despite some of the critics' suspicions that the principles prepared the way for liberalization of active euthanasia, euthanasia is unequivocally rejected in the principles. Physician-assisted suicide is considered to violate professional medical rules. In leaving aside some of the notions customarily used in the euthanasia debate, e.g., passive euthanasia, the principles emphasize the obligation of physicians to offer and the right of patients to receive palliative care. The principles explicitly list modalities of basic treatment that are indispensable in all cases, such as the obligation to satisfy hunger and thirst. This statement is meant to resolve the dispute on nutrition and hydration at the end of life, as it shifts the focus of care from maintaining physiological parameters to satisfying subjective needs. For patients in a persistent vegetative state, artificial feeding is held to be obligatory. Yet, the principles make reference to recent German jurisdiction which permit the stopping of artificial feeding if it is in accordance with the patient's presumed will. Additionally, the wording concerning this issue is found to remain unclear. Patients' autonomy is strengthened by explicitly welcoming advance directives as a means to ascertain patients' wills. The principles mark some changes compared to earlier documents. They deserve careful analysis and should be considered in the international debate on issues concerning the end of life.

Malcolm Alexander Ramsay (1949-2000)

Dr. Malcolm A. Ramsay, a dedicated evolutionary ecologist and naturalist, died at the age of 51 in a helicopter accident on the 21st May, 2000. He and a close colleague, Dr. Stuart Innes, were returning to the research station of Resolute ... after a successful day of tagging polar bears. ... They experienced a helicopter crash over the pack ice close to Lowther Island. Both researchers were killed instantly, leaving the pilot as the only survivor. Malcolm had a passion for the process of evolution, as championed by Charles Darwin and William D. Hamilton. He viewed natural selection as the ultimate force that shapes the structure and function of animals. His research on the eco-physiology of polar bears had an international reputation. His interests, however, covered an amazing array of questions about natural selection and adaptations of organisms. ... Malcolm is best known for his impressive research on polar bears. ... He and four of his students ... contributed significantly to our understanding of lactation, hibernation, fasting, body composition, eco-toxicology, and anaesthesiology of polar bears in their natural environment. ... Malcolm advocated a very liberal way of teaching, a professorial style that forced students to think about, rather than memorize, biological facts. ... His rather humble and easy going attitude was well reflected in his characteristic hair style! I consider it an honour to have been Malcolm's colleague and friend. ...

Responses of Liberal Democratic Societies to Claims from Ethnic Minorities to Community Rights

Immigrants within European and North American countries, with their different religions and ways of life, pose many challenges to the receiving countries' liberal values and ways of life. These challenges express themselves in the form of cultural conflicts played out within the microcosm of the schools. The paper explores the place of minority rights within two liberal societies and examines how the societies' different procedures and ideology resulted in different outcomes for minority rights. These are examined in relation to two selected court cases involving cultural and religious expression through the wearing of religious or cultural attire in schools which attempted to ban these religious or cultural attire despite claims that these 'dress' or attire constituted a religious requirement or an intrinsic aspect of a way of life. The first case involves the wearing of headscarves (called foulards) by Muslim school girls in France, while the second case involves the wearing of a turban by a Sikh pupil. Attempts are made to discuss broader issues of cultural minority community rights within liberal democratic and human rights frameworks.

Sehen, Sichtbarkeit und empirische Forschung

Vision, Visibility, and Empirical Research. In general, natural scientists use the concept of observation in a liberal way: they talk of observing electrons, DNA, or distant quasars. Several philosophers of science have recently argued for a similar use of the concept of observation: they have claimed that the important aspects of scientific research can only be properly reconstructed in accordance with how this term is actually used in science. With reference to an example from astronomy, I point out that the proposed generalisation of the concept of observation leads to undesirable consequences. I argue that a differentiated conceptual framework is required in order to give an adequate account of the varieties of scientific experience. Thus, the appropriate starting point for distinguishing these various scientific research practices should not be the generalised scientific conception of observation, but instead distinctly different uses of the term observation drawn from ordinary language.

Feminist Discourse and Literary Representation in Turn-of-the-Century Greece: Kallirrhoe Siganou-Parren's "The Books of Dawn"

The second half of the nineteenth century was an era of reconstruction for the modern Greek state. The new nation struggled to redefine its ethnicity by means of a two-directional, ostensibly paradoxical approach: by modernizing its society, Westernizing it, and at the same time by rediscovering its fundamental Greekness in local customs and mores. The "woman question," which raised feminist awareness in Greek society toward the end of the nineteenth century, influenced the nation's cultural evolution. Literature began reflecting the new role women were expected to play in this evolution. Kallirrhoë Siganou-Parren, the leader of the feminist movement at the turn of the century, exploited the needs of society in the nascent Greek nation in order to advance her own feminist agenda. Toward this end, she wrote The Books of Dawn, a trilogy of novels that promote a new model of women, educated and independent but also maternal-capable of raising citizens willing to sacrifice everything for their nation's security and social progress. In addition, Parren's novels present a new gender relationship within marriage and a new, more liberal way of child-rearing.

The way of the lotus: Critical reflections on the ethics of the Saddharmapundarika Sūtra

Edward Conze once observed of the thirty‐eight books constituting the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras that their central message could be summed up in two sentences: (1) One should become a Bodhisattva (or Buddha‐to‐be), i.e. one who is content with nothing less than all‐knowledge attained through the perfection of wisdom for the sake of all beings. (2) There is no such thing as a Bodhisattva or as all‐knowledge or as a being or as the perfection of wisdom or as an attainment. [1] It seems to me that Conze was profoundly correct, as far as he went, and that what he said of the Prajñāpāramitā literary corpus might apply to other Mahāyāna Sūtras, as well. One test of this broad application of Conze's observation to the whole of the Mahāyāna scriptural tradition lies in a close reading of one of the Mahāyāna Sūtras from that tradition, the Saddharmapundarika Sūtra, “the scripture of the lotus blossom of the wonderful law”, or the Lotus Sūutra. The Lotus Sūtra not only makes Conze's point, as I shall try to show, but it goes further in offering a new middle path between the two summary sentences above. In doing this it brings forth a practical ethical‐religious way for Buddhists and others to follow who will be caught in the sufferings and terrors of the 21st century. We shall refer to this way as “the way of the Lotus” or “the Lotus way”. In what follows I want to attempt three things. First, using Edward Conze's summary sentences above, I identify and explicate three ways to liberation in the Lotus Sutra, viz. the way of ethics and attachment, i.e. “the Bodhisattva way” ("One should become a Bodhisattva...”); next, the way of emptiness and unattachment, i.e. “the Buddha way” ("There is no such thing as a Bodhisattva...”); and, finally, the Lotus way wherein the Bodhisattva way and the Buddha way combine to form a single and powerful new way of liberation. This third way is indirectly referred to in the remark which Edward Conze makes in his summary of the Prajñāpāramitā immediately following his previous two sentences: “To accept both of these contradictory facts is to be perfect”. [2] To accept the Bodhisattva way together with the Buddha way yields the Lotus way. Second, I demonstrate the significance of the Lotus way as a practical way of solving moral problems for Buddhists and others in the 21st century. Third, and finally, I raise and attempt to answer and solve several questions and puzzles about the Lotus way as a way to peace and liberation for Buddhists and others in the 21st century.

On the fractionation of natural radioactivity in the production of phosphoric acid by the wet acid method

The fractionation of different natural radionuclides (U-isotopes,226Ra and210Po) in the process used for the production of phosphoric acid in some factories located in the southwest of Spain is analyzed. As a consequence, different ways of natural radionuclide liberation to the environment can be evaluated due to these industrial activities.

The Postmodern Self and The Politics of Liberal Education

Richard Rorty is one of the principal architects of a new way of thinking about liberalism. He calls his way “liberal ironism”: it is a postmodern liberalism, without Enlightenment rationalism, without the hopeless and finally enervating aspiration to discover an a historical philosophical foundation (“natural rights”) for liberal principles and practices. The postmodern liberal ironist, unlike the classical liberal rationalist, “faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires,” says Rorty, including the characteristic liberal belief that “cruelty is the worst thing we do.” Such postmodern liberals frankly admit the apparently unhappy consequence of that essential “contingency,” that “there is noneutral, noncircular way to defend” liberal ways, no good argument to deploy against “Nazi and Marxist enemies of liberalism”; but no such argument is needed, says Rorty, since loyalty to one's own community is morality enough, even where that loyalty is without foundation. Here, I begin with a few words about Rorty's postmodern liberalism, as preface to a discussion of the effects of postmodern doctrines on liberal moral psychology.

Equal Protection Remedies: The Errors of Liberal Ways and Means

Equal Protection Remedies: The Errors of Liberal Ways and Means