Moral Rigorism Research Articles

François Gros (1925-2022)

François Gros, a biologist by training, began his research at the Institut Pasteur. In 1961, he discovered the molecular nature of the proposed intermediary between the gene and the protein, a so-called messenger RNA (mRNA), and determined its main characteristics. The author of numerous books, François Gros has helped shape and enlightened the birth of molecular biology and the development of related biotechnologies since the 1970s. He was Professor at the Collège de France and Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. Within the Academy, he initiated the creation of a committee for developing countries (COPED). François Gros was a humanist driven by moral rigour and an unfailing sense of commitment.

Horse Language and Improvised Memorials: Gong Kai's Equine Paintings and Song Loyalism

The loyalist painter Gong Kai (1222–1307) utilized the historical literary trope of the ji 驥 horse, the fine steed capable of covering one thousand li in a day, as an essential part of his artistic rhetoric in response to the violent Song-Yuan dynastic turn. Drawing literary forebears of Gong's equine art into the field of investigation reveals the mechanics of his utilization of the equine trope and his stance within the broad spectrum of Song loyalism. Standing against passive sympathizers of the loyalist cause, Gong embraced the poetics of Daoxue (Learning of the Way) to uphold moral rigor and masculine heroics, couched metaphorically in the suffering ji horse, which was at once physiognomically ideal and metaphysically meaningful. The polysemy and ambiguity of Gong's art invited his colleagues to interiorize equine imagery, thus helping reconstitute an ideal moral image of themselves. Gong's equine art brought forth interactive responses from its viewers and thus served as an improvised memorial to Song loyalists, both living and deceased.

Skovoroda’s philosophy and calling of contemporary people

The article is devoted to the analysis of understanding of calling in the works of Skovoroda and its significance for the world-views and life choices of contemporary people. The current crisis phenomena are explicated in the light of the points of Skovoroda’s philosophy on the disparity between material and spiritual dimensions of human existence, irrelevance of work, devaluation of self-knowledge, individualism, and consumerism. The result is spiritual slavery and inability of people to respond to the challenges of contemporaneity. According to Skovoroda’s principle of self-knowledge, a person has to hear the internal call of existential truth or “God’s Spirit” which motivates for work, public service, and moral improvement. The author explicates 3 semantic levels in Skovoroda’s philosophy of calling: individual, social, and spiritual. By Skovoroda, calling appears as a natural desire to act in a certain sphere, but its end is in the Kingdom of God. The author presents the results of the research of the experience of calling of contemporary Ukrainians and explicates the typology of that experience. The article states that the revealed structure of calling “desire-abilities-realization-good” corresponds in general with the understanding of calling by Skovoroda. Therefore, this structure is constant over time. Nevertheless and contrary to the ethics of Skovoroda, nowadays, the motivation of self-development prevails over the value of care for common good and spiritual goals in understanding of calling. The comparison of the experience of calling in the minds of student youth in Ukraine and in the USA confirms its identity on the basis of common Judaic-Christian tradition. The differences in the contemporary understanding of calling are determined along the lines of religiosity versus secularity, and Protestantism versus Eastern Christianity. In particular, noted moral rigorism of the protestant understanding of calling as an obligation, whereas Jews and the other Christians conceive calling in the forms of light, easiness, and happiness. The author reasoned the significant motivating and pedagogical capability of the idea of calling in the contemporary world. The article emphasizes the importance of Skovoroda’s critical philosophic attitude towards individualism and consumerism in the direction of overcoming problems of environment, particularly of climate change induced by unstoppable growth of energy consumption, and of anthropological crisis.

Working Title

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Fundamentalism as dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, and strong groupness across cultures: Dimensionality, underlying components, and related interreligious prejudice.

Fundamentalism as dogmatic belief, moral rigorism, and strong groupness across cultures: Dimensionality, underlying components, and related interreligious prejudice.

“That is Giving a Banquet”: Neighbor‐Love as Spiritualization of Romantic Loves in Works of Love

ABSTRACTRecent readings of Kierkegaard's Works of Love have admirably shown how his apparent reservations about romantic love can be deflected on his own terms by imbuing them with some of the moral rigor of neighbor‐love. This paper argues however that these readings must be complemented by the reverse argument, which would show how some of the qualities of romantic loves are in fact preserved in neighbor‐love. By drawing on his dialectics of sensate love, psychical love, spiritual love, and self‐love, I show how Kierkegaard believes neighbor‐love should be impartial and yet exhibit some of the character of preferential romantic loves.

Deviant Cartographies: A Contribution to Post-critical Cartography

Based on the recently developed approach of 'post-critical cartography', this article addresses how developments in cartography can be interpreted functionally, dysfunctionally, afunctionally, and metafunctionally. This interpretation takes up the sociological topic of deviance. Normatively, this article bases on Ralf Dahrendorf’s concept of life chances. It includes established terminology which can be applied to the development of cartography. For example, the development and dissemination of digital cartography, in different development stages, has shown to be functional. Cartographic representations restricting life chances due to disinformation and manipulation can be described as dysfunctional. Cartographic representations that do not receive positive responses from the public or the professional community can be characterized as afunctional. Metafunctional representations are capable of highlighting the contingency of the world and its cartographic interpretation, particularly by including the stylistic device of irony. Critical cartography has made some functional contributions to cartography, but it also comprises dysfunctional effects originating in its moral rigorism. This article intends to contribute to the preservation of its functional and to overcome its dysfunctional impacts.

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions

The Third Path into the Twilight? Corruption in Socialist Yugoslavia

Corruption in socialist Yugoslavia was a specific phenomenon when compared to the inter-war period or to post-socialism. In contrast to liberalism, communist ideology did not support an understanding of corruption as a problem of its own but tended to see political and material “deviations” as originating from the same root – i. e., from a lack of political morale. The League of Communists failed to live up to its role as an educator of society, since it was trapped between declarative moral rigorism and the fact that material need and greed could be satisfied best by becoming a party member.

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions. By Thomas Palmer

<i>Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions</i>. By <scp>Thomas Palmer</scp>

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions, written by Thomas Palmer

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions, written by Thomas Palmer

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions. By Thomas Palmer. Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. x + 286 pp. $74.83 cloth.

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions. By Thomas Palmer. Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. x + 286 pp. $74.83 cloth. - Volume 89 Issue 1

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions, by Thomas Palmer

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions, by Thomas Palmer

Jansenism and England. Moral rigorism across the confessions. By Thomas Palmer. (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs.) Pp. x + 286. Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. £70. 978 0 19 881665 2

Jansenism and England. Moral rigorism across the confessions. By Thomas Palmer. (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs.) Pp. x + 286. Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. £70. 978 0 19 881665 2 - Volume 70 Issue 2

Moral rigorism as the idea of a “terrorist dream”

The author describes the trends and reasons for perceiving terrorism as a narrowly criminal politicized community in the article. Terrorism is seen as a political protest, as a form of political activity of a kind of aesthetic color. The author gives a philosophical and cultural assessment of terrorism through a comparison of fascism and "igilism" as a permanent drift from terrorist muscle groups to the creation of a single and homogeneous totalitarian terrorist organization, and later on to a totalitarian-terrorist state implementing a genocide policy. Terrorist activity is compared with moral rigorism, based on the need for liberation from liberal values expressed in modern constitutional law. The idea of a "terrorist dream" is viewed through the prism of such concepts as freedom, happiness, and the ideal in which the myth of "social happiness" is presented as the ideology of modern radical Islamism.

The Oak and the Calf by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the Context of Ethical Quest of the Soviet Intel­ligentsia of the 1960s–1970s

This article considers interpretations of ethical issues by representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia with reference to A. Solzhenitsyn’s The Oak and the Calf . The author argues that in the 1960s, Soviet scholars emphasised the universal character of morality, comprehending the problem of correlation of universal and class values in social practice. Ethical concepts were prescriptive and characterised by moral rigorism. Moral rigorism was also a feature of consciousness of the creative intelligentsia who traditionally perceived themselves and social processes through ethical categories. The intelligentsia were convinced of the educational mission of the community, which imposed a certain moral obligation. An intellectual had to set a behavioural pattern for society and serve noble ideals. Solzhenitsyn’s behaviour was perceived as exemplary by nonconformists. He demonstrated a focus on universal values and proclaimed the truth, conscience, and responsibility of a writer to the people the main ethical criteria. The analysis of The Oak and the Calf demonstrates that for Solzhenitsyn, ethics had instrumental value in his ideological struggle with the state. Speaking of his relationship with Tvardovsky and the editorial board of the Novyi Mir magazine, the writer deviated from the truth for the sake of ideology. He sought to prove that cooperation with the state destroyed the individual. This happened to Tvardovsky who compromised with his conscience. An honest man must fight with the state. The author is committed to the position of moral rigorism considering oppositional behaviour the only valuable form of behaviour from the moral point of view. This position was typical of Soviet dissidents of the 1960s–1970s.

Ideas of Ulrich Beck: Classic Context, Modern Discussion and Possible Synthesis

In the second part of the article, the ideas of U. Beck are considered in the context of classical and modern theories. Particular attention is focused on the significance of the heritage of N. Machiavelli and I. Kant for the author of “The Risk Society”. The German sociologist proclaimed himself as machiavellist, but at the same time he often referred to I. Kant. A dilemma arises: how can political cynicism be combined with moral rigor? The article proposes its solution. U. Beck combines the ideas of N. Machiavelli and I. Kant through the concept of republicanism. The ideas of cosmopolitanism were justified by I. Kant and found development in the work of U. Beck. The article shows that Ulrich Beck's talent is an ability to contextual combinatorics. Apparently, he personally introduced a small number of concepts that became the achievement of sociology ("Second Modern", "meta-game", "meta-power"). U. Beck borrowed the rest of the concepts from other scientists and politicians and put them in his own mental context. But the works of the German sociologist were polemically directed and thereby contributed to the development of sociology. Particular attention in the article is drawn to the U. Beck’s criticism of the concept of postmodernism. The progressive shift in the problem that Beck observes in the concept of the Second Modernity is not just that he proves the continuation of Modernity, but that he establishes its processuality, qualitative changes in it. The article concludes that for the further development of sociology, a synthesis of ideas of the theory of the Second Modernity, world-system analysis, modern Marxist sociology and environmental sociology is desirable. This synthesis is unlikely to be simple. To make it possible, it is necessary to reconstruct the methodological basis of each of these areas in modern sociology.

Kobiety u Tertuliana w kontekście historii zbawienia

The analysis of the writings of Tertullian at an angle of his attitude towards women encounters a lot of difficulties. On one side when addressing to women he uses rather waspish, incisive language sometimes even with a rhetorical em­phasis. We can see it at some instructive, moral fragments of the letters such as De cultu feminarum or De virginibus velandis. Superficial reading of these versets could lead up to a conclusion about antifeminism of Tertullian. On the other side he highly appreciates women because of their participation by body and sole at the God’s redemption and universal resurrection. It is clearly seen at some of his theological works such as, for example, De resurrectione mortuorum. Tertullian is not a writer who habitually looks for and show every negative characteristic feature of woman’s character. All his manifestations of distrust to­wards women derive rather from his own character and prepossession to moral rigorism and partially reflect psyche of people constituting Christian communities at II and III centuries after Christ. At the same time we could say that the apparent discrepancy of his point of view towards women results not only from gradual changing of his attitude to women but mainly from the character of his works and aims he wanted to achieve.

Jansenism in the Modern African Church: The Indigenous Pentecostal Church Tradition in Nigeria

Jansenism is a seventh-century religious movement within the Roman Catholic Church, named after a Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, whose work Augustinus (1640) reviewed the major thoughts of Augustine’s theology. Jansenist teachings were associated with harsh moral rigorism against the Jesuits’ Molinist thoughts. It was first condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1653, and finally in 1713 with many French migrants finding refuge in Holland from persecution. However, having retained traces of its teachings in the same Catholic Church that condemned them, Jansenist thoughts have found flourishing ground in the modern churches of Africa, especially among the African indigenous Pentecostal denominations in Nigeria. This indigenous Pentecostal tradition comprises the African Independent Churches, the Aladura movement, and the African Pentecostal movement, whose belief and practices are in line with the five pillars of Jansenism. This work, therefore, proposes that the reality of history lies with the future; whose interpretation of the past is proved by modern reality, and not by the ancient traditions

A Satyagrahi as a Subject of Social Development in M.K. Gandhi’s Philosophy

The article deals with representatives of creative minority (the term by H. Bergson, A.J. Toynbee) in the process of social development. Satyagrahis play the similar role in M.K. Gandhi’s philosophy. This term originates from the central conception of Indian thinker - Satyagraha . It means the calling for resistance of moral developed person to all injustice around him by means of his soul-force. Gandhi’s image of an ideal man and his understanding of the role of such man in social-dynamical processes shows that philosopher’s intellectual and cultural features influenced his views. So, being the thinker, formed on the joint of two cultures (culture of traditional society and Modernity), Gandhi gives to his image of an ideal man Eastern and Western qualities. He offers to combine the moral rigor of traditional Indian ascetic with social activity, freedom and sense of personal responsibility, which are characteristic for individualistic ethics of Modernity. At the same time he rejects the understanding of social development as a technical progress, which is widespread in the West. The thinker connects this process with the personal improvement and harmonization of social relationships. The latter is impossible without participation of mediators between different social forces. Realizing this fact, Gandhi called his followers to become mediators between quarreling religious communities, castes and political parties in order to conciliate them. Such understanding of social development was in large part determined by social image of the thinker. Being the person formed on the crossroad of intercultural communications, Gandhi himself played the role of mediator between the Hindus and Mussulmans, between high-caste Hindus and untouchables, between different branches of Indian national congress, between economical elites and pure masses.