Men Of Religion Research Articles

The Importance of Contrary Forces in Education: On the Notion of Conflict in Tagore’s Religion of Man

Dealing with conflicts seems to be a great challenge in society today. But not only in society. Higher education displays an air of resoluteness with certainty and security that disguises the conflicts and the fear of conflicts in a substantial number of subjects. If not in a state of denial, higher education avoids taking up conflicts over issues, for learning. The detailed investigation of Tagore’s pedagogical writings, with a focus on the importance of conflicts in education, reveals a genuine embrace of conflicts for education. Conflicts are natural and necessary for the development and change of both the individual and society and the start of a ‘creative imagination’ to solve the problems we face in life. Contradictions in conflicts are not incompatible incongruities that are irreconcilable and mutually exclusive, but to the contrary, in need of each other. Contradictions do not represent different worlds but are substantial parts of one world: together they form a unity. Conflicting forces are necessary to create harmony. Creativity, imagination, love, art, and critical encounters are key elements in Tagore’s practical education aimed at finding similarities among people instead of emphasizing differences. Relations between people over the Identity of people. In other words, we need conflicts to become creative and imaginative human beings. The paper continues discussing conceptual and practical issues that seem necessary to get the teaching of conflicts in education off the ground. On the conceptual level, in particular our dealing with uncertainty and fear, the valuation of conflict and the need for uncertainty-researching education. On a practical level, I propose a certain teaching model, a supportive curriculum, a way of choosing genuine conflicts for education and finally, I argue for specific support and education of teachers, acknowledging the vital role teachers play in delivering the education that we need.

SOCIOPOLITICAL VIEWS OF LUDWIG FEUERBACH

In the proposed publication the author, based on the methodology of analysis, the comparative philosophical method, as well as the methods of literal, conceptual and contextual interpretation of philosophical works, considers the problem of finding a materialistic component in the sociopolitical views of Ludwig Feuerbach. Comprehending the contribution of L. Feuerbach to the dialectical-materialistic method of cognition of reality, widely used in modern social science, the author establishes that the thinker had a significant impact on the formation of the philosophical component of Marxist theory, in line with which for the first time it was possible to synthesize the dialectic of the absolute with materialistic anthropology. The disclosure of the historical and philosophical context of the origin of the views of L. Feuerbach is carried out on the basis of an analysis of the works of Immanuel Kant (a priori philosophy), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (the philosophy of the supersubject), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (the philosophy of the identical Absolute), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (the dialectic of the absolute idea). Based on the results of such an analysis, it is concluded that Feuerbach, being a materialist philosopher, overcame the idealistic views of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but he managed to draw and develop many components from their views (first of all, the dialectical method and the optimistic perception of human entities). Analyzing in detail the sociopolitical ideas of L. Feuerbach in terms of materialistic anthropology, the chanting of the “religion of man” and the apology of freedom, the author establishes that Feuerbach was able to extend the materialistic approach as such to the study of man, social relations, religion, politics and the state. In conclusion, it is deduced that Feuerbach’s belonging to the number of materialist philosophers who extended the materialistic approach not only to nature, but also to society, directly depends on how to understand the essence of materialism: from the standpoint of Marxist reductionism or from the standpoint of interpreting materialism as a study objective reality.

Transcultural Utopian Imagination and the Future: Tagore, Gandhi, Andrews, and India–Britain Entanglements in the Early 1930s

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the transcultural utopian imaginings of futures in early twentieth-century India and Britain, with Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, anticolonial politician M. K. Gandhi, and British Christian activist C. F. Andrews at the center. Homing in on two trips made to England by Tagore (1930) and Gandhi (1931), especially their visits to Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham, and on Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire, the article shows how British Christian and Quaker utopians and Indian utopians cooperated with each other. The article excavates the utopian experiments of Corder Catchpool, also a Quaker, in Darwen, Lancashire, where Gandhi stayed. Religion should be accorded an important place in our understanding of utopia, the article argues. A human propensity to create a paradoxical sense of futurity that does not negate the past, one that Tagore highlights in The Religion of Man (1931), is found in all the utopians discussed.

Theologizing in Black: On Africana Theological Ethics and Anthropology

Theologizing in Black: On Africana Theological Ethics and Anthropology

Tagore’s “Kabuliwallah”

This paper explores the concept of virtual diaspora, a concept through which I hope to establish another bridge between East and West. Virtual diaspora is a distinct and fluid location somewhere between postcoloniality and globalization, which allows the immigrant to address the pain of leaving home by moving back and forth mentally and thus being at home and abroad at the same time. I illustrate this subjective location with the aid of Rabindranath Tagore’s short story, “Kabuliwallah.” The state of mind of virtual diaspora I link systematically to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of immanence as a transcendental field that is without subject or object. As such it is without the material constraints of objects or the identity-based constraints of subjects, such as national and cultural boundaries. Living from this plane of pure immanence opens up the possibilities for the immigrant to move mentally back and forth, thus virtualizing his/her diaspora. I also link this concept of virtual diaspora to the concept of “the religion of man” in Tagore, and also to that of “the religion of humanity” in the Indian philosopher, Sri Aurobindo. In these ways, I hope to establish the concept of a virtual diaspora and at the same time a bridge between East and West.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Idea of Universal Humanism in the Light of Islamic World View

Very few studies are available to understand the philosophical views of Rabindranath Tagore in the light of his attitude and realization of Islam vis-à-vis idea of universalism. Fact remains that the Islamic civilization has thoroughly been recognized in the academic circles but its depth and learning have not been studied up to expectation. European historians and philosophers seem to be hesitant to acknowledge the contribution of Islamic civilization over the centuries. Even a majority of Eastern scholars are critical about welcoming the actual merit of Islam. Rabindranath Tagore being one of the brightest stars in the galaxy of poets and writers made a serious study on the philosophy and writings of many Muslim thinkers and ultimately brought to our notice an extraordinary feeling about Islamic ideas and philosophy. Rabindranth Tagore seems to have sought the inner meaning of Islam and developed a kind of value- based attitude towards human life and the universe. It is likely that through his Gitanjali and Religion of Man (Manusher Dharma) in particular were presented with an objective to stimulate and guide men in search of Ultimate Truth and Oneness of God. It is said that Rabindranth Tagore was acquainted with the verses of the Qur‟an in his childhood and in this respect his father Maharishi Devendranath Tagore imbibed in him many theological aspects of Islam as a religion. The paper intends to explore how Tagore was influenced by Islam and as a poet-thinker he nurtured the idea of eternal truth from the Upanishads, the Tripitakas as well as the Bible and through a particular discipline and inner uplift he came to the conclusion that aggregate of essentials of diversity cannot be judged in the light of mere logic and arguments. This feeling seems to have prompted Tagore to find out the inner truth of the universe and side by side to propagate the idea of universal humanism throughout the world.
 Philosophy and Progress, Vol#61-62; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2017 P 53-66

“The Religion of Man”: Spiritual Experience, Freedom and Tradition in the Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore

The author offers a research of the philosophy of Indian poet, writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore based on hermeneutical analysis of his book “The Religion of Man”. In terms of phenomenological approach the philosophy of the Indian thinker is described as a combination of spiritual experience in contemplation the Supreme Being, the freedom as a methodological approach, the tradition as the source of thought as well as the proof for the correctness of ideas, which is appropriate to Tagore. Having put himself within the tradition of Vedic rishis’ contemplation, the poet developed his own philosophy (ontology and anthropology). The philosophy of Tagore's religious humanism can be described as a synthesis of freedom of thinking and various Indian unorthodox philosophical traditions. The key idea of Tagore's ontology is jīvan-devatā ('the Lord of life’) the eternal Personality and Supreme Man, the Creator of the Universe and human beings. The phenomenon of a human being is the pivotal point in the development of the universe because he is considered there as an expression of the Truth and the Meaning of a life. The Tagore’s philosophy in this respect is far from the traditional Indian understanding of the phenomenon of a human being. Along with the teaching about the links of human soul to the Brahman (jīvan-devatā), the human as the result of Creation is being considered as His co-creator in the World and the Life, the main figure in evolution, the maker of Civilization and the Creator of culture. Man is understood as free, future-oriented and creative being. Tagore affirms for India the idea of value of human freedom, dignity and his earthly life not only for spiritual liberation (mukti), but for other people, society and culture.

Gitanjali's Weak Theology: The Poetics of Tagore and Caputo

Gitanjali's Weak Theology: The Poetics of Tagore and Caputo Bharatwaj Iyer Tagore's collection of songs that won him world renown as a poet was named by him Gitanjali, which, in both Bengali and Sanskrit, means song offerings. At first, it appears that the addressee in these songs is God, but reading the songs again and again at different points of time, I am convinced that that conclusion is far from obvious or is at least not as simple as that. Gitanjali contains 103 songs in the English translation by the author, and every single one contains religious or, even, theological significance. So, it does make sense to consider the songs as offerings to God. The difficulty arises when one tries pinning this God down. What is the nature of this God that Tagore is singing to? To respond that because the God of Gitanjali is indistinct one is here faced with a mystical God that ought to preoccupy negative theology is problematic. It is clear from Gitanjali and other important works like Sadhana, Creative Unity, The Religion of Man, and Personality that our poet's God is intensely personal, and instead of the transcendence attributable to mysticism, it appears more apt to ascribe to it the immanence of the God of the poet and of poetry. Then again, what is this God? How does this God manifest itself? What function does it play in the life of the human being? What religion does it belong to? These questions assume importance the moment Tagore's religious language in his poetry and prose is taken seriously. This study of Gitanjali—a study that shall make use also of the four other spiritual‐mystical prose texts of Tagore above mentioned—proposes that Tagore's God is very similar to the God proposed by postmodern theology, especially the radical turn taken by theology at the hands of John Caputo. If that tall aim of the study needs dilution, then we could say that the study at least aims to better elucidate Tagore's religious language in comparison with the language of radical theology. Both these aims go hand in hand and are compatible. The God of Gitanjali We began by asking an elementary question: who or what is it that these songs are being offered to? One could say it is God as every critic of the collection has immediately accepted, but this would be acceptable only if the solution is taken in a provisional sense, later to be elucidated through analysis. To compare Tagore to a postmodern theologian is interesting, mainly for being so apparently out of place. However, Kenneth R. Stunkel has already drawn out the difficulties attending a postmodern reworking of the prose and poetical works of Tagore. His focus is on the literary devices and language structures in Tagore, along with his ideas on aesthetics, which speak strongly for the endurance of authorship and the reality specific to art, while our focus here would be to re‐read in a postmodern light the religious and theological underpinnings in Tagore's poetry, with Gitanjali in particular, that Stunkel's analysis misses. It is in Tagorean cosmopolitanism and in Tagore's metaphysical ambivalence in general that Stunkel finds this possible postmodern reading. The point of ambivalence is recorded also by an early expounder of Tagore's philosophy, S. Radhakrishnan, where he says that nowhere is there to be found a set system of his own philosophy, all his spiritual prose works being but sighs of the soul. Radhakrishnan also notes how European writers saw in the Gitanjali an expression of Christian mystical thought. This view is rejected by him in favor of a more homegrown one that Tagore is an interpreter of the Upanishads. Through recourse to a mystical interpretation of the Vedantic sort, an engagement with the theological implications of the songs of Gitanjali is avoided. And this is because of the identification of theology with what Caputo calls “strong theology.” But if there is an ambiguity as to who the object of the singing is in these songs, how justified are we to expect a theology out of them? A study of the songs in search of their...

A Question (Still) Worth Asking about The Religions of Man

Abstract Based on a lecture first presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), this paper explores the possible reasons for the continued popularity of the work of the late Huston Smith – carried out in what could be characterized as the pre-history of the North American field’s rebirth in public universities throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. For unlike other works dating from the 1950s, which are now read, if at all, only as primary sources and thus as evidence of an earlier time in the field, his book (originally entitled The Religions of Man [1958]) presents a dated example worth considering, inasmuch as it is, for many, still the preferred classroom resource for training newcomers to the field.

سیرت نبوی ﷺ ایک تحقیقی جائزہ

Prophet Hood consists of guidance from Allah to humankind. It is a Allah given blessing and a favor that is bestowed on an individual chosen be Him to convey His message, which cannot be acquired or earned otherwise. There has never been a human being so well-respected, loved and followed as Muhammad (SAW), the final messenger of Allah. There has never been a person who has changed world history so dramatically as Muhammad (SAW) and his message. The Prophet (SAW) was the single most important person in the history of the world. Knowledge of the Prophetic Biography is necessary for every Muslim and sharing it with everyone is a responsibility. The importance of a complete biography of the Messenger as available to us cannot be under estimated in this troubled time since both Muslims as well as Non-Muslims have serious knowledge gap when it comes to even approaching the nature of the Final Prophet and the Ultimate Messenger of God sent to all of humanity, who came to restore the primordial religion of Man, the submission to Allah and His Commands. Muhammad (SAW) serves as: - Allah’s messenger and prophet to all mankind as an example of human behavior and noble character Therefore, in studying his life-story we should derive lessons and morals that can help us in our lives today.

Dio e l’uomo. Due assoluti a confronto nella poesia di Miguel Torga

Abstract - This paper aims to illustrate the hard existential itinerary of the Portuguese poet and doctor Adolfo Correia Rocha, better known as Miguel Torga. Starting from a strictly Catholic education, the poet passes through a deep crisis that will mark all his life. Unable to accept an absolute God who condemns his creatures to sin and death, Miguel Torga decides to rise up and to call into question the nature of the Creator and his own existence, in the meanwhile searching for a divine nature intrinsic to the human being. By analizing his poetical production, it is possible to recognize a passage from an age of spontaneous faith to an age of rebellion and, finally, to a peaceful acceptance of his own spiritual conflict. Talked God down, Man rises up, defining a new reference system in which Earth and Poetry become the coordinates of a new religion: the “religion of Man”.

Quelling Inflammation with Ketosis and Steric Chemistry.

Quelling Inflammation with Ketosis and Steric Chemistry.

Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi, A Sufi Saint in an Age of Confessionalization: Boundary-Drawing and Accommodation among Ottoman Men of Religion

Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi, A Sufi Saint in an Age of Confessionalization: Boundary-Drawing and Accommodation among Ottoman Men of Religion

Martha Nussbaum: Review of Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice

After much of the 20th Century, when morals were widely considered little more than mere emotional responses, a range of writers, such as Haidt, Prinz, and Patricia Churchland, have been restoring the emotions’ respectable roles in human cognition and morality. Nussbaum in her Upheavals of Thought showed how important emotions are for human cognitive life, so there is no clear distinction between their “irrationality” and the cerebral cortex’s supposed “rationality.” In Political Emotions, Nussbaum asks readers to look into how pivotally emotions affect political life, especially how we may best gear our emotions for political liberalism. As she convincingly urges, politics depend upon our emotions; we neglect them to our detriment lest demagogues commandeer them. She argues a hazardous case, and by the end anyone who cares about liberal democracy should accede to emotions’ centrality in it. Nussbaum builds her case upon what she deems partially failed models for a civic religion as proposed by Rousseau, Herder, Comte, and Mill. Such proposals acknowledge the duty of the state and its institutions to appeal to citizens’ needs for emotional fulfillment without invoking a deity. Nussbaum finds Rousseau’s and Comte’s proposals too rigidifying for political liberalism. Rousseau calls for homogeneity among the populace in thought and civic response to the arts and national allegiance. Comte, seeing philosophy has fulfilled its purpose, sets up an academy of overseeing philosophers to guide the society’s cultural and emotional life. She finds Mill’s proposal more amenable to democracy’s free-spiritedness, especially his recognizing the need both for allegiance to social institutions and for dissent. In an eccentric move, Nussbaum looks to Mozart’s and da Ponte’s The Marriage of Figaro as a work of political philosophy and Cherubino’s resignation to the bittersweetness of love as a model for the type of love that the state needs. She proposes not quite a secular religion but a bundle of emotional conduits that can foster allegiance while retaining the kind of individual unpredictability intrinsic to a thriving democracy. She evokes Tagore’s “Religion of Man” as even better Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2014) 17:1009–1010 DOI 10.1007/s10677-014-9528-6

Tracing Vaishnava Strains in Tagore

The religio-cultural milieu of urban and rural Bengal within which Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) lived was variegated and dynamic with multiple Indian and foreign streams converging on Calcutta, then the capital of British India. One of the more popular but also more refined of the indigenous Bengali Indian streams was the religio-literary Vaishnava tradition of devotion (bhakti) to God Krishna and his human manifestation Chaitanya (1486–1533). Although Rabindranath was exposed to this tradition from his childhood, scholars, especially those writing in English, have tended to neglect this aspect of his experience and formation. The present article provides a corrective to this neglect by showing how Rabindranath treats Vaishnava matters in his fictional and non-fictional prose writings, including personal correspondence, and by examining how passages from his poetry resonate with basic Vaishnava themes, sentiments, and values. In summation, the article confirms that Rabindranath was well informed about the Vaishnava tradition in Bengal and that at the level of aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities, especially as expressed in poetry and song, he shared much with that tradition despite being critical of its restrictive dogmatic tendencies and alleged organisational distortions of the genuine spirituality that he would call the ‘religion of man’.

“Some Qualities of Permanence”:

How good is Tagore’s English prose’? If Tagore himself is to be believed. not good at all! And yet, it must be remembered it has his own 1912 English renderings of his poems in prose, Gitanjali (Songs Offerings) that brought him instant worldwide recognition. It is important to note too that Tagore continued to produce memorable works in English every now and then for almost three decades. We have to only think of a letter like the one he wrote renouncing his knighthood or works such as Nationalism or The Religion of Man ourselves that his achievement in English prose is by no means negligible. Indeed, within a few years of his Gitanjali work, Tagore indicates in a letter that he had actually begun to overcome his limitations and to savor “the wonderful power” of English prose (letter to J. D. Anderson). In the last decade of his life, he was even willing to concede that his prose had managed “to attain some quality of permanence” after the initial help and advice he had got from people like W. B. Yeats and Thomas Sturge Moore and the encouragement he had received from his good friend William Rothenstein. The purpose of this paper is to show how the best of Tagore’s English prose managed to attain “some qualities of permanence” in English because of the artistry with which he used the English language. It will attempt to demonstrate how Tagore endeavored to use the English language flexibly and imaginatively and how he was able to wield the language in diverse ways to suit the occasion, the audience, or the form of expression he had chosen. In the process, I hope to produce a thorough revaluation of Tagore’s contribution to English prose and affirm the value of his prose writings in our time.

The collected speeches of Sagoyewatha, or Red Jacket

In the first collection of a Native American orator's speeches, Granville Ganter presents the complete speeches of Red Jacket or Sagoyewatha (Shay-go-ye-watha), a formidable diplomat and one of the most famous Native American orators of the nineteenth century. As a representative of the Seneca and the Six Nations, Red Jacket negotiated with American presidents from George Washington to Andrew Jackson, establishing a legacy that continues to influence discussions of native sovereignty and cultural identity. In speeches spanning over forty years, he eloquently voiced the rights of Native Americans, opposing the encroachment of white man's religion and culture and the sale of native lands. Presenting more than fifty speeches of Red Jacket, some previously unpublished and others revised using modern standards of textual editing, this volume encourages a wider readership of Red Jacket's work. Ganter's accompanying essays offer a detailed historical framework, presenting archival research about the interpreters and the circumstances of each speech. The great majority of Red Jacket's speeches were interpreted by reliable translators who were often chosen by the Senecas for their accuracy. This edition spans Red Jacket's political career from 1790 to 1830 and includes major addresses to Presidents Washington, Adams, and Monroe. Additionally, it contains original versions of his speeches to evangelical missionaries and land speculators, which circulated for nearly 150 years after Red Jacket's death. This book will stand as the definitive critical edition of Red Jacket's speeches and as a remarkable record of Native American political history. It will be of crucial interest to historians and literary scholars of Native American studies.

Writing the Cross Culture: Native Fiction on the White Man's Religion (review)

Reviewed by: Writing the Cross Culture: Native Fiction on the White Man’s Religion Cynthia Carsten (bio) Writing the Cross Culture: Native Fiction on the White Man’s Religion Edited by James TreatFulcrum Publishing, 2006 This collection of short fiction by Native American authors opens with a short piece by Vine Deloria Jr., which is a humorous turning of the tables on academic scholars of American Indian cultures. Carter Revard follows in the same vein with his "Report to the Nation: Claiming Europe," which posits a history in which Native North Americans are the colonizers of Europe, a scenario I always find nearly impossible to entertain given my understanding of American Indians' advanced state of ethical development at the time of contact. Both stories, however, underscore the absurdities of the European literary tropes of savagism and civilization. From this point, the volume is loosely ordered chronologically, beginning with works published in the early twentieth century. Zitkala-Sa's "The Soft-Hearted Sioux," and E. Pauline Johnson's "As It Was in the Beginning" were both originally published in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Among the earliest Native Americans to write fiction for a Euro-American readership, both authors are highly critical of the bigotries and racism of early Christian missionaries who sought to convert American Indians on the one hand, yet rejected them as fully equal human beings on the other. Given the literary expectations of publishers and readers of the time, it is not surprising [End Page 125] that both stories are nuanced versions of the savage versus civilization theme, but I am not sure that the general reader uneducated in Euro-American literary history would grasp fully the ethnocentrism associated with the stereotype of the American Indian as noble savage. I think introductory comments to the stories providing some socio-historical background would have been helpful, not only for general readers but also for instructors who may want to adopt the text for courses in Native American studies. Likewise, the reader unfamiliar with the history of colonialism, missionization, and the religious and cultural genocide aimed at Native Americans may fail to comprehend the role of Christianity in the social disruption of Indian lives, both historically and in the contemporary situation. Many of the more recently published stories assume the reader's familiarity with the underlying causes of addiction, domestic abuse, and religious polarization that exist among Native peoples today, but it has been my experience in teaching Native American literatures that many students require extensive background knowledge to avoid ethnocentric readings of the texts. I found my own aesthetic appreciation of many of the stories to depend on prior knowledge of such issues. If the book has crossover potential, as the editor claims in his afterword, then perhaps at least a brief critical introduction to the book would have been of benefit in this regard. The editor's fictionalized afterword, oddly reminiscent of Washington Irving's History of New York (1809), a satire on American religious colonialism in which the Earth is conquered by alien invaders, did little to dispel assumptions of Native Americans as tragic and conquered subjects. James Treat's version, entitled "Inscribing the Wound World: Human Fiction on the Spaceman's Religion," calls the aliens' imposed religion Flagellantism, a name that surely calls into question Native Americans' artful strategies of response to the presence of Christianity in their lives. Although the editor warns that "the attentive reader will recognize that this literary device involves more than a simple substitution of terminology," perhaps the analogy is just too imaginatively "alien" to generate real empathy. Despite these drawbacks, the text offers much in the way of playful resistance and the subtleties of Native humor. Among my favorites: Basil Johnston's "Secular Revenge," in which Kitug-Aunquot puts one over on the priest who forbids him to eat bologna on Fridays by delivering sawdust to church in place of wood, telling the outraged priest, "Fauder, you say bologney, meat. Okay; den sawdus' is woods"; and Fus Fixico's old-timers ("Letter to the Editor") who play hooky from church because "the best place to be sorry for grafting and to get close to the Great...

Native Women's Double Cross: Christology from the Contact Zone

One of the hallmarks of American Indian colonial experience was the arrival of Christian missionaries. The response of Native cultures to missionization has been complex, with some resisting the white (wo)man's religion and others embracing it. Throughout their contact with Christianity, however, many American Indians appropriated its stories on their own terms and for their own purposes. Stories about Jesus comprise one of the most important sites for this appropriation. This essay examines the ways in which the cultural production of American Indian women makes a crucial intervention in the debates about Jesus' identity. It argues that the narrative negotiations of Native women in the contact zone of Euro-American encounters transform the theological category of christology.

Freedom From Clerical Control: the Portrayal of Men of Religion in Modern Arabic Literature

Freedom From Clerical Control: the Portrayal of Men of Religion in Modern Arabic Literature