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The Transhumanism of Nick Bostrom and the Ultra-Humanism of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Author(s): Teresa Driollet de Vedoya / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2016

Nick Bostrom, Swedish philosopher at Oxford University, director of the Future of Humanity Institute, thinks and works for the building of the posthuman being. He means to favorite human enhancement through the ethical application of science. The improvement of human condition and human organism would be accomplished by the advancement of technology, genetic engineering, information technology, molecular nanotechnology or artificial intelligence. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin curiously employs the word ultra-human in his writings. We ask ourselves if he uses this expression in the same way Bostrom does. Complexity and consciousness intensify through the way of life Evolution. With the human zoological group cosmos covers with a new envelope: the noosphere. Science, technic, industry, aesthetic and moral developed by men leads to a deep dependance between human beings. The human collective body, explains the Jesuit, will be the Matter that Christ will vivify and save. True human development only prepares the way to receive more than we are: a flame that would make us live for ever.

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Odpoveď Ivanovi Karamazovovi

Author(s): Magdaléna Miklušičáková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 4/2016

The aim of this paper is to find Camus’s and Sartre’s answer to logic and nihilistic freedom of Ivan Karamazov. In contrast to Karamazov Sartre and Camus used freedom to find the way for morality without God. Sartre based his “philosophy of freedom” on postulate: existence precedes essence and defined man as never done project. Camus created his concept on revolt against absurdity and came to solidarity and request an active position. They both see freedom as a burden, but burden with necessity to carry, not to throw away.

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The Critical Edition of Jamâl-i Khalwatî’s Tafsir Leaflet Called “Kitâbu al-Nûriyya wa Kawkabu al-Durriyya”

Author(s): Esra HACIMÜFTÜOĞLU / Language(s): English Issue: 48/2017

This study aims to bring to light a tafsir (exegesis) leaflet which belongs to Jamâl-i Khalwatî (d. 899/1494) who lived in 17th century and became famous with the name “Çelebi Halife”. Jamâl-i Khalwatî, who lived in the time of 2nd Bayezid and who was a versatile scholar, wrote many books on Islamic sufism, tafsir and hadith. The work called Kitâbu al-Nûriyya ve Kawkabu al-Durriyya, which is the subject of this study, is a tafsir leaflet in which the author basically deals with the exegesis of the verse 24/35 (Surah al-Nur) and makes evaluations on some points that he considered important. This leaflet, in which characteristics of Ishari tafsir can be seen, forms a remarkable part of the literature composed in time within the context of the mentioned verse. The verified publication was made on the basis of the five attained versions of the work. In the study, firstly some information about Jamâl-i Khalwatî’s life and works are given, the characterization of the versions that were taken as the base for verification and the method used are specified and the text is given after a short evaluation about the content of the work.

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Als der Herrgott, der Satan und Sankt Petrus mit der Schöpfung beschäftigt waren - Dualistische Schöpfungssagen in der schwedischen, ungarischen und russischen Kultur

Author(s): György Orosz / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2009

In this paper I focus on dualistic creation stories, but without an attempt at an all-European overview. The analysis is confined to Swedish, Hungarian and Russian cultures, and references are made to various genres of literary fiction, folk legends, religious folk epic songs and annals. In the background of these examples the religious ideology of medieval bogomilism can be traced. “The Legend of Småland”, a chapter in Selma Lagerlöf’s children’s novel “The Wonderful Adventures of Nils”, draws on a dualistic cosmogonic myth of apocryphal traditions. This myth represents a modified variant of an etiological, dualistic belief. Satan is replaced by Saint Peter, who is believed to have created the mountains, which are symbolic of chaos, in the plain called Småland. In contrast, the plain was created by God. In the mythological view of the world, the plain is symbolic of the world of order, i.e. cosmos. The motif of soil or sand brought up from the bottom of the sea as well as the cooperation of the Creator and his Demiurge in the creation myth may be part of the ancient heritage in Hungarian mythology, or the motifs of the dualistic creation myth may have been borrowed later in the new homeland from nearby or distant neighbours whose tradition had been deeply affected by bogomilism. In the Russian Primary Chronicle, at the year 1071, an apocryphal story can be read in which magicians (‘volchvy’) present their ideas concerning the creation of man in accordance with the dualistic concept of Bogomils. The human body was created by Satan, from a bunch of straw hurled down from Heaven by God, and it was God who placed the soul in the body. Certain textual variants of “The Book of the Depths” (‘Golubinaja kniga’), a Russian religious folk epic, describe the single combat between Truth (‘Pravda’) and Falsehood (‘Krivda’). This combat can be interpreted, although indirectly, as the Bogomil tenet of the fight between Logos (Jesus) and Satan.

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Византийские источники богословия иконы в «Послании иконописцу» (Часть вторая)

Author(s): Ágnes Kríza / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2009

The first treatise dealing explicitly with theology of the icon in medieval Rus’ was preserved in an anonymous work known as Poslanie iconopistsu (Letter to the Iconographer) written at the end of the 15th century which contains three sermons. These three sermons later became part of the famous Prosvetitel (Enlightener) compiled by Joseph of Volokolamsk. The paper makes an investigation into the problem of the hidden sources of the Letter to the Iconographer which almost entirely consists of verbal quotations from different earlier theological texts. Among the cited writings there are five Byzantine dogmatic works written in defense of icons and translated into Church Slavonic which are of outstanding importance. In the case of these works the method of borrowing their passages and the additional content these gain in their new contexts where they were transplanted shed light to the aims and interests of the 15–16th century Russian theologian which are apparently different from those of his Byzantine predecessors. It is especially interesting to observe how the Russian author tries to legitimate the icon of the Holy Trinity by the aid of the different arguments of Byzantine apologists.

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Zum Fomu jing (‚Sūtra der Mutter des Buddha')

Author(s): Tsuneki Nishiwaki / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2006

Das in dieser Arbeit behandelte Fomu jing ist ein buddhistisches Werk, das nicht in den historischen Sūtrakatalogen enthalten ist. Die große Anzahl von Manuskripten dieses Werkes, die in Dunhuang entdeckt wurden, zeigt, daß es zu einer bestimmten Zeit dort sehr verbreitet war. Im ersten Abschnitt wird unter Berücksichtigung dieser Manuskripte ein Überblick über die Gestalt des Mohemoye jingbzw. des Fomu jing gegeben und es werden Petersburger Dunhuang-Manuskripte des Textes vorgestellt, die bisher in den Nachdrucken nicht benutzt wurden. Im zweiten Abschnitt wird ein Berliner Turfan-Manuskript präsentiert und es werden die „Sechs Großen Alpträume“betrachtet, die den Beweis für den apokryphen Charakter des Fomu jingliefern. Im dritten Abschnitt wird dasFoshuo xiaoniepan jingaus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothekvorgestellt und gezeigt, daß dieses mit den Dunhuang- und Turfan-Manuskripten des Fomu jingin Verbindung steht. Im Schlußkapitel wird versucht darzustellen, in welcher Form das Fomu jingtradiert wurde. Dazu wird der Verlauf der Überlieferung vom Fomu jingzum Foshuo xiaoniepan jingverdeutlicht, und der Umstand erklärt, warum das Sūtra keinen Eintrag in den Sūtrakatalogen fand.

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ПРИТЧЕВЫЙ ХАРАКТЕР «МОСКОВСКИХ РАССКАЗОВ О БЕДНЫХ» М. Н. МАКАРОВА

Author(s): Natalya Tangaeva / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2018

The article is dedicated to the study of the impact of the Evangelic parable on the flash fiction of M. N. Makarov in the early 1840s. Since he was young Makarov cared for national history, everyday life and religious faiths of common people. He also envisages the Evangelic parable as a meaningful narration that Jesus used to represent a spirit of his teaching. The writer’s “Moscow tales about the poor”, published under the pen-name of Makariy Bystroretsky, had an instructive character of the Evangelic parable. Following the parabolic type Makarov writes about home and family, richness and poorness, Salvation through Jesus Christ. By their themes his stories are similar to the evangelic parables of the Unjust Judge, of the Lost Sheep, of the Pharisee and the Publican, of the Good Samaritan, of the Rich Man and Lazarus, of the Rich Full. The tales contain the motives of mercy, love for one’s neighbor, humiliation, responsibility to people and God, declared in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus. A parabolic character of the narration allows the writer to demonstrate “modern miracles” that happen to those who walk with God. Makarov’s tales teach to rely on Divine Providence, to take gratefully the ordeals and the prizes of life. The episodes representing Russian everyday life in the tales serve as a symbolic embodiment of spiritual and physical happiness of Man who made his approach to Jesus Christ. The storylines of Makarov’s tales traces their origins to the texts and motives of the parables in the New Testament. Putting Christian wisdom into a simple narrative the writer’s stories make people’s faith grow.

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Master Yinshun and the Pure Land Thought

Author(s): Stefania Travagnin / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2004

The Chinese scholar-monk Yinshun (1906-), who is conceived as the founder of the renjian fojiao which is spread in Taiwan, dedicated quite a large part of his literary production to the Pure Land doctrine. This paper is divided into three main parts. The first section is an introduction to Yinshun's works on Pure Land and includes the criticism that those writings received. The second part discusses the concepts of purity and pure land in Yinshun's writings. Finally, the third and main part includes monographies on the main Pure Land in Mahayana Buddhism (the Pure Lands of Amitabha, Aksobhya, Maitreya and the Medicine Buddha), as concerned and analysed by Yinshun. This study aims to define Yinshun's philosophy through the analysis of his interpretation of the Pure Land doctrine, and provides a portrait of the Pure Land school in the contemporary Taiwan through questioning Yinshun's hermeneutics of Dharma. In addition, this work touches the issue of the relationship between tradition and innovation, by taking Yinshun and his Pure Land philosophy as case-study.

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Medieval Daoist Ordination: Origins, Structure, and Practice

Author(s): Livia Kohn / Language(s): English Issue: 2-4/2003

Medieval Daoist ordination developed under Buddhist influence in the fifth century, but retained models of ancient Chinese blood covenants. While following the Buddhist model, which was essentially a membership ceremony, in its formalities and overall organisation, in its essence Daoist ordination was an empowerment and transference of allegiance, not from the family to an overlord, but from the world to the celestial realm. Daoists through ordination do not just leave the family but become active members of an otherworldly administration, with all the powers and obligations of this role.

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Wives and Patrons: Uygur Political and Artistic Influence in Tenth-Century Dunhuang

Author(s): Lilla Bikfalvy Russell-Smith / Language(s): English Issue: 2-4/2003

This article studies the intercultural links between the Uygurs and Dunhuang in the tenth-eleventh centuries. Some of the biggest caves at Dunhuang show large-scale representations of Ganzhou Uygur brides as donors. It is argued that the marriage of a Chinese ruler of Dunhuang with the daughter of the Ganzhou Uygur kaghan acted as a catalyst for the formation of a new Sino-Uygur ruling class. A sketch and a painting from Dunhuang are examined in detail. Emphasis is on the appearance of new colours and decorative technologies such as applied gold leaf, iconography including the clothing of the figures and style, including facial features and mannerisms. It is concluded that Ganzhou Uygur brides as patrons played an important role in the formation of tenth-century Dunhuang art, and Uygur influence continued to grow in the eleventh century.

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Evaluarea fenomenului migrației – Soluții pastorale și sociale ale Bisericii Ortodoxe Române

Author(s): Cristian Vlad Irimia / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 6/2015

The Church has an essential role in the life of the Romanian people. It fulfills its spiritual mission with sacrifice and wisdom in the midst of the Christian communities of the entire Romanian space, being truly spiritual mother of the Romanian people, as Mihai Eminescu called it.

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Creștinism versus Islamism în contextul actual al migrației și securității

Author(s): Cristian Vasile PETCU / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 6/2015

Religious pluralism and religious freedom are democratic values of a multicultural and multiethnic Europe, therefore, Governments have the duty to support them in their respective member states.

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Polscy pisarze kalwińscy a narodowy kanon literacki

Author(s): István Molnár / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1(2)/2007

We class among the Calvinist writers, who are treated in detail by the volumes of the new great polish literary history. Calvinists as a religious minority had relatively many belletrists in the 16–17th centuries: M. Bielski, A. Frycz Modrzewski, M. Rej, D. Naborowski as well as Anonim-Protestant, J. Cedrowski, S. Dunin Karwicki, J. Rybiński, A. Trzecieski Jr. P. Hulka-Laskowski was the only significant Calvinist writer in the 20th century.

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Ecclesial Foundations of the Care of Migrants and Refugees

Author(s): Paweł Mąkosa / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

The Christian communities already in the antiquity took care of refugees and migrants. In the following centuries, the Church has repeatedly called for help provided to foreigners, placing particular emphasis on satisfying their spiritual needs. Therefore, recommendations were made to provide pastoral care in their mother tongue or even to create personal parishes for them. The intensification of the Church’s teaching on migration has taken place in the second half of the twentieth century and continues to this day. The documents of the Holy See and the Popes’ statements focus on showing the advantages and dangers of migration and point to various ways of the concern for migrants.

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A Christian family in a “provisional culture”

Author(s): Paweł Rabczyński / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

Contemporary culture can be described as provisional and temporary. A provisional culture is closely bound with such ideologies as secularism, individualism, relativism, practical materialism, hedonism and consumerism. These dominant cultural paradigms threaten the Christian understanding of family, hindering its comprehensive development and its ability to fulfil its basic objectives such as mutual welfare of the spouses or giving birth to and raising offspring. A provisional culture poses a threat and a great challenge for the family. Taking into account the fact that each culture is an expression of the human spirit and an environment for building identity and interpersonal relations, a Christian family must not ignore the problems of the contemporary world, but rather undertake a dialogue with a provisional culture aimed at presenting and promoting the Christian model of family, being the first school of faith, preaching and defending a culture of life.

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One of the ways to the architectonic sacrum

Author(s): Robert Łucka / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

The process of cognition usually ends with an attempt to name and understand the searched/encountered phenomenon. The essence of sacrum is not observable simply because as „we do not have direct access to the quantum world via our senses”, but it does exist. Remembering the words of L. Wittgenstein which state that „the borders of the language (the only language I understand) constitute the borders of my world”, one ought to take one of the ways leading to our subject of cognition. A direct arising in the sphere of sacrum can be both a mental and emotional anticipation of the essence of subject we are heading to, and whose spatial frame is determined by architectonic objects. In its sensory meaning sacrum materializes itself often in a form of sacred chapels, paintings, sculptures, fragments of buildings, landscape etc. In the following article an attempt to select one of the ways that can lead to more complete contact and understanding of a sacred, materialized phenomenon which is referred to as sacrum. One, however, ought to bear in mind that the attempt at reaching the essence of such a place is a difficult task because just like „watching a wild brook does not concern the flow, the sound or reflexes of this particular brook but the general concept of a brook: unbridled push of unformed matter”, the understanding and sensing of sacrum escapes a clear codification.

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The French and Polish Versions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: An Examination of Certain Passages of the Catechism’s teaching on the “Mysterium Ecclesiae” from a Philological and Translational Perspective

Author(s): Leszek Marius Jakoniuk / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

The issue regarding whether or not a translation of a text corresponds to the original has existed since time immemorial. The book of Sirach speaks of this issue when it says: “Please, read kindly and carefully, and be forgiving for those places where it would seem to anyone that, despite our consisten work on the translation, we could not choose the right words” (Prologue 15-20). In the past quarter of a century, the Church has responded with great interest to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), which is revealed by the fact that it has been translated into various languages. Are there any differences between the first Polish edition of the CCC and its French “original”? This article attempts to answer this question by examining a few differences between the Polish and French version of the CCC’s sections on the Church, specifically numbers 770, 771, and 774. These differences may explain why people receive and respond differently to the teachings of the Catholic Church. In order to provide more sound insight, this article also refers to the Latin text of the CCC, since this is considered the standard within the Church. In addition, English, Italian and Russian versions of the CCC were also consulted in the process of conducting a comparative analysis.

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Spór o genezę bractw cerkiewnych w literaturze historycznej

Author(s): Marcin Mironowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2017

The article has discussed the issue of origin of Orthodox Brotherhoods. Historians’ opinions on the origin and background of Orthodox Brotherhoods differ considerably. Some historians claimed they derived from House Brotherhoods operating in Ruthenia, others believed they were established in effect of Magdeburg Law while some connected their beginnings with craft guilds. Moreover, it was also assumed that Orthodox Brotherhoods emerged due to the attempted defence to preserve Orthodox Church in difficult religious and political conditions, or the attempted reforms of Orthodox Church in effect of the decline of Orthodox hierarchy at the end of the 16th century. The article invokes different opinions of Polish and Russian historians as well as the author’s own opinion thereon.

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A FÜSTÖLŐK ÉS A FÜSTÖLÉS SZOKÁSA A CSÁSZÁRKORBAN

Author(s): Eszter Harsányi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2006

The function of the roman ceramic censers has long since been a controversial one. Based on the information gained from the processing of the censers found in Zalalövő and on the ancient sources we can refute, that the censers were used as oil-lamps, libation vessels, fruit bowls or flower pots. There were turibula in each roman household (Liv. XXIX,14,13) and on the basis of the burned traces they were used for the regular offerings for the domestic gods. The name of the turibulum derives from the most often burned substance, the frankincense, which — beyond its ritual aspect — had several practical advantages. With the spread of Christianity, the censers started to disappear from the life of the Roman people because the early Christians considered substance-burning as a pagan act, and refused it.

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Acquiring courage to face the truth: shifts in attitudes toward child sexual abuse

Author(s): Slávka Karkošková / Language(s): English,Polish Issue: 7/2017

In science, culture and morality, from a historical point of view, we can see gradual changes in attitudes toward the child sexual abuse phenomenon. While by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century scholars as well as laypeople had a strong tendency to deny and minimize this socio-pathological phenomenon, by the end of the 20th century, thanks to scientific progress and public awareness raising, the society began to accept the cruel truth about child sexual abuse. This topic is no longer such a big taboo and people are able to speak more openly about it (especially through the media, social networks and nongovernmental organizations). Readiness to act – the courage to intervene, help victims and hold perpetrators accountable – is also changing.

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