Religion and Philosophy

The North American Wildlife Conservation Model (NAM) is the driver of a strong anthropocentric stance, which has legalized an ongoing, annual exploitation of hundreds of millions of wild animals, who are killed in the United States through trapping, hunting and other lethal practices. Increasingly, the American public opposes the killing of wild animals for recreation, trophies and profit but has little—if any—knowledge of the Model. The purpose of this book is to empower the public with knowledge about the NAM’s insufficiencies and to help expedite the shift from lethal to compassionate conservation, an endeavour urgently needed particularly under the threats of climate change, human population growth and accelerating plant and animal species extinctions.

With a focus on trapping, this book exposes the NAM's belief in human supremacy and its consequences for wild animals and their ecosystems, the same value that is driving the ongoing global destruction of nature and accelerating species extinction. Motivated by a deep concern for wild animals who suffer and whose lives are extinguished each year by 'sportsmen and women', this book exposes the violent treatment of wild animals inherent in governmental-promoted hunting and trapping programs, while emphasizing the importance of empathy and compassion for other animals in conservation and in our lives.

This open access handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of Vision Zero, an innovative policy on public road safety developed in Sweden. Covering all the major topics of the subject, the book starts out with a thorough examination of the philosophy, ideas and principles behind Vision Zero. It looks at conditions for the effectiveness of the policy, principles of safety and responsibility as well as critique on the policy. Next, the handbook focuses on how the Vision Zero ideas have been received and implemented in various legislations and countries worldwide. It takes into account the way Vision Zero is looked at in the context of international organizations such as the WHO, the UN, and the OECD. This allows for a comparison of systems, models and effects. The third part of the handbook discusses the management and leadership aspects, including ISO standards, equity issues, other goals for traffic and transportation, and opportunities for the car industry. Part four delves intotools, technologies and organizational measures that contribute to the implementation of Vision Zero in road traffic. Examples of specific elements discussed are urban and rural road designs, human factor designs, and avoiding drunk and distracted driving. The final part of the handbook offers perspectives on the transfer of Vision Zero policy to other areas, ranging from air traffic to suicide prevention and nuclear energy.

Vision Zero is a public road safety policy including both a long-term goal that no one shall be killed or seriously injured as a consequence of accidents in road traffic and a safety principle stating that the design and function of the road transport system shall be adapted to meet the requirements that follow from that goal. It is a new road safety paradigm which has resulted in new types of responsibilities among stakeholders, technological innovations, and new strategies and organizational measures to achieve a safe system. The road safety work based on Vision Zero has shown promising results, and although Sweden has not yet reached a safe system, the number of fatalities and severe injuries has decreased substantially.

This is an open access book.

This volume brings together 11 experts from a range of religious backgrounds, to consider how each tradition has interpreted matters of violence and peace in relation to its sacred text. The traditions covered are Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism.

The role of religion in conflict, war, and the creation of peaceful settlements has attracted much academic attention, including considerations of the interpretation of violence in sacred texts. This collection breaks new ground by bringing multiple faiths into conversation with one another with specific regard to the handling of violence and peace in sacred texts. This combination of close attention to text and expansive scope of religious inclusion is the first of its kind.  

In this book, Ben Lazare Mijuskovic uses both an interdisciplinary and History of Ideas approach to discuss four forms of intertwined theories of human consciousness and reflexive self-consciousness (Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel; Schopenhauer’s subconscious irrational Will; Brentano and Husserl’s transcendent intentionality; and Freud’s dynamic ego). Mijuskovic explores these theories within the context of psychological issues, where the discussion is undergirded by the conflict between loneliness and intimacy. He also explores them in the context of ethics, where the dynamic is between the values of good and evil. The book historically traces these issues in both a personal as well as a political framework. 

This book uses Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief (1922) as a prism through which to explore the role of religion and its interactions with cultural and political thought in the turbulent interwar period in Europe. One of the most influential books in twentieth-century protestant theology, Der Römerbrief found Barth arguing that the crisis of the time was grounded in an even more profound crisis that pertained to the human condition as such. While much research has been conducted on Der Römerbrief, most of it has focused on the book’s explicit theology. The aim of the present volume is to mark the centenary of this seminal book with a broader investigation into the movements of thought within Der Römerbrief and its reception and impact within its cultural and intellectual context. This broader approach by a range of Northern European researchers brings attention to interconnections between cultural and theological movements intimes of crisis.

Should religion and politics be kept apart? What should be the relationship between the church and the state? M.Y. Ciftci answers these questions by studying the most important event in the recent history of the Catholic Church: The Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The book provides a new interpretation of the Council’s teaching on church-state relations to better appreciate its flaws and need for reform. By paying attention to the (often overlooked) importance given by the Council to the lay apostolate, it reveals how the Council did not reform, as is often thought, but retained a flawed conception of the laity’s role in politics. 

It then proposes a new framework for understanding church-state relations using the ressourcement method of returning to scripture and tradition, and by a critical dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan and various Protestant biblical scholars of the Powers in the New Testament. Ciftci shows how fruitful an self-consciously ecumenical approach can be for political theology. As most ressourcement theologians have overlooked political issues, and since ecumenical theology rarely touches on issues of church-state relations, this work makes an original contribution to the ressourcement project and to ecumenism. 

This book explores the phenomenon of conversion to Shi'a Islam in Italy. It thoroughly examines the motivations behind this religious transition and scrutinizes the doctrinal characteristics that Shiism incorporates thanks to the contributions of Italian converts. The text emphasizes the significance of René Guénon’s Traditionalism as a pivotal factor in driving this religious mobility. Additionally, the book delves into the writings of figures such as Julius Evola, who introduced Guénon to Italy, shedding light on Evola’s impact on the youth in the post-World War II era. Furthermore, it evaluates the influence of Henry Corbin on this spiritual journey. To realize this study, between 2018 and 2023, Minoo Mirshahvalad employed multidisciplinary methods that integrated sociology and history.  

This book takes its motive force from our contemporary climate crisis. It seeks to reorient human (and especially Christian) understanding, towards a more ecologically-focused, indigenously-informed way-of-living. James W. Perkinson argues that our current eco-climatic and socio-political emergency is the culmination of a 5,000-year history of supremacist “settlement,” in which city-states first emergent in Mesopotamia and Egypt not only begin coercively organizing labor into surplus production and ecosystems into inordinate and destructive yields of “goods,” but in the process, also simultaneously “deform” the Spirit-World “haloing” of natural phenomenon into outsized service of imperial reach. Perkinson recognizes globalized humanity as an emerging monstrosity destroying both human culture and the world. How we re-envision and revalue, at our critical juncture, our inescapable interdependence with the more-than-human world as peer and teacher and even “elder,” is the central theme that throbs below the surface of the very disparate topics commanding attention in each chapter.

This book addresses the phenomenon of rumors about the occult in contemporary Ghanaian politics. Drawing on data from fieldwork interviews and analysis of case studies, it examines: why political rumors in Ghana often focus on the occult; what political-occult rumors accomplish and for whom; the ways in which Ghanaian politicians use rumors about the occult to gain political advantage; and some of the popular attitudes of the electorate to the rumors. The book demonstrates that political-occult rumors have become important tools in the hands of Ghanaian politicians to gain political advantage over opponents, and the electorate as means to critique the actions and behavior of political actors and the political process, generally. In a nutshell, this book highlights the important role of occult rumors in modern Ghanaian politics, with a particular focus on the period between the late 1970s and present. The main thrust of the argument in this book is that the flourishing of political-occult rumors and the strength of Pentecostalism are related, and that far from being a phenomenon existing on the margins of modern Ghanaian society, the occult is powerful, public and mainstream.

This book explores new societal paradigms related to current debates and discusses how we can confront aspects of those debates which do not fit into a traditional social model. It proposes a theoretical and reflective framework for understanding new social discourse, particularly related to issues of diversity, feminism, and liminal societies. The goal is to explore such issues via humanities-centered lens, rather than just sociological or psychological. Furthermore, the book adheres to the responsibility to generate a way of thinking related to a "new" way of manifesting for our society and generating a culture for the future.

This graduate textbook provides a basic introduction to experimental philosophy (x-phi). In nine chapters, different methods and tools used in X-Phi are explained, spanning quantitative vignette studies, interactive experiments, corpus analysis, psycholinguistic experiments as well as qualitative interview studies. Each chapter introduces a specific experimental method by means of a case study in an easily accessible way and covers the whole research process from the development of a research question to the interpretation of the data.

This book offers a historical analysis as well as contextual management strategy on Nigeria’s lingering ethno-religious conundrums. From a rigorous examination of ethno-religious related violence—considering historical events such as the Civil War, Niger Delta armed struggle, and the rise of Boko Haram—to the application of philosophical, religious, and social frameworks for peacebuilding. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and potential solutions for managing the complex heterogeneous ethno-religious diversity in Nigeria (and Africa) by exploring survey, sacred texts, and relevant theories like Kantian and Gurr’s RD theories. Moreover, the book provides insights for policy makers on how ethno-religiously diverse society normatively induce conflicts, and discusses the importance of proactive policies that enhance good governance and prevent violent conflicts that may fester if unattended. This work would be beneficial to scholars and students of religious studies, peace studies, political science, history, social studies, and Africans and Africans in Diaspora.

Throughout the past years, the Orthodox world has seen numerous political and theological confrontations. New borders have been shaped by churches and states. This only increased in light of the Russian-backed conflict in Ukraine from 2014 and onwards, which has led to new theological lines of thinking, geopolitical confrontations, and an acute need for diplomatic handling of crisis. At the centre is the Russian Orthodox Church’s global role and its effects in Ukraine. The confrontations are born out of a complex entanglement of church politics, theological differences, legal tensions, national allegiances, and the very concrete political and military clashes between nation states. In light of the war in Ukraine, Global Orthodoxy has seen new fault lines in the making. This volume gathers chapters that shed light on these entanglements and their political, theological, and geopolitical consequences. The book is not limited to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, but also includes papers focusing on other nations, churches, and aspects (theological, theoretical, geopolitical, empirical etc.).

This book journeys into the dark territory of solitary confinement. It examines its practice in prisons, jails, immigration detention facilities, and even schools. It looks at international ethics codes such as that of the World Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the Declaration of Tokyo, all of which describe the prolonged use of solitary confinement as akin to torture. The author shows how the philosophical theories of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and others provide an ethical framework for examining solitary confinement. With the aid of contemporary ethicists like Tom Beauchamp, Michael Boylan, Michel Foucault, Claudia Card and Nel Noddings, it also shows how we have the tools for dismantling a practice long overdue for reform. Students, faculty, and the general public will find Solitary Confinement: Philosophical Perspectives a call for change of an urgent human rights issue. Given that thousands of people have been subjected to such extreme isolation and sensory deprivation, this quest warrants our utmost consideration.

This book fills a major historical gap by investigating the role played by Jewish American organizations in the rescue, rehabilitation and reconstruction of Tunisia’s Jewish population during and after World War Two. Using a variety of archival sources to explore the intricacies of this intervention and the dynamics of interactions between these organizations and local Jewish leaders as well as Tunisian government officials, this book highlights that Jewish American organizations present in Tunisia during the wartime and postwar periods played a major role not only in the rescue and relief of the country’s Jewish victims of war and German occupation but also in their educational, vocational, and medical rehabilitation which aimed to prepare them for immigration to Palestine.

An anthology of diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to new spiritualities, this volume brings together interdisciplinary case studies from literature, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and religious studies. It focuses on a range of figures, movements, concepts, and practices associated with non-traditional spiritualities in contemporary Türkiye, examining how novel, eclectic, quasi-desacralized, and self-oriented forms of spirituality are increasingly favored over traditional ones. Grounded in the current cultural context, the contributors explore how spiritualities originally inspired by Southeast Asian traditions, Shamanic practices, and other sources are first transformed into Western forms, then adapted into Muslim-Turkish settings. The term “alternative” highlights the creative, eclectic, non-traditional, or even anti-religious nature of such practices. As the first volume of its kind, this book is an essential resource for scholars of new religious movements and alternative spiritualities in Türkiye.

This book sets out and examines the comprehensive theory of value advanced by G.W. Leibniz over the mature period of his career. Well-known as a mathematician, a physical scientist, a metaphysician, a theologian, and even as an engineer and inventor, he is less known as a moral theorist, or even as championing a theory of value at all. And yet he does. Unfortunately, like much of Leibniz’s philosophical thought, his ideas on the nature, scope, and practice of morality are scattered throughout precious few books, various but numerous essays, aphoristic lists, abandoned (and so partial) projects, and volumes of correspondence. While no one text represents his considered view, a focused study of his output provides ample evidence that his favored moral theory, one that he tends to develop in subtle ways consistent with his systematic metaphysics, is a version of what we today think of as scholastic eudaimonism, i.e., the view that the ultimate goal of human life is happiness or flourishing in accord with human nature, happiness or flourishing that is achieved primarily by virtuous character and virtuous activity. This is the first text to offer a (fairly) exhaustive overview of Leibniz’s moral theory in several decades. The book also aims to integrate to some extent Leibniz’s positions on moral psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and even Christian theology, demonstrating the ways in which they come together (or, as the case may be, exist in tension).

This book on the life and work of Josef Schächter, member of the Vienna Circle and Rabbi, covers all writings of his Viennese period until 1938. The works include his dissertation on Nicolai Hartmann, his monograph Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik inspired by Wittgenstein, his Introduction to Logic, and several articles on linguistic and analytic philosophy, ethics, and religion. It is an important source for anyone working on Schächter, Wittgenstein and/or the Vienna Circle. It provides students and researchers with a special contribution to the Jewish cultural history of Vienna before the Shoah.

This book contains a selection of texts written by the Rabbi and Vienna Circle member Josef Schächter after his emigration to Palestine/Israel. These are the most relevant of those texts dealing with the Vienna Circle and its method. They were mostly written in Hebrew and are here available in English for the first time. Schächter’s writings are supplemented by a transcript of an interview with him, a report by his grandson Asher Schechter, and further documentation of relevance.

This book reports on cutting-edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, including philosophy, biology, psychology and cognitive science, and economy, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and presenting key case studies as well. Further, it describes concepts related to habits, routines, and rituals and examines important features of human action, such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations. Based on a workshop held on April 2022 at the World Congress on Universal Logic (UNILOG 22), in Crete, and including additional invited chapters, the book offers fresh insights into the fields of social practice and the cognitive, computational, and philosophical tools to understand them.

This book offers a defense against non-classical approaches to the paradoxes. The author argues that, despite appearances, the paradoxes give no reason at all to reject classical logic. In fact, he believes classical solutions fare better than non-classical ones with respect to key tests like Curry’s Paradox, a Liar-like paradox that dialetheists are forced to solve in a way totally disjoint from their solution to the Liar.

Graham Priest’s In Contradiction was the first major work that advocated the use of non-classical approaches. Since then, these views have moved into the philosophical mainstream. Much of this movement is fueled by a widespread sense that these logically heterodox solutions get to the real nub of the issue. They lack the ad hoc feel of many other solutions to the paradoxes. The author believes that it's long past time for a response to these attacks against classical orthodoxy. He presents a non-logically-revisionary solution to the paradoxes.

This title offers a literal way of cashing out the disquotation metaphor. While the details of the view are novel, the idea has a pre-history in the relevant literature. The author examines objections in detail. He rejects each in turn and concludes by comparing the virtues of his logically orthodox approach with those of the paraconsistent and paracomplete competition.