A Review of “The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible”

The life and works of Muslim Kurdish intellectuals have long interested scholars and have been the subject of many studies. These studies have generally been based on the Kurds’ own works and on other sources, primarily in Kurdish, written in the contemporary period. Only rarely has there been recourse to another group of sources that might shed additional light on these neglected personalities. This article discusses one of these other sources, the Arabic biographical dictionaries known as . Arab biographers in these compendia present Kurdish writers in a somewhat different light, not necessarily negative, from that found in other Arabic and Persian sources.     

The long arm of the state? Transnationalism,Islam, and nation-building: the case of Turkey and Morocco

From the moment the first Turkish and Moroccan workers migrated to Europe in the early 1960s, the Turkish and Moroccan states have been concerned with how to bind emigrated citizens to their country of origin. In this article, we focus on Islam as a multi-dimensional binding mechanism. Religion is a broad register that links emotion, affect, and senses of belonging and binds individuals to political and cultural projects of collective actors and states. As we will demonstrate, it is a field in which both states and migrants have developed a variety of activities and initiatives, but it is difficult to single out what pertains to the state and what not. We argue that although state involvement in these two cases differs markedly, there are some intriguing parallels when we concentrate on religion. In both cases, religious affiliation is a very complex source of binding and of fission. State-monitored transnational networks have been tools of binding, but the same networks have engendered processes of disengagement from the state.     

Exploring the Promise of Eudaimonic Well-Being Within the Practice of Health Promotion: The “How” is as Important as the “What”

A brief historical and philosophical analysis suggests that the biomedical model and prevention have been the pillars of health promotion practices with the underlying assumption that these concepts provide answers to people’s health woes. Another observation resulting from this analysis is that biomedical, prevention, and more recently, wellness, do not differ much from each other paradigmatically (e.g., instrumental rationality) and, hence, are severely restricted in their short- and long-term effectiveness for helping people with healthy living and quality of life. It is proposed that eudaimonic well-being—if explored, understood, and implemented in a manner that holds true to the purity of the concept—offers significant promise for shifts in health promotion practices that may lead to transformative health experiences and enhanced quality of life.     

Kierkegaard and Psychology as the Science of the “Multifarious Life”

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the actuality of some considerations around psychology made by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). According to him psychology is about the “multifarious” life, which is a term that pinpoints the challenges psychology still have when it comes to including changes and genetic perspectives on its understanding of actual living. Yet Kierkegaard discusses psychology in relationship to metaphysics, which is an almost forgotten perspective. His understanding opens up for narrowing the definition of psychology down to the science of subjectivity, which at the same time elevates psychology to being the only science that focuses on the actual human life. Yet Kierkegaard’s most important contribution to psychology is to maintain a radical distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and in this respect the psychology of today is challenged.     

A Critique of the “Theistic Psychology” Movement as Exemplified in Bartz's (2009) “Theistic Existential Psychotherapy”

From the perspectives of existential philosophy, existential psychotherapy, philosophy of science, and theology, we critique Bartz's (2009 Bartz , J. D. ( 2009 ). Theistic existential psychotherapy . Psychology of Religion and Spirituality , 1 , 69 – 80 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) “Theistic Existential Psychotherapy” as another example of the argumentation of the “theistic psychology” movement. Twenty-one points highlight troubling inadequacies. Introductory and concluding paragraphs provide the broader context of this movement and focus the chief concern: Amidst current epistemological and philosophy-of-science uncertainty, the concerted effort to validate other-worldly religious beliefs as scientific principles within the empirical field of psychology of religion.     

Islam and Christianity: On “Religions of Law”

The pursuit of mutual understanding has not infrequently led Muslims and Christians to define their religious traditions in stark doctrinal opposition one to the other. In this regard, the “religion of law” (Islam)/“religion of grace” (Christianity) dichotomy has a particularly venerable history. This article sets out to re-examine and deconstruct a couplet that would strike many as a platitude, first by giving an account of the Sunni tradition of law-generation, situated in the broad context of the many options represented by different Islamic sects, and then by revisiting the paradigmatic understanding of law in the Christian dispensation worked out by Aquinas. This exposition leads to the conclusion that any simple opposition is to be avoided at all costs, obfuscating, as it does, much more than it elucidates. Furthermore, Christianity emerges from our chosen perspective as, in some sense, more essentially a “religion of law” than Islam ever could be.     

Fairness as “Appropriate Impartiality” and the Problem of the Self-Serving Bias

Garrett Cullity contends that fairness is appropriate impartiality (See Cullity (2004) Chapters 8 and 10 and Cullity (2008)). Cullity deploys his account of fairness as a means of limiting the extreme moral demand to make sacrifices in order to aid others that was posed by Peter Singer in his seminal article ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. My paper is founded upon the combination of (1) the observation that the idea that fairness consists in appropriate impartiality is very vague and (2) the fact that psychological studies show the self-serving bias is especially likely to infect one’s judgements when the ideas involved are vague. I argue that Cullity’s solution to extreme moral demandingness is threatened by these findings. I then comment on whether some other theories of fairness are vulnerable to the same objection.     

Unresolved problems with the “I”, the “A”, and the “T”: A logical and psychometric critique of the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) had already gained the status of a prominent assessment procedure before its psychometric properties and underlying task structure were understood. The present critique addresses five major problems that arise when the IAT is used for diagnostic inferences: (1) the asymmetry of causal and diagnostic inferences; (2) the viability of the underlying association model; (3) the lack of a testable model underlying IAT-based inferences; (4) the difficulties of interpreting difference scores; and (5) the susceptibility of the IAT to deliberate faking and strategic processing. Based on a theoretical reflection of these issues, and a comprehensive survey of published IAT studies, it is concluded that a number of uncontrolled factors can produce (or reduce) significant IAT scores independently of the personality attribute that is supposed to be captured by the IAT procedure.     

The “concept of time” and the “being of the clock”: Bergson, Einstein, Heidegger, and the interrogation of the temporality of modernism

The topic to be addressed in this paper, that is, the distinction between the “concept” of time and the being of the clock, divides into two parts: first, in the debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson, one discovers the ground for the diverging concepts of time characterized by physics in its opposing itself to philosophy. Bergson’s durée or “duration” in opposition to Einstein’s ‘physicist’s time’ as ‘public time,’ one can argue, sets the terms for Martin Heidegger’s extending, his ontological analysis of Da-sein, as human being-in-the-world. Second, in this the ‘concept of time’ gives way to the analysis of the ‘being of the clock.’ What is this being of the clock that makes evident the fundamental temporality of Da-sein? This question is rehearsed in Division Two of Being and Time. My claim is that the fundamental insight into the nature of time revealed by the encounter between Bergson and Einstein is that time extemporizes itself. Temporality “is” not a being but a process that temporalizes itself, precisely because it “is not.”     

Beliefs About the Outcomes of Extramarital Sexual Relationships as a Function of the Gender of the “Cheating Spouse”

A person perception experiment was conducted toexamine people's beliefs about the outcome of anextramarital sexual relationship involving ahypothetical single friend and a married person. Twohundred and eleven undergraduate students (80 males and129 females; most of whom were Caucasian) were theparticipants in the experiment. The married person inthe vignette was presented as either a man or a woman (and always the opposite gender of the singlefriend) and as having low or high investments in themarriage (as indicated by number of children and yearsmarried). Results indicated that the participants' perceptions of the outcome of this type ofextramarital relationship depended on the gender of themarried person/single friend. Participants were morelikely to believe that the married person loved the extramarital partner, was committed to theextramarital relationship, and would marry theextramarital partner, if the married person was a womanrather than a man. The investment manipulations had noeffect on participants' perceptions of therelationship. The results were discussed as they relateto other beliefs about male vs. femalesexuality.     

‘The poorest form of theism’: Schopenhauer,Islam and the perils of comparative hermeneutics

Even among Western philosophers open to religious and intellectual traditions of other cultures, such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), the hermeneutic reception of Islam has been highly problematic. In the case of Schopenhauer, we find an interpretation which aligns the Islamic tradition with philosophical themes which met his general rejection, the commitment to theism and the ‘optimism’ characteristic of a teleological view of existence. These themes are ones Schopenhauer finds refuted in his typologically classified cultural/religious complexes of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, which espouse either polytheism or atheism and a ‘pessimistic’ orientation. In Schopenhauer's contorted hermeneutic, which considerably distorts all the religions he examines, it is these latter traditions which are ancient ancestors of Christian spirituality and show up Islam along with Judaism to be the religious ‘other’ to Europe. In Schopenhauer's case, we can see the fully tragic outcome of a ‘monological’ stance, a stance which considers alien religious traditions as objects of classification rather than living, vibrant partners which can be engaged with and learned from in dialogue, the tragic outcome so endemic to European Orientalism.     

“Hear, Israel” The involvement of Jews in education of the deaf (1850–1880)

During the last two centuries there has been a methodological struggle over teaching the deaf. Do deaf people learn to communicate by means of gestures and signs (the “manual method”) or is it important for them to learn speech and lip-reading (the “oral method”)? In the second half of the nineteenth century, many schools for the deaf made the transition from the manual to the oral method, which the Milan conference of teachers of the deaf decided to promote in 1880. In this conversion, Jews played an important role. Yet there appears to be a clear link between their efforts and Jewish tradition, including its perception of the deaf.     

From Woman as Hasid to Woman as “Tsadik” in the Teachings of the Last Two Lubavitcher Rebbes

The paper deals with some of the ways in which the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, radicalized the legacy of his predecessor, Yosef Yitshak Schneersohn, who was the first hasidic leader to mobilize women as active members of the Habad constituency. In the teachings of Menahem Mendel Schneerson, women were invested for the first time with the sense of being full-fledged female hasidim in their own right. Moreover, unlike his predecessor, whose mobilization of women never became an integral element of his apocalyptic messianism, Menahem Mendel Schneerson consistently framed the empowerment of women in terms of kabbalistic eschatology, anticipating in the present the inverted gender hierarchy of the messianic future, which was, as he declared, just about to unfold. In this context, he applied to women some of the classical hasidic formulations of the doctrine of the tsadik, depicting them as a channel that mediates between Heaven and earth, and as the trigger that releases from Heaven the flow of material prosperity expressed in terms of the traditional tsadik’s blessing for sons (offspring), life (health), and food (secure livelihood).     

Nietzsche on morality as a “sign language of the affects”

Abstract

This article argues that Nietzsche’s meta-ethics is basically a form of sentimentalism (as opposed to cognitivism), but a form of sentimentalism that includes cognitive components in the sentiments that are involved. The article also ascribes to Nietzsche the more original position that the moral sentiments in question vary dramatically between historical periods, cultures, and even individuals, sometimes indeed to the point of becoming inverted between one case and another. Finally, the article also attributes to Nietzsche a hermeneutic insight into certain problems that this situation causes for the accurate interpretation of other people’s (moral) viewpoints. Along the way, the article in addition argues that Nietzsche’s positions on all these issues were molded not only by such well-known influences as Paul Rée and Hume, but also, and indeed more strongly, by Herder (and Hegel), and it develops some grounds for thinking that the positions in question are highly plausible ones.     

Yearning for certainty and the critique of medicine as “science”

A debate has simmered concerning the nature of clinical reasoning, especially diagnostic reasoning: Is it a “science” or an “art”? The trend since the seventeenth century has been to regard medical reasoning as scientific reasoning, and the most advanced clinical reasoning is the most scientific. However, in recent years, several scholars have argued that clinical reasoning is clearly not “science” reasoning, but is in fact a species of narratival or hermeneutical reasoning. The study reviews this dispute, and argues that in a theoretical sense, the dispute rests upon a naïve—but very popular—caricature of what constitutes “science reasoning.” But, if the dispute rests upon just such a caricature, why is it so persistent? The study concludes by suggesting that we, as patients and as physicians, have deep psychological tendencies that incline us to adopt the very naïve “science” concept/model of diagnostic reasoning, even if (or when) we understand its inaptness.     

Understanding the “Why” as Well as the “How”: Service Performance is a Function of Prosocial Motives and Emotional Labor

Which employees tend to better perform with customers? We suggest a combination of individual differences; specifically, we consider both why employees are working (prosocial motivation) and how (emotional labor). Deep acting should enhance the positive relationship between prosocial motivation and performance, while surface acting should dampen this relationship. Using a field sample of 214 grocery clerks and supervisor ratings of interpersonal performance with customers, we did not find the amplifying effect of deep acting. We do find the dampening effect for surface acting, such that surface acting buffers those with low prosocial motives, presumably by allowing them to “act” like they want to help others. This helps to explain the weak relationship of prosocial motives with performance and suggests implications for research and practice.