Comment by Arvind Sharma

Comments on:
JRE Focus on The 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, Journal of Religious Ethics 26.2 (Fall 1998)
"Rethinking Human Rights: A Review Essay on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters" by David Little, Journal of Religious Ethics 27.1 (Spring 1999)     

The Purusārthas: An Axiological Exploration of Hinduism

Three doctrines have often been identified in the context of Hindu civilization as its distinctive markers: the doctrine of the varnas (or the doctrine of the four classes), the doctrine of asramas (or the doctrine of the four stages of life), and the doctrine of the purusarthas (or the doctrine of the four goals of life). The study of the last of these has been comparatively neglected and the doctrine has even been dubbed a myth (Krishna 1996, 189–205). The purpose of this article is twofold: to establish the cogency of the doctrine of the purusarthas in the face of such criticism and to indicate the directions in which the doctrine could be developed further.     

Emotional activation in the first and second language

Late Finnish–English bilinguals were presented with neutral, positive, negative and taboo words in a modified Stroop paradigm in both Finnish and English. Significant interference from negative and taboo words compared to neutral words was found in both languages, whereas positive words were not found to differ significantly from neutral words. Furthermore, no differences in the size of the interference were present between languages. This suggests that, for late bilinguals with good knowledge of their second language, the first (L1) and second (L2) language are equally capable of activating the emotional response to word stimuli representing threat, and thus interfering with the cognitive processes involved in responding to colour. This effect was equivalent for negative and taboo words.