Love and Liturgy

For two millennia Christians have assembled on the “day of the sun” to celebrate the liturgy together. But why do it? Why structure one's life in such a way that participation in ritualized religious activity is a fixed point in the weekly rhythm of one's comings and goings? The project of this essay is to identify reasons to engage in such activity that emanate from the Christian ethical vision. Fundamental to this vision is a contrast between an ethic of proximity, which enjoins us to attend to the needs of those near and dear, and an ethic of outwardness, which enjoins us to both attend to and open ourselves up to the needs of those who belong to various out‐groups. The Christian ethical vision enjoins an ethic of outwardness. A close look at the liturgies of the Eastern Christian tradition reveals the ways in which they express this ethic.     

THE PARTICULARITY OF ANIMALS AND OF JESUS CHRIST

Clough's theological account of animals critiques the familiar negative identification of animals as not‐human. Instead, Clough highlights both the distinctive particularity of each animal as created by God and the shared fleshly creatureliness of human and nonhuman animals. He encourages Christians to recognize Jesus Christ as God enfleshed more than divinely human, and consequently to care for nonhuman animals as those who share with human animals in the redemption of all flesh. This move risks downplaying the possibilities for creaturely specific forms of redemption; limiting the cosmic efficacy of salvation in Christ; and losing the particularity of Christ's divine and human natures. Another, possibly less risky, direction to take Clough's insights about creatureliness and well‐formed theological ethics might attend to the perverse ways that humans assess the worthiness of human and nonhuman animals by substituting particularities of use and abuse for the particularities of creation and salvation.     

Labour discipline in a Christian Orthodox sisterhood in Russia*

This article discusses the issue of labour discipline in a Christian Orthodox organisation in Russia. The sisterhood which I analyse is the meeting point of two types of ‘work’: the ‘secular work’ of employed workers is embedded into the ‘religious work’ of the sisters who live a monastic life. I argue that the religious–economic mix of the sisterhood suggests that three employment models are evident: ‘work more, get less’, ‘work less, get more’ and ‘work for free’. Religious and economic spheres are mediated by labour which takes different forms, creating distinct, but related disciplinary labour spaces. I thread the concept of discipline through religious and economic discourses in the monastic workplace, the conflicts between the religious and economic motivations to work and the role of ‘emotional work’. The analysis is based on the participant observation, conducted over a period of four months while I was a staff member of the sisterhood.     

BEING AND DOING: AN INQUIRY INTO THE COLONIZATION,DECOLONIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY AND ITS STATE,Marcus Raskin

The emerging planetary culture is viewed from an autobiographical perspective. The author discusses the importance of complex thought (Morin) and the notions of gylany and partnership (Eisler) to address the need to develop a heterogeneous, diverse context which supports creativity and mutually beneficial relations. Systems‐theoretical and feminist approaches are brought to bear on the need to develop an ecology of creativity, which focuses not simply on individual genius but on the potential for creative collaboration. Ecological concerns are viewed in the context of our understanding of gender, creativity and progress.     

A Novel “Planetary Man”: From the Philosophical Paradigm of Modernity to Contemporary Anthropological Mutation: The Perspective of Ernesto Balducci

Italian priest, essayist, and intellectual of the twentieth century, Ernesto Balducci identified the crucial turning points of the new millennium by advancing original perspectives capable of opening unusual future scenarios. Sensitive to emergences of society (pollution, wars, ecological collapse), he retraces the causes in the more general “crisis of modernity,” proposing a new paideia and a new model of thought. He theorizes the construction of a novel planetary horizon that presupposes not only the building of new organizational structures, but also the achieving of an authentic “anthropological mutation” capable of inverting the course of history. While the old ethics were anthropocentric, founded on the supremacy of humankind over the world and nature, the new ethics is planetary, meaning that humankind must no longer be used as the parameter, but instead, the global horizon over which the effects of his or her actions extend.     

The Incompleteness of Each Tradition: Toward an Ethic of Complexity (L'incompiutezza di Ogni Tradizione: Verso Un'etica Della Complessita)

This article addresses the power of human technologies to wreak destruction on a planetary scale, such as genetic manipulation and weapons of mass destruction. It proposes the need for a new ethic that would be planetary in scale. Its central aim would be to include the great historical and contemporary diversity of human cognitive and epistemological experience. An “ethic of complexity” can weave together the threads of our common heritage. Although humanity's evolutionary past has been shown to be quite diverse, recent genetic and anthropological research has shown it also to be surprisingly unified. New images and metaphors are providing humanity with a vision that transcends familiar ethnic hatreds and so-called clashes of civilizations. The new planetary culture can be a shining example of unity-in-diversity, or unitas multiplex. It will be robustly diverse, intermixed to the core, and filled with awe at the rich lineages of our common past.     

Dialogue in Our Cosmic Aloneness

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is briefly summarized to serve as a background for making the case that, due to the highly exceptional characteristics of the earth's position and motion in the solar system as well as the precarious history of human evolution, we may be alone in the universe. With the conviction that this cosmic isolation enhances our need for dialogue with God, I discuss the nature of authentic dialogue as exhaustively explored by Martin Buber. I conclude with remarks dealing with the importance of understanding and using Buber's insights on dialogue as a way of satisfying our primal need to communicate with a cosmic “other,” in particular, God. Thus, in contrast to the numerous articles that have discussed the theological implications of SETI being successful, I treat here what it might mean if we are alone.     

Response to Lynne Segal: Thatcher’s legacy

In response to Lynne Segal’s paper on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, I briefly examine how Thatcher redefined the ‘social’ away from being an expression of care and mutuality. Playing on images of the dangers of infection and enfeeblement, she mobilised fears about dependency to create a discourse of strength and self-aggrandising invulnerability, a discourse that is destructive of sociality and an ethic of care.     

肝移植技术应用及其伦理学思考

探讨我国肝移植技术广泛应用的途径,阐述肝移植现状及其面临的伦理道德问题,认为:人们的传统思想文化背景及伦理道德观严重影响了肝移植技术的应用,要加大宣传,改变观念,尽早立法实行科学的脑死亡法。     

现代社会祛除伦理的社会机制

在对犹太人进行的大屠杀中,我们可以清楚看到纳粹如何借助于现代工业技术体系和官僚体系弱化人们的道德情感、混淆人们的道德责任,并最终阻止人们的道德行为,六百万犹太人就这样在大众平静的沉默中离去。现代社会祛除伦理的机制仍然没有改变,让人们保持道德沉默的可能性仍然存在,人类的大罪恶随时随地都可能再现。