DAOIST PRESENTATION AND PERSUASION Wandering among Zhuangzi's Kinds of Language

A concern central to virtually all full‐blooded instances of religious ethics is how persuasively to represent a world central to our fulfillment that far exceeds our normal understanding. The treatment of three kinds of language in an early Daoist text, the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), contains an especially profound discussion and expression of such persuasive presentations in religious ethics. This study examines it and concludes by viewing Dante's Commedia through the perspectives Zhuangzi's ideas and practices present.     

DEMOCRATIC VIRTUE, COMPARATIVE ETHICS, AND CONTEMPORARY ISLAM

This essay illustrates the kind of moral analysis Jeffrey Stout advocates in Democracy and Tradition by way of examining a conversation among Muslims that took place between June and December 2002. Their debate centers on al‐Qaída's legitimacy as God's chosen defender of Islam, which is called into question due to the tension between al‐Qaída's military tactics and the concepts of honorable combat held within the Islamic tradition. This giving and taking of reasons in both defense and detraction of al‐Qaída's tactics demonstrates the living reality of Islamic tradition—the ongoing process of striving to discern God's will in light of communal agreements about the authority of certain texts and the validity of established rules for interpreting them.     

Big Gods,socio-cultural evolution and the non-obvious merits of a sociological interpretation

ABSTRACT

Much of the recent, renewed interest in the cultural evolution of religion has been driven by findings in experimental and cognitive psychology, and, as a result of disciplinary boundaries, sociologists have engaged very little with this new data and theory. In order to bring sociology formally back into this discussion, we provide in this paper five sociological sources for the birth and diffusion of ‘Big God’ ideation (with monotheism serving as a paradigmatic case). Agentically, we suggest that Big God beliefs assuaged existential anxiety, aided in elite legitimation and were useful for religious entrepreneurs hoping to establish new institutional fields. Structurally, we suggest that Big God beliefs may have been an epiphenomenal attempt by people to symbolically represent the centralization of political authority and the intensified use of new technologies. We conclude with a general theory of the cultural evolution of Big Gods that integrates these agentic and structural explanations.     

Religion and space in colonial South America: a technology of geo-political rule and terrestrial-spatial subjectivity in the Jesuit missions of the Banda Oriental

ABSTRACT

Based on a genealogical analysis of documentary evidence, this paper explores the comprehensive technology of geo-political rule that was applied in the missions established and governed by the Society of Jesus in the territories of the Banda Oriental in South America, from the early 17th century to the second half of the 18th century. The interdependent knowledges and practices of the technology – its contested logics of universal conversion, its hard and soft geo-political techniques, its terrestrial-spatial subjectivities – as well as the resistances that opposed the technology’s operation are discussed and conceptualized. These conceptualizations are presented as contributions to the studies on colonial religious governmentalities. The conclusions highlight the relevance of governmentality approaches and meta-institutional analytical perspectives for the study of religions and space and religious geo-politics in past and contemporary societies.     

Focus Introduction: Taking the Measure of Jonathan Edwards for Contemporary Religious Ethics

The Journal of Religious Ethics marks the tercentenary of Edwards's birth with the following collection of essays. In keeping with the overall mission of the journal, this tribute takes the form of historical and constructive reflection, in which diverse perspectives on Edwards's work and diverse forms of engagement with it supplement and correct one another. Our hope is that these essays will serve both to generate interest in Edwards's work among those who are unfamiliar with him, and to advance the discussion of central issues in theological and religious ethics. In this introductory essay, we will offer some reflections on Edwards's general significance for contemporary ethics, followed by a closer examination of his main texts and a brief summary of the essays collected here.     

Rethinking the Comparative Study of Religious Ethics

This essay describes the author's change of approach to the comparative study of religious ethics from the one contained in a book on the subject (with Sumner B. Twiss), published in 1978. The change resulted from interactions with Abdulaziz Sachedina, the noted scholar of Islam, demonstrating the importance of comparing different ethical systems in reference to global topics like human rights, particularly the right to freedom of conscience.     

Ensuring Liberties: Understanding State Restrictions on Religious Freedoms

Promises of religious freedoms have become the standard in national constitutions. Yet, despite these assurances, religious freedoms are routinely denied. Combining new data collections with expanded theoretical explanations, this research explores how dimensions of governance and measures of the religious economy contribute to government restrictions on religion. Consistent with recent work on the judicialization of politics, we find that the absence of an independent judiciary is an important predictor of government restrictions on religious freedoms, whereas free elections and government effectiveness are insignificant in our full models. Consistent with the religious economy theory, we find that social restrictions and government favoritism toward a religion(s) are persistent predictors of the government's restrictions. Although the proportion of the population Muslim holds a strong bivariate association with government restrictions (r = .57), the relationship is reduced to insignificance in our full models. We briefly discuss the implications of these findings.     

生命伦理学原则的冲突及其原因分析

生命伦理学所追求的,是在基本原则指导下建构一个程序规则,让各种理论和价值观获得平等对话和合作的机会。必须充分尊重中国文化传统和社会现实,谨慎而合理的利用西方生命伦理资源。同时,也要意识到生命伦理学的发展所呈现给我们的是鲜活的伦理生活和问题,隐含在问题背后的对生命本身的价值思考,将逐渐展现出其理论趋向和可行的道德规则。     

Self-perceived employability: Construction and initial validation of a scale for university students

This paper reports the development of a research instrument to examine the expectations and self-perceptions of employability of business undergraduates (bachelor degree students) in three UK universities, and examines relationships with other measures. The scale was found to have a satisfactory internal reliability coefficient for an untested measure (α = .75) and had discriminant validity from other new measures such as university commitment. ‘Internal’ and ‘external’ dimensions were identified, the latter relating to the perceptions of the strength of the university brand, the state of the external labour market, and the demand for the degree subject. Perceptions of future employability were surprisingly modest, notably for those in arguably the strongest position, suggesting that these self-perceptions may be a product of relative societal expectations, consistent with positional conflict theory.