Religion, Democracy and the Public Sphere

Throughout the development and maturation of the American democratic experience, religiously inspired conduct has contributed significantly to democratically progressive political concerns such as the abolition of slavery and campaigns for civil rights, but also the encouragement and perpetuation pf anti-democratic practices such as the institution of slavery and policies of racial segregation. It may be rarely admitted, but there is no essential conceptual affinity between conduct proper to democratic political association. It may, therefore, be useful in our own political circumstances to try to determine boundaries for conduct that expresses and satisfies compatibly both religious and democratic commitments. Perhaps most Americans do recognize – if not in their own cases, at least in reference to the beliefs and actions of others – that religiously inspired conduct is neither thereby justified morally or legally nor absolved from further critical appraisal. Certainly, the history of American legal practice shows that religious belief or inspiration does not serve as acceptable legal defense for conduct charged as criminal infraction. The U.S. Constitution contains only two references to religion: the non-establishment clause prohibits governmental institutionalization of religious beliefs or liberty rights – is limited in scope and application both by other constitutional rights of individuals and by constitutionally authorized powers of government. As the U.S.S.C. has repeatedly held, individual constitutional features must be understood in a manner that harmonizes all stated and implied constitutional features, not by unbridled abstractions of selected phrases. Under the American legal system, there is no absolute or unlimited right to free exercise of religion: not everything done publicly under religious inspiration is legally permissible; what is otherwise illegal conduct is not legalized by religious inspiration. In important respects, general features of the legal boundaries concerning religiously inspired conduct in public life are reasonably clear; nevertheless, broader issues concerning further moral or ethical constraints upon religiously inspired conduct remain unresolved and rarely addressed explicitly.

Science & religion in contemporary philosophy

"Reissued in the Crown Library 1912."

Thomas Mitchell and the Wellington caves: The relationship among science, religion, and aesthetics in early-nineteenth-century Australia

THOMAS MITCHELL (1792–1855), explorer and Surveyor-General in New South Wales between 1828 and 1855, was a talented and competent draughtsman who was responsible for the original sketches and even some of the lithographs he used to illustrate his two journals of exploration, published in 1838 and 1848. In this paper, I will be concerned with the 1838 journal, entitled Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia; with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales. On the whole, it is a detailed and lavishly illustrated account of the land Mitchell encountered, along with its inhabitants and natural history. My particular interest is in offering an explanation for differences between a sepia sketch depicting a cave at Wellington, NSW, that Mitchell prepared as one of the illustrations for geological material included in this journal, and the final lithograph.

Levinas and the defination of philosophy: An ethical approach

Emmanuel Levinas’ thought seems to be strictly neither rational, phenomenological nor ontological, and it thus intentionally exposes itself to the asking of the question ‘why call it philosophy at all’? While we may have trouble containing Levinas’ thought within our traditional philosophical boundaries, I argue that this gives us no reason to exclude him from philosophy proper as a mere poser, but rather provides the occasion for reflection on just what it means, in an ethical manner, to call something ‘philosophical’. Instead of asking whether or not philosophy can ‘contain’ Levinas’ thought, I contend that it would be more ethical to instead re-phrase the question in terms of ‘sociality’. When we do this, I argue, we can indeed justifiably call Levinas’ thought philosophy.

Christian Thomasius and the desacralization of philosophy

Despite his significance in early modern Germany, where he was well-known as a political and moral philosopher, jurist, lay-theologian, social and educational reformer, Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) is little known in the world of Anglophone scholarship. 1 Unlike those of his mentor, Samuel Pufendorf, none of Thomasius's works was translated into English, when, at the end of the seventeenth century, English thinkers were searching for a final settlement to the religious question. None has been translated since. Moreover, while Thomasius has been subject to increasing scholarly attention in Germany since the 1970s, where he has been treated largely as a representative of the "early Enlightenment," there is very little secondary literature on him in English. 2 Things are however beginning to change in this regard, with recent research already giving rise to important new Anglophone books and essays. 3 Knud Haakonssen's article on [End Page 595] Thomasius for the new Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy might well be a straw in the wind

The socio-religious beliefs and nature of the contemporary Vampire Subculture

The contemporary Vampire Subculture can be defined as a multi-faceted, socio-religious movement with its own distinct collective community and network of participants who share a similar belief system and customary lifestyle that reflect their concept of the vampire. The Vampire Subculture consists of individuals who profess to be 'real vampires', vampire communities of like-minded persons, 'blood-donors' who willingly allow vampires to partake of them, occult-based and mystical-orientated groups that appeal to their spirituality, the blood fetishists, and the live-action vampire role-players. In response, a Christian counter-movement of self-proclaimed 'vampire-slayers' has emerged that actively opposes the vampire subculture and its beliefs and practices. The socio-religious nature of the Vampire Subculture can be best described as a Segmented, Polycentric and Integrated Network of participants.

Biology Expansively Understood: [Review of] Alexandre Lefebvre's Human Rights as a Way of Life. On Bergson's Political Philosophy, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)

Human Rights as a Way of Life is about the political dimension of Henri Bergson's work, focusing mainly on The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, the last original book by the French philosopher, published in 1932.