World Religions

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World Religions And Philosophy
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(No Transcript)
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Over the next 10 weeks, well be examining the
BIG 5 of world religions
Hinduism
Judaism
Buddhism
Christianity
Islam
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What, if any, is the relationship between
Philosophy and _____?

• Religion
• Myth
• Science
• Ritual
• Anthropology
• Morality

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What is Western Religionand Philosophy?

• It may not be what it seems to be. While
  Western generally means American and European,
  Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian are often
  excluded.
• While Western Philosophy is grounded on Greek
  philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, it has
  been suggested that many of the primary sources
  for Greek ideas were first developed in the
  Middle East, Asia, Egypt, and perhaps parts of
  Africa.

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What is Non-Western Religionand Philosophy?

• Basically anything which does not fit neatly into
  the small American-European theatre, especially
  if it seems far away and unfamiliar.
• China, Japan, India, Africa, Latin America, and
  Islamic Middle Eastern countries are typically
  considered Non-Western (despite Islams
  monotheism).
• Generally, distinctions between Western and
  Non-Western philosophy are largely arbitrary and
  misleading (because even in Western, there is not
  a single coherent system of belief). But trying
  to find some dissimilarities provides us with a
  starting point.

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What Religions are Asian/Eastern?

• ? Western Religions are generally designated as
  the monotheistic Big 3 meaning Judaism,
  Christianity, and Islam (which arguably could be
  considered an Eastern religion as well).
• ? Asian/Eastern/Non-Western Religions are
  typically defined as such because they are (a)
  polytheistic, or (b) have no identifiable god,
  or are more grounded in intimacy than
  integrity (i.e., more relationship-oriented
  than individualistic).
• The last point (c) will be more fully developed
  in a little while.

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Some Philosophical Questions

• Did the world have a beginning? If it did, was
  the world created, and if so by whom and how?
• Is the world and all the things of the world
  viewed as living beings?
• Are there pervasive gods or God or spirits?
• Is there a sharp division between the secular and
  the divine, between people and the God or gods?
• What are the origins and sources of good and
  evil?
• How important is the concept of social harmony?
• Are some people in a privileged position to gain
  philosophical/religious knowledge or wisdom, or
  can anyone who puts his mind to it become wise?
• To what degree are our philosophical and
  religio-theological positions culturally biased?

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Can the West think Asian?
A basic logical statement
Eastern
If A, then B or All A are B
Western
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What is thinking Asian?
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Are the differences in Western Eastern
Religions and Philosophies an indication that
people in the West East do not think the same
way?

• No -- The simple answer thinking is thinking
  despite where, HOW people think does not
  change from culture to culture our brains are
  all wired the same
• WHAT people think about and how they perceive
  what they think about may be culturally
  influenced (just as a persons attention and
  emphasis on things perceived also may be
  influenced by race, gender, religion, economics,
  and a host of other things)
• But the basic how is the same for all people
  the focus on the what and interpretation of
  that what may be at the root of any significant
  differences

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Lets play a game to see if everyone in this
classroom perceives and interprets the same

• What is it? A rabbit or a bird?

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What is it? A young lady or old hag?
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What is it? A vase or faces?
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Thinking is the same
Study the stairs carefully.

• Attentiveness, emphasis, and interpretation of
  perceptions are generally the reasons why people
  believe there are (cultural) differences in
  peoples thinking
• But more realistically, there are no differences
  in thinking, just in attentiveness, emphasis, and
  interpretation
• Since cultural philosophy is based on what a
  particular culture (or cultures) chooses to
  emphasize and explore, the differences between
  the West and East philosophically are a result of
  different focusing and interpreting NOT a
  difference in thinking itself
• See handout on Integrity v Intimacy

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A working definition of Religion
? Belief in something sacred (e.g., gods or other
supernatural beings). ? A distinction between
sacred and profane objects. ? Ritual acts
focused on sacred objects. ? A moral code
believed to have a sacred or supernatural basis.
? Characteristically religious feelings (awe,
sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration),
which tend to be aroused in the presence of
sacred objects and during the practice of ritual.
? Prayer and other forms of communication with
the supernatural. ? A world-view or a general
picture of the world as a whole and the place of
the individual therein. This picture contains
some specification of an over-all purpose or
point of the world an indication of how the
individual fits into it. ? A more or less total
organization of one's life based on a worldview.
? A social group bound together by the above.
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A working definition of Philosophy

• The philosopher Wilfrid Sellers defined
  philosophy as the study of how things in the most
  general sense hang together in the general sense.
• Philosophers worry about the order of things
  how our natural, social, and cultural worlds hang
  together.
• When Eastern philosophers address the idea of how
  things hang together, they express a relational
  principle of ordering, which they label
  aesthetic.
• The Western notion of hanging is a more
  atomistic and hierarchical logical ordering
  which is also more linear.
• Because relationships are of primary concern for
  the Eastern, coordination is more important than
  rigid distinctions, and social roles are
  understood contextually.

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Western Scientific v Eastern Aesthetic

• In the West, a scientist and/or philosopher might
  think about discovering the natural laws which
  underlie and regulate the universe.
• Aquinas, for example, believed that if a person
  could reason out these laws by looking at nature,
  he would be able to immediately comprehend (and
  be able to follow) the Natural Laws and then be
  able to distinguish moral and immoral behavior.

• An Eastern philosopher would look for the
  aesthetic sense of order in the (ever-changing)
  universe in the same way that an artist might
  think about creating a pleasing composition.
• The difference is between discovering an order
  already there, even if we dont see it (the
  Western approach), and helping to invent one (the
  Eastern approach).

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West v East Ontology (Being)

• The Western preference for ontological permanence
  over the flux and change of the phenomenal world
  means that the world of ordinary experience
  cannot be presumed finally real.
• Reality refers to the really-real that
  grounds this world of appearances (which itself
  is not real), since appearances are misleading
  and/or illusory.

• The phenomenal world (as things appear) of
  process and change is simply wanwu (the ten
  thousand things).
• Adherents to Eastern Philosophy and Religions are
  less inclined to asked what makes something real
  or why things exist, and they are more interested
  in negotiating the complex relationships among
  the changing phenomena themselves.

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West v East Being (Part 2)

• Being takes precedence over Becoming, and thus
  becoming is ultimately unreal.
• Being itself is complete (and perfect, like
  Platos forms) and has no further need to
  change.

• Becoming takes precedence over being. Being is
  interpreted as a transitory state marked by
  further transition. The yin-yang relationship
  typifies the always changing situation of
  existence and experience. Everything is in
  process.

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West v East the World/Cosmos

• There is some permanent, perfect, objective,
  originative, determinative principle in the
  single-ordered (really-real) world (usually
  called God).
• The realm of appearances (where we live) is
  characterized by wholes and parts a world
  patterned by discreteness and permanence in which
  change is primarily the rearrangement of that
  which is unchanging (like the atoms of
  Democritus).

• Since everything is always in a transitory state,
  there is no final whole we call Cosmos or
  World. The world is an interactive field. It
  is wanwu the ten thousand things.
• There are no parts or objects the things
  are simply states of becoming -- just happenings,
  processes, or events.

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West v East - Order

• Order is simply the patterned regularity we find
  in the world as we discover it and as we add to
  it its the way things happen and the way we
  make things happen (the Tao).
• Order, then, is the unique graining in any piece
  of wood, the DNA genetic map in every cell, the
  veins in any blade of grass, and so forth.
• Order is the Eternal Now, an always changing
  pattern of order that inheres in and is
  inseparable from the uncreated and unending world
  that is ordered.

• Regardless of how the world came about, there is
  the general assumption that there is a given
  cosmic design which gives meaning and purpose to
  human life.
• The universe began somewhere and is going
  somewhere, and this tradition is characterized by
  a predominance of linear, cause-and-effect
  explanations for why things are what they are and
  the way they are and will stay the way they are.

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The West asks questions that the East generally
does not ask

• Design by Robert Frost
• I found a dimpled spider, fat and
  white,On a white heal-all, holding up a
  mothLike a white piece of rigid satin
  cloth--Assorted characters of death and
  blightMixed ready to begin the morning
  right,Like the ingredients of a witches'
  broth--A snow-drop spider, a flower like a
  froth,And dead wings carried like a paper
  kite.What had that flower to do with being
  white,The wayside blue and innocent
  heal-all?What brought the kindred spider to that
  height,Then steered the white moth thither in
  the night?What but design of darkness to
  appall?--If design govern in a thing so small.

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Eastern philosophers generally believe that

• they live in spontaneously self-originating and
  self-ordering world which has no beginning or end
  and no independently assigned purpose.
• Eastern Aestheticism means that shaping life is a
  process of education and refinement, comparable
  in many ways to learning to draw bamboo ink
  paintings or to writing well-formed characters in
  the art of calligraphy or to studying the flow of
  the water in a stream.

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West v East Power v Creativity 1

• Power relationships reduce creativity to modes of
  external causation, and the creative element
  (such as the Western notion of God) is completely
  in control of its other. The created object
  itself is literally nothing.

• Creativity is a notion that can only be
  characterized in terms of self-actualization for
  all involved.
• Creativity can only make sense in a world with
  ontological parity. Either everything shares in
  creativity or the world is sharply divided into
  the creator and the created the maker and the
  made.
• There is an absence of linear causality or of
  singular determination.

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West v East Power v Creativity 2

• For example, in the East a poem is not an
  externally crafted product rather, it is a
  creative process of spontaneous
  self-actualization through the realization of
  novelty.
• Creativity is both self-creativity and
  co-creativity in a world of mutually actualized
  selves, each a focus of transactional realization
  in a realm of interdependent processes.

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West v East - Language

• In the West, logical and semantic clarity are
  among the most celebrated of the ideals of
  Reason. These ideas are associated with univocal
  definition guaranteeing unambiguous usage.
• In this sense, the opposite of clarity is
  confusion a state of unarticulated ideas or
  feelings.

• In classical Eastern texts, allusive and
  connotatively rich language is more highly prized
  than clarity, precision, and argumentative rigor.
• For the East, the opposite of clarity is not
  confusion, but something like vagueness.
• We must attempt to avoid what A.N.Whitehead
  called the Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary.
• For example, besides creativity, in Chinese
  cheng carries the associations of sincerity and
  integrity. Can you figure out how all three
  definitions could work together?

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West v East Death

• Death is the end of life.
• With death, a person can either cease to exist or
  expect some sort of judgment and then reward or
  punishment (which would last through eternity)
  based on the kind of life he lived while his
  spiritual self (i.e., his soul) was dwelling in a
  material body.

• Death celebrates the uniqueness of each person by
  punctuating and consummating the ongoing process
  in such a way as to produce distinct intimate
  events defined in terms of our unique relations
  with someone else.
• A person who lives forever is one who is
  remembered by those with whom he had
  relationships. A person who never developed
  relationships and is forgotten ceases to exist.
• Or, in the case of Buddhism, it means that our
  useless human strivings are finally over it is
  a release from this world.

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..

• Pervasive in the Eastern tradition (not just
  Daoist or Confucian), the recognition that the
  form of one kind of thing gives way to the
  ceaseless adventure of becoming other things is
  grounded in a transformational perspective.
• Confucius stood on a riverbank and mused about
  the flux and flow of life, saying, Isnt lifes
  passing just like this, never ceasing day or
  night!
• Such a recognition of continuity and intimacy
  presumably stimulates empathetic feelings for
  other creatures in a shared environment.

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• Life and death are not rivaling forces.
• The Chinese focus is on the interdependence and
  complimentary of opposites on the yin and yang,
  mind and body continuum where each can only be
  explained by reference to each other.
• Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) cosmology is
  non-dualistic. Everything that is, is Brahman.
  The universe has to be grasped dynamically, as it
  moves, vibrates and dances. it moves and grows
  and changes continually. Brahman is the eternal
  Now, and in eternity there is no before or after,
  for everything is everywhere, always.

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A Way of Summing it Up

• Western Thinking
• is based on
• Integrity (one-ness)

• Eastern Thinking
• is based on
• Intimacy (relationships)

Maybe the following charts will help
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INTEGRITY (Western) INTIMACY (Eastern)
1. Objectivity as public verifiability 1. Intimacy is objective, but personal rather than public
2. External over internal relations 2. In an intimate relation, self and other belong together in a way that does not sharply distinguish the two
3. Knowledge as ideally empty of affect (emotional responses) 3. Intimate knowledge has an affective dimension
4. The intellectual psychological distinct from the somatic (relating to the body) 4. Intimacy is somatic (expressed in the body) as well as psychological
5. Knowledge as reflective and self-conscious of its own ground 5. Intimacys ground is not generally self-conscious, reflective, or self-illuminating
6. Knowledge does not necessarily affect knower or known 6. Knowledge limited to intimate circle of experts (experience-based)
7. Correspondence theory of truth (a corresponds to that a) 7. Knowing affects knower and known
8. Language as referential 8. Expression (verbal or otherwise) arises out of mutual effect of knower and known
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INTEGRITY (Western) INTIMACY (Eastern)
AESTHETICS
1. Art as mediating and relating separately existent of self and world. 1. Art as expressive of intrinsic overlap between self and world.
2. Creativity as artistic autonomy individual freedom of expression. 2. Creativity as naturalness or spontaneity arising from self and world together.
3. Work of art as subjective addition to the world. 3. Of the world as well as in it the work of art as necessarily objective as well as subjective.
4. Work art as having own meaning independent of artists intent or audiences response. 4. Artist, audience, work of art as inseparably related (co-creativity by all three).
LOGIC Socratic dialectic (arguments encouraged) Validity based on pure, cold, unemotional, deductive Logic with empirical proofs Persuasion (arguments avoided) Validity based on (1) ancient authority, (2) common observation, and (3) practical effect
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ETHICS
1. Ought as preserving others integrity (or rights). 1. Ought as recognizing and preserving the overlap with the other.
2. Ethical external relation abstracted into universal principles or maxims discourse of responsibility. 2. Situational responsiveness discourse of love or compassion or responsiveness.

POLITICS
1. State composed of individuals bound by social contracts. 1. State holographically (recursively) present in each individual.
2. Emphasis on individual responsibilities and rights. 2. Emphasis on individuals as intrinsically also the body of the state.
3. Only the guilty are guilty no guilt by association. 3. Guilt of one necessarily affects all in relationship.
4. Emphasis on compromise bridging opposing poles. 4. Emphasis on consensus as inherently shared viewpoint.
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OK, you say. People in the East West dont
think differently but they still have different
notions about things because their
attentiveness towards and perception of the world
leads them to reach different conclusions about
things.
OK. So what?
There is an easy (but oversimplified) answer..
Different conclusions become the foundations for
different religions.
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Why should you care about all of this (other than
for a grade)?
One good reason is that you will know more
about the people you meet and work with who may
have religious beliefs which are different from
yours.
Not everyone in the United States is a
Protestant Christian or an Atheist. There are
many other religions actively practiced in the
U.S.
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Non-Religious 16
Islam 21
Judaism 2.2
Buddhism 6
Hinduism 14
Christianity 33
There are a lot of religions in the world, and we
are going to be studying only 5 of them.
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With the exceptions of Islam (600 AD) and
Hinduism (c.a. 1500 BC), almost all of the
major world religions (including Chinese
Confucianism Daoism) began during the period
called THE AXIAL AGE
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According to the German philosopher Karl
Jaspers, the AXIAL AGE was the period from 800 BC
to 200 BC during which the same intensity of
thought appeared in three different regions
China, India and the Occidental Near East West.
After the Axial Age, the different regions of
Earth never again showed such parallelism.
Jaspers defined this period as that against which
future generations measure the quality of their
thinking but was unable to define any cause or
connection for it. The word axial in the phrase
Axial Age should be interpreted to mean pivotal.
The name is derived from the German word Achse,
which means both axis and pivot. However, in this
case the word was mistranslated as axial, and the
term has stuck. The phrase Axial Age is
frequently seen in the writing of
English-speaking theologians such as Karen
Armstrong.
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Characteristics of The AXIAL AGE

• Man becomes aware of existence, himself, and his
• limitations.
• 2. People begin to move into urban areas, and the
  cities
• grow larger and larger (e.g., Greek
  city-states).
• 3. Instead of one butcher or baker or candlestick
  maker, in
• the cities, there are many people who do the
  same
• things. There is a major shift from bartering
  to a
• market economy (with coinage) which includes
• competition. In the competitive struggle,
  some
• people fail and some are successful economic
  class
• stuggles begin to emerge.

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4. City states and regions begin to vie for power
(in order to claim the wealth), and there is a
marked growth of violence as well as a stuggle
for global empires (e.g., Alexander the Great).
The battles and violence leads to the
dislocation of large numbers of people. 5. Man
becomes less certain about his home, his
economic situation, and even about his
existence itself. He yearns for his salvation
(i.e., saved from these things). 6. He tries to
gain salvation by reflection. For the first time
in history, philosophers appear in public.
Philosophical disputes ensue to convince the
other party. This ends in discussion,
fractionalization, and ultimately chaos. 7. This
chaos produces todays thinking categories. 8.
Mans opinions, manners, and customs are hereby
put to the test, doubted, and done away with.
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All these characteristics appeared under the same
sociological circumstances China, India, and the
Occidental Near East West were divided into
small states engaged in a never-ending struggle
against each other. The scholars roamed from city
to city to exchange ideas. These scholars were
the wise men of religion and philosophical
systems in China, Confucianism and Taoism in
India, Brahmanism (later called Hinduism) and
Buddhism in the Occident, the religion of
Zarathustra in Canaan, Judaism and in Greece,
sophism and philosophy.SOURCE Karl Jaspers
Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, Fischer
Bücherei, Frankfurt/M Hamburg, July 1955.
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For This Course, Skills Needed Are - the
ability to listen - the ability to read - the
ability to do independent research - the ability
to do essay writing -having an open and
questioning mind

• Some Essential Points To Remember
• - There are no certain answers (except for the
  tests)
• The main idea is generally exploration, not
• explanation
• You should be prepared to abandon cherished
• notions
• - Youll have more fun in this class if you
  develop an
• interest in the abstract and have a
  curious mind

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So, lets get started!
Lets look at Chapter 1 and then come back for
some questions.
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1. People embrace religion

• a. to gain strength to deal with personal
  problems.
• b. because of the desire for life beyond death.
• c. because of the desire for this life to have
  meaning.
• d. all of these.

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2. Genuine religious experiences have common
elements (according to Wach, a comparative
religions scholar). The pattern includes

• the experience involves the persons whole being.
• an experience with the Unseen or Sacred Reality.
• c. the experience is the most intense of all
  human experiences.
• d. all of these.

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3. The experience of "connecting" with a divine,
transcendent reality or Unseen Reality has been
called by many names including __________.

• a. God-realization.
• b. Awakening.
• c. Enlightenment.
• d. Any of the above.

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4. Our two primary modes of understanding the
reality around us are through _____________ and
_______________.

• a. non-emotional responses, direct knowledge
• b. emotional responses, belief in a non-rational
• reality
• c. intuition, emotional responses
• d. rational thought, non-rational modes of knowing

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5. Westerners sometimes embrace Eastern religions
in an attempt to avoid lifes realities.
Psychologist John Welwoods calls this attempt
_________ _________.

• a. spiritual escapism
• b. world denial.
• c. spiritual bypassing.
• d. new-age pilgrimages.

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6. These elements, characteristic of religions
everywhere, serve as aids to connect followers to
the divine.

• a. Spiritual practices
• b. Sacraments
• c. Rituals
• d. any of these.

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7. Religious myths help followers understand the
divine and our relationship with the divine. A
function of these myths is

• a. to aid in personal inner exploration.
• b. to explain the creation of the world.
• c. to present a model for how people should
  behave.
• d. any of these.

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8. Joseph Campbell interpreted the myth of the
hero's journey primarily as a representation of a
__________ triumph.

• a. psychological
• b. sociological
• c. moral
• d. physical

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9. Followers of any religion who resist
contemporary influence while affirming
historically traditional doctrines or practices
should be called _______, a term more appropriate
than fundamentalists, which is misleading in
several ways.

• a. heretics.
• b. conservatives.
• c. absolutists.
• d. liberals.

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Any Questions?
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