Category: ECERP2017
Fostering Moral Competence with KMDD (Konstanz Method of Dilemma-Discussion)
Well designed ethics classes can enchance moral competence development which plays an important role in a general personality and identity development It has been also proved that an effective way to stimulate development must put individuals in situations of cognitive conflict (Turiel, 1966). It shows how important the quality of reasoning is in the general …
Living the Rhetoric of Dialogue: An Ecumenical Challenge
“Dialogue is a manner of acting, an attitude; a spirit which guides one’s conduct. It implies concern, respect, and hospitality toward the other. It leaves room for the other person’s identity, modes of expression, and values. Dialogue is thus the norm and necessary manner of every form of Christian mission, as well as of every …
Porphyry, An Anti-Christian Plotinian Platonist
Porphyry, the Phoenician polymath, having studied with Plotinus when he was thirty years old, was a well-known Hellenic philosopher, an opponent of Christianity, a defender of Paganism and was born in Tyre, in the Roman Empire. We know of his anti-Christian ideology and of his defence of traditional Roman religions, by means of a fragment …
Arguing About Religious Identity and the No True Scotsman Fallacy
Anthony Flew critiqued a particular argumentative manoeuvre he dubbed, ‘The No True Scotsman Move’, where a speaker redefines an original claim by inserting the term ‘true’as an attributive adjective thereby restricting the extension of their first assertion. It is often appealed to in religious-apologetic diatribe. One non-academic book on fallacies names it, ‘The No True …
Numbers, Geometry, and Mathematical Axioms: The Problem of Metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason
We have shown that 1) “the representation I think” – the transcendental unity of self-consciousness – is homogeneous with “pure apperception” which signifies “the thoroughgoing identity of oneself in all possible representations” which “grounds empirical consciousness a priori” (A116): 2) “the representation I think,” which can accompany all others, is to cognize “through categories whatever …
Personal Identity and Wholeness: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Reflection on Mission
The aim of this essay is to argue the way the fundamental aspects of von Balthasar’s distinctive theological aesthetic and dramatic model of human personal identity and wholeness fit together around his key perception of ‘mission’. Based on the perspective of von Balthasar’s theological thought, a human being becomes a ‘unique person’ when encountering God …
The Evolving Narrative of Indian Mythology and Classical Arts
Abstract philosophy is best explained through effective metaphors. Ancient Indian mythology and classical dance are reflective of this; having been integral to the propagation of philosophical thought from one generation to another. Over centuries, both these mediums have simultaneously evolved by virtue of being influenced by the prevalent socio-cultural scene. And the perspectives that we …
On Eric Voegelin’s (1901–1985) Totalitarianism and Gnosticism: Gnosticism As the Nature of Modernity
This paper is part of the a master’s thesis in progress. The chosen theme arises from the need to understand the relation that the political philosopher makes between totalitarianism and ideologies, Gnosticism and modernity. For this research, two basic concepts proposed by his philosophical-political theory will be used as fundamental theoretical base: political religions and …
The Complaint of Rumi’s Reed: It’s Significance as the Identity of Man in the Concept of Existence
The Quran opens with “In the Name of God the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate”. Muslims read this verse in their daily life, in prayer, before eat and even before driving. For the Muslims this verse is not only a way of life that is rooted in tradition, but also it signifies a cosmological and …