Collective representations are the result of an immense cooperation, which stretches out not only into space but into time as well; to make them, a multitude of minds have associated, united and combined their ideas and sentiments: for them, long generations have accumulated their experience and their knowledge. A special intellectual activity is therefore concentrated in them, which is in!nite...

Historians of Indian religion agree that in the time between the seventh and fifth centuries BC a fundamental change in the orientation of religious life occurred. among various groups of religious thinkers, both orthodox and unorthodox, new theories developed about human action and its role in relation to repeated births and deaths. These thinkers’ theories on how the world is constructed and ...

Ghasem Amin is known as a harbinger of women’s social and cultural rights in the world of Arabs. Primarily, he centered his ideas on three axes: a; women’s education to the primary level, B; necessity of women’s free will and decision making in issues like marriage, c; religious veil (covering all the body except the face and the two palms); although the outcomes of his ideas require more discu...

The notion of the bodhisattva, the selfless individual who is dedicated to alleviating the sufferings of others, is traditionally articulated within a Mahāyāna Buddhist framework. The question posed here is whether and to what extent this religious ideal can be conceived of, or instantiated by, individuals whose religiosity is framed by a different set of beliefs and values, taking the Roman Ca...

In this Alaska Native study, cultural "insiders" analyzed problems associated with increased alcohol availability, factors which have reduced alcohol-related problems, and ideas for improving treatment in an Inuit community. Participants described frequent binging, blackouts, family violence, suicide, loss of child custody, and feelings of intergenerational grief. Helpful existing treatment app...

Leon Kass is much misunderstood. He is not simply a Republican ideologue who tailored his ideas to break out of the ivory tower and into the halls of power. Nor does he look simply to use human nature as a moral guide. When the full range of his writings is considered and set in the tradition of his teachers, Hans Jonas and Leo Strauss, what emerges is a natural law position colored by religiou...

Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, now established, is the only workable explanation we have for the remarkable fact of our own existence, the vast diversity of plant and animal life, the compelling illusion of design in nature, and the architecture of the human mind. We are risen apes, not fallen angels. Our different races and ethnicities hide an essential truth: we are all African...