Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Diss.--Bonn, 1950.

The focus of this thesis is demonstrating how the conceptual difference between secularity and religion is a foundational presupposition of the modern academic and political discourse. The thesis will focus on a critical analysis of Charles Taylor's philosophical work, particularly A Secular Age. Taylor's work is a telling example of how the current academic discourse about religion and secularity describes the two phenomena as radically different, two different “states of existence” that appeal to different contents of human consciousness. Taylor's philosophy has to rely on a fundamental presupposition of reality, so that he can describe the history of Western civilization as an unavoidable epistemic gain that has reached its peak with the development of the modern understanding of the world. Despite his attempt to develop a “positive” story to explain the development of secularity, Taylor has to rely on a moment of “loss” to make sense of his historical narrative. In the second part of thesis, I will present the argument that the concept of “faith” can be understood as a fundamental form of relation that connects individuals and societies to an ontology of the world. In pre-modern societies, the concept was understood as a normative source for the ethical and existential understanding of a society in both religious and nonreligious contexts, not just as a mystical connection to a transcendental source of truth. With modernity, the understanding of the concept has changed. However, this different understanding has not been followed by a disappearance of the attitude of “faith” in non-religious contexts. The “attitude of faith” can be understood as the fundamental connection a society/civilization establishes with its Weltaanschauung, its metaphysical world-view. More than being a “religious” connection to the transcendent, faith would be the form of connection through which human beings substantiate the ultimate nature of their claims.

The following is intended to suggest a fairly simple contention concerning a number of interconnected propositions made in connection with the debates on modernity and secularism. None of these propositions is particularly novel, nor is this the first time that they have been put forward. Yet the issues raised have remained with us and become all the more pressing; I can see that points that were made, against the flow, more than two decades ago, now stand out more cogently than ever, and are being revisited, rediscovered or simply discovered by many. The simple contention I wish to start with concerns Islamism, often brought out emblematically when secularism and modernity are discussed. Like other self-consciously retrogressive identitarian motifs, ideas, sensibilities, moods and inflections of politics that sustain differentialist culturalism and are sustained by it conceptually, Islamism has come to gain very considerable political and social traction over the past quarter of a century. This had until recently reached the extent that it, as a perceptual grid of social and cultural purchase relating to societies and countries that many associate with Islam, has become hegemonic in public discussions about society and politics and, until recently, hegemonic without serious challenge. It has also been crucial for triggering the latest round of antisecular discussions and polemics. The following discussion will proceed in three stages. First, an overall characterisation of anti-secular polemics and motifs in their broader discursive and other contexts and motifs will be offered, with special attention to writings characterised as post-colonialist. Next will be offered a discussion of some keywords that come up in this context and which indicate the conceptual profile in question. The essay will then move on to discuss two specific methods of using history in arguments against secularism. Finally, the essay will concentrate on post-colonialist discussions of Islam and secularism, exemplified in a particular case.:1 Sentiment, Pathos, Rhetoric........................................................................4 2 Moods and Keywords.................................................................................11 3 Actually Existing Secularism and the Challenge of Fate........................21 4 One Genealogy of Post-colonialist Eminence.........................................38 5 Bibliography.................................................................................................51

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Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Manuscript. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 190-194). / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue. / 前言 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一章 --- 潘霍華的生平及其思想發展 --- p.6 / Chapter ´¡ --- 終生的問題，及該問題的性質 --- p.6 / Chapter ´Ł --- 三個階段 --- p.8 / Chapter （一） --- 神學的基礎：尋求啟示的具體性 --- p.9 / Chapter （二） --- 神學的焦點：基督教的窄門 --- p.22 / Chapter （三） --- 神學的成長：「俗世的基督教」 --- p.32 / Chapter ´Ø --- 總結 --- p.46 / Chapter 第二章 --- 「非宗教的解釋」之性質 --- p.51 / Chapter ´¡ --- 「將聖經名詞作非宗教的解釋」之定義 --- p.51 / Chapter ´Ł --- 從潘霍華對宗教的概念看非宗教的解釋之性 --- p.54 / Chapter (一) --- 受巴特的影響，奧巴特不同的地方 --- p.54 / Chapter (二) --- 宗教的七種性質 --- p.55 / Chapter ´Ø --- 從潘霍華批評布勒特受和巴特看「非宗教的解釋」之性質 --- p.68 / Chapter (一) --- 巴特的「啟示的實證論」 --- p.70 / Chapter (二) --- 布勒特曼的自由主義 --- p.80 / Chapter ´Ð --- 總結：「非宗教的解釋」之緣起，需要滿足的條件，要面對的困難，工作的目的，進行的標準和方法。 --- p.93 / Chapter 第三章 --- 現世的肯定 --- p.96 / Chapter ´¡ --- 引言：「現世的肯定」、「現世的信仰」的教會」三者的關係 --- p.96 / Chapter ´Ł --- 正視及齡的世界 --- p.99 / Chapter ´Ø --- 從潘霍華思想的發展，看肯定現世的因素 --- p.104 / Chapter (一) --- 尼采的影響：對大地的熱愛 --- p.104 / Chapter (二) --- 自由神學的背景 --- p.105 / Chapter （三） --- 舊約聖經的角度 --- p.109 / Chapter ´Ð --- 現世的肯定之神學基礎：世界的真實性和基督論的關係 --- p.111 / Chapter (一) --- 「終極的事」和「欠終極的事」 --- p.112 / Chapter (二) --- 反對二元論的謬誤 --- p.113 / Chapter （三） --- 世界的真實和上帝的真實 --- p.117 / Chapter ´Þ --- 現世肯定的表現 --- p.122 / Chapter (一) --- 在現世中愛上帝 --- p.122 / Chapter (二) --- 對歷史文化的關注和珍惜 --- p.124 / Chapter ´Æ --- 總結：道成因身的基督論帶來脫離束縛的自由 --- p.127 / Chapter 第四章 --- 現世信仰 --- p.129 / Chapter ´¡ --- 引言：「非宗教的解釋」´ؤ´ؤ信息內容和表達方式 --- p.129 / Chapter ´Ł --- 十字架的神學：被擠出世界之外的上帝 --- p.130 / Chapter (一) --- 分析潘霍華十字架的基督論 --- p.131 / Chapter （二) --- 幾個重要的思想 --- p.137 / Chapter A --- 信息：「耶穌基督´ؤ´ؤ為他人而活的人」 --- p.137 / Chapter B --- 重新建立起越的觀念 --- p.138 / Chapter C --- 及齡的世界使我們更接近上帝 --- p.139 / Chapter ´Ø --- 作基督徒的意義：參與上帝在世上的苦難 --- p.141 / Chapter (一) --- 分析潘霍華「悔改的第二層意思」 --- p.141 / Chapter （二) --- 兩個重要思想 --- p.147 / Chapter A --- 責任的概念 --- p.147 / Chapter B --- 基督教信仰深化「現世」的意義 --- p.148 / Chapter ´Ð --- 秘密的操練 --- p.150 / Chapter (一) --- 「非宗教的解釋」最深邃的一面：禱告與正義的行動 --- p.150 / Chapter （二) --- 「秘密的操練」：名詞的來源 --- p.152 / Chapter （三） --- 潘霍華個人的經驗 --- p.155 / Chapter ´Þ --- 總結：信仰的信息和信仰的語言 --- p.162 / Chapter 第五章 --- 結論：現世的教會 --- p.164 / Chapter ´¡ --- 引言 --- p.164 / Chapter ´Ł --- 一個集合和分散的團契 --- p.169 / Chapter ´Ø --- 教會作為集合的團契：轉變成基督的樣式 --- p.171 / Chapter ´Ð --- 教會作為分散的團契：服侍世界，見證基督 --- p.173 / Chapter V --- 總結 --- p.180 / Chapter （一） --- 教會是「非宗教的解釋」之具體表現 --- p.180 / Chapter （二） --- 潘霍華對我們的挑戰，對今日的意義 --- p.185 / 參考書目 --- p.190

This dissertation focuses on the different ways that religion and secularism are understood and articulated through the practices of Lebanese citizens. Situated at the intersections of legal anthropology, theories of secularism and religion, and interdisciplinary studies of the state and gendered citizenship, my research invites us to rethink theories of liberalism, feminism, and secular modernity by demonstrating how they manifest in non-Western contexts. My project thus challenges us to think more critically about the supposed universality of Euro American articulations of secularism, liberalism, and feminism and asks us to reexamine how these categories are circulated and regulated internationally. I study two practices of Lebanese citizenship; religious conversion as an act that moves between different personal status laws, and advocacy for a secular personal status and/or civil marriage law. This advocacy is a crucial part of what I am calling "da`wa secularism," a term that brings into relief the pedagogical aspect of an activism that aims to saturate the public sphere with a "culture of secularism." Both conversion and da'wa secularism are practices that are predicated on and directed towards the Lebanese legal system. Acts of conversion rely on the laws currently in place; advocacy for a secular personal status seeks to reform them. Despite this divergence between these two practices of Lebanese citizenship, both are couched in and discursively reproduce important aspects of the ideological framework of the Lebanese state. These aspects include the secularity of the state, the role the state is supposed to play in ensuring the protection of Lebanon's pluralism, and the state's mandate to buffer citizens from the overreaching of religious personal status institutions. However, conversion reproduces the state's secularity as the universal space which allows a citizen to change religions freely, while activists suggest that this form of secularism is deficient, dangerous, and "not truly" secular. Similarly, acts of conversion reproduce the citizen as a category of practice that is refracted through the registers of personal status and civil/secular laws and within which the latter has ultimate jurisdiction over the former, while advocacy for a secular personal status seeks to produce Lebanese citizens that are only, and entirely, under the jurisdiction of the civil and secular state. At stake are contending views of secularism, religion, and citizenship.

This thesis is a comparative study of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981) and Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (1993). It compares the novels' representations of the postcolonial Indian nation-state and of the conflict between secular and religious perspectives in the Indian public sphere. The novels are interpreted as responses to specific moments of crisis in the so-called "secular consensus" of the Indian state: Midnight's Children to the Emergency of 1975, A Suitable Boy to the rise of the Hindu right in the early 1990s. The aim of this study is to establish secularism as an interpretative concept in South Asian literature in English. Each chapter examines different aspects of the texts in relation to secularism. The first chapter outlines two different theoretical positions, Seth's "rationalist" and Rushdie's "radical" secularism. The second examines the question of minority identity in the two novels. The third explores the different narrative structures that shape their ideas of Indian citizenship. The fourth compares their differing versions of India's national past. The fifth interrogates the status of English as a secular language in the Indian context by examining the interaction between English and Indian vernaculars in the two texts. The dialogic form of the novel has been appropriated by postcolonial Indian writers in English in order to stage contrasting religious and secular worldviews. This dialogism, it is suggested, may offer the possibility of opening up the public sphere to different modes of communication not exclusively defined by rationalism.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, March 2008.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2014. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-97)