L‟objectif de mon mémoire se concentre sur la notion d‟altérité émanant des philosophies d‟Emmanuel Lévinas et de Paul Ricoeur ; je m‟intéresse plus précisément au concept clé d‟éthique et de savoir en quoi enrichit-elle le dialogue judéo-chrétien. Le point initial de ma réflexion est l‟herméneutique biblique, qu‟Emmanuel Lévinas et Paul Ricoeur articulent, d‟après moi, différemment selon leurs héritages religieux respectifs à savoir juif et chrétien. Néanmoins, la signification éthique des Textes Sacrés perdure pour chacun d‟eux comme lieu commun même si la signification leur est différente et propre à leurs traditions religieuses. Ainsi, dans ce mémoire l‟altérité développée par Lévinas, talmudiste reconnu, sera comparée avec la pensée de Ricoeur dont la conception est davantage chrétienne, en référence à son travail exégétique. Quand bien même Lévinas et Ricoeur ont tenu à distinguer leurs philosophies de leurs théologies, l‟hypothèse de départ prend une liberté herméneutique qui oscille souvent entre philosophie et théologie et qui tend à retracer au mieux l‟altérité et son lien intrinsèque avec l‟éthique. Cette lecture comparatiste m‟amènera donc à penser et à intégrer l‟altérité comme une prémisse éthique au dialogue judéo-chrétien. Mon travail en sciences des religions qui prend racine depuis l‟herméneutique même, s‟oriente vers une perspective éthique et dialogique et c‟est cette visée de médiation interreligieuse qui lui confère une appartenance à cette discipline. / The Otherness is the focus of my thesis, a notion that emanates from Emmanuel Levinas’ and Paul Ricoeur’s philosophies; I’m interested more precisely about the concept of ethics and to discover how it improves the reflection upon Jewish and Christian dialogue. The initial point of my reflexion is the biblical hermeneutics that Emmanuel Lévinas and Paul Ricoeur structure, to my point of view, variously depending their religious background: Jewish for Lévinas and Christian for Ricoeur. Nevertheless, the ethical signification of the Bible perpetuates for both of them as a commonplace, even if the signification is different and inherent to their own religious traditions. In my thesis, the Otherness, as elaborated by Lévinas, will be compared with Ricoeur’s thoughts, whom conception is more Christian as his biblical works let us guess. Even if Lévinas and Ricoeur have tried to distinguish their philosophical work from their theological one, claiming a neutrality about theology, my initial hypothesis take an hermeneutical freedom which often oscillates between theology and philosophy and which try to recount the alterity and its intrinsic link to ethics. A comparatist reading will lead me to think that the ethics of the Otherness is the basis of Jewish and Christian dialogue because of Levinas’ and Ricoeur’s works. My work in religious studies is based upon hermeneutics and turns toward an ethical and dialogical perspective; it is this interreligious mediation aim which confers to my thesis a belonging in this discipline.

Within American religious culture, there is a small but significant and growing movement that overlaps and interacts with the environmental movement. It's known by many names, including Contemporary Paganism, Neo-Paganism, Earth Religion, and Nature Religion. A few years of observation at Starwood Festival, the largest annual Pagan gathering in North America, revealed that many individuals who identify as Pagan (or Wiccan, Druid, animist, or another of the identities that fall under the Pagan umbrella) include in their spiritual practice engagement with faeries or other nature spirits. My research employed qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews to examine the extent to which engagement with faeries and other nature spirits among Pagan festival attendees affects their relationships with nature and their behaviors in the natural world. The Pagan understanding of the Earth and all of its inhabitants and elements as animate or inspirited, as exemplified in the phenomenon of faery faith, conflates the wellbeing of the Earth and wild nature with the psychological wellbeing of each individual human, making this worldview highly compatible with the emerging field of ecopsychology. Drawing on theories of enchantment, consciousness, multiple realities, imagination, and play, my interpretations of the stories of my informants contribute additional perspective to the contemporary practice of Paganism as a small but growing countercultural movement within the dominant Western culture, particularly as it informs the human-(in)-nature relationship.

We live in a so-called late-modern age where religion and various world-views are something one must relate to in society, no matter what one thinks of that and wherever one lives in the world. This statement applies not least if we are to be able to live in consensus with each other and if we want a world with fewer conflicts, which I, without any evidence, claim that the majority of the world´s population wants.     The fact that people with different truth claims, religions an world-views live side by side as today, is not a new phomenon globally and historically, but the Christian conformity that was formerly the practice in the West has today been replaced by a multitude of world-views through increased immigration and through increased secularization.     The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and describe the mission of religious philosophy in a late-modern, multi-religious, pluralistic world. And in the first place to find out what the three religious philosophers Kevin Schilbrack from USA, Mikael Stenmark from Sweden and Nick Trakakis from Australia say about this. By comparing their perceptions with each other, I want to point out similarities and differences and see why I mean that the discipline should be developed for one or the other direction.     I advocate that religion of philosophy continues to work with the methods by which one seeks to understand, describe and explain different religions ans world-views, as well as critically review, assess or evaluate them. This is because the philosophy of religion is to be taken seriously in order for philosophy of religion to take society seriously. Religion of philosophy should also study lived religion as a complement to the textculture.     Moving the starting point to the religion you are studying can also be of benefit to the study of religious philosophy in order to get a more accurate picture of foreign religions. The advantage of what I advocate here is that in the future we can get a philosophy of religion that is not normative, defined that it has the starting point in theism, that the confessional is the norm, or relativistic.

Hick’s pluralist assumption has remained the most knowable model of religious pluralism in the last few decades. Many have, from the perspectives of various major world religions, questioned his notion that the teachings of all religions are derived from the same Absolute Truth and that salvific-end is one, yet little attention has been paid to the traditions that he graded as unauthentic and non-valuable according to his soteriological and ethical criteriology. The purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate the exclusiveness of Hick’s model by describing a tradition called “Chinese Folk Religion” that does not fit into his definition of ‘authentic religion’. As the study suggested, his understanding of the world religious situation is over-generalised and simplified, and his particular criteriology does not treat all traditions fairly or pluralistically. As a response, this thesis proposed a more inclusive theory that also integrates the currently disregarded tradition into the interpretation.

Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-71), Anglican theologian and philosopher, hastypically been remembered as a Kantian agnostic whose ideas led to those of Herbert Spencer. This thesis provides a critical challenge to this picture, and offers a thorough revisioning of Mansel's theology in context. First, concerning misrepresentation, I argue it was Spencer himself who, having had a youthful relationship with Mansel's sister Katherine, developed a prejudice against him, distorted the reception of his work, and promoted the caricature image of Mansel as an unwitting agnostic and "Kantist". With the help of Liberals such as Goldwin Smith and Leslie Stephen, Spencer's portrayal has stuck. I refute this picture and offer an alternative reading of Mansel. Second, concerning personalism, I show that Mansel was essentially a theistic personalist, indebted to the traditions of Bishop Browne, Bishop Butler, and Scottish common sense philosophy. Mansel represents a mid-Victorian example of "IThou" philosophical theology, grounded in the religious practice of Christian prayer. Mansel's theistic personalism had much in common with Newman's theology, and I explore the ways in which Newman's Grammar of Assent was written in response to Mansel's Bampton Lectures. Third, concerning politics, I argue that Spencer's distorted picture of Mansel as a Kantian agnostic served the political interests of partisan Liberals, and was aggressively spread by them because of Mansel's own Tory commitments. Located in context, Mansel, is here interpreted with reference to key personal relationships and personal networks, including his connection with leading Tories, such as Lord Carnarvon and Benjamin Disraeli. Crucially, I interpret his controversies with Frederick Denison Maurice and John Stuart Mill with reference to the political events of 1859 and 1865. These controversies were simultaneously religious and political, and receive a careful contextual reading.

Selon la version courante du « dilemme d’Euthyphron », on considère que lorsque les théistes tentent de décrire la relation entre Dieu et la morale, ils doivent choisir entre volontarisme théologique et objectivisme robuste (le réalisme moral, en particulier). Selon la première option, les statuts moraux fondamentaux dépendent essentiellement des volontés contingentes, ou nécessaires, de Dieu. Selon la deuxième, Dieu agit en conformité avec un ordre moral objectif et nécessaire, en lui-même indépendant de sa volonté, comme il l’est de tout type de volonté ou de pro-attitude, au moins pour ce qui est des statuts moraux fondamentaux (et les propriétés morales sont conséquentielles aux propriétés non morales, sinon réductibles à elles). Ici nous argumentons en faveur de l’existence d’une troisième possibilité pour les théistes, refusant l’externalisme moral assumé par les deux premières options. Selon cette troisième option, on nie qu’objets, états de choses, actions ou personnes puissent posséder une valeur ou générer des obligations morales indépendamment de l’ensemble de nos pro-attitudes et des fins que nous sommes inclinés à poursuivre. Nous proposons, contre les objections réalistes en particulier, la défense d’une version universaliste (ou non relativiste) de cette position métaéthique, et tentons de montrer sa compatibilité avec le théisme classique : la théorie anti-objectiviste de la loi naturelle, selon laquelle les valeurs et les normes pertinentes pour nous dépendent de notre complexe motivationnel, en dépendant de nos inclinations universellement partagées et des fins (ou de la fin) en lesquelles (en laquelle) nous trouvons notre achèvement et notre bonheur. / According to the common version of the “Euthyphro dilemma”, it is generally considered that when theists try to describe the relation between God and morality, they must either opt for theological voluntarism or for hard objectivism (moral realism, in particular). According to the first option, fundamental moral statuses depend essentially on God’s contingent, or even necessary, will. According to the second, God acts in conformity to an objective (and necessary) moral order that is in itself independent of His will, as it is of any kind of pro-attitude, will or desire, at least for the most fundamental and prior moral statuses (and moral properties are consequential upon nonmoral ones, if not reducible to them). I argue here for the existence of a third possibility for theists, rejecting the metaethical externalism assumed by the first two options. According to this third option, it is not the case that objects, state of affairs, actions or persons can have value or generate obligations to us independently of all our pro-attitudes and of the ends we are inclined to pursue. I propose a defence, against realist objections in particular, of a universalist (or non relativist) version of that metaethical position and try to show its compatibility with classical theism : the anti-objectivist natural law theory, according to which values and norms relevant for us depend on our motivational set, depending on our – universally shared – natural inclinations or essential dispositions to love and pursue certain ends (or possibly one ultimate end) preferently to others, and to find our completion and happiness in them (in it).

This study explores how the corporal punishment experienced by learners in Nepalese schools can impact upon multiple aspects of their lives. I examine how these short and long-term effects can extend into adulthood using an auto/biographical methodology; from a perspective influenced by my own encounters as a corporal punishment survivor from Nepal. Corporal punishment continues to be used in Nepalese schools, with the support of many teachers, parents and school management committees, despite several government policy initiatives and court rulings against it. In contrast to worldwide developments (notably in Scandinavia and America), research into corporal punishment in Nepal tends to be rare, quantitative and focused upon the prevalence and short-term effects as described by group participants and newspaper articles. This study addresses the urgent need to increase public awareness, using personal accounts describing the long-term outcomes of corporal punishment, with a depth of detail facilitated by an auto/biographical research methodology. Participants in the study expressed feelings of relief and increased self-understanding, although for myself at least, these were accompanied by feelings of grief and confusion. The lives of five corporal punishment survivors are explored through a series of interviews carried out in the Devchuli municipality of Nawalparasi, Nepal, between November 2015 and January 2016. The first is my own story, the second is a pilot interview and the other three are discussed under the themes of immediate compliance, severing dichotomies, disempowered bodies and the spiritual threat of spatio-temporal appropriation. The participants, whose identities are protected, look back, as adults, upon their experiences of corporal punishment at school and consider possible links between these and their current social, political, economic and spiritual challenges. Simultaneously, the study questions whether ‘effects’ can ever be conceptually or temporally contained within ‘multi-faceted’ and ‘becoming’ identities, using examples from the participants’ self-appraisals. I examine literature from the global debate on the effects of corporal punishment upon children, including the contrasting methodologies of Murray Straus, Alice Miller and Elizabeth Gershoff. The impact of corporal punishment upon notions of personhood is explored using Theodor Adorno’s interpretation of reification and comparable notions of objectification challenged by Andrea Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum and Paolo Freire. Corporal punishment is discussed in relation to power, conflict and the Holocaust, using Adorno and Bauman’s descriptions of authoritarian behaviours and immediate compliance, and Nietzsche and Foucault’s notions of punishment as a spectacle. Conditions for the possibility of corporal punishment are located to traditions deifying teachers, judgement-based belief systems and neo-liberal ideologies of competition and performativity. These are contrasted with alternative, non-punitive pedagogical and theological resources. Participants explore the ways in which healing and holistic self-development can be blocked by everyday vocabularies of violence and conditionality, triggering destructive individual and collective over-determined reactions. My study ‘concludes’ with reflections upon how corporal punishment has affected my participants’ lives: with their social roles hampered by defensive masks and evasive dances; their political lives blocked by fears of punishment; their economic lives stilted by caution and low self-esteem and their spiritual lives distorted by disenchantment and disappointment. Methodology and theory converge as my study rejects inherently disciplinarian, Enlightenment-led demands fo**r rational or scientific ‘proof’ of psychological effects, by presenting auto/biography itself, especially ‘child-standpoint’ narratives, as valid revolutionary praxis, effervescent with resistance to punitive ideologies and practices and dedicated to the liberation of our present from a painful past.

This research will focus specifically on SWB [spiritual well being] among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). By virtue of his membership in this denomination, the researcher is more familiar with the theology, religious life and traditions of the LDS than those of any other denomination. Latter-day Saint theology has been well defined, and because of a fundamental belief in the prophetic ability of a single leader of the church, the doctrine and practices of the Latter-day Saints are consistent throughout the United States and the world.

Prophecy appears to play an important role in the Book of Mormon. The prophets evidently felt it necessary to include a considerable amount of prophetic material in this modern book of scripture. Three general divisions of book of mormon prophecy can be made: (1) prophecies which relate to the period of time prior to the year 421 A.D., the approximate date of the final writing on the plates of Mormon, (2) prophecies which relate to the period 421 to 1830, the publication date of the Book of Mormon, and (3) prophecies which relate to the period 1830 onward. The first two divisions above pertain to the period of time prior to the year 1830 A.D. and thus are not pertinent to the discussion under consideration in this thesis. It would be natural to suppose that many of the prophecies relating to the third division would have been already fulfilled. The evidence of fulfillment of prophecies following the publication of the Book of Mormon is added proof of its genuine authenticity. The scriptures indicate that the fulfillment of prophecies made by a prophet is one way of knowing whether or not he is a genuine prophet. There are a number of problems which present themselves as the prophecies of the Book of Mormon are read and considered. Some of these problems are: 1. How much importance is attached to prophecy? 2. What seems to be the purpose of prophecy? 3. Are the prophets dealing with similar basic issues in their prophecies? 4. If so, what are these issues? 5. Can a classification be made of the prophecies? 6. Are the prophecies which deal with the same subject consistent in that which is foretold? 7. Is there sufficient evidence to show fulfillment of the prophecies which should have come to pass since the publication of the Book of Mormon? This thesis will deal with the above problems. The writer will attempt to classify the prophecies of the Book of Mormon that relate to the period from 1830 onward and to present evidence in regard to the fulfillment of these prophecies.

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