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Abstract
Drawing on Kuhn’s understanding of scientific paradigms as exemplary ways of problem solving, this article critically assesses the current status of the study of Javanese Islam, in particular the long-standing debate on its nature. Is it a syncretist, animist religion or is it essentially Islamic? An analysis from a Kuhnian perspective indicates that both stances are actually the outcome of the same standardized theoretical approach. Consequentially, certain phenomena that are usually considered part of the Javanese religious condition now appear as anomalies of a paradigm. They will remain unsolvable, unless different theoretical approaches are developed. Locating a central assumption in the research into non-Western cultures – the universality of religion – is a step in that direction. From there, generating new descriptions and new research questions becomes a possibility.
Abstract
This article examines the genealogy of the concept of “transconscious,” a key notion in the work of Mircea Eliade. It argues that the “transconscious” is the inheritor of a long psychological tradition in the study of religion, namely that of the religious faculty. The first section looks at the religious faculty in the work of Max Müller and some of his German post-Kantian precursors, namely, Friedrich Jacobi and Jakob Fries. The subsequent sections examine the history of terms such as “super-conscious,” “supra-conscious,” and “trans-conscious” in turn-of-the-century philosophy and theology in the period before 1947. I argue that there are four intellectual strands that go into the making of Eliade’s “transconscious,” namely: (1) psychology of mysticism; (2) occultism; (3) interpretations of yoga; (4) contemporary philosophy and theology. The final section looks at Eliade’s uses of the “transconscious” and at his debate with C. G. Jung regarding religion and the mind.
Abstract
This article explores how the Lengyan jing, or Śūrangama Sūtra – an apocryphal Buddhist scripture written in China around 705 CE – remapped Chinese Buddhist understandings of moral responsibility in consequential ways. Although grounded in the orthodox doctrinal premise that all sentient beings innately possess buddha-nature, the Lengyan jing is punctuated by warnings about the danger that even the most earnest seekers of enlightenment might be possessed by demons, embark on evil behavior, and end up fully demonic. Such warnings depart from longstanding norms in Buddhist ethics, according to which responsibility for fault is measured in terms of a person’s intentions. Instead, I argue that the Lengyan jing articulates a moral logic of what Sandra Macpherson calls “tragic responsibility.” This logic informed important but overlooked aspects of the soteriological vision found in key texts from the Chan (Japanese Zen) tradition, which rose to prominence in the centuries following the Lengyan jing’s composition.
Abstract
It often has been an illusion that Filipinos lack indigeneity due to the ties with the United States since 1898. Lost in these mists were the indigenous agendas that lay underneath the official narratives. The article presents a background and then examines the administration of Elpidio Quirino, president of the Philippines from 1948 to 1953, particularly his neutralist Pacific Pact initiative and the failed use of military force against the Huks. It concludes with a discussion of the rise of Ramón Magsaysay. It then examines Magsaysay, Philippine president from 1953 to 1957, beginning as defense secretary, support from the United States, the Magsaysay myth, his counterinsurgency campaign against the Huks, his election as president, international leadership, and legacies after his death. The study will show how the top-down policies of Quirino reliant on military force gave way to the unifying, reformist, inclusive, and inspirational leadership of Magsaysay, which became a kind of third force apart from the oligarchy and the Communists.