Que s’est-il passé entre Aṣ̌i et Zaraϑuštra? (original) (raw)
Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory
founded Aktion Sühnezeichen (ASF, literally: Action Sign of Atonement) as an organization that was meant to atone for the National Socialist past. Throughout the 1960s, the organization established itself in the Federal Republic as a valued civil society actor. 1 In the founding appeal with the title Wir bitten um Frieden (We ask for Peace), Kreyssig sets the conceptual framework for ASF's reconciliation efforts, which is characterized by the ideas of peace, reconciliation, atonement, and forgiveness. The starting 1 In the following decades, the organization received awards for its civil society commitment, such as the Theodor Heuss Prize in 1965 and the Buber-Rosenzweig-Medaille in 1993. For comprehensive studies about ASF, see Gabriele Kammerer, Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste. Aber man kann es einfach tun
Asceticism between Agon and Agency (2019)
"Zu Tisch bei den Heiligen...". Askese, Nahrung und Individualisierung im spätantiken Mönchstum. Gedenkkolloquium für Prof. Dr. Veit Rosenberger (7. April 1963 - 1. September 2016), 2019
A late thirteenth-century Stoning of St. Stephen, currently in the Cathedral Museum in Mainz, Germany, shows the martyr smiling radiantly in the midst of his execution. In contrast to Stephen’s saintly bliss, his executioners scream in rage. The narrative of St. Stephen, from the Acts of the Apostles, reports that those present at Stephen’s trial ‘viderunt faciem eius tamquam faciem angeli [saw his face as if it had been the face of an angel]’ (Acts 6:15). Although the biblical story describes Stephen as crying out to God at the moment of his death, the makers of the Mainz relief applied the description of the saint as angelic – which they understood to mean that he smiled softly – to the martyrdom in order to highlight his joy at dying for Christ. Stephen’s calm joy makes him angelic, while the anger of the attackers makes them demonic. The Mainz relief is far from the only representation of a blissful saint in medieval art. Early Christian and medieval hagiography is full of saints who taunt their persecutors or are described as smiling while they die. This is also true, for example, in the story of St. Vincent. In contrast, the persecutors of these saints often experience debilitating, blinding rage. Drawing on visual and textual hagiographies, this paper explores the implications of martyrs’ smiles, arguing that their calm pleasure in the face of suffering both asserts the power of their belief in salvation and serves to disarm their persecutors. The contrast between calmly smiling saints and their immoderate enemies underlines the importance of emotional restraint for Christian virtue.
Languages of Science between Western and Eastern Civilizations, 2024
Fr. Angelo A. Zottoli S.J. (1826–1902) reached the village of Xujiahui 徐家匯, known also as Zi-ka-wei, in September 1848. Immediately after his arrival, the young Zottoli was asked to teach theology there. As a result, starting from 1849, he prepared handy references that were designed probably to be complementary to his lessons. The result of this initial effort is the Dissertationes theologicae ad recentiorum praesertim haereticorum conditionem (Theological Dissertations Facing the Situation of Modern Heretics, 1849–1856), a two-volume manuscript discussing various theological topics. This work shows the linguistic skills of the young Zottoli since it includes annotations in Latin, French, Italian, and Hebrew. From this moment on, Zottoli devoted his adult life to the teaching of Jesuit spirituality and Catholic theology in both Latin and Chinese. As a result, he produced numerous works in these two languages, sometimes combining them. In this sense, an interesting preparatory work written in 1877 was the Ascetica nomenclatio (Ascetic Nomenclature), a list of Latin terms related to Jesuit and Catholic spirituality that Zottoli translated into Chinese also provided his Romanization of the Chinese characters. These two unedited manuscripts shed light on the rich tapestry of unedited works produced by Zottoli and preserved at the Bibliotheca Zi-ka-wei, in Shanghai. This article offers a concise account of these two works and aims at encouraging scholars to study these materials more in-depth.
TRADIZIONI MORALI. GRECI, EBREI, CRISTIANI, ISLAMICI, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma
2015
This book tells the story of the genesis and subsequent self-transformations of a discourse that cannot be found in current histories of philosophy. In fact, it does not reconstruct the story of one sub-discipline of “philosophy”, but instead the story of two “moral traditions”, two distinct traditions of critical reflection on zedaqà and hokmā or on dyke and phronesis, two couples of concepts whence – by adding, subtracting, emphasizing, and crossbreeding – the concepts of “justice” and “wisdom” took their origin; by these concepts, western languages have always framed questions about how we should live and how we should interact with each other. It reconstructs then the process of crossbreeding between both traditions through syntheses, controversies, annexations, misunderstandings, which gave birth to several subsequent moral traditions and whose legitimacy claims may be traced precisely in those ancient controversies. Such still competing moral traditions are the Christian, the rabbinic Jewish, the Islamic traditions, and finally that of neoclassical humanism and Enlightenment. It reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, or codes of shared rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories, or reflections on the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines showing that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, but instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us.
Holiness as Happiness: A Plain Account of Sanctification
In this essay I provide a brief overview of the shape of Wesley’s teaching about sanctification, before building upon a major theme in David McEwan's second book, The Life of God in the Soul (namely, the theme of holiness as happiness) to argue that, while Wesley is not to be slavishly followed in all respects, his eudaimonian concept of holiness continues to provide a valuable model for inviting people into the fullness of sanctifying grace. Note: This is a pre-publication draft version. The definitive and final version is to be found in A Plain Account of Christian Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of David B. McEwan. eds. Rob A. Fringer and Dean G. Smith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2020), forthcoming.
Religions, 2021
The paper identifies the measure of pain monastic Christian ascetics in medieval central Europe inflicted on themselves to express the right measure of love for God. I ask whether the measure of pain had significance; whether a ratio existed between the measure of pain ascetics experienced and the measure of love they expressed; how self-inflicted painful acts enabled the epistemic achievement of expressing the right measure of love for God; what made the right measure such; and what was the difference between ascetics and martyrs regarding the measures of pain and love respectively. Providing answers to these questions, unaddressed in existing studies, is the main contribution of this paper. While addressing them, I present a new category, the category of measure , for philosophical analysis of the old religious phenomenon under discussion. This category allows me to demonstrate that the measure of pain had significance and that there was an adequacy ratio between the measure of pain monastic ascetics experienced and the measure of love they expressed. It also lets me argue that the right measure of pain for expressing their love for God, following His example, was the exposure of blood, regardless of its quantity.