INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON HUMANISTIC IDEOLOGY
VOL. 1 NO. 1 SPRING-SUMMER 2008

TOPIC: CONTEMPORARY IDEOLOGIES

EDITORIAL: Mihaela GLIGOR, Ideology. The problem, 7
PROFILE: David HART, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, Comte de Tracy. Profile, 11

ARTICLES:
T. N. MADAN, India’s Religions: Plurality and Pluralism. Religious Pluralism as Ideology, 15
Abstract: Religions occupies an important place in both private and public domains in India. This paper present India’s major religions as practiced in everyday life. Plurality of religions in India is described at two levels: first, the global level, and, second, the intra-religious level. We’ll analize these aspects from ethnographic and historical perspectives rather than from a theological angle.
Keywords: religions, religious pluralism, ideology, cultural traditions, secularism, community.

Carl OLSON, The Deification of Death in Postmodern Thought: A Critical Examination, 25
Abstract: After a brief survey of some postmodern thinkers on the subject of death, this paper examines Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Martin Heidegger on the subject of death before examining Derrida’s grasp of death. Then, the paper reviews the rationale for the postmodern deification of death within the context of Nietzsche’s prophetic proclamation of the death of God. Finally, this paper addresses some of the philosophical dangers involved with the deification of death for postmodern philosophers.
Keywords: postmodern thought, deconstruction, difference, deification of death, Dasein, philosophy, phenomenology.

Virgil DRĂGHICI, The understanding of Being as a logical problem, 43
Abstract: The present paper is not an interpretation of the Heideggerian conceptualizations about Being or logic, but an account of some aspects of Heidegger’s “encounters” with logic, namely:
1. Heidegger’s attitude regarding logic.
2. Why does logic have to become onto-logic, i.e. a more originary interrogation (as a questioning of Being).
3. Apory of thematizing: some comments.
The explanation of these aspects will be focused on identification in Heidegger’s writings of the respective fragments.
Keywords: Heidegger, Dasein, Being, logic, apory, understanding

Janam MUKHERJEE, Structure and Violence, 65
Abstract: Since its inception as a discipline, anthropology has often enough assumed the culture of the “other” (the classical object of its investigations) to be a closed system sufficient unto itself. Behind this academic myth has always lurked the reality of colonial penetration, in the wake of which ethnography has found its way. Today, in this post-colonial, post-structural, post-modern world, the contention of the cultural isolate is entirely untenable. Rather, it is all too often impositions and outbreaks of violence that define the existence of the citizens of the “third world.” This paper examines violence as the emerging object of ethnographic study. Towards this end I differentiate between “structural violence” (violence that is embedded in the order of things) and “episodic violence” (which might be most simply understood as the violence of the masses.) The differentiation drawn, however, proves to be only analytical, as a main thrust of this paper is to suggest the complicated relationship and interdependence between these two “modes” of violence.
Keywords: structure, globalization, violence, nationalism, anthropology, ecology, language.

Atashee Chatterjee SINHA, Verbal communication and gender discrimination: A study from an Indian perspective, 85
Abstract: I have presented a short survey and analysis of the frequently found differences between Masculine and Feminine language vis-à-vis the traditional gendered outlook, with references to both Indian and Western culture and linguistic practice. My study is confined to inter-personal communication where we find various forms of covert violence. The social context, the politics of power, the gendered roles and the mental conditioning of men and women are found to be the cause of the domination of men over women in several societies and the discriminatory use of everyday language in most nations, around the world. The point to be taken into consideration here is that we need to find an alternative to such violent linguistic usage which are covertly denying freedom and dignity to a particular group of human beings who stand in “down” position in a “top-down” power structure. Within such a power setup, women are labeled not only as weaker sex but also as incapable of using the language that is intelligible and understandable by all (here “all” refers to men). However it is evident from this exposition that the language spoken and accepted as normal has many hidden nuances which are far from being respectful to women. No matter how much energy has been spent so far on dividing men’s language from women’s language, or for bridging the gap of communication between the two sexes, I find it more crucial today to enquire whether the so-called neutral masculine language can restore equality and dignity for all, irrespective of biological, psychological or any other differences. It is with the help of a few feminist critics, thinkers and sociologists that I have attempted to formulate some alternative ways of speaking in a more respectful, and non-violent manner.
Keywords: language, gender, communication, language and power, covert violence, discrimination, linguistic violence, male language, female language, languages in India, language of care.

Mihaela GLIGOR, The Ideology of the Archangel Michael Legion and Mircea Eliade’s Political Views in Interwar Romania, 111
Abstract: Analyzing Mircea Eliade’s political thinking, we observe that it evolved between 1935 and 1936, apparently under Professor Nae Ionescu’s influence and probably also due to the suasion of political trends in fashion at that time. While in the early ’30s he rejected fascism, by examining his articles of those years, we see that he gradually moved nearer to the ideology of the Iron Guard, in whose favour he published some supporting statements in 1937-1938. Still, Mircea Eliade always pleaded for the political non-involvement of his generation, and believed in the intellectual’s power to change things. These aspects, together with “Românism” (Romanian nationalism), which played a significant role in Eliade’s vocabulary in the ’30s, were very important indications of his rightist orientation.
Keywords: Ideology, Orthodoxy, political movement, philosophy, anti-Semitism, fascism, Românism, Legion.

Ali Shehzad ZAIDI, The Divine Love of Hafiz and Pushkin in Mircea Eliade’s “The Captain’s Daughter”, 127
Abstract: Mircea Eliade’s “The Captain’s Daughter” invokes the legacies of Hafiz and Pushkin to sacralize the world. In this enigmatic short story, the motif of boredom denotes the characters’ immersion in profane time and in a mechanistic mode of being. A captain hires a peasant boy, Brânduş, to box with his son, Valentin. Brânduş subverts Valentin’s socialization into reflexive violence, and reveals that he knows that the captain’s daughter, Agrippina, had been left back a year at school. Intrigued, Agrippina tries to find out how Brânduş discovered the secret that was at once a family disgrace and transformative mystery. The young boy represents the spiritual freedom missing in Agrippina’s suffocating social and family environment. In its recollection of the various cultural guises of love, in its return to origins, Eliade’s story unifies cultures and connects us to the living universe.
Keywords: Eliade, The Captain’s Daughter, Hafiz, Pushkin, Romanian short story, Romanian literature, Persian literature, Persian poetry, Russian literature.

Liviu ANTONESEI, Modernizing, the Reform of the Calendar and Symbolic Concurrent Times, 145
Abstract: The problem of Time had always been a preoccupation of philosophers and science men. The following paper intends to analyze modernization and the reform of the calendar as this was perceived in the Romanian ethos, making some correspondence with what Time meant to philosophers and anthropologists and, also, to Romanian peasants, in order to show that people live in their own socio-cultural experience related to time, an existence in itself.
Keywords: Modern culture, traditional culture, cultural codes, time, linear time and circular time, the ways of symbolizing time, social concurrent times, history, post-history, modernization, reform, tradition, the reform of the calendar.

Sanjukta BHATTACHARYYA, Idea of a Basic Myth - Cosmogonic Myth, 167
Abstract: Myths are one of the important components of religion through which it manifests itself in a religio-cultural community. Cosmogony or the birth of world being one of the most frequented themes of myths, this paper intends to produce a descriptive analysis of the meaning, nature and significance of Cosmogonic myths in any culture and tradition. We try to classify and analyse Cosmogonic myths on the basis of their symbolic structures expressed either through the process of creation or emergence, and through the agency of an earth diver. The paper also makes an attempt, through a descriptive discussion of Cosmogonic myths of various cultures; to establish Mircea Eliade’s idea of Cosmogonic myths as being the basic myth of any tradition, the other myths of the tradition having been derived from the theme of Cosmogonic myths.
Keywords: Religious Studies, Religious Phenomenon, Myth, and Cosmogony.

REVIEWS, 193
Mac Linscott RICKETTS: Bryan S. Rennie (editor), The International Eliade, Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2007, vi + 318 p., ISBN - 13: 978-0-7914-7087-9
Mac Linscott RICKETTS: Bryan S. Rennie (editor), Mircea Eliade, A Critical Reader, London, UK and Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2007, viii + 448 p., ISBN - 9781904768944
Santosh Kr. SINGH: Akbar Ahmed, Journey into Islam: The crisis of Globalization, Brookings Institution Press, Penguin/ Viking, 2007, 323 p., ISBN - 13: 9780815701323
Janam MUKHERJEE: Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, 253 p., ISBN - 13: 9780520247451
Răzvan TATU: Jerry L. Walls (editor), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, 2008, 724 p., ISBN - 978-0-19-517049-8


CONTRIBUTORS, 207