The Role of Religion in Reducing Violence in Human Relationships

Theme

It is both the glory and the conundrum of persons that they can
achieve their proper fullness only by transcending or going beyond
their humanity. They are destined to a life they can neither fully
comprehend or precisely control. The result is a need for philosophy,
notably metaphysics, in order to help guide one's steps.

On the one hand, it is necessary to avoid the idolatry of an egoism
that absolutizes oneself and instrumentalizes the other to the
destruction of both. On the other hand, one is drawn ever forward and
upward to realize the human potential of a spirit incarnate in
matter, yet which knows no bounds.

The key to both is the transcendence unique to humans which both
constitutes and challenges their glory. Poorly conceived this can
base attacks on others and religious wars. Yet correctly applied it
constitutes the call for self-sacrifice for others and the appeal of
peace.

Two currents are especially relevant here. One relates to the Nazi
experience and the holocaust. After World War II this generated a
focused attack, especially among French philosophers, against any
sense of 'absolute' and hence of 'transcendence'. This reduced all to
the relative, the reductively human and the secular. This is an
essential ingredient of the post moderns and of contemporary
philosophy.

The other current is the spectacle of the contemporary turmoil across
the various regions of the globe. This tends to reinforce the first
current leading to the sense that any sense of transcendence is
destructive of life in these times. Here one is led to the central
issue of culture and its phases: a sense of transcendence was needed
in an earliest rural phase of life; it was supplanted by the rule of
law immanent to human society in its modern urban configuration. What
then of the present situation where the media so individualizes the
context of meaning that it supplants the social forces of religious
institutions on the religious/transcendent level, as well as of
social structures such as labor unions and political parties on the
properly human level.

Whether religion is essentially the cause of peace and/or of violence
is the main burden of this seminar. Through human history religion
has been the essential key to the salvation of humanity, yet if
poorly done or not attended to in a secular age leads to human
stagnation and indeed to violence.

Sub-topics:

- Modernity and modern types of violence
- Religion and inner peace
- Abrahamic faith and the idea of pacifism
- Peaceful and violent reading of religious texts
- Successful peaceful religious leaders: cases and examples
- Family and education of peace
- Theological treatment of violence
- Religious extremism, the origins and excuses
- Religion, meaningfulness of life and peace, nihilism and violence


Contact:

Janet Blake
Shahid Beheshti University
Tehran
Iran
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://www.crvp.org/conf/2014/teheran.htm