Toward a universal declaration of a global ethic

Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies

Volumn 3, Issue 7, 2004, Pages 19-45

  Swidler, Leonard ^a,b  

^a TEMPLE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Global Dialogue Institute

Author keywords

Declaration of universal ethics; Dialogue; Global ethics; Ideology; Inter religious dialogue

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149329269     PISSN: 15830039     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Munich: Beck, 1922-23), 2 vols.
2. Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (New York: Dutton, 1941).
3. See among others, Hans Küng, Theologie im Aufbruch (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1987), esp. pp. 153 ff.
4. See especially Ewert Cousins, AJudaism-Christianity-Islam: Facing Modernity Together, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 30:3-4 (Summer-Fall, 1993), pp. 417-425.
5. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1970).
6. I am grateful for this exemplary comparison to Henry Rosemont, who I met when he was the Fulbright Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University, Shanghai, 1982-84.
7. Already two millennia and more ago some Hindu and Buddhist thinkers held a nonabsolutistic epistemology, but that fact had no significant impact on the West; because of the relative cultural eclipse of those civilizations in the modern period and the dominance of the Western scientific worldview, these ancient nonabsolutistic epistemologies have until now played no significant role in the emerging global society-though in the context of dialogue, they should in the future. Since the middle of the nineteenth century Eastern thought has become increasingly better known in the West, and proportionately influential. This knowledge and influence appears to be increasing geometrically in recent decades. It is even beginning to move into the hardest of our so-called hard sciences, nuclear physics, as evidenced by the popular book of the theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2nd ed., 1983).
8. For a full discussion of these epistemological issues and related matters, see my After the Absolute: The Dialogical Future of Religious Reflection. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990
9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 1, a. 2.
10. I am in this section especially indebted to Ewert Cous-ins= essay AJudaism-Christianity-Islam: Facing Modernity Together, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 30:3-4 (Summer-Fall, 1993), pp. 417-425.
11. Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zurich: Artemis, 1949), pp. 19-43.
12. trans. Michael Bullock, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 1.
13. For the ongoing academic discussion of Jaspers= position on the Axial Period, see Wisdom, Revelation, and Doubt: Perspectives on the First Millennium B.C., Daedalus (Spring, 1975);
14. and The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, ed. S.N. Eisenstadt (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989).
15. For a more comprehensive treatment of Cousins= concept of the Second Axial Period, see his book Christ of the 21st Century (Rockport, MA: Element, 1992).
16. Leonard Swidler et alii, Death or Dialogue (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990).
17. Hadith: Muslim, chapter on iman, 71-2;
18. Ibn Madja, Introduction, 9;
19. Al-Darimi, chapter on riqaq; Hambal 3, 1976.
20. The first quotation is cited in Bhagavan Das, The Essential Unity of All Religions (1934), p. 298.
21. A Yoruba Proverb (Nigeria), cited in Andrew Wilson, ed., World Scripture (New York: Paragon House, 1991), p. 114
22. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, A 54;
23. and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Ethics, BA 66f.
24. Gleanings from the Writings of Baha=u=llah, trans. by Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, IL: Baha=i Publishing Trust, 2d ed., 1976).
25. The Scripture of Won Buddhism (Iri, Korea: Won Kwang Publishing Co., rev. ed. 1988), pp. 309f.
26. Bhagavan Das, The Essential Unity of All Religions (1934), p. 303.
27. Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel, eds., A Global Ethic (New York: Continuum, 1993).