Religion Past and Present
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning†, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
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Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Radio and Television Preaching
(418 words)
[German Version] The organization of radio and television in Germany has been under ¶ state direction since the start of its use as a public medium in 1926. From the beginning, the churches were involved, and pursued conceptually preventive-reactive and positive goals in broadcasting. On the one hand, they tried to oppose undesirable tendencies toward loss of individuality, and superficiality; but it was particularly in warding off socialist ideas, and the influence of the “other” confession, that both Cathol…
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Religion Past and Present
Radowitz, Joseph Maria von
(209 words)
[German Version] (Feb 6, 1797, Blankenburg – Dec 25, 1853, Berlin), Prussian general, minister of state, and confidant of Frederick William IV. Radowitz, from the Hungarian Catholic nobility, entered Prussian service in 1823, where his military and diplomatic career advanced rapidly. Until they parted company he was a member of the Gerlach circle. In 1831 he was co-founder of the
Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt, and from the 1830s he was the closest friend of Frederick William IV. As a reforming conservative, he supported the religious and social monarchy…
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Religion Past and Present
Radziwill
(362 words)
[German Version]
1. Nicholas the Red (Mikołai Rudy Radziwiłł; Apr 27, 1512 – Apr 27, 1584, Vilnius), high chancellor and high hetman of Lithuania, from 1566 (following his cousin Nicholas the Black [see 2 below]) voivode of Vilnius; he became a Calvinist c. 1564. His descendants remained faithful to the Reformed confession and, until the line failed in 1667, ensured the continuation of Reformed parishes on the Radziwill estates (of the Birse branch) in Lithuania. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography T. Nowakowski,
Die Radziwills. Die Geschichte einer großen europäischen Familie, 1968, 79–…
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Religion Past and Present
Rāga
(177 words)
[German Version] (lit. “dye, passion, red”) denotes in both North and South Indian music the musical mode. The definition of a
rāga covers the fixed base tone, the central tones, and the group of permitted tones that make possible the improvised development of a theme or the composition of multi-part art songs (South India), as long as specific rules and stylistic features (ornamentations and melisma) are observed. Moreover, the emotional mood plays an important part: in North Indian music it is related to times of …
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Religion Past and Present
Ragaz, Leonhard
(290 words)
[German Version] (Jul 28, 1868, Tamins, Graubünden/ Grisons – Dec 6, 1945, Zürich), studied theology in Basel, Jena (under R.A. Lipsius), and Berlin (under O. Pfleiderer); he was pastor in Graubünden and Chur, then in 1902 at the Basel Minster, where he distanced himself from theological liberalism and relinquished its optimistic philosophy of history – which was much influenced by G.W.F. Hegel, R. Rothe, and A. Ritschl – in favor of a theology, eschatological in tone, in which the kingdom of God is “hope for the earth” and the purpose and goal of Christian ethics, and ¶ religion and the so…
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Religion Past and Present
Rahlfs, Alfred
(185 words)
[German Version] (May 29, 1865, Linden near Hanover – Apr 8, 1935, Göttingen), became a
Privatdozent (OT) in 1891, extraordinary professor in 1901, full professor in 1919, in Göttingen; he was director of the Septuagint project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, a project founded in 1908 by Rudolf Smend (1851–1913) and J. Wellhausen (Septuagint research). Rahlfs, an important Greek and Semitic philologist, was mainly concerned with scholarly editing of the LXX (see esp. his edition of the LXX, still in use,…
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Religion Past and Present
Rahner
(787 words)
[German Version]
1. Hugo (May 3, 1900, Pfullendorf, Baden – Dec 21, 1968, Munich), theologian, historian, and humanist; brother of Karl. In 1919 he became a Jesuit; he studied theology in Valkenburg (the Netherlands) and Innsbruck, earning his doctorate in 1931. From 1931 to 1934 he studied history in Bonn with F.J. Dölger and ¶ Wilhelm Levison. In 1935 he received his Dr.Phil. and gained his habilitation in Innsbruck in patrology, Early Church history, and the history of dogma. After appointment as full professor in 1937, he spent the years from 19…
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Religion Past and Present
Rahtmann, Hermann
(287 words)
[German Version] (1585, Lübeck – Jun 30, 1628, Danzig [Gdansk]), completed his schooling under Georg Rollenhagen in Magdeburg and studied in Rostock and Cologne, where he earned his living as a printer’s reader. Educated to be a Lutheran and/or Jesuit theologian, Rahtmann obtained an M.A. and continued his studies in Leipzig. He became a deacon in Danzig in 1612, and pastor in 1626. Starting from a dualism of spirit and flesh, and influenced by K. v. Schwenckfeld and a spiritual interpretation of …
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Religion Past and Present
Raiffeisen, Friedrich Wilhelm
(334 words)
[German Version] (Mar 30, 1818, Hamm/Sieg – Mar 11, 1888, Neuwied), was influenced by the Siegerland revival movement (Revival/Revival movements: I, 7), through his mother. He was founder of the rural cooperative system. As mayor of Weyerbusch in the Westerwald (1845), in Flammersfeld (1848), and in Heddesdorf (1852), he became familiar with the poverty of the people in the famine years of 1846/1847 and later. Moneylenders exploited the farmers’ plight by charging extortionate rates of interest. M…
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Religion Past and Present
Raikes, Robert
(164 words)
[German Version] (Sep 14, 1735, Gloucester – Apr 5, 1811, Gloucester), founder of the Sunday School movement. Raikes inherited a successful newspaper, the
Gloucester Journal, and used the proceeds to promote a variety of philanthropic causes, especially prison reform. In 1780 he and a local curate established a Sunday School in Gloucester, and Raikes publicized its opening in the
Journal. The idea attracted wide attention, and Sunday Schools were quickly set up throughout Britain, Ireland, and America. J. Wesley remarked that the schools were “one of th…
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Religion Past and Present
Rain
(352 words)
[German Version] The value accorded to rain is related to whether cultures practice agriculture based on irrigation or on rain. There may be a focus either on preventing uncontrolled flooding that destroys growth, or on anxiety lest there be no rain, and on desire for rain. Rain is seen as a gift of mountain and weather gods (e.g. in the Near East, where YHWH, too, displays traits of such gods; Indra in the Vedic pantheon [Vedic and Brahmanic religion]; Chac or Tlaloc [Aztec religion: V] in Centra…
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Religion Past and Present
Rainbow
(242 words)
[German Version] As a sign of God’s covenant (Gen 9:12–17; according to Zenger, God’s war bow) after the Flood, the rainbow has largely positive connotations in Western history; this causes the ancient Greek tradition, according to which the rainbow is considered an ominous sign of future continuous rain (Ovid,
Met. I, 270), to recede into the background. Both traditions, as omen and as link between the cosmic regions, are widespread in religious history. The rainbow is thought of as a bridge on which the gods walk across the sky, down to the …
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Religion Past and Present
Raiser, Ludwig
(195 words)
[German Version] (Oct 27, 1904, Stuttgart – Jun 13, 1980, Tübingen), lawyer. The historical experience of National Socialism impressed on Raiser the need for active civil co-responsibility in democratic society. Therefore, as full professor and rector from 1945 to 1952 in Göttingen, and from 1955 to 1973 in Tübingen, and in many roles in academic and university politics, he took an active part in shaping university reforms during that time. The recurrent theme of his legal writings was the orderin…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramah
(311 words)
[German Version] The Hebrew word רָמָה/
rāmāh means “height” and was a commonplace name for elevated places. Several biblical places are called various derivatives of the noun (Ramatayim, Ramoth, Ramoth-Gilead, Ramoth-Negev, Ramath-Lehi, Ramath-Mizpeh). It is not always easy to distinguish between them and establish their locations.
1. The best known place is the Ramah of Benjamin which is often mentioned (Josh 18:25; Judg 19:13; 1 Kgs 15:17, 21f.; Isa 10:29; Jer 40:1). The town is identified with modern er-Rām, situated 9 km north of Jerus…
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Religion Past and Present
Rāmakrishna
(400 words)
[German Version] (Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṃsa, birth name Gadadhar Chattopadhyay; Feb 18, 1836, Kamarpukur, India – Aug 16, 1886, Calcutta), is considered the most important holy figure of Hinduism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1847 Rāmakrishna, who was born into a rural Bengal Brahman family, came to ¶ Dakshineshvar where he served as a Kālī priest from 1856 and was taught Vedānta by the ascetic Totāpurī. His ecstatic worship and mystical show of the goddess Kālī became widely known and, from the 1870s on, attracted primarily young Calcut…
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Religion Past and Present
Rāmānuja
(384 words)
[German Version] (also Uṭaiyavar; traditional dates: 1017, Śrīperumputūr [Tamil Nadu] – 1137). In his commentary (
Śrībhāṣya) on the Brahma Sutras, Rāmānuja systematized the philosophical teachings of his predecessors Nāthamuni (10th cent.) and Yāmuna (11th cent.), thereby establishing the Viṣṇu-oriented philosophical direction of the Viśiṣṭādvaita (“qualified non-duality” [monism]; Hinduism: II, 2), in which non-duality (advaita) is qualified in the sense that the world and the ¶ individual soul each receive their own weight. This school teaches devoted…
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Religion Past and Present
Rāmāyaṇa
(436 words)
[German Version] ̣The
Rāmāyaṇa is one of Hinduism’s two most important Sanskrit epics; the other is the Mahābhārata. The oldest parts of the epic date from the 5th century bce; by the 3rd century ce, the text of the
Rāmāyaṇa probably existed in a relatively complete form. It describes the life of Rāma, the hero after whom the text is named. For many Hindus the
Rāmāyaṇa is a religious text; its main figures, Rāma, Sītā, and Hanumat (also known as Hanumān), have divine status. Sītā is considered the ideal of a faithful wife. Indian tradition lauds the metrical text, which comprises some 24,000 ¶…
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Religion Past and Present
Rambach
(367 words)
[German Version]
1. Johann Jakob (Feb 24, 1693, Halle – Apr 19, 1735, Giessen). From 1712, Rambach studied in Halle; in 1715 he worked on J.H. Michaelis’s edition of the
Biblia Hebraica; from 1719 (together with G.A. Francke), he studied in Jena (esp. under J.F. Buddeus), where in 1720 he gained his M.A.; in 1723 he became assistant in the Halle faculty of theology; in 1726, assistant professor; in 1727, full professor of theology in Halle; in 1731, Dr.theol.; from 1731, professor and general superintendent in Giessen. Ramba…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramin, Günther Werner Hans
(119 words)
[German Version] (Oct 15, 1898, Karlsruhe – Feb 27, 1956, Leipzig), German organist, harpsichordist, choirmaster, and composer; in Leipzig from 1910. Ramin studied under K. Straube; he was organist at Sankt Thomas and at the Gewandhaus (Leipzig) from 1933 to1938, and from 1945 to 1951, he directed the Gewandhaus choir; and from 1935 to 1943, the Berlin Philharmonic Choir. He was cantor at Sankt Thomas from 1940 to 1956. Ramin composed works for organ and choir, and wrote about the organ and the Bach tradition; he also published practical editions. Christian Finke Bibliography L. v. Koer…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramón Martí
(170 words)
[German Version] (Eng.: Raymond martini, c. 1215/1220, Subirats, Catalonia – c. 1292, Barcelona), Dominican. In 1263 Ramón was present at a Christian-Jewish disputation (I) in Barcelona, and preached in Murcia to Jews and Muslims. In 1269 he was expelled from Tunis after a short stay. He maintained relations with the court of St. Louis IX in Paris, and with Thomas Aquinas. He spent his last years in Barcelona. His polemical
magnum opus, Pugio fidei, written in 1278, is based on excellent knowledge of Jewish and Islamic sources and treats the following subjects: the e…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramsay, Andreas Michael
(303 words)
[German Version] (Chevalier Ramsay; 1686, Ayr, Scotland – May 6, 1743, St. Germain en Laye, near Paris), son of a baker, Ramsay was repelled while still a youth by the controversy between presbyterianism (Presbyterians) and Episcopalianism. As a student he tended towards Deism, but also formed links with mystical and spiritualist circles, which he intensified while a private tutor in London. He was on the continent from 1710, first with P. Poiret in Rijnsburg. Then he worked as secretary to F. Fén…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramsay, Paul
(153 words)
[German Version] (Dec 10, 1913, Mendenhall – Apr 29, Princeton), was a Protestant ethicist and student of H.R. Niebuhr at Yale. Ramsay taught at Princeton University from 1944 to 1982. His early writings show his gifts as a moral philosopher and theological ethicist. However, Ramsay is best known for his penetrating analysis of particular moral issues. His study of the just war tradition led him grudgingly to support limited nuclear deterrence and the Vietnam War. Ramsay used the doctrine of coven…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramsey, Arthur Michael
(136 words)
[German Version] (Nov 14, 1904, Cambridge, UK – Apr 23, 1988, Oxford, UK), archbishop of Canterbury, was a much beloved and admired priest, theologian, and bishop of broad, yet traditional, Anglo-Catholic leanings. After Cambridge Ramsey was ordained in the Church of England and served in both parish and university appointments. In 1952 Ramsey became bishop of Durham, in 1956 archbishop of York, and in 1961 archbishop of Canterbury, where he labored tirelessly in mission work and the wider Anglica…
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Religion Past and Present
Ramus, Petrus
(516 words)
[German Version] (Pierre de la Ramée; 1515, Cuts, Picardy – Aug 28, 1572, Paris), came from an impoverished aristocratic family; he attended the Collège de Navarre in Paris from the age of 12, and gained his M.A. in 1536. His polemics against Aristotelianism caused a sensation; in 1544 King Francis I prohibited him from teaching and publishing on philosophical subjects. Until this ban was lifted in 1547 by King Francis II, Ramus devoted himself to mathematics. From 1551 he ¶ held important administrative posts at the University of Paris. From the early 1560s he was a Protes…
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Religion Past and Present
Rancé, Armand-Jean Le Bouthillier de
(194 words)
[German Version] (Jan 9, 1626, Paris – Oct 27, 1700, La Trappe), founder of the La Trappe reform (Trappists), son of Maria de’ Medici’s secretary, and godchild of Cardinal Richelieu. He held many benefices. In 1651 he was ordained priest, and in 1654 gained his Dr.theol. He became a rigorous ascetic, renounced his benefices, retired to La Trappe, and from then on subjected this Cistercian abbey to the strictest observance as regular abbot (1664–1695), attracting monks who were willing to reform. H…
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Religion Past and Present
Rang, Martin
(178 words)
[German Version] (Nov 6, 1900, Wolfskirch near Posen – Mar 14, 1988, Frankfurt am Main), decided after studying Protestant theology in Marburg to follow a teaching career. In 1930 he became a tutor, and in 1931 professor of religious education at the Halle Pedagogical Academy. After the academy’s closure in 1933, he was suspended. He had affinities with Gerhard Bohne’s concept of proclamation, but gave it a new church basis: religious education is “church in the school.” Rang’s biblical didactics …
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Religion Past and Present
Ranke, Leopold von
(576 words)
[German Version] (ennobled in 1865; Dec 21, 1795, Wiehe an der Unstrut – May 23, 1886, Berlin), historian. After studying theology and philology in Leipzig and Halle and teaching in the Gymnasium in Frankfurt an der Oder, Ranke was appointed associate professor of history in Berlin in 1825; he taught as full professor from 1834 to 1871. Ranke helped make the study of history (Historiography: V, 2) an independent discipline based on critical analysis of sources, but he also viewed the work of a his…
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Religion Past and Present
Rank, Otto
(170 words)
[German Version] (Apr 22, 1884, Vienna – Mar 31, 1939, New York), pupil and secretary of S. Freud; from 1919, editor of the
Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse.¶ Rank’s book
Das Trauma der Geburt (1924; ET:
The Trauma of Birth, 1929) marked the beginning of an estrangement from Freud. In it, Rank develops the thesis that the trauma of birth and the fantasy of returning to the mother’s womb are more important than subsequent traumas, such as the Oedipus complex. His later work acquired speculative philosophical features; he …
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Religion Past and Present
Ranson, Charles Wesley
(153 words)
[German Version] (Jun 15, 1903, Northern Ireland – Jan 13, 1988, USA), was ordained a Methodist minister in 1929 for service as a missionary in India. Appointed as secretary of the National Christian Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon in 1943, he became research secretary of the International Missionary Council (IMC) in 1945 and was elected to serve as general secretary at the IMC meeting in Whitby, Canada, in 1947. His years in that key post were dominated by the often sensitive and controversia…
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Religion Past and Present
Ranters
(301 words)
[German Version] Ranters, a derogatory term used to characterize a quasi-religious anti-nomian movement (Antinomism)¶ among radical English Protestants which is thought to have emerged sometime between 1649 and 1654, during the Interregnum. As a movement, the Ranters were anarchic rather than organized as a sect and consisted largely of members of the Parliamentary army along with the London poor, where the movement was centered. The term originated among those who were deeply offended by their behavior, whi…
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Religion Past and Present
Rap
(233 words)
[German Version] began in the mid-1970s in New York as part of the complex, initially Afro-American and later international hip-hop movement, other expressions of which are DJing, breakdance, and graffiti. Rap (in the double sense of “utter vigorously” and “tap smartly”) is a rhythmic, mostly rhyming speech song with percussion accompaniment. It is thought to have arisen from Caribbean and African narrative traditions (
griot), from narrative Blues (Blues and religion), and from Black Power lyrics. The texts are about everyday social life of urban youth (esp…
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Religion Past and Present
Raphael
(387 words)
[German Version] (Raffaello Sanzio; probably Apr 6, 1483, Urbino – Apr 6, 1520, Rome), Italian painter and architect. He was probably apprenticed in 1494 to Perugino in Perugia. In 1504 he went to Florence for further training; in 1508 he went to Rome, where in 1514 he succeeded Bramante as supervising architect of the new St. Peter’s Basilica. His extensive workshop included included Giulio Romano and Pierino del Vaga. Several Madonnas embodying the quintessence of naïve devotion antedate his move to Rome (
Madonna of the Goldfinch,
Madonna in Green, c. 1506/1507, both in the Uffiz…
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Religion Past and Present
Raphael, Günter Albert Rudolf
(184 words)
[German Version] (Apr 30, 1903, Berlin – Oct 19, 1960, Herford). After studying music in Berlin (1922–1925), and supported by A. Mendelssohn and K. Straube, Raphael taught theory of music and composition from 1926 to 1934 at the Leipzig Conservatory, until he was compelled by racist persecution to withdraw to Meiningen (Thuringia) and in 1945 to Laubach (Hesse). After the war, the composer (who won the 1948 Liszt Prize in Weimar) began to teach again, as a lecturer in Duisburg (1949–1953) and from…
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Religion Past and Present
Rapoport, Solomon Juda Löb
(157 words)
[German Version] (acronym: Shir; May 17 or Jun 1, 1790, Lemberg – Oct 16, 1867, Prague). In 1837 Rapoport accepted a call to become rabbi in Tarnopol, Galicia. The Prague Jewish community installed him in 1840 as their senior lawyer and in 1860 appointed him their chief rabbi. As a young man Rapoport accepted the ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment, under the influence of N. Krochmal. He was strictly faithful to the Law, opposing both the anti-rationalism of east European Hasidism and the Jewish ref…
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Religion Past and Present
Rapture
(461 words)
[German Version] is a sudden transfer by means of divine power to a remote location, usually heaven (Ascension), or to a far-away country, on a mountain, etc. This may pro-¶ vide for temporary protection or enable an ecstatic reception of revelation. It is granted to those with a special relationship to God as an alternative to death. Because it involves the physical body and not just the taking up of the soul, the search for a body by those left behind is often futile, and there is no grave. Frequently, rapture is a way to cope with an unnatural or unsolved death. The raptured one …
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Religion Past and Present
Rasa
(280 words)
[German Version] (lit. “taste, essence”) is primarily a term from Indian aesthetics and poetics that includes archetypal moods, the essence of what can be experienced, and of human feelings as such. The oldest written source is thought to be the
Nāṭyaśāstra, a dance and theater manual, dated to the 2nd century (Kūtiyāṭṭam, Indian ¶ dance). It already lists eight of the nine moods current today:
śṛṇgāra, “erotic mood”;
hāsya, “comic”;
karuṇa, “compassion”;
raudra, “terrifying”;
vīra, “heroic”;
bhayānaka, “terrible”;
bībhatsa, “revolting,” and
adbhuta, “wonderful”; the l…
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Religion Past and Present
Raselius, Andreas
(113 words)
[German Version] (Rasel, Raesel; 1563, Halmbach, Oberpfalz – Jan 6, 1602, Heidelberg), composer and musical theorist. In 1581 Raselius studied in Heidelberg, where in 1583 he became preceptor at the elector’s
Pädagogium; in 1584 he became teacher and cantor in Regensburg; in 1600, court musical director in Heidelberg. He published two anthologies of songs (1591 and 1599), and two collections of German Gospel texts for Sundays and festivals (1594 and 1595). Raselius’s main work on the theory of music,
Hexachordum seu quaestiones musicae practicae (1598), was of great importance…
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Religion Past and Present
Rashba
(219 words)
[German Version] (Adret Solomon ben Adrat [Rashba is an acronym]; c. 1235, Barcelona – 1310, Barcelona), head of a school of Jewish law and Jewish mysticism in Barcelona, late 13th/early 14th century. A student of the Kabbalistic (Kabbalah) school of Girona, he was leader of a group of kabbalists in Catalonia. Before becoming a rabbi in Barcelona, he was a merchant, and traded with the king of Aragon, among others. More ¶ than 1,000 of his Responsa (7 vols.) have survived; they deal with daily problems and political matters, and with complicated questions of law as …
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Religion Past and Present
Rashi
(386 words)
[German Version] (Solomon ben Isaac [Rashi is an acronym]; 1040, Troyes – 1105, Troyes), probably the most important exegete of the Bible and commentator on the Talmud in the 11th century; he studied in the 1060s in the Talmud academies in Mainz and Worms. After returning to Troyes, he opened a teaching institution for study of the Bible and Talmud, and directed it until his death in 1105. Rashi’s biblical commentaries are marked by a tendency to limit traditional rabbinic Midrash exposition – not by any means discarding it, but paying particular attention to the
sensus litteralis of the v…
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Religion Past and Present
Rastafarianism
(151 words)
[German Version] arose c. 1930 in Jamaica under the influence of the Afro-American nationalist M. Garvey. It is a pan-African new religion that venerates the Ethiopian emperor (Ras Tafari [Haile Selassie]) as the messianic liberator of the black race. The world of the whites is rejected as evil (Babylon). Since the Bible is considered to have been falsified by white Christendom, the black diaspora develops new theological theories, and hopes for a return to Africa (Zion). Special importance is att…
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Religion Past and Present
Ratherius of Verona
(174 words)
[German Version] (c. 890, region of Liège – Apr 25, 974, Namur), a difficult character who led an eventful life. He was three times (931–934, 946–948 and 962–968) bishop of Verona, and once, for a short time (953–955), bishop of Liège. Betweentimes he was in the monasteries of Aulne near Liège and Lobbes, where he was also buried. Among his few extant works, the
Praeloquia (written 934–936) is noteworthy. It contains Christian moral teaching for laity and clergy. Of autobiographical interest are the
Dialogus confessionalis and the
Qualitatis coniectura, in which the old Ratherius p…
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Religion Past and Present
Rational Choice
(268 words)
[German Version] denotes a choice of behavior that leads to a chosen external target situation, better (more economically, more securely, with no, or fewer, unwanted side-effects) than other forms of behavior that could have been chosen at the same time. Such rationality of choice is related to the actor’s knowledge (of facts and rules), and to ethical convictions (e.g. excluding a goal attained by behavior that uses other persons only as means, not also as end in themselves [I. Kant]). Judgment o…
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Religion Past and Present
Rationalism
(3,896 words)
[German Version]
I. Philosophy The term
rationalism is used in philosophy in a wider and a narrower sense. In its wider sense, it stands for all those antiskeptical positions (Skepticism: I) in the theory of being and its epistemology that see the only reliable source of certain knowledge not in sensory perception but in the activity of
ratio, reason (I). The paradigm for reasoning activity that guarantees certainty (I) is provided by mathematical thought with its concepts of tautologies and deductive conclusions. In its narrower sense, Rationalism st…
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Religion Past and Present
Rationality
(2,088 words)
[German Version]
I. Philosophy
Rationality is derived from Latin
ratio (“calculation, consideration, reason”) and medieval Latin
rationalitas (“reason, capacity for thought”). The term denotes various intellectual capacities that distinguish human beings as “rational animals” from the other more highly developed animals. In German, from the 18th century, these capacities were generally designated as
Verstand (Intellect: I) and
Vernunft (Reason: I). Under the influence of the English term
rationality, and the usage of various scientific disciplines, especially s…
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Religion Past and Present
Rationalization
(707 words)
[German Version]
I. Religious Studies Rationalization is a relatively recent umbrella term with a variety of meanings; it denotes the replacement of traditional and fortuitous processes by planned, structured, and repeatable methods, according to criteria of functionality, effectiveness, and controllability. Since the effect of such methods is in principle always open to improvement, rationalization remains a never-ending process. In religious studies, rationality characterizes the epistemological “t…
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Religion Past and Present