1. In general, ‘will’ (in Lat., voluntas; in Ger., Wille; in Fr., volonté) denotes the motivation of an acting subject in the direction of a particular goal. The subject of a will is not necessarily an individual human being, but, in the transferred sense, can also be a collectivity (‘general will,’ Fr. volonté générale), or a power conceived as transcendent, and as influencing the human being and the world (will of God). Insofar as the will is qualified as free, it presupposes the possible autonomy of the actor/agent. A distinction must then be m…

Category “Guilt” 1. The essential notes of the category of guilt are two. For one, ‘guilt’ evinces the person as the author of a delinquency to whom the consequences of his or her actions must be ascribed even beyond the concrete deed. For another, ‘guilt’ indicates the instances before which the person becomes guilty. Guilt stands the person before a court of justice—God, others, and one's own ego (→ Conscience)—before which his or her responsibility can be established and attributed for the consequences of an act or omission. This attribut…

The theological concept of predestination means divine ‘pre-determination’ to a permanent status with respect to salvation. Predestination primarily concerns the lot of the human being in the hereafter. As a concept, it is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible but in the New Testament, in Rom 8:28–30 and Eph 1:1–14. Some theologians assume that these passages deal with an offer of salvation open to all persons. Separation into elect and damned follows only in the Last Judgment. While eternal salvation awaits the redeemed, sinners are condemned to eternal damnation. In terms of the histo…

1. Determinism is a Weltanschauung or worldview that holds all processes of inanimate and animate nature, together with human acts, to be causally conditioned. In other words, inorganic, organic, cultural, and psychic life presents a tight succession of cause and effect. Between causes and effects, therefore, no objective undetermined, random uncaused moment can be introduced, and this in principle. Therefore natural, cultural, and psychic processes are basically (pre-)determinable. 2. The ancient protagonists of this theory are Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucreti…

The question of the meaning of this world's → evil—of natural evil (natural catastrophes), of moral evil, in the sense of war and crime, and of personal suffering (hunger, disease, death)—is encountered by every human being. It seems to have become fundamental for personal meaning. Thus, for some religions, the fact that there is such a thing as ‘bad’ poses problems of no little significance. How is a good and caring God to be reconciled with blind fate, and evil? The believer feels frequently e…

1. Ethics and moral philosophy are frequently employed as synonyms, to denote, systematically, the rules of ideal human behavior. Where the two terms are differentiated, the concept of ethics, derived from the Greek éthos (‘habit,’ ‘custom’), denotes the systematic discussion and isolation of the good or commanded, in opposition to the evil or forbidden and reprehensible; while the concept moral, derived from the Latin mores (‘customs’), denotes the ideal type of ways of behavior—the right ‘doing’ in concrete situations. Each area can be closely connected wi…

1. Originally, ‘theater’ denotes a ‘space for viewing’ (in Gk., théatron, from theásthai, ‘consider,’ ‘contemplate,’ ‘observe’). In this space, human beings and their acting (in Gk., dráma), are brought before an audience as a scene, whether in free, improvised performance, or on the basis of (poetical) narrative. To theater as an art form, then, belong players (actors), audience, and theater as a place where acting occurs. Depending on whether the presentation—or performance—prioritizes verbal or nonverbal means of comm…

Concept and Period 1. The concept of ‘Renaissance’ (in Ital., Rinascimento, ‘Rebirth’) was coined by the historiography of the nineteenth century. Jacob Burckhardt adopted it from the French of Honoré de Balzac, and made it popular through his Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (Ger., “The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy”; 1860). The denomination was intended to mark an era in European art history and intellectual history, that seemed especially characterized by a resumption of attention to now ‘classical’ objects and thought, and…

1. The concept of capitalism, fallen from fashion today—the preferred term is market economy—denotes an economic mode whose constitutive condition is the exchange of goods, on a theoretically transparent market, by its formally free economic subjects, with labor being counted as one of these goods. A long-term equilibrium between supply and demand is supposed. Whether the value of these goods is ‘objectively’ determinable—for example, when it is measured by the average amount of work time spent in their prod…

Democracy as the Principle of the Legitimation of the Political 1. Democracy was already discussed in the philosophy of antiquity; only in modern times, however, has it become the principle of the legitimation of government. Unlike the traditional typology of the constitution, essentially molded by Aristotle, democracy today no longer posits merely one form of government among the many that might be possible; instead, it molds the modern versions in terms of the traditional concept of the ‘common good’ ( bonum commune), on which the legitimation of the political rests across…

Definition and Overview 1. ‘Society’ denotes a comprehensive social connection, a holistic system of human life in common, signed by extensive autarchy. As a concept, society is never independent of the concrete historical framework-conditions in which it is being developed. Historically, it is a new concept that became possible only as the unity of state and society—and their close connection with religion—lost its self-evidence: a development that begins to materialize in Europe only with the beg…

Biographical Data 1. Augustine was born in 354 in Thagaste (today's Souk-Ahras, Algeria), and died in 430 in Hippo Regius (Northern Africa). Reared as a Christian by his mother, Monica, he lived at first (373–384) as a teacher of rhetoric in Thagaste, Carthage, Rome, and at the Western Roman Imperial Court at Milan. After a conversion experience, he had himself baptized (387), and in 391 was ordained a priest. From 396 until his death Augustine was Bishop of the provincial city of Hippo Regius. Intellectual and Religious Development 2. Augustine's intellectual career was no less tu…

Exchange of Gifts 1. In societies that do not employ governmental institutions and the medium of money in the establishment of interpersonal relationships, an exchange of gifts has a greater burden of meaning than that of a mere transaction in goods. By contrast with forms of exchange, usually profane, determined directly by economic requirements, an exchange of gifts is a social process and follows ritual rules, which frequently appear in the form of ritual laws, sacred ceremonies, and magic. The …

Concept 1. The adjective ‘Protestant’ refers to those Christian directions that have basically taken form in the sixteenth-century → Reformation. Their appearance marks the second turning point in the (European) history of Christianity, after the separation of the Greek East and the Latin West (→ Catholicism). The occasion of the Reformation was the understanding of repentance. Monk and theologian Martin → Luther stepped into the foreground in 1517 with his criticism of indulgences, and from 1520…

The Concept-Symbol 1. From the religious viewpoint, sin designates the manifold forms of deviation from juridical, social, moral, and intra-religious norms. Connected with the conceptual address of sin, then, is the religious discourse upon the normative, the ritual, juridical, moral, and social construction of order and disorder. Interpretational work on the concept-symbol sin is bound up with ritual practices and procedures for the re-production of the social order and the religious salvific order, in the form of sanction and punishment, sacrifice and gift, confes…

Acknowledging Oneself 1. As a result of the loss of significance of the large churches, the meaning of ‘confession’ has only marginally to do with a public or private religious act involving the acknowledgement of guilt and sin. On the other hand, the public ‘confessions’ on talk shows, especially of sexual misdeeds on the part of celebrities, or analogous acknowledgments on the part of politicians, enjoy high public notice. Historically, with the development of the various forms of confession as spaces of religiously defined self-thematizing,1 the Christian churches in Europe …

1. In the way of life maintained in hunting societies, which owe their economic support to the activities of the women who gather wild fruit, roots, and so on, as well as to the male hunt for wild beasts, animals occupy a most important position. Here, hunting is not just a way of securing the wherewithal for nutrition; it is bound up with religious concepts, as well. Despite the unquestionable multiplicity and variety of the religious notions characterizing the hunting cultures, certain general, basic attitudes can be attributed to them. Notions of Human Being and Animal 2. As a western o…

1. In prostitution, → body and → sexuality become merchandise. Like religion, prostitution is the expression of psychosocial needs on the part of societies and the individuals living in them. An intimation of this is, among other things, the myth of the world's ‘oldest profession.’ From the Christian perspective, it does not seem likely that the ‘high spiritual’ will be bound up with the ‘low bodily’—especially in the area of human sexuality. Today there are contrary tendencies, however, that, w…

Etymology 1. ‘Millenarianism’ is derived from the Latin mille (‘thousand’) and annus (‘year’), and denotes the expectation of a ‘thousand-year reign.’ ‘Chiliasm,’ with the same meaning, is derived from the Greek chílioi (‘thousand’). The original theological concept was taken over from other disciplines, and bound up with various kinds of expectations of ‘end and revolution’ in religious and social movements. Millenarianism as a Christian Expectation of the End 2. In the history of Christianity, millenarianism can be understood in terms of Rev 20:2,7, as the exp…

Concept 1. Since the Enlightenment, the concept of the constitution has been equated with that of the laws that ground and organize the exercise of rule in a state. Generally, these laws are gathered into a single document of their own and placed above the other, simple, laws. Originally, ‘Constitution’ (Lat., constitutio, ‘setting together’) meant the compilation of different elements into a unified structure. Just as we speak of the constitution of a person in terms of health, the constitution of a state consisted not only in the law, but in t…