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Freedom of religion is to be distinguished from religious → tolerance. Religious tolerance is accorded the followers of another cult, and of deviant conceptualizations of belief. Meanwhile, since the French → Revolution of 1789, religious freedom represents a constitutionally guaranteed right of every citizen, and is limited only by laws that are valid for every citizen. Article 18 of the United Nations' “Declaration of Human Rights” states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscie…

1. With few exceptions, religions have always been a social phenomenon. The forms of their community formation and societal nature, as well as their types of social organization, are worthy of inquiry. Individual paths, such as those of hermits, or pillar-dwellers, or mystics, are to be found at least in all differentiated religions. The significance of these “religious virtuosi” (M. Weber) for the shaping of concepts of the saints, for example, and the significance of the paths to salvation tha…

A Commandment of Peace 1. Tolerance means the ‘enduring,’ ‘bearing,’ or (colloquially) ‘standing’ or ‘putting up with’ the views, lifestyles, goals, interests, and so forth, of others, which do not conform to one's own positions, or that, indeed, contradict them. Socially, or societally, an obligatory organization, like a political state, which possesses the corresponding (or necessary) means of power to impose its position, can accord ‘tolerance’ to deviant groups, minorities and individuals. Howev…

1. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, was born May 6, 1856 in Freiberg (Mähren), and died September 23, 1939 in London. He studied medicine from 1873 to 1881. In 1885 he was named Privatdozent (unsalaried university lecturer) for nervous diseases, and received a travel stipend that placed him in a position to study hysterical phenomena, especially their generation through hypnotic suggestion, for some five months, at the Salpetriere, Paris, with Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893). The impres…