Jeune Street

From a recent roundtable discussion held at the Bilgi University in Istanbul, in which participants were asked whether religion was “an integrating or dividing factor in societies of the third millennium?”:

In the course of the debate, [Prof.] Fred Dallmayr [Notre Dame University] emphasised the centrality of the religious message in our societies, starting with the identification of the idea of God with the concepts of truth and virtue. Following a path that appeared to follow in the footsteps of the philosophical ideas of Emmanuel Lévinas, Dallmayr underlined the centrality of a culture that sees ‘otherness’ as an indispensible condition for abandoning an egotistic and individualistic perspective of human communities. In this sense the religious message is not a dividing element but rather one of unity, with the ethical and transcendent élan it adds to a society’s aspirations. The central message provided by monotheistic religions consists of the prospect of divine love as the universal reflection of particular love for humankind.

HT: The Immanent Frame