Introduction -- A sociology of gloom: initial forebodings -- Collective memory: remembrance and the constitution of images -- Ruins: irruptions in the fragments -- Dark gothic: life in the shade -- Satan: modernity's imaginary friend -- Sociology, sin and expiation -- Sociodicy or theodicy? A matter of sociological choice -- Conclusion
Pelagian origins -- Representation and the fall -- "The bargain basis": Rawls, anti-Pelagianism, and moral arbitrariness -- Egalitarianism and theodicy -- Justice, equality, and institutions -- "God gave the world to Adam, and his posterity in common": appropriation and the Left-Libertarian challenge -- Conclusion: Back to representation.
A survey of sovereignty concepts -- Michelet : burying the governments of grace -- Michelet : sovereign people, political theology, and liberal exclusion -- Hobbes, decisionism, and the friendly exception -- Hobbes's civic theodicy : Leibniz, suffering innocents, and prosperity of the wicked -- Seneca's friendly sovereign -- Seneca and Rome's new make-believe.
Following Max Weber's (1963) study of theodicy & Clifford Geertz's (1977) contention that religions must determine how to suffer, it is contended that all societies have demonstrated concern with human suffering. Emile Durkheim study of how individual pain functions as the medium through which social authority is maintained & Karl Marx's understanding of human suffering in political economies are discussed in the context of South African apartheid. Characterized by multiple genocides & instances of unwarranted suffering, the 20th century has witnessed the termination of theodicy. A comparison of US veteran health problems caused by exposure to Agent Orange & the Bhopal, India, disaster indicates that bureaucracies & judiciaries have appropriated human suffering; moreover, the media have commodified suffering for consumption by global audiences. Although some social institutions have mandated the production of pain, moral communities have provided assistance & healing to individuals, especially in instances of communal disaster. 26 References. Adapted from the source document.
Trends in ecology and environment -- Economics and environmental jusitce -- Eco-theology from the north -- Eco-theology from the south -- Eco-theology from the east -- Eco-theology from the west -- Biblical eco-theology -- Ecology and christology -- Ecology and theodicy -- Ecology and spirit -- Eco-feminist theology -- Eco-eschatology -- Postscript: Toward theological eco-praxis
"The reign of philosophical optimism, or the doctrine of the 'best of all possible worlds', in modern European philosophy began in 1710 with the publication of Leibniz's Theodicy, about God's goodness and wisdom, divine and human freedom, and the meaning of evil. It ended on November 1, 1755 with the Lisbon Earthquake, which was followed by numerous attacks against optimism, starting with Voltaire's Poéme sur le désastre de Lisbonne and Candide. But the years between both events were intense. In this book, Hernán D. Caro offers the first comprehensive survey of the criticisms of optimism before the infamous earthquake, a time when the foundations of what has been called the 'debacle of the perfect world' were first laid"--
Political theology and the new science of politics -- Political economy as theodicy and agnostics -- Sociology I : from Malebranche to Durkheim -- Sociology II : from Kant to Weber -- Policing the sublime : a critique of the sociology of religion -- For and against Hegel -- For and against Marx -- Founding the supernatural : political and liberation theology in the context of modern Catholic thought -- Science, power, and reality -- Ontological violence or the postmodern problematic -- Difference of virtue, virtue of difference -- The other city : theology as a social science