The Front National is tipped to ‘win’ this year’s elections in France, but it needs more than votes to claim a share of power

In addition to the European Parliament elections in May, France will hold municipal elections on 23 and 30 March. James Shields writes that, as with many French elections, the far-right Front National (FN) has attracted much media coverage and public attention in the lead-up. However, he argues that while the FN might significantly improve its share of votes and seats, the party remains critically hampered by its lack of political allies and a highly disproportional electoral system that punishes isolation

The Meta Taylor Rule

This paper provides a characterisation of U.S. monetary policy within a generalized Tay¬lor rule framework that accommodates uncertainties about the duration of policy regimes and the speciÞcation of the rule, in addition to the standard parameter and stochastic un¬certainties inherent in traditional Taylor rule analysis. Our approach involves estimation and inference based on Taylor rules obtained through standard linear regression methods, but combined using Bayesian model averaging techniques. Employing data that were available in real time, the estimated version of the ‘meta’ Taylor rule provides a ßexible but compelling characterisation of monetary policy in the United States over the last forty years.Taylor rule, real-time policy, model uncertainty, US interest rates.

Faith and the Sublation of Modernity: Kierkegaard and the Transformation of Fideism

This article retraces the “genealogy” of the fideist perspective in philosophy as well as literature, especially within the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and the novel Don Quixote. It contends that a demythologized perspective of the fideist-humanist sort, based upon Erasmian tolerance and intellectual creativity and updated with the insights of post-analytic theory (e.g., the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, and Jeffrey Stout), without revoking the vocabulary of transcendence, can reinforce the weathered but still valuable post-Enlightenment moral vocabulary, and can reiterate the humaneness of liberal hope without undue encumbrance from the dogmatic baggage of traditional theological jargon and metaphysics

Review: David Lyle Jeffrey, People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (Eerdman\u27s, 1996)

Book Review: David Lyle Jeffrey, People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture (Eerdman\u27s, 1996

Awakening between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations on Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945

The half-century between the publication of the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 教育勅語, 1890) and the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941) was one of tremendous institutional and intellectual tumult in the world of Japanese Buddhism. Buddhist sects and scholars were not immune to the changing political and cultural winds. While it is true that by the late 1930s, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions had capitulated to the status quo, preaching, in the words of Joseph Kitagawa “the virtues of peace, harmony, and loyalty to the throne,” the previous decades show anything but a continuous progression towards Buddhist nationalism. From the 1890s, Buddhist scholars and leaders such as Murakami Senshō 村上専精 (1851-1929), Inoue Enryō 井上圓了 (1858-1919), Shaku Sōen 釋宗演 (1859-1919), and Kiyozawa Manshi 清沢満之 (1863-1903) were working towards the “reform” of Buddhism along to suit what they saw as encroaching “modernity”—especially Western science. They were joined in the succeeding decades by the intellectuals of the Kyoto School, whose vision was less a “new Buddhism” than a “new philosophy” both suited to twentieth-century Japan and with universal aspirations. Though there is significant variation in the thought of the leading figures of the Kyoto School, Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870-1945), Tanabe Hajime 田辺元 (1885-1962), and Nishitani Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900-1990), their work can be accurately categorized as an attempt at Buddhist “modernism.” What emerges then, from an examination of this fertile period is a debate between two visions of “new Buddhism”—one based on an understanding of “modernity” as a historical locus with specific political and cultural implications, and the other based on a “modernist” understanding of religion as a form of “aesthetics” largely abstracted from historical circumstances. This paper will examine the debate between the two visions of Buddhism during the period leading up to World War Two, as well as its implications for post-war Japanese Buddhism

Liberation as Revolutionary Praxis: Rethinking Buddhism Materialism

While it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for many centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation”—along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to history, identity and social change found its way to Asia, and confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing Western ones. In the past century, several attempts have been made—in India, southeast Asia, China and Japan—to bring together Marxist and Buddhist worldviews, with only moderate success (both at the level of theory and practice). This paper analyzes both the possibilities and problems of a “Buddhist materialism” constructed along Marxian lines, by focusing in particular on Buddhist and Marxist conceptions of “liberation.” By utilizing the theoretical work of Japanese “radical Buddhist” Seno’o Girō, I argue that the root of the tension lies with conceptions of selfhood and agency—but that, contrary to expectations, a strong case can be made for convergence between Buddhist and Marxian perspectives on these issues, as both traditions ultimately seek a resolution of existential determination in response to alienation. Along the way, I discuss the work of Marx, Engels, Gramsci, Lukàcs, Sartre, and Richard Rorty in relation to aspects of traditional (particularly East Asian Mahāyāna) Buddhist thought

Sexuality, Exoticism, and Iconoclasm in the Media Age: The Strange Case of the Buddha Bikini

It is widely acknowledged that we in the West are living in an age of both rampant consumerism and competing religious faiths. In addition, those of us living in the United States of America inhabit a society with striking variation when it comes to what is considered appropriate sexual or bodily display, especially when it comes to women’s bodies. The hullabaloo surrounding Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” brought to light some of these tensions, at the single most important religious spectacle in America, no less, the Super Bowl. Though admittedly less well known, another recent scandal even more clearly raises questions surrounding the use (and abuse) of religious iconography in an increasingly global consumerist culture: the Strange Case of the Buddha Bikini. In a recent catalogue, popular lingerie and swimsuit company Victoria’s Secret launched a revealing “tankini” emblazoned with traditional tantric Buddhist images, sparking angry protest from Asian, Asian-American, and some Western Buddhists. This article explores the various causes and conditions that led up to this intercultural and very postmodern crisis, including the issue of the use of sex and religion in contemporary advertising, as well as traditional and contemporary Buddhist approaches to religious iconography, sexuality and the female body. Finally, I compare a number of similar cases in order to broaden the issue and take steps towards a more general and comparative analysis of blasphemy, iconoclasm and religious differences and free speech in our increasingly globalized, consumerist and media-saturated age

Eros and Transgression in an Age of Immanence: Georges Bataille’s (Religious) Critique of Kinsey

This paper explores the religious implications of eroticism in Western culture since the Sexual Revolution, a period at once applauded for its open and immanent view of sexuality and denounced for its shamelessness and promiscuity. After discussing the work and effects of Alfred C. Kinsey, the father of the Sexual Revolution, I focus on a critical appraisal of Kinsey written by French theorist Georges Bataille (“Kinsey, the Underworld and Work,” in L’Erotisme, 1957). Bataille situates contemporary Western sexuality within a larger historical movement towards the “desacralization” of all aspects of human life: sex, under the scientific gaze of the Kinsey team, became simply another “object” to be analyzed and classified, and “good” sex defined solely in terms of frequency and explosiveness of orgasm. For many, including Hugh Hefner, this approach to sex occasioned a refreshing awakening from the long dark night of Victorian sexual repression. However, as Bataille’s protégé Foucault has shown, the scientific approach to sexuality often masks a desire to control and delimit sexual behaviour, not “liberate” it. Moreover, Bataille makes the point that the desacralization of sexuality denudes sex of a vital component—eroticism—which is necessary for real pleasure and ecstasy. Beyond the “moral” critiques one often hears leveled against Kinsey and his work, Bataille provides a “religious” critique, one that stands, perhaps surprisingly, on the “near side” of sexuality