Peter Berger's heretical imperative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Peter Berger's heretical imperative - Essay Example According to Berger, pluralism presents the crisis into which modernity has exposed religion (Woodhead Heelas & Martin, 2001). Berger focuses on modernity and its implications on religion. The contemporary society is characterized by plurality of institutions, consciousness and choices, which yield uncertainty. According to Berger, pluralism is â€Å"a situation in which there is competition in the institutional ordering of comprehensive meanings of everyday life† (Oldmeadow, 2010, p.33). Because of uncertainty, there are unsteady, inconsistent and erratic plausibility structures, particularly those of religion. Berger argues that religion becomes a matter of choice, which he best refers to as a â€Å"heretical imperative† (heresy). According to Peter Berger, there are three contemporary responses to the crisis that modernity thrusts religion into, which include deduction, reduction as well as induction. Berger denounces deduction, which entails the reaffirmation of inf luence of a sacred ritual against secular authority (Esposito, Fasching & Lewis, 2011). He also rejects reductionism, which reinterprets a sacred ritual on the basis of secular authority. In rejecting the two responses, Berger supports the third approach, which is induction. His belief is that the crisis facing religion is a product of the sterile antithesis of neo-orthodoxy and secularism (Woodhead Heelas & Martin, 2001). He believes that by shunning both deductive and reductive approaches and adopting inductive approach, the crisis can be triumphed. Berger explores the relationship between human religion and world-building. The society is presented as dialectic because it is considered as a human invention. Man cannot exist without society and without man, society cannot exist. This exhibits the dialectic nature of the society. Berger argues that pluralism undermines stable belief (Berger, 1979). Pluralism is the cause of secularisation. According to Berger, the basic dialectic pr ocess of society entails three steps. These include externalisation, objectivation as well as internalisation. The three moments are crucial for effective comprehension of empirical dimension society. Externalisation refers to â€Å"the ongoing outpouring of human being into the world, both in the physical and the mental activity of men† (Berger, 1979, p. 4). Objectivation refers to the achievement by the products of man’s activity of an authenticity that faces its initial makers. Internalisation on the other hand, refers to men’s manipulation of reality, in which they change the reality into structures of objective and subjective consciousness. Externalisation is a prerequisite for anthropology. It deals with the biological development of man, where he interacts with extra-organic surrounding of both physical human worlds. Human being must create his own world. As such, the world-building activity does not qualify as a biological superfluous occurrence, but a d irect product of man’s biological composure. Man creates his own world through biological means. This human world is characterized by uncertainty unlike animals’ world. Because humanly established structures tend to be unstable, man creates culture to ensure stable structure that cannot be attained biologically. However, culture needs to be progressively changed by man. The instability of cultural structures posses a significant challenge to man’

HISTORY Bachelor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

HISTORY Bachelor - Essay Example As far as Goldhagen's infamous chapter eight, "Police Battalion 101: Assessing the men's motives," the main point of argument with this chapter has to do with the accusation that many ordinary Germans had motivation to participate in the Holocaust, and had several motives for doing so. Many people have felt that the book's lacking cannot defend the attacks against it or, on the other hand, that the book's accomplishments do not explain its successful sales. However, this consideration of the book is shortsighted; focusing on Goldhagen tacks attention away from his important claims, and to examine the central points of the book itself. The book's thesis is quite familiar; its central claim reflects on a refutation of fifty years examination and research regarding the Holocaust. The important focus of chapter eight's concepts actually argues against the idea that the mass genocide of the Jewish people happened based on logic and the upper echelons of government. The mass murder of the Jewish people would have presented the Nazis with several difficult problems when planning how to approach the killings (Hilberg). However, the government planning was extremely complex, as well as the killing, which was very critical to the initial success of the extermination. The process by which the genocide was organized removed everyday individuals psychologically and morally from the actions of the government. This would mean that either the everyday individuals who took part in German society were unaware of the genocide, or may have even perhaps had some kind of resistance to the entire concept. However, Goldhagen does not ag ree with this concept; he feels that even ordinary Germans possessed anti-Semitic beliefs that allows them to somehow participate in, or overlook, the actions of the government. Goldhagen states that it was the "cognitive and value structures" of ordinary Germans--namely their virulently anti-Semitic beliefs--that constituted the "central causal agent of the Holocaust" (67-68). When first examining this concept, it really seems that Goldhagen's claim is perhaps more obvious than most would want to accept. If the everyday citizens of Germany were opposed to the mass extermination of the Jews, why would the Nazis have attempted so flawlessly to kill the millions they did murder Wouldn't the everyday German citizens make more attempts, personally and publicly, to assist the Jews The Anti-Semitism in Germany, therefore, was not an offshoot of the Nazis' own personal vendetta, but part of the social construct of all citizens of Germany. Therefore, Goldhagen feels that the Nazis cannot be blamed solely for the extermination of the Jews; the entire German people should be considered, as this seemed to have been more of a nationwide attempt. Hitler's leadership and conquering of Europe may have opened the door to mass killing; however, the media depiction of the Jews as subhuman and Hitler's control of the German people were not enough to undertake such a large pr oject of genocide. Instead, Goldhagen feels that the hating of the Jewish people by the German people came far before this, and predated Hitler's control of Germany. Rather, it seems to have been a part of the German culture for quite some time. Goldenhangen's proof comes not on the focus of the extermination camps present in Germany and