Vol. 23 No. 1 (2007)

View Vol. 23 No. 1 (2007)

Editorial:

A world without border, without walls, how imaginable is it? Infinity or borderlessness, is always intriguing, and even more so now. It is intriguing probably due to its ambivalent nature: borderlessness shows the allure of freedom, yet also the menace of uncertainty and formlessness. Human civilizations over the ages have been animated by this ambivalence, that is, by both the dream of breaking through the limit and the fear of the unlimited; by the centrifugal force towards the universal and by the centripetal interest of keeping the particular order. Today such tension applies to almost every dimension of human life. In politics this touches the problem of state : how is 'state' to be conceived of today, in the face of increasing immigrants or refugees and the tendency of regional unifications? How far the 'border' is to be open ? In developing-societies this may mean the border between the dignity of human individual and the importance of community. In the realm of culture it appears in the ambiguity of the so called 'identity'. In religion the monotheistic religions in particular- this can mean the uncertainty of attitude towards the'other', or problem of the peculiarity of religious language. In the world of science and modern rationality the tension would concern, among other things, the problem of the validity of other faculties such as intuition or imagination. Melintas of this issue addresses precisely the complexity of these tensional borders

Editor.

Published: 2014-07-21

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