Transcribe the following words. Pay attention to the stress.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 370.

Machinery, façade, dynasty, dignitary, autocratic, regime, caste, oligarchy, absolutism, administrator, elite, stratum, committee, bureaucratic, jeopardize, efficiency, reciprocal, primacy, personnel, demise, legitimate, legislature

6.4 Give English-Russian equivalents of the following expressions:

a. Introduction, Monarchy, Oligarchy

предусматривать рамки (пределы); идти рука об руку с чем-то; a ceremonial dignitary; to distinguish between form and reality; официальный глава правительства; indispensable figure in all great official occasions; выполнять задачи правления (в государстве); по праву законного происхождения; to vanish from the world; набирать элиту из привилегированной касты; испытать на себе в полной мере влияние индустриализации; stratum of society; доставшееся в наследство социальное положение; to compel recruitment: ограничить власть; to thrust great power into smb's hands; быть подотчетным, отвечать за что-либо; to jeopardise the efficiency of the policy- making process; государственные органы.

b. Democracy, Constitutional Government

обычное, естественное право; to be assigned to the post; no жребию; набор установленных норм, принятых за основной закон; to be subjected to reciprocal control; формулировать волю государства; to be harnessed to political democracy; участие масс в политике; extensions of the suffrage; придавать первостепенное значение воле большинства; techniques of party competition; вы­борные должности в правительстве; the integration of a multitude of interests; связующее звено между правящими и управляемы­ми; to be exemplified; интеграция или слияние законодательной и исполнительной властей; separation of legislature and executive; преодолеть вето двумя третями голосов.

6.5 Explain the meaning of the following words and word combinations in English:

prescription and practice, monocrat, pre-industrial societies, the phenomenon of irresponsible rule, status quo, doctrine of checks and balances

6.6 Match the following words and word combinations with their definitions:

1. elite
2. monarch
3. demise
4. seminal documents
5. checks and balances
6. democracy
7. the ruling class

a) reciprocal controls and the necessity to cooperate in formulating the will of the state

b) decease, death

c) fruitful, productive creative papers

d) social grouping set apart from the rest of society

e) a stratum of society that monopolizes the chief social and economic functions in the state

f) symbol of national unity and authority

g) rule by the people

6.7 Give the plural to the following nouns:millenium, phenomenon, datum, stratum, means, series

6.8 Put the verb given in brackets into the correct tenses. Mind that the text was written in the 20"¹ century.

The 20^th century (to see) the demise of most of the hereditary monarchies both of the Western and the non-Western world. The reigning dynasties of modern Europe (to survive) only because royal rule severely (to limit) prior to the 20^th century. In many countries of the non-Western world thrones (to topple). In a sense, the kings who still (to maintain) their position (to be) less monarchs than monocrats.

The term oligarchy rarely (to use) to refer to contemporary politi­cal systems, although this phenomenon (not to vanish) from the world. Many of the classical conditions of oligarchic rule (to find) until recent­ly in those parts of Asia in which governing elites (to recruit) exclusively from a ruling caste. Nowadays in some countries that (not to experi­ence) the full impact of industrialization, governing elites still often (to recruit) from a ruling class — a stratum of society that (to mono­polize) the chief social and economic functions in the system.

Democracy literally (to mean) rule by the people. Democracy (to have) its beginnings in the city-states of ancient Greece.

Constitutional government (to define) by the existence of a consti­tution.

6.9 Complete the text with the given words and word combinations:

the will of the majority; framework; exemplify; institutionaliiation; an absolute ruler; to have nothing in common; fusion; symbol of unity; presidential and parliamentary systems; an institutional fa­cade; emerging states; separation; a ceremonial dignitary; to integ­rate a multitude of interests; a link; elective office; lacking in power; strata of society; an indispensable figure; proceed hand in hand; legal instrument

It is a commonplace in the contemporary world that political sys­tems with the same type of governmental machinery often function differently. Therefore it is very important that the work of the analyst investigating governmental structures should ... with the close exami­nation of the actual facts of the political process.

Within the ... of the same governmentalstructure some institutions can play roles of entirely opposite significance. Thus parliament may be an effective part of a political system, or may be just ... . A constitu­tion may be a ... , affecting the political life profoundly, or it may ... with the facts of political processes, being just a piece of paper. Func­tions of a monarch may vary from ... under autocratic regimes of the ... in Africa and Asia to ... , who is considered ... in all great official occasions in Europe. In Great Britain, for example, the Queen pro­vides a historically valid ... — a sort of... between all ... , though en­tirely ....

In contemporary constitutional democracies ... is expressed in free elections and ... of political parties. Their essential functions are ... into programs and to nominate party members for... in the govern­ment. The U.S. and Great Britain ... the two major types of constitu­tional democracy: ... respectively. While the US presidential system is based on the principle of... of legislative and executive powers the British parliamentary system provides for their....

6.10 Translate the following into English using words and phrases from the text:

Изучение структуры управления не может быть успешным без тщательного исследования реальных политических процес­сов в стране. Нельзя судить о политической системе только на основании правовой структуры: тот факт, что два государства имеют аналогичные конституции с идентичными правовыми требованиями и сходными институтами (организациями), вовсе не означает, что мы имеем дело с одним и тем же типом полити­ческой системы.

Таким образом, роль монарха может коренным образом ме­няться в зависимости от политической жизни в стране. Если в условиях парламентской демократии стран Западной Европы король царствует, но не правит, являясь фактически лишь обя­зательной фигурой на официальных церемониях, то в странах третьего мира он наделен неограниченной властью и по сути ничем не отличается от диктатора. Интересно отметить, что до настоящего времени сохранились как раз королевские династии тех стран Европы, в которых их власть в период, предшествовав­ший XX в., имела весьма ограниченный характер. Тем же, кто с успехом пользовался в свое время абсолютной властью, пришлось заплатить потерей трона к началу XX столетия, которое также стало свидетелем конца наследного правления не только в европейском мире.

Термин олигархия редко используется в рамках современных политических систем, и тем не менее явление это не исчезло со­всем. Более того, олигархические тенденции наиболее четко про­слеживаются в передовых политических системах с бюрократи­ческой структурой. Олигархия — это феномен неограниченной политической власти, принадлежащей небольшой группе людей. Олигархическое правление также меняло свои формы в зависи­мости от политических реформ в той или иной стране.

Так, до появления развитой промышленности олигархичес­кое правление существовало в простейших формах, т. е. правя­щая элита формировалась исключительно из рядов привилеги­рованных классов по принципу наследования. Под давлением индустриализации такой выбор стал делаться скорее на основе личных достоинств и достижений, а социальное положение и богатство отошли на второй план.

Сущностью конституционно-демократического правления яв­ляется распределение полномочий между несколькими государ­ственными органами с целью их сотрудничества и взаимного контроля при формулировании воли большинства людей. Мне­ние большинства выражается посредством политических партий, учреждение которых является ключевым атрибутом любой совре­менной конституционно-демократической системы. Выполняя свои функции, политические партии служат связующим звеном между теми, кто управляет, и теми, кем управляют в стране

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6.11 Read and translate the following text without a dictionary:

Few states in the modern world have constitutional arrangements that are more than a century old. Indeed, the vast majority of all the world's states have constitutions written in the 20th century. This is true of states such as Germany, Italy, and Japan that were defeated in World War II and of other states, such as the successor states of the Soviet Union, Spain, and China, that have experienced civil war and revolutions in the course of the century. Great Britain and the United States are almost alone among major contemporary nation-states in possessing constitutional arrangements that predate the 20th century.

The prestige of constitutional democracy was once so great that many thought all the countries of the world would eventually accede to the examples of the United States of Great Britain and establish simi­lar arrangements. However, the collapse of the Weimar Constitution in Germany in the 1930s and the recurrent political crises of the Fourth Republic in France after World War 11 suggested that constitu­tional democracy carries no guarantee of stability. The failure of both presidential and parliamentary systems to work as expected in less-ad­vanced countries that modelled their constitutions on those of the United States and Britain resulted in a further diminution in the pres­tige of both systems. Functioning examples are located throughout the world, though these are generally poorly institutionalized outside of those countries with direct historical ties to Western Europe. Japan is a notable exception to this generalization, as are Costa Rica, India, and several other states to a lesser degree.

Curious enough that even in Britain and the United States, the 20th century has seen much change in the governmental system. In the United States, for example, the relationship of legislature and ex­ecutive at both the national and the state levels has been significantly altered by the growth of bureaucracies and the enlargement of the ex­ecutive's budgetary powers. In Britain, even far more reaching chang­es have occurred in the relationship between the prime minister and Parliament and in Parliament's role in supervising the executive estab­lishment. In both countries, the appearance of the welfare state, the impact of modern technology on the economy, and international cri­ses have resulted in major alterations in the ways in which the institu­tions of government function and interact.

The adoption of new constitutions is also a major aspect of politi­cal change in almost all of the states of Eastern Europe. All systems, moreover, even without formal constitutional change, undergo a continual process of adjustment and mutation as their institutional ar­rangements respond to and reflect changes in the social order and the balance of political forces.

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6.12 Write an essay or speak on one of the following topics:

1.The role of monarchy in modern European countries.

2.Oligarchic tendencies in advanced political systems.

3.The contemporary political systems based on constitutionalism and democracy.

UNIT 11

Religion

Religion is one of the phenomena that influences and excites the hu­man mind since the time immemorial. One of the many definitions of religion regards it as human being's relation to what people consider holy, sacred, or divine, namely God or gods or spirits. Worship is probably the most basic element of religion, but moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are generally also constituent elements of the religious life.

A lot of scientists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries tried to give classifications of religion from different points of view. Considera­ble progress toward scientific classifications of religions was marked by the emergence of morphological schemes, which assume that religion in its history has passed through a series of discernible stages of devel­opment, each having readily identifiable characteristics and each con­stituting an advance beyond the former stage. So essential is the notion of progressive development to morphological schemes that they might also be called evolutionary classifications. The pioneer of morphological classifications was E. B. Tylor, a British anthropologist, whose Primitive Culture (1871) is among the most influential books ever written in its field. Tylor developed the thesis of animism, a view that the essential el­ement in all religions is belief in spiritual beings. According to Tylor, the belief arises naturally from elements universal in human experience (e.g., death, sleep, dreams, trances, and hallucinations) and leads through processes of primitive logic to the belief in a spiritual reality distinct from the body and capable of existing independently.

Of immediate interest is the classification of religions drawn from Tylor's animistic thesis. Ancestor worship, prevalent in preliterate societies, is obeisance to the spirits of the dead. Fetishism, the venera­tion of objects believed to have magical or supernatural potency, springs from the association of spirits with particular places or things and leads to idolatry, in which the image is viewed as the symbol of a spiritual being or deity. Totemism, the belief in an association between particular groups of people and certain spirits that serve as guardians of those people, arises when the entire world is conceived as peopled by spiritual beings. At a still higher stage, polytheism, the interest in particular deities or spirits disappears and is replaced by concern for a "species" deity who represents an entire class of similar spiritual real­ities. Polytheism may evolve into monotheism, a belief in a supreme and unique deity. Tylor's theory of the nature of religions and the re­sultant classification were so logical, convincing, and comprehensive that for a number of years they remained virtually unchallenged.

The morphological classification of religions received more so­phisticated expression from C. P. Tiele, a 19th-century Dutch scholar and an important pioneer in the scientific study of religion. His point of departure was that of distinguishing between nature and ethical re­ligions. Ethical religion, in Tiele's views, develops out of nature reli­gion and falls into two subcategories. First are the national nomistic (legal) religions that are particularistic, limited to the horizon of one people only and based upon a sacred law drawn from sacred books. Above them are the universalistic religions, qualitatively different in kind, aspiring to be accepted by all men, and based upon abstract principles and maxims. In both subtypes, doctrines and teachings are associated with the careers of distinct personalities who play impor­tant roles in their origin and formation. Tiele found only three exam­ples of this highest type of religion: Islam, Christianity, and Bud­dhism. Tiele's classification enjoyed a great vogue and influenced many who came after him.

The past 150 years have also produced several classifications of re­ligion based on speculative and abstract concepts that serve the pur­poses of philosophy. The principal example of these is the scheme of G.W. F. Hegel in his famous Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1832). In general, Hegel's understanding of religion coincided with his philosophical thought; he viewed the whole of human history as a vast dialectical movement toward the realization of freedom. The real­ity of history, he held, is Spirit, and the story of religion is the process by which Spirit comes to full consciousness of itself. Individual religions thus represent stages in a process of evolution directed toward the great goal at which all history aims.

Hegel classified religions according to the role that they have played in the self-realization of Spirit. The historical religions fall into three great divisions, corresponding with the stages of the dialectical ^: progression. At the lowest level of development, according to Hegel, are the religions of nature, or religions based principally upon the im­mediate consciousness deriving from sense experience. They include: immediate religion or magic at the lowest level; religions, such as those of China and India plus Buddhism, that represent a division of consciousness within itself; and others, such as the religions of an­cient Persia, Syria, and Egypt, that form a transition to the next type. At an intermediate level are the religions of spiritual individuality, among which Hegel placed Judaism (the religion of sublimity), an­cient Greek religion (the religion of beauty), and ancient Roman religion (the religion of utility). At the highest level is absolute religion, or the religion of complete spirituality, which Hegel identified with Christianity. The progression thus proceeds from man immersed in nature and functioning only at the level of sensual consciousness, to man becoming conscious of himself in his individuality as distinct from nature, and beyond that to a grand awareness in which the op­position of individuality and nature is overcome in the realization of Absolute Spirit. Many criticisms have been offered of Hegel's classifi­cation. An immediately noticeable shortcoming is the failure to make a place for Islam, one of the major historical religious communities. The classification is also questionable for its assumption of continu­ous development in history. Nevertheless, Hegel's scheme was influ­ential and was adapted and modified by a generation of philosophers of religion in the Idealist tradition.

Sociological studies of religion were undertaken by Auguste Comte who is considered the founder of modern sociology. His general theo­ry hinged substantially on a particular view of religion, and this view has somewhat influenced the sociology of religion since that time. In The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte he expounded a naturalis­tic Positivism and sketched out the following stages in the evolution of thought. First, there is what he called the theological stage, in which events are explained by reference to supernatural beings; next, there is the metaphysical stage, in which more abstract unseen forces are in­voked; finally, in the positivistic stage, men seek causes in a scientific and practical manner. To seek for scientific laws governing human morality and society is as necessary, in this view, as to search for those in physics and biology.

A rather separate tradition was created by the German economic theorist Karl Marx (1818—83). A number of Marxists, notably Lenin (1870-1924) and K. Kautsky (1854-1938), have developed social in­terpretations of religion based on the theory of the class struggle. Whereas sociological functionalists posited the existence in a society of some religion or a substitute for it (Comte, incidentally, propound­ed a positivistic religion, somewhat in the spirit of the French Revolu­tion), the Marxists implied the disappearance of religion in a classless society. Thus, in their view religion in man's primordial communist condition, at the dawn of the historical dialectic, reflects ignorance of natural causes, which are explained animistically. Religion, both con­sciously and unconsciously, becomes an instrument of exploitation. In the words of the young Marx, religion is "the generalized theory of the world... its logic in popular form".

One of the most influential theoreticians of the sociology of reli­gion was the German scholar Max Weber (1864—1920). He observed that there is an apparent connection between Protestantism and the rise of capitalism, and in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capi­talism he accounted for the connection in terms of Calvinism's incul­cating a this-worldly asceticism, which created a rational discipline and work ethic, together with a drive to accumulate savings that could be used for further investment. Weber noted, however, that such a the­sis ought to be tested; and a major contribution of his thinking was his systematic exploration of other cultural traditions from a sociological point of view. He wrote influentially about Islam, Judaism, and Indi­an and Chinese religions and, in so doing, elaborated a set of catego­ries, such as types of prophecy, the idea of charisma (spiritual power), routinization, and other categories, which became tools to deal with the comparative material; he was thus the real founder of comparative sociology. Because of his special interest in religion, he can also be reckoned a major figure in the comparative study of religion.

In the study of religious psychology the most influential were the psychoanalysts. A considerable literature has developed around the relationship of psychoanalysis and religion. Freud, the founder of psy­choanalysis, maintained that inner conflicts — often the result of repression, particularly in relation to sex — become expressed in pe­culiarities of behaviour and mood, especially in the vivid imagery of dreams that erupt from the unconscious area of one's personality. By comparing the symbolism of dreams and mythology, Freud held that belief in God — in particular, the father image — merely perpetuates in fantasy what the individual must in actual fact overcome as part of his growth to maturity, thus giving religious belief a treatment that not only made belief in God unnecessary but positively unhelpful.

The Swiss psychoanalyst C. G. Jung (1875—1961) adopted a very different posture, one that was more sympathetic to religion and more concerned with a positive appreciation of religious symbolism. Jung considered the question of the existence of God to be unanswerable by the psychologist and adopted a kind of agnosticism. Yet he consid­ered the spiritual realm to possess a psychological reality that cannot be explained away, and certainly not in the manner suggested by Freud. Jung postulated, in addition to the personal unconscious (roughly as in Freud), the collective unconscious, which is the reposi­tory of human experience and which contains "archetypes" (i.e., ba­sic images that are universal in that they recur in independent cul­tures). The irruption of these images from the unconscious into the realm of consciousness he viewed as the basis of religious experience and often of artistic creativity. Religion can thus help men, who stand in need of the mysterious and symbolic, in the process of individuation — of becoming individual selves.

Among other psychoanalytic interpreters of religion, the Ameri­can scholar Erich Fromm (1900-80) modified Freudian theory and produced a more complex account of the functions of religion. Part of the modification is viewing the Oedipus complex as based not so much on sexuality as on a "much more profound desire" - namely, the childish desire to remain attached to protecting figures. The right religion, in Fromm's estimation, can, in principle, foster an individu­al's highest potentialities, but religion in practice tends to relapse into being neurotic. Authoritarian religion, according to Freud, is dys­functional and alienates man from himself.

Summing up the above said it is necessary to note that the classifi­cation of religions that will withstand all criticism and serve all the purposes of a general science has not been achieved. Each classifica­tion presented above has been attacked for its inadequacies or distor­tions, yet each is useful in bringing to light certain aspects of religion. Even the crudest and most subjective classifications throw into relief various aspects of religious life and thus contribute to the cause of un­derstanding. The most fruitful approach for a student of religion ap­pears to be that of employing a number of diverse classifications, each one for the insight it may yield. Though each may have its shortcom­ings, each also offers a positive contribution to the store of knowledge and its systematization. And it must be kept in mind that classifica­tion should be viewed as a method and a tool only.

Although a perfect classification lies at present beyond scholars' grasp, certain criteria, both positive and negative in nature, may be suggested for building and judging classifications. First, classifications should not be arbitrary, subjective, or provincial but objective to the extent possible. It is not just to divide religions into lower and higher or primitive and higher religions. Second, an acceptable classification must concern itself with the fundamentals of religion and with the most typical elements of the units it is seeking to order. Third, a prop­er classification should be capable of presenting both that which is common to religious forms of a given type and that which is peculiar or unique to each member of the type. Fourth, it is desirable in a clas­sification that it demonstrate the dynamics of religious life both in the recognition that religions as living systems are constantly changing and in the effort to show, through the categories chosen, how it is pos­sible for one religious form or manifestation to develop into another. Few errors have been more damaging to the understanding of religion than that of viewing religious systems as static and fixed, as, in effect, ahistorical. Fifth, a classification must define what exactly is to be classified. If the purpose is to develop types of religions as a whole, the questions of what constitutes a religion and what constitutes various individual religions must be asked. Since no historical manifestation of religion is known that has not exhibited an unvarying process of change, evolution, and development, these questions are far from eas­ily solved. With such criteria in mind it should be possible continu­ously to construct classification schemes that illuminate man's reli­gious history

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