Basel, Switzerland

Mensch-Umwelt-Beziehungen in islamischer Tradition (MUBIT)

Table of contents

Mensch-Umwelt-Beziehungen in islamischer Tradition (MUBIT) at University of Basel

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: physical science, environment
University website: www.unibas.ch/
Programme: World and Mankind in the Islamic Traditions (MUBIT)
Type: PhD/Doctoral programme
Academic degree: Dr. phil.
Credits: 18 ECTS

Definitions and quotes

Tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyers' wigs or military officers' spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word "tradition" itself derives from the Latin tradere literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that be political or cultural, over short periods of time. Various academic disciplines also use the word in a variety of ways.
Tradition
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
G. K. Chesterton, in “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy (1908), p. 85
Tradition
Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.
Bruce Lee, in Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975)
Tradition
Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.
Jaroslav Pelikan, in "Christianity as an enfolding circle," U.S. News & World Report (June 26, 1989), p. 57
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