La laicite francaise est souvent regardee comme la version la plus stricte de la separation du politique et du religieux. En effet, elle desacralise le pouvoir politique, et sa structure est tout a fait differente de la <<religion civile americaine>>. Car aux Etats-Unis, on peut facilement observer au sein meme du domaine politique quelques elements religieux qui s'inspirent de la tradition judeo-chretienne pourtant dissociee des eglises. Mais peut-on en deduire qu'aucune dimension religieuse n'existe dans la vie politique en France? En fait, certains chercheurs insistent aujourd'hui sur la pertinence d'etudier la laicite (et les valeurs laiques) dans la perspective de la religion civile. Et cela devant d'autres qui defendent que la laicite francaise n'a rien a voir avec la religion civile. En presentant leur debat, nous essayons de montrer sous quelles conditions historico-politiques la laicite francaise peut se rapprocher de la notion de religion civile. Pour cela, apres examen de trois moments cles de l'histoire de la laicite en France, c'est-a-dire, la periode revolutionnaire, les premieres annees de la Troisieme Republique, et nos jours, nous pouvons mettre en evidence plusieurs visages de la laicite en meme temps que divers aspects de la religion civile.

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God or Buddha, who are fundamental objects in religion, have been traditionally defined as "the Infinite." It is a religious analysis to analyze the consequences of redefining the Infinite of God or Buddha as the infinite in mathematical set theory. The religious philosophy of Kiyozawa Manshi is inevitably a religious analysis. Kiyozawa defined God or Buddha as the Infinite and we human beings as the finite, so as to clarify the difference between the religion of relying on the self and the religion of relying on the other. This article will redefine Kiyozawa's concepts of the Infinite and relying on the self and relying on the other; express these concepts as transfinite ordinal, limit ordinal, and complement of finite ordinal in set theory; and analyse those consequences. Results by analysis are the completeness of God or Buddha and the equipotency of relying on the self to relying on the other.

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This paper will analyze the historical formation of the theory of Buddhist decadence in the Edo Period. This theory can be regarded as the discourse informed by the following assumptions. First, during the Edo period monks did not keep the precepts, leading lives even more secular than lay people. Second, the Buddhist institution lost its freedom due to its close relationship with the shogunate. In short, Buddhism in early modern Japan was more corrupt than in other historical periods. This theory is regarded as having been formulated in Tsuji Zennosuke's research on early modern Buddhism. However, although he is sometimes presented as the first scholar to introduce this image of decadent early modern Buddhism, the idea was already "common sense" among both scholars and priests by the time Tsuji published his works. Keeping these aspects in mind, this article shall focus especially on the period from the Meiji Restoration (1868) to the publication, in 1931, of Tsuji Zennosuke's Nihon Bukkyo shi no kenkyu zoku hen, where the theory of Buddhist decadence can be found in its more systematic format.

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The relation between Jung's thought and ancient gnosticism has been discussed repeatedly, but still remains unclear. The reason is that Jung's references to gnosticism are extremely vague and lack validity. On the other hand both show a certain kind of parallel way of thinking, such as "the realization of the self" teleology, or the world view of "Good and Evil dualism." In this article I will discuss the idea that the romantic theory of religion is the base of the Jung's thought, by taking up the writing of Schleiermacher and Schelling. I will also consider the problems in applying the modern romantic perspective to ancient gnosticism.

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Kishimoto Hideo, a scholar of the science of religion, had cancer at 51 years old, but recovered his health after he had an operation. Just when he was about to forget the matter, he experienced a recurrence of cancer. He fought against it, and against a fear of death, for ten years. Kishimoto declared that he did not believe in the perpetuity of a soul and a posthumous world. But when he faced death, he realized that it was the most convincing weapon for the problem of death. Kishimoto at first fell into "a state of life starvation" for fear of death. In later years, however, he said "The shadow of fear of death has disappeared, " "I am filled with hope in thinking about my work and doing as much as I can with my life." What brought such a change of a state of mind? This report pays attention to the change of Kishimoto's state of mind, and considers "the view of the posthumous world" that Kishimoto grasped in the last moments of his life.

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This paper begins its work as an attempt to apply Arabic literature in finding new ways to conduct Zoroastrian studies. After the brief survey of former applications of Greek, Latin, Syrian, Armenian, ancient Chinese, and modern European literature, it will be pointed that the encompassing corpus of Arabic literature has still not been completed in the field of Zoroastrian studies. As a tentative conclusion, this paper insists that Pahiavi literature does not represent the whole of Zoroastrianism but only "Persian Zoroastrianism, " and that there might be other types of Zoroastrianisms in the Sasanian empire. Arabic literature may be the most significant material for studying those another Zoroastrianisms. At this time we assume the existence of a "Mesopotamian Zoroastrianism" and a "Khorasanian Zoroastrianism."

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