History of the location of the soul

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_location_of_the_soul 

 

Galen's description of the body told through "pneuma" or what was understood to be the soul

The search for a hypothetical soul and its location have been a subject of much speculation throughout history. In early medicine and anatomy, the location of the soul was hypothesized to be located within the body. Aristotle and Plato understood the soul as a corporeal form but closely related to the physical world. The Hippocratic Corpus chronicles the evolution of thought that the soul is located within the body and is manifested in diseased conditions. Later, Galen explicitly used Plato's description of the corporeal soul to physical locations in the body. The logical (λογιστικός) in the brain, the spirited (θυμοειδές) in the heart, and the appetitive (ἐπιθυμητικόν) in the liver. Da Vinci had a similar approach to Galen, locating the soul, or ssenso comune, as well as the imprensiva (intellect) and memoria (memory) in different ventricles of the brain. Today neuroscientists and other fields of science that deal with the body and the mind, such as psychology, bridge the gap between what is physical and what is corporeal.

Ancient Egypt

Further information: Ancient Egyptian conception of the soul

The earliest theory pertaining to the location of the soul is thought to come from Ancient Egypt during the third millennium BC. Ancient Egyptian civilizations held the belief that the soul was composed of several parts: the Ba, Ka, Ren, Sheut, and the Ib. Furthermore, the Ib was located in the heart, and considered the vital force that brought human beings to life. Because the Ib was also responsible for thoughts and feelings, its status determined a person's fate upon their death. This took place during a heart weighing ceremony, in which Anubis would feed the heaviest hearts to the demon Ammit. It is believed that the Ancient Egyptian view of the heart formed the foundation for later theories on the location for the human soul.

Hippocratic Corpus

The Hippocratic Corpus and its many treatises demonstrate the evolving knowledge of the body and how to treat ailments in reference to the soul. The treatise on Diseases II physicians are warned about the illnesses associated with air in the body, particularly in the lungs causing the patient to cough vigorously and hoarsely.

"διαπνειν δοΚει δια στηθεοζ"

translated as "the patient is breathing through their lungs". The next lines detail that this is an extremely serious time condition for the patient and was a cause of great concern. To remedy the air in the lungs the physician was advised to clear out the lungs of all air that was possible using a bladder and hosing.

Later in the Corpus, during or after the life of Aristotle on Disease IV, pneuma, or air is presented as a warming life force. In the treatise On the Sacred Disease air is described as not being located in just the lungs but in the entire body and circulating it giving life. According to the treatise the first location of the air is to the brain and it describes that medical conditions of the brain can be caused by a blockage of air flow there. Aristotle in his works refers to pneuma being directly related to the soul.

Plato

Further information: Plato's theory of soul

Plato, the student of Socrates and teacher to Aristotle, suggests in Timmeus that the human soul was divine in nature, and that it entered the human body after separating from a spiritual origin that it would return to upon death. Furthermore, Plato believed the soul to be a tripartite one, composed of the logos, the thymos, and the epithemitikon. In order to protect the immortal soul from contamination, the perishable souls, the thymos and the epithemitikon, were separated from the head by the neck. The thymos, responsible for feelings such as rage, bravery, and hope, was located in the chest cavity. The epithemitikon, which controlled desires and unconscious thought, was located near the umbilicus, farthest from the logos. The brain, then, was the seat of all rational thought, the logos, and the true location of the immortal and divine soul.

Aristotle

In De Spiritu Aristotle links the idea of pneuma and the soul directly together saying that "Pneuma is connected to the soul" that, "it is the souls primary driving force".

Aristotle in De Anima (On the Soul) suggests that organs of the body are required for the soul to interact with. Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed the soul's existence was not separate from the human body, thus the soul could not be immortal. Similarly to Plato, however, Aristotle believed the soul is composed of three parts: the vegetative, sensitive, and rational. Growth and reproduction is a result of the vegetative soul, and is found in all organisms. The sensitive soul, however, allows for sensation and movement in humans and animals. The third, the rational, is exclusive to humans, and allows for rational thought.

In book II, Aristotle states that, the soul is the part of the human that allows its entire being, that one can't exist without the other and they complement each other. In book III he provides an example of his theory of the soul and makes the correlation between the physical sensations of light the phaos in the body and the corporeal imaginations phantasia. Aristotle imagined the soul as in part, within the human body and in part a corporeal imagination. In Aristotle's treatise On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration, Aristotle explicitly states that while the soul has a corporeal form, there is a physical area of the soul in the human body, the heart. Aristotle states the heart is the location of the 5 sensations of the body and is directly responsible for respiration and the sustenance of life. The heart is of further importance as it is all animal's area of heating the body and blood and the creation of pneuma, or life force that animates the body. To Aristotle this explains why dead things become cold, do not breathe, and that their souls have left them. Because the heart is the location of the human soul and life force, it is the organ of utmost importance in Aristotelian physiology. Correspondingly, the heart is the first organ to appear during embryonic development.

Epicurus

Epicurus, with a view reflecting that of the Greek philosopher Democritus, suggested that the human soul was corporeal and composed of small particles spread out within the entire body. Epicurus believed that the separation of these small particles resulted in a loss of sensation, and consequently, death.  Like Aristotle, Epicurus was of the opinion that the soul was a result of the body, making it mortal and perishable.

Herophilus

Image depicting the third and fourth ventricle–Herophilus thought as these were the seat of the soul.

In the third century Herophilos in Alexandria was one of the first anatomists to perform dissections of the human body for the brief time that it was legal. Herophilos discovered many novel aspects of the human body, specifically in the brain and associated tissues. The works of Herophilus were lost in the fire of Alexandria of 391 AD and therefore we only know of his existence in other surviving works. Most of the medical terminology and works are recorded in the books by Galen and therefore the reliability that Herophilus actually thought to the soul to be in the body is in question.

According to the recordings of his work, Herophilus thought that the location of the soul is in the brain, specifically in the ventricles of the brain, the 4 open cavities in the innermost parts of the brain. Herophilos describes the distinction of the soul and natures as being intertwined within the body and while are separate things, cannot exist without the other. Herophilos in his dissections discovered the differences between nerves and blood vessels. Nerves carried the pneuma or soul to animate the body and the vessels being related to nature. Following the lines tracks of the nerves through the body he saw that they all converge in the brain, and by Herophilus' reasoning the ventricles of the brain. Of particular importance to the location of the soul was the 4th ventricle of the brain.

Herophilus observed that there existed two types of nerves, those that functioned in motor activity and those that take in sensory information. Because all nerves are a continuation of the spinal cord and the cerebellum, which are located most closely to the 4th ventricle, it stood to reason that the center of movement and perception, and thus the soul, must be located in the 4th ventricle.

In his treatise, On Anatomy, pneuma was inhaled by the lungs and sent to the brain ventricles via the vessels of the body where the brain would convert it into what he called "psychic pneuma", or the soul, and produce thought, motion and all other animations of the body. Herophilus discovered the bumpy aspect of the walls of the ventricles of the brain that he called the choroid plexus and which was thought to be the interaction of the brain with the pneuma to create the psychic pneuma and then these were sent out via the nervous system. He further identified 8 of the cerebral nerves and tracked them to the spinal cord and throughout the body. The choroid plexus is the term still used today and are the structures that produce cerebrospinal fluid.

Galen

Galen was one of the most foundational physicians in history and is known for careful and detailed vivisection and dissections of animals that was foundational to modern medicine. Galen was known for his treatises on being both a physician and a philosopher and was well versed in the works of Plato. His medical anatomy is described through the use of Plato's corporeal ideals of the soul. The heart was the spirited, the liver the appetitive, and the brain the logical. Later on, Galen moved to Rome where he carried out vivisections on pigs and monkeys to observe their pulmonary circulation. He was the first scientist to distinguish the physiological difference between the arteries and the veins. Galen restricted himself to the scientific explanation of blood flow and respiration.

Galen states in On Respiration and the Arteries "one must determine by dissection that the number and nature of the structures that connect the heart to the brain" and it was observed that when these nerves were cut in animals they would lose their voice and when veins were cut they would bleed, but retain their voice. Therefore, the brain does not need the heart to feel or create sensations and the heart does not need the brain to move. Galen recognized the importance of both the heart and the brain in the proper functioning of a human but saw these as two distinct systems governed separately. Therefore, there are two souls in combat, the brain representing the logical soul and driving logical being, the heart representing spirited actions of movement and impulse constantly at odds with each other and supplied by different supporting systems.

Galen states the "liver is the archai" or the source of the veins and blood of the body and is therefore important in regards to the appetitive soul, but does little to elaborate further on the reason for its connection on why this makes it appetitive. He continues to theorize that the "spleen purifies the liver" but does not while the spleen does not purify the liver it highlight the anatomical connections of the human body. Galen addresses that the proof for the liver is not as obvious as it was in the case of the heart and the brain.

Galen also made a focus on the view on nature. He agreed with ancient doctrine of the four elements which includes the earth, water, wind and the fire to embody the cold, hot dry and wet irreducible qualities. This made a correspondence to the essential body humors which includes the blood, the black bile the phlegm and the yellow bile. The humor had to get their origin from the foods’ elements. The Physiology of Galen started with the nutrition. Food was transformed in the blood and the blood was later on Trans mutated into the tissues’ flesh, the human body however constituted of more of hungry organs. It had both the vitality and the warmth. It was in a position to move voluntarily. It also had thoughts. Therefore, the blood was avital spirit overlaid on the natural spirits or the nutritive. The natural spirit originated from the food and the drink, the origin of the vital spirit was from the atmospheric air . The veins carried the natural spirits while the arteries carried the vital spirits. The heart was centrally located. The heart organ played a role in mediating the exchange of the blood which was in the vein and the air in the arteries. The body was also provided with innate heat by the heart. The heart was not a pump. It was a factory and a smelter’s furnace. The rest of the parts of the body and their actions resulted from the 4 elements combination, the humors and the qualities. Galen made a proposal of natural faculties’ theory in which every part of the body had the ability to retain, attract its nutritive humors as well as expelling the excrements. Therefore, the flow of materials within the body parts seemed to be following a gradient of both the attractive and the expulsive powers.

He also made reaffirmation about the heart as a source of innate heat of the body "The heart is, as it were, the hearthstone and source of the innate heat by which the animal is governed." He also made a careful observation of the physical properties which were unusual. He described the heart to be a very hard flesh which could not be easily injured. The hardness, the tension and also the general strength together with the resistance to injury contributed to a unique property of the heart. He also made an argument about the expansion and the contraction of the heart which made a heart an intelligent organ for playing such a role. The complexity of the fibers of the heart also was prepared to carry out several functions: getting to enlarge when it was to attract what was useful, getting to clasp the contents in which it had attracted and also getting to contact when it was due time to expel the residue. However, Galen was too bold, He contradicted other scientists in the matters which concerned the detailed Anatomy such the Aristotle’s which stated that the heart was a point origin of the nerves. He further made an argument that the heart was just a secondary organ which was next to the liver organ in its operation because it was not site responsible in the production of the humors. His ideas predominated until the mid of seventeenth

Plotinus

The Egyptian philosopher and father of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus’s idea of the human soul would form the foundation for the Christian view of the human soul. Like Plato, Plotinus believed that the soul resulted from an immortal being that would return to its divine source upon death. Plotinus believed in two parts of the soul, a higher level rational part and the lower level portion located in the entire body.

Plotinus saw the soul as a tool of universal structure and one of two parts of the human form: body and soul.  He saw the soul as what was responsible for life and for there to be existence after death, the soul could not be in the body. However, the body was necessary for the soul to exist. Therefore, there was a duality to the roles of the soul among Plotinus' philosophy. The soul played an important role in merging with the One, the "ultimate object of desire".

Plotinus created three stages to reaching the goal of "attaining union with the One".

Stage 1: Return to one's true self as soul

This stage involves gaining control of your own body through Plato's civic virtues and detachment from material goods. Here you recognize yourself as soul, "a divine reality independent of body and prior to it".

Stage 2: Attaining the life of divine intellect

This second stage involves embracing the higher processes of the soul and abandoning the current way of thinking. Since the soul is a bridge between the human form and reaching the One, the thinking processes of the soul and its divinity will lift you closer to the One.

Stage 3: Union with the One

The final step is an abandonment of all things one has learned before. Since the One is above all knowledge, language, and reasoning; it must be a personal journey to unite.

As Plotinus himself put it:

Therefore ‘it cannot be said’ or ‘written’, he says [Plato, Letter 7, 341c], but we speak and write, sending on to it and wakening from words [or explanations] towards contemplation, as if showing the way to him who wishes to see something. For teaching extends to the road and the passage, but the vision is the work of him who has decided to see.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas sought a Christian view of the soul using the ideas of Aristotle. In Aquinas’s view, the soul was incorporeal and immortal, and came about as a direct result of divine intervention from God, which typically came about during the second trimester of pregnancy.  At this point, the fetus would have the ability to perceive and move, the result of being given a soul. As such, being incorporeal, though "infused" in an unknown manner to the body, and being the "form" of the body in a platonic sense, the soul has no location, and therefore cannot be "located in" the body as one locates an organ. This is the typical understanding of the soul found in the Catholic Church today.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci used his experience in the field of anatomy to hypothesize that the soul was located in the optic chiasm, near the 3rd ventricle of the brain. His views were supported by observations of change in perception following disturbances to that particular area of the brain.

Da Vinci's search for the soul fell into three phases: Early Concepts, Personal Quest, and Synthesis.

Phase 1: Early Concepts

From his 1487 experiment of pithing frogs, Da Vinci honed in on the medulla as the location of the soul:

the frog instantly dies when its spinal medulla is perforated. And previously it lived without heart or any interior organs, or intestines or skin. Here therefore, it appears, lies the foundation of movement and life.

Phase 2: Personal Quest

In this second phase, Da Vinci began examining the nervous system and how they connected with the skull. This phase is when he stated that the soul was located slightly above the optic chiasm, in the anterior portion of the 3rd ventricle.

This phase also establishes the role of the soul in the body according to Da Vinci. Da Vinci saw the soul as ruling over all of the senses, he states, "The Soul appears to reside in the seat of judgement, and the judicial part appears to be in that place where all the senses come together, which is called the 'senso comune'."

Phase 3: Synthesis

This final stage involved further study into the anatomy of the brain. Da Vinci used wax to fill the ventricles of an ox brain in order to have a physical model of the location of the "senso comune" as well as two other landmarks, the imprensiva and memoria.

René Descartes

Descartes accepted Plotinus’s perspective on the dual nature of the soul. According to Descartes, the soul conferred the ability to think; this differentiated humans from animals, who had no ability to think or even feel. However, Descartes believed that the physical body and the mind must be physically connected at some point. Descartes’ reasoning came from his observation that every structure of the brain is paired except for the pineal gland. He felt that the pineal gland must be the meeting point of the physical body and the mind, and therefore, the pineal gland must be the location of the soul.

Traditional Chinese philosophy

In wuxing, the five Shen are housed in the five yin organs (also known as zàng (脏)) as follows:

• The heart houses or stores the shen (神)
• The lung houses or stores the po (魄)
• The liver houses or stores the hun (魂)
• The spleen houses or stores the yi (意)
• The kidneys houses or stores the zhi (志)

Kafir

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir 

Kafir (Arabic: كافر kāfir; plural كَافِرُونَ kāfirūna, كفّار kuffār or كَفَرَة kafarah; feminine كافرة kāfirah; feminine plural كافرات kāfirāt or كوافر kawāfir) is an Arabic and Islamic term which, in the Islamic tradition, refers to a person who disbelieves in God as per Islam, or denies his authority, or rejects the tenets of Islam. The term is often translated as "infidel", "pagan", "rejector", "denier", "disbeliever", "unbeliever", "nonbeliever", and "non-Muslim". The term is used in different ways in the Quran, with the most fundamental sense being "ungrateful" (toward God). Kufr means "unbelief" or "non-belief", "to be thankless", "to be faithless", or "ingratitude". The opposite term of kufr is īmān (faith), and the opposite of kāfir is muʾmin (believer). A person who denies the existence of a creator might be called a dahri.

Kafir is sometimes used interchangeably with mushrik (مشرك, those who practice polytheism), another type of religious wrongdoer mentioned frequently in the Quran and other Islamic works. (Other, sometimes overlapping Quranic terms for wrong doers are ẓallām (villain, oppressor) and fāsiq (sinner, fornicator).) Historically, while Islamic scholars agreed that a polytheist/mushrik is a kafir, they sometimes disagreed on the propriety of applying the term to Muslims who committed a grave sin or to the People of the Book. The Quran distinguishes between mushrikun and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol-worshippers, although some classical commentators considered the Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk.

In modern times, kafir is sometimes applied towards self-professed Muslims particularly by members of Islamist movements. The act of declaring another self-professed Muslim a kafir is known as takfir, a practice that has been condemned but also employed in theological and political polemics over the centuries. A Dhimmī or Muʿāhid is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. Dhimmī were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation according to some scholars, whereas others state that religious minorities subjected to the status of Dhimmī (such as Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Gnostics, Mandeans, and Zoroastrians) were inferior to the status of Muslims in Islamic states. Jews and Christians were required to pay the jizya and kharaj taxes, while others, depending on the different rulings of the four madhhab, might be required to convert to Islam, pay the jizya, be exiled, or killed under the Islamic death penalty.

In 2019, Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest independent Islamic organization based in Indonesia, issued a proclamation urging Muslims to refrain from using the word "kafir" to refer to non-Muslims, because the term is both offensive and perceived as "theologically violent".

Etymology

The word kāfir is the active participle of the verb كَفَرَ kafara, from root ك-ف-ر K-F-R. As a pre-Islamic term it described farmers burying seeds in the ground. One of its applications in the Quran has also the same meaning as farmer. Since farmers cover the seeds with soil while planting, the word kāfir implies a person who hides or covers. Ideologically, it implies a person who hides or covers the truth. Arabic poets personify the darkness of night as kâfir, perhaps as a survival of pre-Islamic Arabian religious or mythological usage.

The noun for disbelief, "blasphemy", "impiety" rather than the person who disbelieves, is kufr.

Usage

The practice of declaring another Muslim as a kafir is takfir. Kufr (unbelief) and shirk (idolatry) are used throughout the Quran and sometimes used interchangeably by Muslims. According to Salafist scholars, Kufr is the "denial of the Truth" (truth in the form of articles of faith in Islam), and shirk means devoting "acts of worship to anything beside God" or "the worship of idols and other created beings". So a mushrik may worship other things while also "acknowledging God".

In the Quran

The distinction between those who believe in Islam and those who do not is an essential one in the Quran. Kafir, and its plural kuffaar, is used directly 134 times in Quran, its verbal noun "kufr" is used 37 times, and the verbal cognates of kafir are used about 250 times.

By extension of the basic meaning of the root, "to cover", the term is used in the Quran in the senses of ignore/fail to acknowledge and to spurn/be ungrateful. The meaning of "disbelief", which has come to be regarded as primary, retains all of these connotations in the Quranic usage. In the Quranic discourse, the term typifies all things that are unacceptable and offensive to God. Whereby it is not necessary to deny the existence of God, but it suffices to deviate from his will as seen in a dialogue between God and Iblis, the latter called a kafir. According to Al-Damiri (1341–1405) it is neither denying God, nor the act of disobedience alone, but Iblis' attitude (claiming that God's command is unjust), which makes him a kafir. The most fundamental sense of kufr in the Quran is "ingratitude", the willful refusal to acknowledge or appreciate the benefits that God bestows on humankind, including clear signs and revealed scriptures.

According to the E. J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Volume 4, the term first applied in the Quran to unbelieving Meccans, who endeavoured "to refute and revile the Prophet". A waiting attitude towards the kafir was recommended at first for Muslims; later, Muslims were ordered to keep apart from unbelievers and defend themselves against their attacks and even take the offensive. Most passages in the Quran referring to unbelievers in general talk about their fate on the day of judgement and destination in hell.

According to scholar Marilyn Waldman, as the Quran "progresses" (as the reader goes from the verses revealed first to later ones), the meaning behind the term kafir does not change but "progresses", i.e. "accumulates meaning over time". As the Islamic prophet Muhammad's views of his opponents change, his use of kafir "undergoes a development". Kafir moves from being one description of Muhammad's opponents to the primary one. Later in the Quran, kafir becomes more and more connected with shirk. Finally, towards the end of the Quran, kafir begins to also signify the group of people to be fought by the mu'minīn (believers).

Types of unbelievers

People of the Book

Main article: People of the Book

 

Egyptian Islamic scholar, Ahmad Karima interviewed on 30 July 2017, says People of the Book are not kuffār and "It's all in God's hands".

The status of the Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book), particularly Jews and Christians, with respect to the Islamic notions of unbelief is disputed.

Charles Adams writes that the Quran reproaches the People of the Book with kufr for rejecting Muhammad's message when they should have been the first to accept it as possessors of earlier revelations, and singles out Christians for disregarding the evidence of God's unity. The Quranic verse 5:73 ("Certainly they disbelieve [kafara] who say: God is the third of three"), among other verses, has been traditionally understood in Islam as rejection of the Christian doctrine on the Trinity, though modern scholarship has suggested alternative interpretations. Other Quranic verses strongly deny the deity of Jesus Christ, son of Mary and reproach the people who treat Jesus as equal with God as disbelievers who will have strayed from the path of God which would result in the entrance of hellfire.  While the Quran does not recognize the attribute of Jesus as the Son of God or God himself, it respects Jesus as a prophet and messenger of God sent to children of Israel. Some Muslim thinkers such as Mohamed Talbi have viewed the most extreme Quranic presentations of the dogmas of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus ( 5:19, 5:75–76, 5:119) as non-Christian formulas that were rejected by the Church.

On the other hand, modern scholarship has suggested alternative interpretations of verse Q. 5:73. Cyril Glasse criticizes the use of kafirun [pl. of kafir] to describe Christians as "loose usage". According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, in traditional Islamic jurisprudence, ahl al-kitab are "usually regarded more leniently than other kuffar [pl. of kafir]" and "in theory" a Muslim commits a punishable offense if he says to a Jew or a Christian: "Thou unbeliever". (Charles Adams and A. Kevin Reinhart also write that "later thinkers" in Islam distinguished between ahl al-kitab and the polytheists/mushrikīn).

Historically, People of the Book permanently residing under Islamic rule were entitled to a special status known as dhimmī, while those visiting Muslim lands received a different status known as musta'min.

Mushrikun

Mushrikun (pl. of mushrik) are those who practice shirk, which literally means "association" and refers to accepting other gods and divinities alongside the god of the Muslims – Allah (as God's "associates"). The term is often translated as polytheism. The Quran distinguishes between mushrikun and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol worshipers, although some classical commentators considered Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk. Shirk is held to be the worst form of disbelief, and it is identified in the Quran as the only sin that God will not pardon ( 4:48, 4:116).

Accusations of shirk have been common in religious polemics within Islam. Thus, in the early Islamic debates on free will and theodicy, Sunni theologians charged their Mu'tazila adversaries with shirk, accusing them of attributing to man creative powers comparable to those of God in both originating and executing his own actions. Mu'tazila theologians, in turn, charged the Sunnis with shirk on the grounds that under their doctrine a voluntary human act would result from an "association" between God, who creates the act, and the individual who appropriates it by carrying it out.

In classical jurisprudence, Islamic religious tolerance applied only to the People of the Book, while mushrikun, based on the Sword Verse, faced a choice between conversion to Islam and fight to the death, which may be substituted by enslavement. In practice, the designation of People of the Book and the dhimmī status was extended even to non-monotheistic religions of conquered peoples, such as Hinduism. Following destruction of major Hindu temples during the Muslim conquests in South Asia, Hindus and Muslims on the subcontinent came to share a number of popular religious practices and beliefs, such as veneration of Sufi saints and worship at Sufi dargahs, although Hindus may worship at Hindu shrines also.

In the 18th century, followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (aka Wahhabis) believed "kufr or shirk" was found in the Muslim community itself, especially in "the practice of popular religion":

shirk took many forms: the attribution to prophets, saints, astrologers, and soothsayers of knowledge of the unseen world, which only God possesses and can grant; the attribution of power to any being except God, including the power of intercession; reverence given in any way to any created thing, even to the tomb of the Prophet; such superstitious customs as belief in omens and in auspicious and inauspicious days; and swearing by the names of the Prophet, ʿAlī, the Shīʿī imams, or the saints. Thus the Wahhābīs acted even to destroy the cemetery where many of the Prophet's most notable companions were buried, on the grounds that it was a center of idolatry.

While ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Wahhābīs was/were "the best-known premodern" revivalist and "sectarian movement" of that era, other revivalists included Shah Ismail Dehlvi and Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi, leaders of the Mujāhidīn movement on the North-West frontier of India in the early nineteenth century.

Sinners

Whether a Muslim could commit a sin great enough to become a kafir was disputed by jurists in the early centuries of Islam. The most tolerant view (that of the Murji'ah) was that even those who had committed a major sin (kabira) were still believers and "their fate was left to God". The most strict view (that of Kharidji Ibadis, descended from the Kharijites) was that every Muslim who dies having not repented of his sins was considered a kafir. In between these two positions, the Mu'tazila believed that there was a status between believer and unbeliever called "rejected" or fasiq.

Takfir

Main article: Takfir

Further information: Takfiri

The Kharijites view that the self-proclaimed Muslim who had sinned and "failed to repent had ipso facto excluded himself from the community, and was hence a kafir" (a practice known as takfir) was considered so extreme by the Sunni majority that they in turn declared the Kharijites to be kuffar, following the hadith that declared, "If a Muslim charges a fellow Muslim with kufr, he is himself a kafir if the accusation should prove untrue".

Nevertheless, in Islamic theological polemics kafir was "a frequent term for the Muslim protagonist" holding the opposite view, according to Brill's Islamic Encyclopedia.

Present-day Muslims who make interpretations that differ from what others believe are declared kafirs; fatwas (edicts by Islamic religious leaders) are issued ordering Muslims to kill them, and some such people have been killed also.

Murtad

Another group that are "distinguished from the mass of kafirun" are the murtad, or apostate ex-Muslims, who are considered renegades and traitors. Their traditional punishment is death, even, according to some scholars, if they recant their abandonment of Islam.

Muʿāhid / Dhimmī

Dhimmī are non-Muslims living under the protection of an Islamic state. Dhimmī were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation according to some scholars, whereas others state that religious minorities subjected to the status of Dhimmī (such as Jews, Samaritans, Gnostics, Mandeans, and Zoroastrians) were inferior to the status of Muslims in Islamic states. Jews and Christians were required to pay the jizyah while pagans, depending on the different rulings of the four madhhab, might be required to accept Islam, pay the jizya, be exiled, or be killed under the Islamic death penalty. Some historians believe that forced conversion was rare in Islamic history, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary. Muslim rulers were often more interested in conquest than conversion.

Upon payment of the tax (jizya), the dhimmī would receive a receipt of payment, either in the form of a piece of paper or parchment or as a seal humiliatingly placed upon their neck, and was thereafter compelled to carry this receipt wherever he went within the realms of Islam. Failure to produce an up-to-date jizya receipt on the request of a Muslim could result in death or forced conversion to Islam of the dhimmī in question.

Types of disbelief

Various types of unbelief recognized by legal scholars include:

• kufr bi-l-qawl (verbally expressed unbelief)
• kufr bi-l-fi'l (unbelief expressed through action)
• kufr bi-l-i'tiqad (unbelief of convictions) 
• kufr akbar (major unbelief)
• kufr asghar (minor unbelief)
• takfir 'amm (general charge of unbelief, i.e. charged against a community like ahmadiyya
• takfir al-mu'ayyan (charge of unbelief against a particular individual)
• takfir al-'awamm (charge of unbelief against "rank and file Muslims" for example following taqlid.
• takfir al-mutlaq (category covers general statements such as 'whoever says X or does Y is guilty of unbelief')
• kufr asli (original unbelief of non-Muslims, those born to non-Muslim family)
• kufr tari (acquired unbelief of formerly observant Muslims, i.e. apostates)

Iman

Muslim belief/doctrine is often summarized in "the Six Articles of Faith", (the first five are mentioned together in the Quran 2:285).

1. God
2. His angels
3. His Messengers
4. His Revealed Books,
5. The Day of Resurrection
6. Al-Qadar, Divine Preordainments, i.e. whatever God has ordained must come to pass

According to the Salafi scholar Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali, "kufr is basically disbelief in any of the articles of faith. He also lists several different types of major disbelief, (disbelief so severe it excludes those who practice it completely from the fold of Islam):

1. Kufr-at-Takdhib: disbelief in divine truth or the denial of any of the articles of Faith (quran 39:32)
2. Kufr-al-iba wat-takabbur ma'at-Tasdiq: refusing to submit to God's Commandments after conviction of their truth (quran 2:34)
3. Kufr-ash-Shakk waz-Zann: doubting or lacking conviction in the six articles of Faith. (quran 18:35–38)
4. Kufr-al-I'raadh: turning away from the truth knowingly or deviating from the obvious signs which God has revealed. (quran 46:3)
5. Kufr-an-Nifaaq: hypocritical disbelief (quran 63:2–3)

Minor disbelief or Kufran-Ni'mah indicates "ungratefulness of God's Blessings or Favours".

According to another source, a paraphrase of the Tafsir by Ibn Kathir, there are eight kinds of Al-Kufr al-Akbar (major unbelief), some are the same as those described by Al-Hilali (Kufr-al-I'rad, Kufr-an-Nifaaq) and some different.

1. Kufrul-'Inaad: Disbelief out of stubbornness. This applies to someone who knows the Truth and admits to knowing the Truth, and knowing it with his tongue, but refuses to accept it and refrains from making a declaration. God says: Throw into Hell every stubborn disbeliever.
2. Kufrul-Inkaar: Disbelief out of denial. This applies to someone who denies with both heart and tongue. God says: They recognize the favors of God, yet they deny them. Most of them are disbelievers.
3. Kufrul-Juhood: Disbelief out of rejection. This applies to someone who acknowledges the truth in his heart, but rejects it with his tongue. This type of kufr is applicable to those who call themselves Muslims but who reject any necessary and accepted norms of Islam such as Salah and Zakat. God says: They denied them (our signs) even though their hearts believed in them, out of spite and arrogance.
4. Kufrul-Nifaaq: Disbelief out of hypocrisy. This applies to someone who pretends to be a believer but conceals his disbelief. Such a person is called a munafiq or hypocrite. God says: Verily the hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of Hell. You will find no one to help them.
5. Kufrul-Kurh: Disbelief out of detesting any of God's commands. God says: Perdition (destruction) has been consigned to those who disbelieve and He will render their actions void. This is because they are averse to that which God has revealed so He has made their actions fruitless.
6. Kufrul-Istihzaha: Disbelief due to mockery and derision. God says: Say: Was it at God, His signs and His apostles that you were mocking? Make no excuses. You have disbelieved after you have believed.
7. Kufrul-I'raadh: Disbelief due to avoidance. This applies to those who turn away and avoid the truth. God says: And who is more unjust than he who is reminded of his Lord's signs but then turns away from them. Then he forgets what he has sent forward (for the Day of Judgement).
8. Kufrul-Istibdaal: Disbelief because of trying to substitute God's Laws with man-made laws. God says: Or have they partners with God who have instituted for them a religion that God has not allowed. God says: Say not concerning that which your tongues put forth falsely (that) is lawful and this is forbidden so as to invent a lie against God. Verily, those who invent a lie against God will never prosper.

Ignorance

In Islam, jahiliyyah ("ignorance") refers to the time of Arabia before Islam.

History of the usage of the term

Usage in the proper sense

Further information: Islam and other religions

When the Islamic empire expanded, the word "kafir" was broadly used as a descriptive term for all pagans and anyone else who disbelieved in Islam. Historically, the attitude toward unbelievers in Islam was determined more by socio-political conditions than by religious doctrine. A tolerance toward unbelievers "impossible to imagine in contemporary Christendom" prevailed even to the time of the Crusades, particularly with respect to the People of the Book. However, due to animosity towards Franks, the term kafir developed into a term of abuse. During the Mahdist War, the Mahdist State used the term kuffar against Ottoman Turks, and the Turks themselves used the term kuffar towards Persians during the Ottoman-Safavid wars. In modern Muslim popular imagination, the dajjal (antichrist-like figure) will have k-f-r written on his forehead.

However, there was extensive religious violence in India between Muslims and non-Muslims during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (before the political decline of Islam). In their memoirs on Muslim invasions, enslavement and plunder of this period, many Muslim historians in South Asia used the term Kafir for Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. Raziuddin Aquil states that "non-Muslims were often condemned as kafirs, in medieval Indian Islamic literature, including court chronicles, Sufi texts and literary compositions" and fatwas were issued that justified persecution of the non-Muslims.

Relations between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world and use of the word "kafir" were equally as complex, and over the last century, issues regarding "kafir" have arisen over the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Calling the Jews of Israel, "the usurping kafir", Yasser Arafat turned on the Muslim resistance and "allegedly set a precedent for preventing Muslims from mobilizing against 'aggressor disbelievers' in other Muslim lands, and enabled 'the cowardly, alien kafir' to achieve new levels of intervention in Muslim affairs."

In 2019, Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest independent Islamic organization in the world based in Indonesia, issued a proclamation urging Muslims to refrain from using the word kafir to refer to non-Muslims, as the term is both offensive and perceived to be "theologically violent".

Muhammad's parents

Further information: Banu Hashim

See also: Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia

A hadith in which Muhammad states that his father, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, was in Hell, has become a source of disagreement among Islamic scholars about the status of Muhammad's parents. Over the centuries, Sunni scholars have dismissed this hadith despite its appearance in the authoritative Sahih Muslim collection. It passed through a single chain of transmission for three generations, so that its authenticity was not considered certain enough to supersede a theological consensus which stated that people who died before a prophetic message reached them—as Muhammad's father had done—could not be held accountable for not embracing it. Shia Muslim scholars likewise consider Muhammad's parents to be in Paradise. In contrast, the Salafi website IslamQA.info, founded by the Saudi Arabian Salafi scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid, argues that Islamic tradition teaches that Muhammad's parents were kuffār ("disbelievers") who are in Hell.

Other uses

See also: Kaffir (racial term), Kafiristan, Kaffrine, and Kaffraria

 

The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country by Rev. Joseph Shooter

By the 15th century, Muslims in Africa were using the word Kaffir in reference to the non-Muslim African natives. Many of those kufari were enslaved and sold to European and Asian merchants by their Muslim captors, most of the merchants were from Portugal, which had established trading outposts along the coast of West Africa by that time. These European traders adopted the Arabic word and its derivatives.

Some of the earliest records of European usage of the word can be found in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) by Richard Hakluyt. In volume 4, Hakluyt writes: "calling them Cafars and Gawars, which is, infidels or disbelievers". Volume 9 refers to the slaves (slaves called Cafari) and inhabitants of Ethiopia (and they use to go in small shippes, and trade with the Cafars) by two different but similar names. The word is also used in reference to the coast of Africa as land of Cafraria. The 16th century explorer Leo Africanus described the Cafri as "negroes", and he also stated that they constituted one of five principal population groups in Africa. He identified their geographical heartland as being located in a remote region of southern Africa, an area which he designated as Cafraria.

By the late 19th century, the word was in use in English-language newspapers and books. One of the Union-Castle Line ships operating off the South African coast was named SS Kafir.^[96] In the early twentieth century, in his book The Essential Kafir, Dudley Kidd writes that the word kafir had come to be used for all dark-skinned South African tribes. Thus, in many parts of South Africa, kafir became synonymous with the word "native". Currently in South Africa, however, the word kaffir is regarded as a racial slur, applied pejoratively or offensively to blacks.

The song "Kafir" by the American technical death metal band Nile on its sixth album Those Whom the Gods Detest uses the violent attitudes that Muslim extremists have towards kafirs as subject matter.

The Nuristani people were formerly known as the Kaffirs of Kafiristan before the Afghan Islamization of the region.

The Kalash people who live in the Hindu Kush mountain range which is located south west of Chitral are referred to as kafirs by the Muslim population of Chitral.

In modern Spanish, the word cafre, derived from the Arabic word kafir by way of the Portuguese language, also means "uncouth" or "savage".

Institution

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution

Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Institutions vary in their level of formality and informality.

Institutions are a principal object of study in social sciences such as political science, anthropology, economics, and sociology (the latter described by Émile Durkheim as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning"). Primary or meta-institutions are institutions such as the family or money that are broad enough to encompass sets of related institutions. Institutions are also a central concern for law, the formal mechanism for political rule-making and enforcement. Historians study and document the founding, growth, decay and development of institutions as part of political, economic and cultural history.

Definition

There are a variety of definitions of institutions. These definitions entail varying levels of formality and organizational complexity. The most expansive definitions may include informal but regularized practices, such as handshakes, whereas the most narrow definitions may only include institutions that are highly formalized (e.g. have specified laws, rules and complex organizational structures).

According to Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen, institutions are in the most general sense "building blocks of social order: they represent socially sanctioned, that is, collectively enforced expectations with respect to the behavior of specific categories of actors or to the performance of certain activities. Typically, they involve mutually related rights and obligations for actors." Sociologists and anthropologists have expansive definitions of institutions that include informal institutions. Political scientists have sometimes defined institutions in more formal ways where third parties must reliably and predictably enforce the rules governing the transactions of first and second parties.

One prominent Rational Choice Institutionalist definition of institutions is provided by Jack Knight who defines institutions as entailing "a set of rules that structure social interactions in particular ways" and that "knowledge of these rules must be shared by the members of the relevant community or society." Definitions by Knight and Randall Calvert exclude purely private idiosyncrasies and conventions.

Douglass North defines institutions as "rules of the game in a society" and "humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interactions." Randall Calvert defines institution as "an equilibrium of behavior in an underlying game." This means that "it must be rational for nearly every individual to almost always adhere to the behavior prescriptions of the institution, given that nearly all other individuals are doing so."

Robert Keohane defined institutions as "persistent and connected sets of rules (formal or informal) that prescribe behavioral roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations." Samuel P. Huntington defined institutions as "stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior."

Avner Greif and David Laitin define institutions "as a system of human-made, nonphysical elements – norms, beliefs, organizations, and rules – exogenous to each individual whose behavior it influences that generates behavioral regularities." Additionally, they specify that organizations "are institutional elements that influence the set of beliefs and norms that can be self-enforcing in the transaction under consideration. Rules are behavioral instructions that facilitate individuals with the cognitive task of choosing behavior by defining the situation and coordinating behavior."

All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Organizations and institutions can be synonymous, but Jack Knight writes that organizations are a narrow version of institutions or represent a cluster of institutions; the two are distinct in the sense that organizations contain internal institutions (that govern interactions between the members of the organizations).

An informal institution tends to have socially shared rules, which are unwritten and yet are often known by all inhabitants of a certain country, as such they are often referred to as being an inherent part of the culture of a given country. Informal practices are often referred to as "cultural", for example clientelism or corruption is sometimes stated as a part of the political culture in a certain place, but an informal institution itself is not cultural, it may be shaped by culture or behaviour of a given political landscape, but they should be looked at in the same way as formal institutions to understand their role in a given country. The relationship between formal and informal institutions is often closely aligned and informal institutions step in to prop up inefficient institutions. However, because they do not have a centre, which directs and coordinates their actions, changing informal institutions is a slow and lengthy process.

According to Geoffrey M. Hodgson, it is misleading to say that an institution is a form of behavior. Instead, Hodgson states that institutions are "integrated systems of rules that structure social interactions."

Examples

Examples of institutions include:

• Family: The family is the center of the child's life. The family teaches children cultural values and attitudes about themselves and others – see sociology of the family. Children learn continuously from their environment. Children also become aware of class at a very early age and assign different values to each class accordingly.
• Religion: Some religion is like an ethnic or cultural category, making it less likely for the individuals to break from religious affiliations and be more socialized in this setting. Parental religious participation is the most influential part of religious socialization—more so than religious peers or religious beliefs. See sociology of religion and civil religion.
• Peer groups: A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions and age in common. This is where children can escape supervision and learn to form relationships on their own. The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence however peer groups generally only affect short term interests unlike the family which has long term influence.
• Economic systems: Economic systems dictate "acceptable alternatives for consumption", "social values of consumption alternatives", the "establishment of dominant values", and "the nature of involvement in consumption".
• Legal systems: Children are pressured from both parents and peers to conform and obey certain laws or norms of the group/community. Parents’ attitudes toward legal systems influence children's views as to what is legally acceptable. For example, children whose parents are continually in jail are more accepting of incarceration. See jurisprudence, philosophy of law, sociology of law.
• Penal systems: The penal systems acts upon prisoners and the guards. Prison is a separate environment from that of normal society; prisoners and guards form their own communities and create their own social norms. Guards serve as "social control agents" who discipline and provide security. From the view of the prisoners, the communities can be oppressive and domineering, causing feelings of defiance and contempt towards the guards. Because of the change in societies, prisoners experience loneliness, a lack of emotional relationships, a decrease in identity and "lack of security and autonomy". Both the inmates and the guards feel tense, fearful, and defensive, which creates an uneasy atmosphere within the community. See sociology of punishment.
• Language: People learn to socialize differently depending on the specific language and culture in which they live. A specific example of this is code switching. This is where immigrant children learn to behave in accordance with the languages used in their lives: separate languages at home and in peer groups (mainly in educational settings). Depending on the language and situation at any given time, people will socialize differently. See linguistics, sociolinguistics, sociology of language.
• Mass media: The mass media are the means for delivering impersonal communications directed to a vast audience. The term media comes from Latin meaning, "middle", suggesting that the media's function is to connect people. The media can teach norms and values by way of representing symbolic reward and punishment for different kinds of behavior. Mass media has enormous effects on our attitudes and behavior, notably in regards to aggression. See media studies.
• Educational institutions – schools (preschool, primary/elementary, secondary, and post-secondary/higher –see sociology of education)
• Research community – academia and universities; research institutes – see sociology of science
• Medicine – hospitals and other health care institutions – see sociology of health and illness, medical sociology
  • Psychiatric hospitals (history)
• Military or paramilitary forces – see military sociology
• Industry – businesses, including corporations – see financial institution, factory, capitalism, division of labour, social class, industrial sociology
• Civil society or NGOs – charitable organizations; advocacy groups; political parties; think tanks; virtual communities

In an extended context:

• Art and culture (See also: culture industry, critical theory, cultural studies, cultural sociology)
• The nation-state – Social and political scientists often speak of the state as embodying all institutions such as schools, prisons, police, and so on. However, these institutions may be considered private or autonomous, whilst organised religion and family life certainly pre-date the advent of the nation state. The Neo-Marxist thought of Antonio Gramsci, for instance, distinguishes between institutions of political society (police, the army, legal system, etc.), which dominate directly and coercively—and civil society (the family, education system, etc.).

Social science perspectives

While institutions tend to appear to people in society as part of the natural, unchanging landscape of their lives, study of institutions by the social sciences tends to reveal the nature of institutions as social constructions, artifacts of a particular time, culture and society, produced by collective human choice, though not directly by individual intention. Sociology traditionally analyzed social institutions in terms of interlocking social roles and expectations. Social institutions created and were composed of groups of roles, or expected behaviors. The social function of the institution was executed by the fulfillment of roles. Basic biological requirements, for reproduction and care of the young, are served by the institutions of marriage and family, for example, by creating, elaborating and prescribing the behaviors expected for husband/father, wife/mother, child, etc.

The relationship of the institutions to human nature is a foundational question for the social sciences. Institutions can be seen as "naturally" arising from, and conforming to, human nature—a fundamentally conservative view—or institutions can be seen as artificial, almost accidental, and in need of architectural redesign, informed by expert social analysis, to better serve human needs—a fundamentally progressive view. Adam Smith anchored his economics in the supposed human "propensity to truck, barter and exchange". Modern feminists have criticized traditional marriage and other institutions as element of an oppressive and obsolete patriarchy. The Marxist view—which sees human nature as historically 'evolving' towards voluntary social cooperation, shared by some anarchists—is that supra-individual institutions such as the market and the state are incompatible with the individual liberty of a truly free society.

Economics, in recent years, has used game theory to study institutions from two perspectives. Firstly, how do institutions survive and evolve? In this perspective, institutions arise from Nash equilibria of games. For example, whenever people pass each other in a corridor or thoroughfare, there is a need for customs, which avoid collisions. Such a custom might call for each party to keep to their own right (or left—such a choice is arbitrary, it is only necessary that the choice be uniform and consistent). Such customs may be supposed to be the origin of rules, such as the rule, adopted in many countries, which requires driving automobiles on the right side of the road.

Secondly, how do institutions affect behaviour? In this perspective, the focus is on behaviour arising from a given set of institutional rules. In these models, institutions determine the rules (i.e. strategy sets and utility functions) of games, rather than arise as equilibria out of games. Douglass North argues, the very emergence of an institution reflects behavioral adaptations through his application of increasing returns. Over time institutions develop rules that incentivize certain behaviors over others because they present less risk or induce lower cost, and establish path dependent outcomes. For example, the Cournot duopoly model is based on an institution involving an auctioneer who sells all goods at the market-clearing price. While it is always possible to analyze behaviour with the institutions-as-equilibria approach instead, it is much more complicated.

In political science, the effect of institutions on behavior has also been considered from a meme perspective, like game theory borrowed from biology. A "memetic institutionalism" has been proposed, suggesting that institutions provide selection environments for political action, whereby differentiated retention arises and thereby a Darwinian evolution of institutions over time. Public choice theory, another branch of economics with a close relationship to political science, considers how government policy choices are made, and seeks to determine what the policy outputs are likely to be, given a particular political decision-making process and context. Credibility thesis purports that institutions emerge from intentional institution-building but never in the originally intended form. Instead, institutional development is endogenous and spontaneously ordered and institutional persistence can be explained by their credibility, which is provided by the function that particular institutions serve.

In history, a distinction between eras or periods, implies a major and fundamental change in the system of institutions governing a society. Political and military events are judged to be of historical significance to the extent that they are associated with changes in institutions. In European history, particular significance is attached to the long transition from the feudal institutions of the Middle Ages to the modern institutions, which govern contemporary life.

Theories of institutional emergence

Scholars have proposed different approaches to the emergence of institutions, such as spontaneous emergence, evolution and social contracts. Some scholars argue that institutions can emerge spontaneously without intent as individuals and groups converge on a particular institutional arrangement. Other approaches see institutional development as the result of evolutionary or learning processes. Other scholars see institutions as being formed through social contracts or rational purposeful designs.

Theories of institutional change

In order to understand why some institutions persist and other institutions only appear in certain contexts, it is important to understand what drives institutional change. Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson assert that institutional change is endogenous. They posit a framework for institutional change that is rooted in the distribution of resources across society and preexisting political institutions. These two factors determine de jure and de facto political power, respectively, which in turn defines this period's economic institutions and next period's political institutions. Finally, the current economic institutions determine next period's distribution of resources and the cycle repeats. Douglass North attributes institutional change to the work of "political entrepreneurs", who see personal opportunities to be derived from a changed institutional framework. These entrepreneurs weigh the expected costs of altering the institutional framework against the benefits they can derive from the change. North describes institutional change as a process that is extremely incremental, and that works through both formal and informal institutions. Lipscy argues that patterns of institutional change vary according to underlying characteristics of issue areas, such as network effects.

In a 2020 study, Johannes Gerschewski created a two-by-two typology of institutional change depending on the sources of change (exogenous or endogenous) and the time horizon of change (short or long). In another 2020 study, Erik Voeten created a two-by-two typology of institutional design depending on whether actors have full agency or are bound by structures, and whether institutional designs reflect historical processes or are optimal equilibriums.

Institutional persistence

North argues that because of the preexisting influence that existing organizations have over the existing framework, change that is brought about is often in the interests of these organizations. This produces a phenomenon called path dependence, which states that institutional patterns are persistent and endure over time. These paths are determined at critical junctures, analogous to a fork in the road, whose outcome leads to a narrowing of possible future outcomes. Once a choice is made during a critical juncture, it becomes progressively difficult to return to the initial point where the choice was made. James Mahoney studies path dependence in the context of national regime change in Central America and finds that liberal policy choices of Central American leaders in the 19th century was the critical juncture that led to the divergent levels of development that we see in these countries today. The policy choices that leaders made in the context of liberal reform policy led to a variety of self-reinforcing institutions that created divergent development outcomes for the Central American countries.

Though institutions are persistent, North states that paths can change course when external forces weaken the power of an existing organization. This allows other entrepreneurs to affect change in the institutional framework. This change can also occur as a result of gridlock between political actors produced by a lack of mediating institutions and an inability to reach a bargain. Artificial implementation of institutional change has been tested in political development but can have unintended consequences. North, Wallis, and Weingast divide societies into different social orders: open access orders, which about a dozen developed countries fall into today, and limited access orders, which accounts for the rest of the countries. Open access orders and limited access orders differ fundamentally in the way power and influence is distributed. As a result, open access institutions placed in limited access orders face limited success and are often coopted by the powerful elite for self-enrichment. Transition to more democratic institutions is not created simply by transplanting these institutions into new contexts, but happens when it is in the interest of the dominant coalition to widen access.

Natural selection

Ian Lustick suggests that the social sciences, particularly those with the institution as a central concept, can benefit by applying the concept of natural selection to the study of how institutions change over time. By viewing institutions as existing within a fitness landscape, Lustick argues that the gradual improvements typical of many institutions can be seen as analogous to hill-climbing within one of these fitness landscapes. This can eventually lead to institutions becoming stuck on local maxima, such that for the institution to improve any further, it would first need to decrease its overall fitness score (e.g., adopt policies that may cause short-term harm to the institution's members). The tendency to get stuck on local maxima can explain why certain types of institutions may continue to have policies that are harmful to its members or to the institution itself, even when members and leadership are all aware of the faults of these policies.

As an example, Lustick cites Amyx's analysis of the gradual rise of the Japanese economy and its seemingly sudden reversal in the so-called "Lost Decade". According to Amyx, Japanese experts were not unaware of the possible causes of Japan's economic decline. Rather, to return Japan's economy back to the path to economic prosperity, policymakers would have had to adopt policies that would first cause short-term harm to the Japanese people and government. Under this analysis, says Ian Lustick, Japan was stuck on a "local maxima", which it arrived at through gradual increases in its fitness level, set by the economic landscape of the 1970s and 80s. Without an accompanying change in institutional flexibility, Japan was unable to adapt to changing conditions, and even though experts may have known which changes the country needed, they would have been virtually powerless to enact those changes without instituting unpopular policies that would have been harmful in the short-term.

The lessons from Lustick's analysis applied to Sweden's economic situation can similarly apply to the political gridlock that often characterizes politics in the United States. For example, Lustick observes that any politician who hopes to run for elected office stands very little to no chance if they enact policies that show no short-term results. Unfortunately, there is a mismatch between policies that bring about short-term benefits with minimal sacrifice, and those that bring about long-lasting change by encouraging institution-level adaptations.

There are some criticisms to Lustick's application of natural selection theory to institutional change. Lustick himself notes that identifying the inability of institutions to adapt as a symptom of being stuck on a local maxima within a fitness landscape does nothing to solve the problem. At the very least, however, it might add credibility to the idea that truly beneficial change might require short-term harm to institutions and their members. David Sloan Wilson notes that Lustick needs to more carefully distinguish between two concepts: multilevel selection theory and evolution on multi-peaked landscapes. Bradley Thayer points out that the concept of a fitness landscape and local maxima only makes sense if one institution can be said to be "better" than another, and this in turn only makes sense insofar as there exists some objective measure of an institution's quality. This may be relatively simple in evaluating the economic prosperity of a society, for example, but it is difficult to see how objectively a measure can be applied to the amount of freedom of a society, or the quality of life of the individuals within.

Institutionalization

Main article: Institutionalisation

The term "institutionalization" is widely used in social theory to refer to the process of embedding something (for example a concept, a social role, a particular value or mode of behavior) within an organization, social system, or society as a whole. The term may also be used to refer to committing a particular individual to an institution, such as a mental institution. To this extent, "institutionalization" may carry negative connotations regarding the treatment of, and damage caused to, vulnerable human beings by the oppressive or corrupt application of inflexible systems of social, medical, or legal controls by publicly owned, private or not-for-profit organizations.

The term "institutionalization" may also be used in a political sense to apply to the creation or organization of governmental institutions or particular bodies responsible for overseeing or implementing policy, for example in the welfare or development.