Enrico Beltramini
Biographic Data
| ID | 990107 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Enrico Beltramini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Enrico |
| FAMILY NAME | Beltramini |
| SIGNATURE | BELTRAMINI E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Notre Dame de Namur University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9704-3960 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 29 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Nepali Political Secularism as Majoritarian Secularism
In this article, I provide a tentative interpretation of Nepali political secularism. The entry point is an article written on the subject by the prominent political theorist Rajeev Bhargava. I summarize the findings of his article, and I introduce some changes to his framework, moving from his view as a political theorist of secularism to mine as a religious scholar. Finally, I offer my own interpretation. In brief, I see political secularism in…
Historiography and Christianity after Liberalism
This article focuses on the influence of liberal and postliberal historiography on the study of Christianity. It aims to define a postliberal historiography that goes beyond the constraints of existing critiques of liberal historiography. Postliberal historiography critiques liberal historicism but has yet to fully escape its ontological assumptions. To move beyond its limitations, history must be reinterpreted through a new ontological framework…
Beyond Neutrality
This article argues that any use of social theory by Indian theologians is inherently non-neutral, challenging the widespread assumption that theology can rely on an unbiased social theory for analyzing society. When theologians adopt neutral social theory, they inadvertently import Western intellectual paradigms rooted in modernity, Enlightenment rationality, Christian theology, and Eurocentrism. On the other hand, attempts to resist Western inf…
Indian Theology and the Crisis of Indian Secularism
In this paper I discuss the crisis of Indian secularism and how Roman Catholic Indian theologians address such a crisis. First, I define the crisis as the result of the application of Western illiberal ideas to the distinct reality of Indian secularism. The result is a separation between politics and religion that resembles that in place in the West. I also study Roman Catholic Indian theologians’ distinctive understanding of Indian secularism an…
The fish is only as big as the pond it swims in
This article examines the far-reaching implications of the Chinchilla Paper and related insights for artificial intelligence (AI) scalability, existential risk narratives, and theological reflections on AI. The Chinchilla Paper, a landmark study by DeepMind, disrupts traditional assumptions about computational power as the key to AI advancement, revealing instead that AI's potential is fundamentally constrained by the finite availability of high-…
Medieval Temporalities
Twenty years ago, I read After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (2001) by Jack Kornfield. The story was far from being memorable, but the idea behind it was remarkable: “Most spiritual accounts end with illumination or enlightenment. But what if we ask what happens after that? What happens when the Zen master returns home to spouse and children? What happens when the Christian mystic goes shopping?” (xiii–x…
Toward a Historiography of the Sacred
In this study, I explore the possibility of a historiography that recognizes and incorporates the sacred as an essential part of how reality is conceived. Here, the "sacred" refers to the belief that reality is inherently shaped and influenced by the presence and action of God. For the majority of the last twenty centuries, this has been the prevailing conception of reality in Europe. However, interpreting such a conception poses a significant he…
The Church’s Extrincist Response to the Pandemic
In this article, I return to Giorgio Agamben’s intervention on the pandemic to reflect on one of his claims, namely the mundanity of the Roman Catholic Church. Agamben comes to this conclusion after reporting about the passive response of the Church to the state-of-emergency legislation and the “barbaric” conditions of social relationships that followed. These conditions, and not the conspiracy theories on the invention of an epidemic to extend f…
The God of Cosmologists and Philosophers
Cosmologists and philosophers have not limited themselves to discussing the multiverse hypothesis within the confines of their own fields; they have, instead, extended their reflections to the realm of Christian religion and theology. This move equates to a belief in the superiority of the secular knowledge even in religious matters. I redesign the spheres of competence between secular knowledge and theology, giving priority to true theology not …
The Historical Revolution of Vatican II and the Vision of a Post-Western Christianity in India
The vision of a post-western Christianity in India is traditionally linked to a distinct theological interpretation of Vatican II. According to such an interpretation, Vatican II was a theological revolution that favoured the openness of the Church to the world. In this article, I explore that vision through a historical, rather than a theological, interpretation of Vatican II. In Europe, Vatican II was a historical revolution that promoted the e…
When religion meets history of technology
Despite the growing scholarly work at the intersection of religion and technology, how to characterize their relationship remains a matter of dispute for historians of technology. This essay leverages a seminal piece by Jennifer Karns Alexander in a recent special issue of History and Technology on religion and technology for addressing the metatheory behind the subject. Alexander appears to believe that the problems affecting the scholarship of …
Sitting on the Lakeshore
In his Letters from Lake Como, Romano Guardini distilled the characteristics of a cultural shift from a rural community to an industrialized society. Decades later, he would complete and refine his vision of that shift in The End of the Modern World. In the two books, but especially in Letters, Guardini argued for the possibility of a conciliation between a Christianity that differs from medieval Christianity, or Christendom, and an artificial, t…
Pannikar’s Cosmic Monasticism
Raimon Panikkar was a Spanish theologian with Indian roots whose reflections on monasticism were at once creative and inspiring. He aimed to renew the monastic tradition not in the sense of restoration but rather aggiornamento, namely, bringing it up to date. His scholarly considerations were matched with a personal tendency toward solitude, although seen as a complement to rather than a priority in an integrated life. This article is primarily a…
Roman Catholic Government and Mission to Tibet
In this article I consider the administration of the Roman Catholic Church mission to Tibet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After summarizing the main events of this mission, I focus on the juridical-political aspects of the government (i.e., administration) of mission. I contribute to the understanding of the history of mission to Tibet by addressing administration in theological terms. I show that government in the history of missi…
The Government of Evil Machines
In this article I propose a theological reflection on the philosophical assumptions behind the idea that intelligent machine can be governed through ethical protocols, which may apply either to the people who develop the machines or to the machines themselves, or both. This idea is particularly relevant in the case of machines’ extreme wrongdoing, a wrongdoing that becomes an existential risk for humankind. I call this extreme wrong-doing, ‘evil.…
The Crisis of Indian Secularism
In this paper I suggest that Roman Catholic theologians in India take a second look at the distinction between western and Indian secularisms. Blurring the lines between western and Indian secularisms may help the theological reflection on the so-called crisis of Indian secularism. The key point is the non-ontological, historical character of secularism. A look at the growing literature on western post-secularization, in fact, may offer some sugg…
The "Wisdom Writer", Michael Amaladoss and His Thought
This paper offers a synthetic introduction to Michael Amaladoss and his thought. Amaladoss is a member of the Society of Jesus and one of the finest Indian theologians; in the course of decades of engagement with themes such as interfaith dialogue, Indian theology, social justice, and secularism, he has greatly contributed to putting Asian theology on the map. In this study, I focus on Amaladoss, his theological style, his main intellectual conce…
Between Dualism and Immanentism Sacramental Ontology and History
How to deal with religious ideas in religious history (and in history in general) has recently become a matter of discussion. In particular, a number of authors have framed their work around the concept of 'sacramental ontology,' that is, a unified vision of reality in which the secular and the religious come together, although maintaining their distinction. The authors' choices have been criticized by their fellow colleagues as a form of apologe…
Against technocratic authoritarianism. A short intellectual history of the cypherpunk movement
This essay aims to correct the established idea that the cypherpunk movement was organically embracing libertarianism. By addressing the cypherpunk movement, the intellectual roots of many of the concerns about freedom and about a surveillance society that dominate this internet age come to light. The cypherpunks, a heterogenic group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, argued in the nineties that the Internet…
Evil and roboethics in management studies
Philosophy of Management Between Scientism and Technology
Images of Eastern Religions and Roman Catholic Identity
While in the past two decades the Roman Catholic Church has reaffirmed an inclusivist stance with respect to other religions, there is reason to explore the question of whether Catholic teaching is as much about offering a definition of what is true in other religions as it is about defining Catholic identity. In this article, I investigate the representations of Eastern religions within ordinary expressions of Catholic teaching between 1990 and …
Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue
This article presents an intellectual analysis of different streams of Hindu-Christian dialogue. The focus is on a group of Western Catholic clergymen who relocated to India, specifically from 1939-55, to establish an advanced form of interreligious encounter with Hinduism. The article focuses on the difference among these priests’ and monks’ distinct interpretations of the interfaith dialogue rather than the general goals behind their engagement…
Hinduism in the Roman Catholic Imagination between the Two World Wars
This article explores the Roman Catholic intellectual milieu and the articulated perspective of theologians and missionaries on Hinduism in the period between the two World Wars. In the aftermath of World War I, the Roman Catholic Church elaborated a vision of Christian missions that would continue the civilization of India when the political power of Western nations vanishes. In this context, the new science of missiology absorbed the modern val…
Christian Saṃnyāsis and the Enduring Influence of Bede Griffiths in California
This article thematizes a spiritual movement of ascetic hermits in California, which is based on the religious practice of Bede Griffiths. These hermits took their religious vows in India as Christian saṃnyāsis, in the hands of Father Bede, and then returned to California to ignite a contemplative renewal in the Christian dispirited tradition. Some tried to integrate such Indian tradition in the Benedictine order, while others traced new paths
Against technocratic authoritarianism. A short intellectual history of the cypherpunk movement
This essay aims to correct the established idea that the cypherpunk movement was organically embracing libertarianism. By addressing the cypherpunk movement, the intellectual roots of many of the concerns about freedom and about a surveillance society that dominate this internet age come to light. The cypherpunks, a heterogenic group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, argued in the nineties that the Internet…
The "Wisdom Writer", Michael Amaladoss and His Thought
This paper offers a synthetic introduction to Michael Amaladoss and his thought. Amaladoss is a member of the Society of Jesus and one of the finest Indian theologians; in the course of decades of engagement with themes such as interfaith dialogue, Indian theology, social justice, and secularism, he has greatly contributed to putting Asian theology on the map. In this study, I focus on Amaladoss, his theological style, his main intellectual conce…
For Jobs and Freedom
Book Review| July 01 2016 For Jobs and Freedom: Selected Speeches and Writings of A. Philip Randolph For Jobs and Freedom: Selected Speeches and Writings of A. Philip Randolph. Edited by Andrew E. Kersten and David Lucander. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014. xviii + 358 pp. 11 photos. $80 (cloth); $29 (paper). Enrico Beltramini Enrico Beltramini Notre Dame de Namur University Enrico Beltramini is a scholar-in-residence at Notre Da…
Iberian Globalization and the Rise of Catholic Theology of Religions in the XVI Century
This article provides a synthetic view of the historical and theological components that explain how Catholicism came to understand the great religious systems in Asia as doctrinally inferior during the sixteenth century in response to the discovery/invasion of the “New Worlds” by Iberian Europeans.2 A strong emphasis on the universal salvific will of God led Catholic theologians to elaborate a doctrine that ultimately altered Catholicism’s under…
Modernity and its Discontents
This article presents a reassessment of the Hindu-Christian dialogue in its relationship with modernity. The focus is on a group of Western Catholic clergymen who relocated to India, specifically during 1940-70, and became involved in the Hindu-Christian dialogue. The article traces the reasons for these Catholics’ relocations to their dissatisfaction with modernity and the predominance of rationality in the West, as well as their aversion to mod…
Can One Person Belong to Two Faiths? The Experience of Three Catholic Monks
In the last decade, the question of multireligious identity has begun to receive academic attention. In particular, scholars are beginning to explore examples of people who have experienced two religious traditions equally seriously – that is, the experience of ‘double religious belonging’. This paper reframes, in the light of the notion of double belonging, the lives and experiences of three Roman Catholic priests and monks who moved from Europe…
Hinduism in the Roman Catholic Imagination between the Two World Wars
This article explores the Roman Catholic intellectual milieu and the articulated perspective of theologians and missionaries on Hinduism in the period between the two World Wars. In the aftermath of World War I, the Roman Catholic Church elaborated a vision of Christian missions that would continue the civilization of India when the political power of Western nations vanishes. In this context, the new science of missiology absorbed the modern val…
Christian Saṃnyāsis and the Enduring Influence of Bede Griffiths in California
This article thematizes a spiritual movement of ascetic hermits in California, which is based on the religious practice of Bede Griffiths. These hermits took their religious vows in India as Christian saṃnyāsis, in the hands of Father Bede, and then returned to California to ignite a contemplative renewal in the Christian dispirited tradition. Some tried to integrate such Indian tradition in the Benedictine order, while others traced new paths
For Jobs and Freedom
Book Review| July 01 2016 For Jobs and Freedom: Selected Speeches and Writings of A. Philip Randolph For Jobs and Freedom: Selected Speeches and Writings of A. Philip Randolph. Edited by Andrew E. Kersten and David Lucander. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014. xviii + 358 pp. 11 photos. $80 (cloth); $29 (paper). Enrico Beltramini Enrico Beltramini Notre Dame de Namur University Enrico Beltramini is a scholar-in-residence at Notre Da…
Images of Eastern Religions and Roman Catholic Identity
While in the past two decades the Roman Catholic Church has reaffirmed an inclusivist stance with respect to other religions, there is reason to explore the question of whether Catholic teaching is as much about offering a definition of what is true in other religions as it is about defining Catholic identity. In this article, I investigate the representations of Eastern religions within ordinary expressions of Catholic teaching between 1990 and …
Roman Catholic Streams of Hindu-Christian Dialogue
This article presents an intellectual analysis of different streams of Hindu-Christian dialogue. The focus is on a group of Western Catholic clergymen who relocated to India, specifically from 1939-55, to establish an advanced form of interreligious encounter with Hinduism. The article focuses on the difference among these priests’ and monks’ distinct interpretations of the interfaith dialogue rather than the general goals behind their engagement…
Evil and roboethics in management studies
Philosophy of Management Between Scientism and Technology
Against technocratic authoritarianism. A short intellectual history of the cypherpunk movement
This essay aims to correct the established idea that the cypherpunk movement was organically embracing libertarianism. By addressing the cypherpunk movement, the intellectual roots of many of the concerns about freedom and about a surveillance society that dominate this internet age come to light. The cypherpunks, a heterogenic group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, argued in the nineties that the Internet…
Roman Catholic Government and Mission to Tibet
In this article I consider the administration of the Roman Catholic Church mission to Tibet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After summarizing the main events of this mission, I focus on the juridical-political aspects of the government (i.e., administration) of mission. I contribute to the understanding of the history of mission to Tibet by addressing administration in theological terms. I show that government in the history of missi…
The Government of Evil Machines
In this article I propose a theological reflection on the philosophical assumptions behind the idea that intelligent machine can be governed through ethical protocols, which may apply either to the people who develop the machines or to the machines themselves, or both. This idea is particularly relevant in the case of machines’ extreme wrongdoing, a wrongdoing that becomes an existential risk for humankind. I call this extreme wrong-doing, ‘evil.…
The Crisis of Indian Secularism
In this paper I suggest that Roman Catholic theologians in India take a second look at the distinction between western and Indian secularisms. Blurring the lines between western and Indian secularisms may help the theological reflection on the so-called crisis of Indian secularism. The key point is the non-ontological, historical character of secularism. A look at the growing literature on western post-secularization, in fact, may offer some sugg…
The "Wisdom Writer", Michael Amaladoss and His Thought
This paper offers a synthetic introduction to Michael Amaladoss and his thought. Amaladoss is a member of the Society of Jesus and one of the finest Indian theologians; in the course of decades of engagement with themes such as interfaith dialogue, Indian theology, social justice, and secularism, he has greatly contributed to putting Asian theology on the map. In this study, I focus on Amaladoss, his theological style, his main intellectual conce…
Between Dualism and Immanentism Sacramental Ontology and History
How to deal with religious ideas in religious history (and in history in general) has recently become a matter of discussion. In particular, a number of authors have framed their work around the concept of 'sacramental ontology,' that is, a unified vision of reality in which the secular and the religious come together, although maintaining their distinction. The authors' choices have been criticized by their fellow colleagues as a form of apologe…
Pannikar’s Cosmic Monasticism
Raimon Panikkar was a Spanish theologian with Indian roots whose reflections on monasticism were at once creative and inspiring. He aimed to renew the monastic tradition not in the sense of restoration but rather aggiornamento, namely, bringing it up to date. His scholarly considerations were matched with a personal tendency toward solitude, although seen as a complement to rather than a priority in an integrated life. This article is primarily a…
The Church’s Extrincist Response to the Pandemic
In this article, I return to Giorgio Agamben’s intervention on the pandemic to reflect on one of his claims, namely the mundanity of the Roman Catholic Church. Agamben comes to this conclusion after reporting about the passive response of the Church to the state-of-emergency legislation and the “barbaric” conditions of social relationships that followed. These conditions, and not the conspiracy theories on the invention of an epidemic to extend f…
The God of Cosmologists and Philosophers
Cosmologists and philosophers have not limited themselves to discussing the multiverse hypothesis within the confines of their own fields; they have, instead, extended their reflections to the realm of Christian religion and theology. This move equates to a belief in the superiority of the secular knowledge even in religious matters. I redesign the spheres of competence between secular knowledge and theology, giving priority to true theology not …
The Historical Revolution of Vatican II and the Vision of a Post-Western Christianity in India
The vision of a post-western Christianity in India is traditionally linked to a distinct theological interpretation of Vatican II. According to such an interpretation, Vatican II was a theological revolution that favoured the openness of the Church to the world. In this article, I explore that vision through a historical, rather than a theological, interpretation of Vatican II. In Europe, Vatican II was a historical revolution that promoted the e…
When religion meets history of technology
Despite the growing scholarly work at the intersection of religion and technology, how to characterize their relationship remains a matter of dispute for historians of technology. This essay leverages a seminal piece by Jennifer Karns Alexander in a recent special issue of History and Technology on religion and technology for addressing the metatheory behind the subject. Alexander appears to believe that the problems affecting the scholarship of …
Sitting on the Lakeshore
In his Letters from Lake Como, Romano Guardini distilled the characteristics of a cultural shift from a rural community to an industrialized society. Decades later, he would complete and refine his vision of that shift in The End of the Modern World. In the two books, but especially in Letters, Guardini argued for the possibility of a conciliation between a Christianity that differs from medieval Christianity, or Christendom, and an artificial, t…
Medieval Temporalities
Twenty years ago, I read After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (2001) by Jack Kornfield. The story was far from being memorable, but the idea behind it was remarkable: “Most spiritual accounts end with illumination or enlightenment. But what if we ask what happens after that? What happens when the Zen master returns home to spouse and children? What happens when the Christian mystic goes shopping?” (xiii–x…
Toward a Historiography of the Sacred
In this study, I explore the possibility of a historiography that recognizes and incorporates the sacred as an essential part of how reality is conceived. Here, the "sacred" refers to the belief that reality is inherently shaped and influenced by the presence and action of God. For the majority of the last twenty centuries, this has been the prevailing conception of reality in Europe. However, interpreting such a conception poses a significant he…
Indian Theology and the Crisis of Indian Secularism
In this paper I discuss the crisis of Indian secularism and how Roman Catholic Indian theologians address such a crisis. First, I define the crisis as the result of the application of Western illiberal ideas to the distinct reality of Indian secularism. The result is a separation between politics and religion that resembles that in place in the West. I also study Roman Catholic Indian theologians’ distinctive understanding of Indian secularism an…
Philosophy (24 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Religious studies (14 works) · History (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Theology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works)