Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Philip Nord
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Emotional Needs ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
New Literature

This introductory chapter discusses how the globalizing world proved a tough environment for secularism but less so for border-hopping religions, which promised salvation in another life. The coming of this brave new world has prompted scholars to call into question once confident secularization narratives that predicted religion's inevitable demise. That questioning has taken a variety of tacks. The first and most profound makes the case that secularism itself is a variety of belief, one that posits its own triumph in the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy, a prophecy, however, that has now proven false. A second line of critique blames present-day religious conflict on a secularism all too militant, which has excluded religion from the public sphere, causing it in certain of its forms to radicalize. And a third bemoans the spiritless character of contemporary life in secular societies, which seem to lack the capacity to resonate to their citizens' deepest emotional needs. Yet, how is it that secularity, for all such obvious limitations, got as far as it did, projecting an image of inevitability that persuaded so many for so long? The new literature on secularism has an answer to this question as well. Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment are often pointed to as the main culprits, promoting individual autonomy and a critical-minded rationalism, which were the building blocks of secularist thought. The book revisits these two issues: the origins and crisis of secular forms.

To Begin

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inner Sense ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Broad Outline

This introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the problems of identity. There would seem to be both public and private issues of identity. In the public sphere, in talk about crime, health, prostitution, and urbanism, the identities of those who make up the social body become a problem in a new way. In broad outline, this must have to do with the growth of cities, along with the institutionalization and increasing bureaucratization of the modern nation-state. The chapter then turns to the private or inner sense of identity that is at the very center of modern thought and imagination from the dawn of the modern world on—starting with the Renaissance, one might say, though one could push the date back to remarkable innovations from the twelfth century but gaining a new momentum and a new accent in the Enlightenment.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Olivier Roy
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
The Public ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
Treaty Of Rome ◽  
The Public Sphere

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the debate over Europe's Christian identity. Since the Treaty of Rome, there have been two significant developments for Christianity in Europe. First, secularization has given way to the large-scale dechristianization of European societies in both religious and cultural terms, especially from the protests of 1968 onwards. Second, Islam has arrived in Europe, through immigration and, with Turkey's application for membership of the EU, the proposed expansion of the continent's borders. Thus, the debate over Europe's Christian identity does not rest on a binary opposition between Europe and Islam, but on a triangle whose three poles are: (1) the Christian religion; (2) Europe's secular values (even if they occasionally make reference to a Christian identity); (3) Islam as a religion. However, the debate over Islam are much deeper questions about the very nature of Europe and its relationship to religion in general. The notion that Europe would be fine if only Islam or immigration did not exist is, of course, an illusion. There is a serious crisis surrounding European identity and the place of religion in the public sphere, as can be seen both in Christian radicalization over the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, and in secular radicalization over religious slaughter and circumcision. This is nothing short of a crisis in European culture.

Flânerie for Cyborgs

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 209-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Shields
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Body ◽  
Work Place ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Literary Figure ◽  
Social Science Fiction ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site ◽  
Clinic Hospital

As a literary figure or conceit, Haraway’s cyborg is kin to Dumas’ and Balzac’s flâneur. As a social science fiction, crossing and mixing categories, the cyborg is an abject quasi-body who does not fit the Enlightenment model of the political subject and actor. The ‘Manifesto’ has a geography of sites - Home, Market, Paid Work Place, State, School, Clinic-Hospital and Church - which this article updates and to which it adds the Body and the Web. However, Haraway’s ‘cyborg-analysis’ directs attention to the nanotechnological scale of biotechnology. The spatialization implied in the ‘Manifesto’ is more like a surface, a site of regeneration, not a space of the body or of rebirth or the space of institutions such as the Market or School. The cyborg cannot be an Enlightenment political actor, but challenges the traditions, scale and space of the public sphere even as she carries ethical qualities and potentials for less normative forms of politics.

Gandhi and the Virtue of Care

Hypatia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Kupfer
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mutual Dependency ◽  
The Public Sphere

The film Gandhi expands our understanding of how the virtue of care can function in the public sphere by portraying Gandhi dealing with Indian independence from Britain, the subjugation of women and Untouchables, and strife between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi illustrates in his social and political activism how the virtue of care is animated by benevolence and structured by the building blocks of the care perspective: responsibility and need, relationship and mutual dependency, context and narrative.

The Institutionalization of Reason

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 95-104
Author(s):  
Frederick Rauscher
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Public Sphere

Kant's description of an enlightened society as involving the free use of reason in public debate has received due attention in recent work on Kant. When thinking of Kant's view of Enlightenment, one now conjures up the image of free persons speaking their mind in what is now often called the ‘public sphere’. Jürgen Habermas is well known for taking Kant to be committed to wide participation of individuals in public debate. Kant's own suggestion for a motto for the Enlightenment, ‘Sapere aude’, seems to speak to all citizens when urging them to ‘Have courage to make use of your own understanding’ (8: 35).

Positive Freedom and the Citizen in Athens

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi T. Campa
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Freedom ◽  
Democratic Citizen ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract Freedom in democratic Athens is often understood as consisting of positive freedom in the public sphere in the form of political participation and negative freedom in the private sphere in the form of citizens doing ‘whatever they wish’. The original meaning of positive freedom, though, is more akin to self-mastery than political participation. By looking at phrases describing Athenians’ ability to do ‘whatever they wish’ from Herodotus to Aristotle, this article argues that the phrases instead express individual positive freedom in both private and public spheres. The democratic citizen is free because he is the author of his own actions. Individual autonomy stands in contrast to Spartan and Persian definitions of freedom, which focus on the external, negative freedom of the state. In addition to an ideological distinction, positive freedom also gives rise to the principle of voluntarism.

Discursive turns and critical junctures

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Pietro Castelli Gattinara ◽  
Konstantinos Eleftheriadis ◽  
Andrea Felicetti
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
Subsequent Choice ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Empirical Design

The introductory chapter presents the theoretical framework of the research, its empirical design and the content of the volume. Our analysis of the Charlie Hebdo attacks addresses in particular the claims, frames, and justifications that civil society actors introduce in multiple public spheres. We want to understand both the content and the forms of these interventions by considering the appropriation of existing discursive opportunities by collective actors, but also their embeddedness within strategies of resource mobilization. Locating our research within social movement studies, we point at the cultural dynamics during discursive critical junctures, showing the ways in which different actors address transformative events which challenge their visions. As a “transformative event” the attacks point at the capacity of action itself to produce contextual opportunities and organizational resources that are mobilized in the strategic interactions of various actors. In this chapter, we first reflect on the concept of transformative events as triggering critical junctures, defined as moments in which changes happen suddenly rather than incrementally (as well as subsequent choice points), and on the very conceptions of citizenship that are affected by them. We then move to a discussion of the forms that debates might take in the public sphere (referring in particular to the concept of deliberation). After that, we present our analytic model, followed by a justification of the research design and the methodological choices. The chapter ends with a presentation of the volume.

Religion and Television in the Arab World: Towards a Communication Studies Approach

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riadh Ferjani
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Religious Speech ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper explores the contribution communication studies can make towards a better scholarly understanding of religious talk on Arab television. It offers four theoretical avenues, backed up by examples, to address not only what is at stake in the televising of religion on Arab channels but also the validity of adopting a communication studies approach. First, the political economy of communication can situate religious programs as a link in the chain of a veritable industry of religious by-products and services, where commercial benefits are not guaranteed. Secondly, discourse analysis situates religious speech on television at the intersection of internal and external logics, to consider how much religion there is in religious programs. Thirdly, to theorize religious talk in terms of the public sphere is to problematize the application of a concept with historically specific connections (to the Enlightenment) to discussion of non-Western contemporary reality. Fourthly, conceptual tools from sociological audience studies can help us to see whether the craze for religious programs is related to their intrinsic qualities or whether there are other, more contextualized, ways of reading the relationship that viewers maintain with on-screen religion. The four pathways proposed here converge in seeing religious talk on television as a social phenomenon and, as such, capable of being construed as an object of sociological study.

“A Swarm of Laughter!” On Kierkegaard’s Conception of Enthusiasm and Its Comedic Remedy, an Enlightenment Inheritance

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carson Seabourn Webb
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many

AbstractToday the term “enthusiasm” signifies little more than innocuous excitement. During the Enlightenment, however, the term was abuzz with pejorative innuendos of sub-humanity, the many nuances of which were debated in the public sphere. Its significance was more sting than substance, however, and by the middle of the nineteenth century Kierkegaard could complain that the category of enthusiasm had become hopelessly unclear. Despite this, based on The Book on Adler and on three texts in which Kierkegaard uses Socrates as a prototype of enthusiasm, I argue that Kierkegaard’s concept of enthusiasm places him in the lineage of earlier Enlightenment writers, such as Lessing, Shaftesbury, and Kant, whose conceptions and critiques of enthusiasm Kierkegaard was familiar with. By putting Kierkegaard’s use of the comic in The Book on Adler into conversation with Shaftesbury’s and Kant’s comedic remedies for enthusiasm, the extent to which Kierkegaard is an inheritor of and detractor from this tradition becomes evident

scholarly journals The Smell of Others: Olfactory claims and the public sphere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shared Beliefs ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Shanty Town ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Shared Norms

Smell is typically considered the least of the senses, the lowest in a hierarchy privileging sight since the Enlightenment. The experience of olfaction is highly emotion-laden and tightly bound to memory and personal history, and Western smell vocabularies are notoriously poor: scentful experience seems poorly suited as a basis to enroll others in political projects, especially in contexts that privilege rational public debate. But smells can also spur us to immediate action. When do they prompt us to enroll others in that action, and how do we turn individual sensory experiences into convincing arguments? How does olfaction leave the realm of individual experience and generate consequential social change? This article shows how social processes of olfaction can be used to prompt social action. With an analysis of the complaints that legitimated the 2015 destruction of a shanty town in southern Sweden and a historical inquiry into the shared beliefs that allowed those complaints to make sense, I show how olfactory claims – claims based on personal experiences of smell – can leverage broadly shared norms, values, and meanings to demand social action. Despite the personal, emotional, and fleeting nature of olfactory experience (or perhaps thanks to those features, which disallow independent confirmation) it can easily be weaponized as a political tool. This article asks how individual sensory experience can have social impact, and shows how a fit between local olfactory cosmologies and the particular features of olfactory claims can allow them to be used to demand action.

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