An Alternative Postsecularism

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Wayne Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Private Sphere ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Alternative Version

This paper outlines an alternative version of postsecularism, one that involves a critique of many Western approaches to postsecularism. This alternative postsecularism accepts secularity for certain purposes and domains, but not secularism. It inherits the Enlightenment in some institutional respects, but not necessarily its philosophical conceptions or its anti-religion. It does not make detailed prescriptions for any specific context, but it does imply that a mature postsecularism will take account of spiritual performances in both the public and the private sphere.

Secularization — the Return of Religions - Post-secularism

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Zinser
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Social Participation ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Historical Transition

In his contribution, Hartmut Zinser views the processes of secularization within European or so-called Western societies, which have mainly taken place since the Enlightenment, through the lens of the sociology of religion. Starting from a definition of the profane and the sacred, he considers the historical "transition of sacralized objects into a secular use" and then explains why the so-called "secularization thesis", which assumes "an increasing replacement of the meaning of religion as a universal historical process," today cannot be considered valid anymore and is finished. But what consequences does this have for a modern, post-secular society as religions leave the "private" sphere, regain the public space and aspire again to social participation? Zinser approaches this question in the last chapter of his essay, where he also deals with the position of Jürgen Habermas in this regard.

Homicide in Scotland, 1800–1849: Numbers and Theories (2)

2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-240
Author(s):  
W. W. J. Knox
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Location ◽  
Spontaneous Action

This article challenges a series of orthodox propositions put forward by historians writing on the decline in homicide levels over the last three hundred years. Firstly, there was a decline in impulsive violence; secondly, there was a shift from stranger to intimate killing; and thirdly, there was a transition of the site of murder from the public to the private sphere. It will be argued that murder remained a mainly spontaneous action, a response to highly charged or impassioned insults and words, sometimes alcohol-fuelled and while the killing of spouses and other immediate family members increased over the course of 150 years (1700–1849), the pattern established in the second half of the eighteenth century was hardly disturbed since most victims were known to their assailants as family, friends or workmates. Stranger killing became more commonly associated with drunken brawls in taverns or in the streets; homicides that involved premeditative action, such as robbery, were rarely the cause of death. It is also clear that the street rather than the home was the most common location, again reflecting the spontaneous and opportunistic character of homicide.

Multicultural differences in the public sphere

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-300
Author(s):  
Rudi Visker
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Academic Question ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Great Length ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Private Realm ◽  
The Public Sphere

The present article plays off two conceptions of the public sphere against one another. The first one sees in it a sign of what is already present in the private sphere, whereas the second regards it as a symbol that has to inscribe its own symbolic force into the private realm. That this is by no means a mere academic question becomes obvious by way of several examples analyzed at great length: the institution of mourning and the discussion about the presence of religious symbols in the public sphere. An argument for considering the Muslim veil as a protection against the divine is put forward in an attempt to clarify the presuppositions of our current predisposal against it. Ultimately, pluralism should perhaps not just be taken to refer only to the presence of others outside of us who we are able to numerically count, but might be the more difficult plight of having to cope with an otherness within each of us. Should the latter be the case, then we are in need of a public sphere where we can leave behind and thus honor what is not only differentiating us from others but also from ourselves.

Privatpolitik und Aufklärung: Johann Christoph Gottscheds Veröffentlichungsstrategie

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-43
Author(s):  
Nadja Reinhard
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Scientific Integration

Abstract According to Jürgen Habermas, equality amongst those of unequal social standing in 18th-century society was limited to the private sphere. Though Gottsched shows how to use this sphere strategically for private policy and cooperation, he knows how to modify his publication strategies wisely in order to achieve the greatest and best possible effectiveness in his attempt to popularise Enlightenment. By his Moralische Wochenschriften as well as by his more popular way of academic writing for students he spreads controversial ideas such as theoretical and practical reason’s primacy over theologic argumentations, the academic education of women, or female authorship. Yet, he does so prudently and expertly uses the opportunities offered by publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym to support scientific integration of women. Gottsched relied upon a variety of rhetorical strategies to introduce controversial ideas to the broader public without embracing them openly. Employing different strategies of publication, he pursued his agenda as a moral educator, promoted emancipation from religious authorities, and advanced his own brand of cultural nationalism in order to unfold and popularise the German literary tradition. He thus significantly contributed to the structural transformation of the public sphere as described by Heinrich Bosse.

The Right to Life

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Brysk
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Honor Killings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
Sex Selective Abortion ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
The Right

Chapter 6 concerns denial of women’s right to life . The new frame of “femicide” has dramatically increased attention to gender-based killing in the public and private sphere, and encompasses a spectrum of threats and assaults that culminate in murder. The chapter follows the threats to women’s security through the life cycle, beginning with cases of “gendercide” (sex-selective abortion and infanticide) in India, then moving to honor killings in Turkey and Pakistan. We examine public femicide in Mexico and Central America—with comparison to the disappearance of indigenous women in Canada, as “second-class citizens” in a developed democracy. The chapter continues mapping the panorama of private sphere domestic violence in the semi-liberal gender regimes of China, Russia, Brazil, and the Philippines, along with a range of responses in law, public policy, advocacy, and protest.

Fighting Corruption

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Arena
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Late Roman

Corruption was seen as a major factor in the collapse of Republican Rome, as Valentina Arena’s subsequent essay “Fighting Corruption: Political Thought and Practice in the Late Roman Republic” argues. It was in reaction to this perception of the Republic’s political fortunes that an array of legislative and institutional measures were established and continually reformed to become more effective. What this chapter shows is that, as in Greece, the public sphere was distinct from the private sphere and, importantly, it was within this distinction that the foundations of anticorruption measures lay. Moreover, it is difficult to defend the existence of a major disjuncture between moralistic discourses and legal-political institutions designed to patrol the public/private divide: both were part of the same discourse and strategy to curb corruption and improve government.

Living machines in our cultural imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Szollosy
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Public perceptions of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)—both positive and negative—are hopelessly misinformed, based far too much on science fiction rather than science fact. However, these fictions can be instructive, and reveal to us important anxieties that exist in the public imagination, both towards robots and AI and about the human condition more generally. These anxieties are based on little-understood processes (such as anthropomorphization and projection), but cannot be dismissed merely as inaccuracies in need of correction. Our demonization of robots and AI illustrate two-hundred-year-old fears about the consequences of the Enlightenment and industrialization. Idealistic hopes projected onto robots and AI, in contrast, reveal other anxieties, about our mortality—and the transhumanist desire to transcend the limitations of our physical bodies—and about the future of our species. This chapter reviews these issues and considers some of their broader implications for our future lives with living machines.

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