“Practical” Hermeneutics of Muhammad Quraish Shihab – between Scilla of Anarchy and Charybdis of Dogmatism

The present article deals with the work of an Indonesian scholar and a public intellectual Muhammad Quraish Shihab. The paper reveals the main principles of Quraish Shihab's Quranic Hermeneutics, which include pragmatism (orienting towards the joint interest), thematic approach and methodological holism. Among the objects of the research there are his innovative approach to Quran exegesis, his links with Egyptian modernist schools of M. Abduh and M.R. Ridah, his ideas, where Islam comes as a “middle way”. Moreover, the article demonstrates the connection between his hermeneutical theory and his social activism, especially in the fi eld of media. The author concludes the paper with a brief explanation of the main points of Quraish Shihab's hermeneutical theory.

Anne Applebaum’s Strategy of Telling the History of International Relations in Central and Eastern Europe

The text aims to present the strategy used by Anne Applebaum to bring the history of Central and Eastern Europe closer to western audiences. In the article, the author was presented as a journalist and public intellectual who developed an original way of speaking and writing about the past of Central and Eastern Europe. She has been portrayed as a kind of mediator who attempts to explain the essence and sources of the diverse identities and narratives that have formed among the nations and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. Selected assessments of her activity, formulated by historians as well as public opinion leaders, were also presented.

No Sinecure Acting as Public Intellectual in Education

The author has earlier made a plea for educators acting as public intellectuals in society to counteract still influential neo-liberal tendencies in educational policies and practices. Against emphases on overstretched attention for measurable output and accountability in education, the aim of education in schools is formulated in terms of holistic personhood formation. Interviewing three educators in different phases of their carrier, it becomes clear that working in academia nowadays it is no sinecure to act as a public intellectual. The author also presents his own experiences in different roles, and makes clear that the instructional niche one is working in could be of utmost importance for really taking that role. To realize a change, it is, according the author, necessary to stop with too much focus on highly cited publications in academic journals, and on individual researchers instead of on research groups working collectively together in joint research programs and with societal partners.

Max Weber and political theology of Friedrich Naumann

In the Weberian literature, it has been repeatedly noted that there is no serious theological interest in the most important provisions of the sociology of religion by Max Weber. This seems paradoxical given the religious-theological context for the development of Webers intellectual project of the social-theoretical hermeneutics of Western modernity. In the first part of the article, the author reconstructs the family and friends religious constellation which determined Webers understanding of the existential significance of religious meanings for certain groups of the modern era. The author mentions Webers close ties with a number of leading theologians of Germany in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, which influenced the heuristics of his writings. The second part of the article focuses on the multifaceted figure of Friedrich Naumann, a public intellectual, who was a Protestant pastor and a reactionary-conservative theologian and became a spiritual-political leader of the German left liberals. The author shows the initial ambivalence of the political-religious situation in the German Empire in the 1880s-1890s, in which Naumann tried to combine Christianity and socialism, and provides a brief overview of the young theologian and social activists gradual turning into a prominent figure of the German journalism and politics. In the third part of the article, the author describes the meeting of two thinkers as fateful for both Weber and Naumann, and emphasizes a radical turn in the worldview of the famous religious theorist and practitioner, who under the powerful influence of Webers personality and argumentation gave up both many previous ideas and pastors office. In conclusion, the author identifies the paradigmatic nature of Naumans ideological-political evolution as typical for a significant part of German intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century, and considers Naumanns Hegelian acceptance of the modern nation-state as the highest value (following Weber) as a self-fulfilling diagnosis for the crisis modernity on the eve of the First World War catastrophe.