This paper focuses on the revision of the classical thesis concerning secularism the progressive domination of the discussion around the issue of the civil society. These two poles facilitated the development of a series of historiographic approaches that particularly touched on the areas of Eastern and Southeastern Europeís history. Here we are concerned with three central cases of historiographic discourseís production, as indicators of the dominant ìparadigmîís change: the first concerns the role of the Russian church in (...) the pre-Revolutionary period; the second, the issue of secularization and its relations with Islam in the Ottoman Empire; and finally the third, the problem of internal fragmentation of the Orthodox millet with the establishment of Greek autocephalus Church in 1833 and (self-sufficiency) and later the Bulgarian Exarchate. These new approaches were intended to solve various long-standing problems and for the most part resulted in solutions within existing opposites of historiographic schools of thought. (shrink)

The twentieth-century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd left behind an impressive canon of philosophical works and has continued to influence a scholarly community in Europe and North America, which has extended, critiqued, and applied his thought in many academic fields. Jonathan Chaplin introduces Dooyeweerd for the first time to many English readers by critically expounding Dooyeweerd's social and political thought and by exhibiting its pertinence to contemporary civil society debates. Chaplin begins by contextualizing Dooyeweerd's thought, first in relation to (...) present-day debates and then in relation to the work of the Dutch philosopher Abraham Kuyper. Chaplin outlines the distinctive theory of historical and cultural development that serves as an essential backdrop to Dooyeweerd's substantive social philosophy; examines Dooyeweerd's notion of societal structural principles; and sets forth his complex classification of particular types of social structure and their various interrelationships. Chaplin provides a detailed examination of Dooyeweerd's theory of the state, its definitive nature, and its proper role vis-a-vis other elements of society. Dooyeweerd's contributions, Chaplin concludes, assist us in mapping the ways in which state and civil society should be related to achieve justice and the public good. "This superb study simultaneously introduces and critically engages the work of one of the most important and neglected Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, while showing its connection to the pluralist tradition and bringing it to bear on the contemporary debate about civil society. More than just providing an overview of Dooyeweerd's thought, it seeks to advance his intellectual project and show its contemporary relevance. It is essential reading not only for those interested in the neo-Calvinist tradition, but for anyone interested in Christian social thought, structural pluralism, or the nature and fate of civil society." --_Kenneth L. Grasso, Texas State University _ "The subtlety, scope, and insightfulness of Dooyeweerd's social philosophy were unparalleled among Protestant thinkers in the past century. Yet his contributions are not well known. Jonathan Chaplin promises to remedy this neglect. His lucid and masterful study brings a new and transformative voice to contemporary debates about the future of a democratic society." --_Lambert Zuidervaart, Institute for Christian Studies and University of Toronto_ "Finally, an authoritative book that brings to brilliant light and life Herman Dooyeweerd's Christian philosophy of law, politics, and society. For the past half century, the profound and original teachings of this prolific Dutch sage have been lost on most readers. Jonathan Chaplin has rescued Dooyeweerd from his own obscure prose, poor translations, and cultic mystique to reveal his astonishing and engaging insights into our lives as persons and peoples, rulers and citizens, preachers and parishioners, parents and children. This will be the go-to book on Dooyeweerd for many years to come." --_John Witte, Jr., Emory University_ "Herman Dooyeweerd was both deep and original. Much of his writing is an articulation of rather undeveloped lines of thought in his Dutch predecessor, Abraham Kuyper. In the course of his exposition, Chaplin effectively highlights Dooyeweerd's significance for a theory of civil society and for present-day social theory in general." --_Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University and the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia_. (shrink)

For decades, the United States has supported the development of civil society in various places around the world. Promoted as integral to democracy, civil society projects have come to include religion and religious freedom as significant components. U.S. experts point to tolerance of all faiths and the presence of voluntary religious association as essential checks to state power and necessary to a free society. Because of its unique relationship with Cuba, the United States support of civil (...) society there has addressed religion in a way unlike that in other countries. This article examines very recent developments there, placing them in larger social and historical context of politics and church/state relations. (shrink)

As relações Estado-Religião têm sido regidas na modernidade pelo princípio da laicidade do Estado. Esta laicidade assumiu, muitas vezes, o caráter de negação dos valores transcendentes, sob a capa de neutralidade do Estado. Tal posição se explica pela origem do Estado laico como reação à influência dominante das Igrejas cristãs sobre toda a vida social, no período anterior à Revolução Francesa. Ora, esta contraposição entre as esferas religiosa e política perdeu qualquer sentido no mundo atual, pelo menos, no Ocidente. Com (...) efeito, as mudanças culturais advindas com a secularização da sociedade reclamam - está é a proposta do artigo - um novo modelo de laicidade, segundo o qual o Estado, longe de pretender impor aos cidadãos uma determinada visão do mundo, pretensamente científica, mas, na verdade, ideológica, promova a participação de todas as forças vivas da nação, em particular, das comunidades religiosas, no debate público sobre as questões de interesse comum, sobretudo no seu aspecto ético. Palavras-chave : Laicidade; Estado; Religião; Tradições culturais; Secularização; Ética.The relations between Religion and State have been ruled in modern times by a secularist view of politics. Official secularism has often assumed the denial of transcendent values, under cover of State neutrality. This position can be explained in view of the origins of the secular State as a reaction against the hegemonic social influence of Christian Churches prior to the French Revolution. The opposition between the religious and political spheres, however, has lost all meaning in today's world, at least in the West. In fact, as this article intends to show, the cultural changes arising precisely from the secularization of society require a new model of secular State, wherein the State should not seek to impose on its citizens a certain worldview which, although purportedly scientific, would in fact be ideological. On the contrary, it should promote the participation of all of civil society, and of the nation's religious communities in particular, in the public debate about issues of common interest, especially regarding their ethical aspects. Key Words : Secularity; State; Religion; Cultural traditions; Secularization; Ethics. (shrink)

Michael Walzer’s essay titled Secularism in US State and Society defends the American secular state. Walzer argues that the United States’ version of secularism is exemplary. The essay is divided into three parts, in which he describes a key element of separationist politics. The first is the law that no state can include any religious purpose within its programs (essentially the “wall” between church and state). The second element outlines that any civil religion sponsored (...) by the state should remain civil, and the third highlights the importance of religious tolerance, which is ingrained in the separation of church and state. Through these three points, Walzer proposes that American separationism is successful, and could be called “liberal separationism”. (shrink)

The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularization thesis’. Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are well-documented vis-à-vis all major religions and across all regions. The (...) ongoing moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe, marked by a preoccupation with policing Muslim women's dress, reminds us of the centrality of women and gender power relations in the interrelation of religion, culture and the state. Added to postmodern and other critiques of the secular-religious binary, most sociological research now contradicts the equation of modernization with secularization. This article focuses on the challenges that these developments pose to politically oriented feminist thinking and practice. It argues that non-oppressive feminist responses require a new critical engagement with secularism as a normative principle in democratic, multicultural societies. To inform this process, the author maps and links discussions across different fields of feminist scholarship, in the sociology of religion and in political theory. She organizes the main philosophical traditions and fault lines that form the intellectual terrain at the intersection of feminism, religion and politics in two broad groups: feminist critiques of the Enlightenment critique of religion; and feminist scholarship at the critical edges of the Enlightenment tradition. The author argues that notwithstanding the fragmented nature of feminist debates in this area, common ground is emerging across different politically oriented approaches: all emphasize ‘democracy’ and the values that underpin it as the larger discursive frame in which the principle of secularism can be redefined with emancipatory intent in a neo-secular age. (shrink)

This essay explores social forces which contributed to regaining independence by the Polish people and sovereignty by the Polish state after 45 years of Soviet domination There were four major factors or forces of historical change: workers' resistance (big-industry working class); intellectual opposition (dissidents); grass-roots movement (families, households and their microeconmuc activity); and the Catholic Church (in the late phase of the Polish People's Republic). The preliminary thesis is that Poland succeeded in transcending communism and Soviet domination as (...) quickly as it did thanks to its civil society traditions. In particular, universities and their intellectual influence on the young generations of Poles helped nurture the political opposition Equally, the grass-roots movement of Polish family households undermined the unrealistic, strange system of national (planned) economy, which otherwise could have lasted much longer in Poland, as it did in all of Eastem Europe. The conclusion follows that the historically formed cultural capital of the Polish people was the decisive factor in the nation's liberation from totalitarian rule. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Romanian Cultural and Political IdentityDonald R. KelleyThe Journal of the History of Ideas, in collaboration with other institutions, including the Universities of Bucharest and Budapest and the Soros Foundation, recently sponsored the second in a series of international conferences being planned on topics in current intellectual history. (The first, “Interrogating Tradition,” was held at Rutgers University, 13–16 November 1997.) The Romanian conference, which was held in the Elisabeta Palace (...) in Bucharest (27–31 May 1998), was devoted to “Culture and the Politics of National Identity in Modern Romania.” Over forty scholars, mainly from Romania but some also from the U.S., France, Germany, and Hungary, gathered to discuss a variety of questions about Romanian society, past, present, and speculative future; and they were joined by at least as many visitors, especially students, from the local area and beyond.Topics discussed included politics, language, economics, historiography, religion, education, philosophy, ideologies, intelligentsia, particular intellectuals, minorities, and women (though not Gypsies or gays). Under this riot of rubrics a wide range of questions were posed in interdisciplinary fashion, with frequent, sometimes impassioned interventions. What is—was, might have been, can be—Romania? Who is a Romanian (and who not)? What is Romania’s relation to the West and the East? (And what are the “West” and the “East”?) To modernity, to modernism, to modernization? What is—has been, should be—the function of intellectuals, of political and cultural elites, in understanding the Romanian past and in setting a course for the future? What, more generally, is the role of history in answering such questions? Or is history perhaps (as Karl Krause remarked of psychoanalysis) the disease for which it claims to be the cure?Keith Hitchens’s keynote address suggested that rehashing old essentialist debates might not be productive at millennium’s end, but the conference itself could not avoid some excursions down the paths of memory and myth. For historians, Western historians anyway, Romania seems to have too many pasts. Located at the juncture of four previous empires, Romania is a mosaic, or perhaps a pandemonium, of ethnic, religious, economic, and ideological groups that can only imagine, or invent, a nationality. Geographically (and in many ways culturally) remote from the West, Romania for a long time (as Sorin Antohi remarked) lacked both a public sphere and a civil society; and suffering “a Counter-Reformation without a Reformation” (Alexandru Dutu’s phrase), it has not enjoyed a tradition of religious or ethnic toleration. Nor have either the Germans or the Jews (as Glass said) found their own unity within the changing borders of the modern Romanian state. Not until the nineteenth century did Romania develop, out of its Boyar background (as Siupiur argued), an intellectual elite that could create a modern national history and help turn “peasants into Romanians” (Antohi’s phrase); and even then this elite seemed more attracted to conservative [End Page 735] (Herder, Savigny, Burke) than to liberal views of autochthonism. Many features of Western modernity, such as Newtonian science, reached Romania late, and indeed there was a retrograde movement against liberalism under the aegis by orthodox religion. In any case this intelligentsia has been as fragmented and multiform as the Romanian past itself. True, some Romanian scholars like to posit a mainstream tradition, “excesses aside,” as one speaker put it—but how, asked another, can historians put “excesses” aside from the devastating perspective of this century?Political and cultural self-examination was the dominant theme of this conference. Nationality, said Pippidi, depends on three factors, viz., name, language, religion, and territory. The Romanian name dates from the tenth century, indicating a separation of the Roman from the Greek tradition in Wallachia; and from the seventeenth century the idea of a mainly Roman provenance was given privilege. As a language, “Romanian” was spoken in the late Middle Ages, but the first written document is dated 1521. The principal religion in Romania was and is Greek orthodox, although there are also Roman Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, and German Protestant communities, as well as the Uniate church created in the eighteenth century. As for the territory, this has been a matter of change, conflict, and confusion throughout the tragic course... (shrink)

Trafficking in persons is a multi-sided phenomenon accompanying the current migration flows, therefore, the actions that must be undertaken in order to prevent, combat the phenomenon as well as to assist the victims of trafficking require a large partnership between all the actors involved: international organisations, governmental institutions and representatives of civil society. The special psychological, ethical issues raised especially by trafficking prevention and assistance to victims make the church and various religious organisations play a very important role (...) in the corresponding networks at both international and national level. Even if the integration of the church in the networks fighting against trafficking in persons has been quite largely addressed worldwide, there are but few studies undertaken in Romania in this area. Our paper opens the room for dialogue among the researchers interested in this topic from an interdisciplinary perspective to discuss the possibilities to establish sustainable partnerships between the state and the church against rafficking in persons. With this aim in view, we have first carried out a quantitative analysis of the scope and dynamics of trafficking in persons in Romania focusing on the victims’ profile by exploitation type. The main socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, schooling, area of origin) have been considered in order to identify the vulnerability factors related to the risk involved by trafficking, both at national and regional level. We have also examined the responses in legislative and institutional terms, with a special emphasis on the collaboration between the state and the church in preventing and combating trafficking in persons. Of special relevance are the conclusions resulted from the field research undertaken in the area covered by the Diocese of Maramures and Satu Mare. (shrink)

At a time when secular liberalism is in crisis and when the civic contribution of religion is being re-assessed, the rich tradition of Christian political theology demands renewed attention. This book, based on the 2001 Bampton Lectures, explores the relationship of the church both to the state and civil institutions. Arguing that theological approaches to the state were often situated within the context of Christendom and are therefore outmoded, the author claims that a more differentiated approach (...) can be developed by attention to the concept of civil society. The book offers a critical assessment of the effect of the First Amendment in the USA and, in a concluding chapter, it defends the case for continuing disestablishment in England and Scotland. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to discuss both the concept of secularism among the Ottoman intellectuals and the principle of secularism during the period of the Turkish Republic based on ideas rather than practice. We can analyze “secularism in Turkey” in two separate periods of time: First, “The Ottoman Empire and Secularism” which discusses the ideas of secularism before the foundation of the Turkish Republic, and second “A Brief Analysis of the Turkish Republic and the Principle of Secularism” (...) in which the idea of secularism related to the ideology of the state in the course of the Turkish Republic are shortly examined. In this article, we generally state the consistent development of secularism practiced in Turkey. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Just Capitalism: A Christian Ethic of Economic Globalization by Brent WatersNicholas Aaron FriesnerJust Capitalism: A Christian Ethic of Economic Globalization Brent Waters LOUISVILLE: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2016. 260 pp. $40.00In Just Capitalism, Brent Waters offers a wide-ranging defense of economic globalization, the market state, and the pursuit of affluence, which together provide a means to spread human flourishing around the globe. For Waters, the free-flowing economic (...) exchange enabled by globalization does not inherently conflict with Christian tradition, and it can be harnessed in a responsible manner to share and communicate the goods of creation. He argues that breaking down global barriers to market participation expresses a preferential option for the poor and provides a means for achieving the work of the Spirit by spreading the materials goods that lift people out of poverty and alleviate suffering. The book's primary contribution is its broad explanation of recent work on the economics of globalization and Waters's ability to put this literature into a theological conversation. The argument is particularly timely for Christian ethicists who are concerned with developing the tools to respond to expanding movements toward isolationism and economic protectionism in the United States and Europe.Part 1 of Just Capitalism claims that moral theology has not properly interrogated the common view that affluence fundamentally conflicts with the Christian tradition. By contextualizing both the biblical sources and the traditional theological voices that support this view, Waters shows that these sources assumed an economic model in which resources are scarce and wealth is built by exploiting the poor. Instead, Waters argues that our present economic system is based on increasing productivity, and therefore wealth is not necessarily exploitative. In fact, he claims that the pursuit of affluence can be beneficial for helping to lift people out of poverty. Rather than retreating from engagement with wealth and the market, Christians should recognize that free exchange is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for human flourishing (15). [End Page 213]In part 2, Waters develops a notion of koinonia, whereby human flourishing depends on communicating the goods of creation in the associations of civil society. Responding to worries about the homogenizing forces of market economies that make individuals into producers and consumers, Waters offers the church as a communicative association that stands in tension with capitalist markets by cultivating reciprocity instead of consumption, breaking down barriers in a gathering community, and being nonterritorial in its scope (150–51). Because communicative associations like the church are essential to the vitality of civil society, the challenge is to "embrace the dynamism of global markets in order to promote more widespread prosperity," while establishing the requisite political stability that allows these associations to exist (159).Nevertheless, Waters does not spend much time elaborating on specific moments when the church should come into conflict with capitalism—he notes that his reservations only give him "two-and-a-half-cheers" for globalization, rather than three (14–15). In his desire to show compatibility with globalization, he neglects to give a sense of when communicative associations could justifiably remove themselves from the system of exchange. This relates to Waters's final chapter on capitalist responses to environmental devastation, which relies on his earlier development of a stewardship model, one that seems to reduce creation to its instrumental value for human "delight" (89–90, 92, 111, 115). Waters admits that the pursuit of affluence requires short-term environmental damage, especially in developing countries; nevertheless, he thinks that affluent societies will better preserve the environment (through "national parks and wildlife preserves") (217), and some environmental exploitation is needed to form these affluent societies. This will probably be insufficient for environmental ethicists who resist the notion that creation's purpose is to be ordered to promote human flourishing (204). He is clear, however, that "Eden is a garden, and not a wilderness" (203).Nicholas Aaron FriesnerBrown UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Since the fall of communism in 1989 Southeast Europe has been a site of far-reaching societal transformation, much of it marked by political crisis, economic upheaval, ethnic tension, and bitter war. The book comprises articles investigating the history and development of civil society in post-communist Southeast Europe. How is civil society to be grasped, what are the historical factors shaping the civil societies of the region?, what is the function of civil society in the transition to (...) democracy and a market-economy?, and what are the prospects for the future development of the civil societies of the region in an age of globalization?, -these are just a few of the major questions addressed in this collection of articles. Many of the authors are social scientists, philosophers, and activists from the region, offering first-hand critical analysis of the state of civil society in Southeast Europe and suggesting theoretical and practical strategies for the future course of its development. The aim is to provide the reader with insight into the complex challenges that face the civil societies of the region. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the biography of a little-known Italian priest, Francesco Bellisomi (1663–1741), in order to trace the intellectual and political dimensions of religious reformism in early eighteenth-century Europe. Its primary objective is to demonstrate the causal relationships between three trends: firstly, pietistic spiritual reform influenced by mystical theology; secondly, ecumenical dialogue among Protestants and between Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians; and thirdly, the political articulation of the non-confessional state. By following a persecuted Bellisomi from Pavia to Rome, and (...) then on to Venice, Vienna, Halle, Berlin and London, it depicts the strands connecting the political, intellectual and religious environment on the Italian Peninsula, within the Holy Roman Empire and in the British Isles. From the latter seventeenth century, the equation of confessionalism – the alliance of a confessionalising church and a centralising state – was being undermined across Europe. One factor in this process was enthusiasm for a supra-confessional ecclesia universalis, the nature of which was highly contested. Bellisomi’s life offers a unique window onto this networked and inter-confessional intellectual culture. (shrink)

Until recently, the name of Metropolitan Alexy was mentioned by researchers, mainly historians and religious scholars, mostly in the context of the problem of the split of the Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian lands during the years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1943 as the head of the Autonomous Church. At the same time, he remains almost unknown as a religious thinker, and meanwhile, in his numerous theological-philosophical and historical-religious studies works, the bishop raised the most devastating (...) religious and spiritual problems of society and person, many of which have not lost their relevance to this day. Since Ukraine began to realize itself as a democratic country, the process of revising the relations of our state with various social institutions, including the Church, began to find a model that would ensure the harmonious development of both the state and the Church. In this context, the study of the views of one of the prominent hierarchs of intellectuals Metropolitan Alexy on church-state relations is very important and relevant. (shrink)

A crucial, but often overlooked, dimension of the human and constitutional right to religious freedom is the autonomy of religious institutions, associations and societies with respect to matters of governance, doctrine, formation and membership. Although the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed this autonomy in the context of American constitutional law, it is vulnerable, and even under threat, for a variety of reasons, including a general decline in the health of civil society and mediating associations and a (...) crisis of confidence and authority caused by clerical sexual abuse and churches’ failure to respond to it. (shrink)

Ukraine has a special geopolitical location in Europe - between East and West, South and North. The specificity of this provision is due to multi-year contacts between peoples who lived or passed through its territory, the interactions of different cultures, traditions and worldviews. As a result, there is a rather varied ethno-national and religious palette of Ukrainian population. In today's conditions of building an independent state and civil society, this can be both a positive and a negative factor. (...) Recent events and practices show that the problem of religious and ethnic renaissance has acquired a special political and spiritual significance. Different directions of Christianity, other religions, existing for centuries on the Ukrainian ethnic basis, have been influenced by a wide range of social and national life. In addition, ethno-national and religious processes took place differently in the western and eastern regions of Ukraine, in the village and in the city. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images of Ancient Rome in Late Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan HistoriographyMelissa CalaresuThe case of the late Neapolitan enlightenment, the variety and sophistication of which has been little recognized outside of Italian scholarship, illustrates the significance of particular regional concerns and intellectual traditions in the development of enlightened movements in Europe. 1 This becomes apparent when examining how Neapolitans looked to their own past in relation to the unique set of (...) political and social problems of the Kingdom of Naples. In this article I shall examine a number of historical writings published in the 1780s. This was a decade of intense intellectual activity which saw the publication of the defining works of the later Neapolitan enlightenment, such as Gaetano Filangieri’s Scienza della legislazione from 1780 and Francesco Mario Pagano’s Saggi politici between 1783 and 1785. 2 It was also the decade in which Giuseppe Maria Galanti’s Storia filosofica e politica delle nazioni antiche e moderne [End Page 641] introduced in translation important texts of the British and French Enlightenments, and the journal Scelta miscellanea briefly became an important focal point of collaboration and intellectual exchange for reform-minded intellectuals in Naples. 3 The impetus which bound together these many projects of the 1780s was twofold: on one hand, the growing awareness of the particular problems of Neapolitan society and of the urgent need for reform, expressed through the language and concerns of the wider enlightened movement; and at the same time a revived sense of a distinct cultural and political identity. The writing of history, even of the most remote age, did not escape these concerns.The cultural renewal of the 1780s brought new histories of the Kingdom, and in these Rome played an essential role. As Naples’s most powerful neighbor in ancient times, Rome defeated the Samnites, the tribe which had inhabited the Kingdom, and brought the region under Imperial control. From the Middle Ages the universal pretensions of the Roman papacy had continually threatened the temporal authority of Neapolitan rulers, and the symbol of these pretensions had survived into the eighteenth century with the offering each year of a feudal homage, the Chinea, to Rome. It was against this threat which Pietro Giannone’s anti-clericalism in the Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli (1723) was directed. 4 The symbol of Rome, ancient and modern, served as an effective foil for Neapolitan intellectuals who believed that the development of good government in the Kingdom had been frustrated by the interference of outside powers.This interference was perceived as having broken the natural bond between the rulers of Naples and their subjects. The Spanish viceroys already had an established and especially reviled place in this history of misgovernment in Naples. 5 The arrival of Charles III in 1734 and the establishment of an autonomous monarchy in the Kingdom broke this history and brought a new optimism for the possibility of reform. As regalisti, the reformers of the end of the [End Page 642] eighteenth century continued their efforts to strengthen the jurisdictional rights of the now autonomous Bourbon monarchy against both the Papacy and the feudal nobility within the Kingdom. 6 Within these historiographical and political traditions Rome was clearly recognized as a recurring symbol of oppression and obstacle to Naples’s sovereignty, and late eighteenth-century historians looked back to a period before the arrival of the ancient Romans to find a native tradition which could inform contemporary reform and upon which a cultural identity could be constructed.Italian writers, from the Renaissance, had charted the early history of the various city-states, duchies, and kingdoms in the Italian peninsula relative to the rise and fall of ancient Rome. Despite the local patriotism which these histories expressed, Rome remained a powerful symbol and model of civilization, and it was from such a model that both politics and culture were discussed and compared in Europe. Consequently, interest in pre-Roman Italy most often related to the reconstruction of the origins and early history of Rome, and it was towards this which most antiquarians and historians worked in their attempts to understand the causes for its rise. 7 In any case antiquarian interest in pre-Roman... (shrink)

This is a Political Economy study on migrants-citizens relations management in the United States of America, with special attention to the religious factor and the pendulum effect. There is a model switch, from integration policies to official persecution, under a high social opportunity cost. Also, there is a split between the State and civil society, causing civil disobedience and sanctuary network across the country. The paper focuses on the development of the Sanctuary Movement, as a case of (...) popular action against to the power elite policies and their sanctions. There was a revival of this movement during the values crisis or 2008 recession, but at the same time there was a critical division into the movement, with higher tension for the migrants. (shrink)

The relation between Church and state is nowadays at stake. This article concerns the relation between Church and state from an ecclesiastical and canonical point of view. It makes clear, how the ecclesiastical doctrine reacts to social developments in relation to the national state in order to safeguard the independence of the Church. The 19th century ecclesiastical doctrine on the Church as a societas perfecta reacts on doctrines on the national (...) states, which claimed absolute sovereignty and by that subordinated the Church to the civil government and civil law. With societas perfecta doctrine the Church defends its sovereignty in the domain of the spiritual good of men. In this way the Church defines and protects its divine origin and independence from the national state. In the first half of the 20th century the democratic and constitutional national states were developed, which acknowledges religious freedom on a constitutional level as a human and a civil right. Because of this progress the Second Vatican Council could formulate its doctrine on religious freedom based on the traditional ecclesiastical teaching of the freedom of the religious act. By then, the independence of the Church is founded and defended on the freedom of the Church, which is guaranteed in national states, which acknowledge religious freedom as a human and civil right. Although one can say that there is discontinuity in the ecclesiastical teaching on the Church as a societas perfecta and the ecclesiastical doctrine on religious freedom, there exists also continuity, because both ecclesiastical doctrines intend to safeguard the independence of the Church in human society. (shrink)

The article attempts to trace the evolution of the concept of civil society. Drawing from the work of political philosophers from the classical period, the period of renaissance, scientific revolution, the period of Enlightenment in the 18th century, and ideologies from the Marxist and Gramscian discourses, the article demonstrates the shifts in the meaning and implications of the concept, its relations to public spaces, accountability, governance, normative ideals of state and the relationship between the state and its (...) citizens. The article concludes its historical progression with the New Social Movements, wherein the civil society became synonymous with strategic action to construct 'an alternative social and world order’, a site for problem solving. Other contenders who put forth a renewed interest in the resurgence of civil society were the New Left, who assigned civil society a role to defend people’s democratic will in the face of state power, and the neoliberals who considered civil society as a site for subversion from authoritarian regimes. The article finally concludes with a call for urgent attention towards reclaiming the authority of the civil society in education scenario. (shrink)

The paper deals with mutual conditionality of existence between the civil society and legal state. The paper is based on the 1918-1940 doctrine of independent Lithuania, the models of the legal state and the tentative models of the civil society created at that time. In the first part of the article, the concept of the legal state is discussed. In terms of creation of the model of the legal state, M. Romeris works are of (...) exceptional importance. It his works, M. Romeris related the legal state in essence with the legal, procedural system for ensuring the lawfulness. On the basis of works of European scholars of the 19th–20th centuries, M. Romeris conducted a critical analysis of the legal state and elucidated its most significant traits. It is notable that M. Romeris was able to make a correct insight into the strategy of advancing towards the legal state. (shrink)

Academic interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be traced back to the 1930s. Since then an impressive body of empirical data and theory-building has been amassed, mainly located in the fields of management studies and business ethics. One of the most noteworthy recent conceptual contributions to the scholarship is Midttun’s (Corporate Governance 5(3):159–174, 2005 ) CSR-oriented embedded relational model of societal governance. It re-conceptualises the relationships between the state, business, and civil society. Other scholars (In Albareda et (...) al. Corporate Governance 6(4):386–400, 2006 ; Business Ethics: A European Review 17(4):347–363, 2008 ; Lozano et al., Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility, 2008 ) have recently successfully used the model as the basis for their analytical framework for researching CSR activities in a large number of western European countries. While this research offers valuable insights into how CSR is operationalised, it also suffers from a number of significant limitations. To develop a stronger analytical framework with which to explore CSR, this article draws more deeply on political science literature concerned with governance and public policy analysis. This represents the main purpose of this article. In addition, this article also addresses a second and more modest aim: to reflect on the ways in which relational governance-inspired frameworks could be adapted and applied to politico-economic systems where state-industry-third sector relations differ from those found in North America and Western Europe. Both lines of argument are illustrated using vignettes from a case study of the Evenkia Hydro-Electric Station building project in the Russian Federation. (shrink)

The idea of civil society is one of the oldest and most contested in Western political and sociological thought. Among the social sciences, anthropology has been the discipline that has prompted the boldest critiques of the concept. This paper argues that the “revival” of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe in one particular field—that of environmental activism—has been contingent with the outcomes of EU enlargement policies. I introduce the case study of one of the most complex and (...) contested transport development projects in Central Eastern Europe: the Budapest Ring Road. I maintain that within the EU enlargement project alternative forms of political power have been built from below and that they eventually come to compete with the state (and local governments) to influence decision-making processes. These forms, to be individuated in the emergence of environmental activism, take shape at local, state and transnational levels and aim, although often contradictorily, at restituting political agency under the condition of lowering public participation in decision-making processes. (shrink)

The article focuses on the role of civil society in the aggregate of causes that eventually brought about the collapse of the communist block and — in consequence — changed the global balance of power. The concept of ‘ethical civil society’ is introduced in explaining the path to democracy of former Soviet bloc countries. The article also explores cultural determinants of democratisation in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989; in particular the relation between religious confession and likelihood (...) of democratic outcome of post-communist transformation is examined. (shrink)

The work of René Girard invites us to re-imagine a ‘religious–secular’ interactivity within social space in a way released from the violent dualisms of the ‘sacred/profane.’ Earlier Dietrich Bonhoeffer considered the same task and suggested directions for a positive theology of church-state relations, even as the inherited forms of these institutions were collapsing about him. This paper explores the Girardian scenario for church and state becoming rivalrous ‘doubles’– whether it be secular utopic projects doubling religious narratives (...) of redemption, or churches doubling the state as parallel yet purer societies – and suggests resources from Bonhoeffer by which a non-rivalrous church-state relationality - both mutually-constituting and mutually-limiting - may be configured. (shrink)

Political philosophy has difficulties to cope with the complexity and variety of state-religions relations. ‘Strict separationism’ is still the preferred option amongst liberals, deliberative and republican democrats, socialist and feminists. In this article, I develop a complex typology based on comparative history and sociology of religions. I summarize my reasons why institutional pluralist models like plural establishment or non-constitutional pluralism are attractive not only for religious minorities but for religiously deeply diverse societies in general. Most attention is paid defending (...) associative democracy, the most flexible and open variety of institutional pluralism, against realist objections that group representation is incompatible with liberal democracy, that it leads to stigmatization and bureaucratization, that it strengthens undemocratic leaders, that it leads to an ossification of the status quo, and, most importantly, that it is inherently divisive undermining social cohesion and political unity. In my refutation of these objections I try to show that it helps to integrate minority religions into liberal democratic policies compatible with reasonable pluralism and to prevent religious and political fundamentalism. (shrink)

The paper offers a survey of the debate on the introduction, in the Preamble of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, of references to God and Europe’s Christian tradition. It examines the question of European identity and values which motivates these proposals in relation to (1) the nature of the EU as an essentially political construction; (2) the issue of human rights in the EU; (3) the protection of cultural and religious diversity within the EU. The study shows (...) that the confessionalization of Europe promoted by strong churches on the Continent, which are legitimate actors of civil society, betray a failure to understand the logic of the European construction. To the extent to which they represent an attempt to secure a privileged position with respect to other religious or non-religious actors, they run against the functional principles and values of the Union. (shrink)

Although the historical process of globalization has promoted the nation-state as a universal cultural form, national ideologies are far from uniform. This article explores how the competing discourses of citizenship and nation-hood evolved in Southeastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By comparing the articulation of Serb, Greek and Bulgarian identities, the essay examines how regional historical factors led to the concept of nationhood becoming central to the formation of national identity among the region's Eastern Orthodox Christians. (...) It demonstrates that the subsequent regional national rivalries have been the consequence of the local peoples' route towards modernity, and cannot be attributed to a 'clash of civilizations'. Rather, the history of Southeastern Europe suggests that the production of heterogeneity is inherent in the globalization process. (shrink)

In Ukrainian academia, the last decades have seen growing interest in the concept of civil society, which has been studied from different disciplinary angles. Commentators disagree on the level of development it has reached in Ukraine. They emphasize its absence in Soviet times, and the general lack of organizational initiative in contemporary Ukraine. In this essay, I show that, although these critiques of Ukrainian civil society are crucial for comprehending its historical evolution, the history of Ukrainian civil (...) society can also help us understand how it might evolve in the future, both during and, hopefully after, the current war. In my analysis, I focus on two particular lines. The first is the interaction between civil society and the state, which shifted from an anti-state attitude to a model of partnership. The second, which operates in the background, is how civil society has struggled with different utopian ideas, over the 20th and early 21st centuries. Analyzing this relationship to different utopian ideas helps us understand how the relations between civil society and the state changed over time. I conclude with a question about European challenges. (shrink)

The resurgence of religious movements all over the world, their varying claims to identity and politics (from public deliberations to fundamentalism), and their success in generating system-transforming effects in both national and world politics have indicated clearly that there is a need to uncover the invisible interconnections between religion and politics. Moreover, the way in which religion has been striking back has taken different forms. From religious and terrorist fundamentalism to multiculturalism, from communitarian claims to the religious state to (...) religion-based civil societal calls for pluralism and freedom, it is possible to see different articulations of the resurgence of religion in the world in which we live. In this context, Turkey constitutes a sociologically illuminating, theoretically challenging and politically timely case study. As a modern republic on the margins of Europe and preparing for accession negotiations with the European Union for full membership, Turkey is both a Muslim society and a strictly secular nation-state. This article suggests, first, that the process of modernization and democratization in Turkey has always faced the problem of establishing a delicate balance between politics and religion, and, second, that in this process the more secularism is used by the state elite to control religion, the less pluralistic and democratic the state has become in governing a society where Islam has always played an important role in the symbolic formation of Turkish identity. What is needed in this context is a ‘democratic secular imaginary’ as a more dialogical, tolerant and accommodating strategy of living with difference, enabling us to understand religious claims to difference in their own right, and to approach them clearly and critically. (shrink)

This book examines the relationship between the educational activities of civil society and those of the state via three case studies in: vocational education, political education and educational markets. Winch argues that the narrower educational activities of the state cannot be understood independently of those that take place in civil society which consists of institutions such as families, churches, businesses, trade unions, charities and political associations.

China’s civil society has expanded recently, providing space for new players, although it remains small and controlled by the Communist Party. The mainland Chinese church is taking its place in the civil society, although it is unlikely that it will enjoy Western-style freedoms even in the medium term. Singapore is an Asian democracy where relations between church and civil society are different again; the country has long been culturally and religiously pluralist, and was never part (...) of ‘Christendom’. Also, Singapore’s government is more socially interventionist than its Western counterparts. I describe the West, Singapore and China as permissive, prescriptive and restrictive, respectively, and conclude that Singapore’s prescriptive approach to church and civil society may be a model for China. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, but (...) instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

The article reviews the works of Ukrainian and foreign researchers, the object of which was the phenomenon of «civil religion» in the context of harmonization of relations between church, state and society.

This article examines relationships between civil society and state. It explains that civil society refers to uncoerced associational life distinct from the family and institutions of the state Civil society is also often thought to be distinct from the economy, but their separation is a matter of some dispute. Despite differences in definitional boundaries, contemporary interest in civil society focuses predominantly on associational life rather than market or exchange relations. This article describes the six (...) relationships between civil society and state, and suggests that these relations are not mutually exclusive and they do not necessarily compete with each other. (shrink)

In recent years scholars have begun to question the usefulness of the category of ''religion'' to describe a distinctive form of human experience and behavior. In his last book, The Ideology of Religious Studies, Timothy Fitzgerald argued that ''religion'' was not a private area of human existence that could be separated from the public realm and that the study of religion as such was thus impossibility. In this new book he examines a wide range of English-language texts to show how (...) religion became transformed from a very specific category indigenous to Christian culture into a universalist claim about human nature and society. These claims, he shows, are implied by and frequently explicit in theories and methods of comparative religion. But they are also tacitly reproduced throughout the humanities in the relatively indiscriminate use of ''religion'' as an a priori valid cross-cultural analytical concept, for example in historiography, sociology, and social anthropology. Fitzgerald seeks to link the argument about religion to the parallel formation of the ''non-religious'' and such dichotomies as church-state, sacred-profane, ecclesiastical-civil, spiritual-temporal, supernatural-natural, and irrational-rational. Part of his argument is that the category ''religion'' has a different logic compared to the category ''sacred,'' but the two have been consistently confused by major writers, including Durkheim and Eliade. Fitzgerald contends that ''religion'' imagined as a private belief in the supernatural was a necessary conceptual space for the simultaneous imagining of ''secular'' practices and institutions such as politics, economics, and the Nation State. The invention of ''religion'' as a universal type of experience, practice, and institution was partly the result of sacralizing new concepts of exchange, ownership, and labor practices, applying ''scientific'' rationality to human behavior, administering the colonies and classifying native institutions. In contrast, shows Fitzgerald, the sacred-profane dichotomy has a different logic of use. (shrink)

There exists a limited pluralist model of regulating or `managing' religious diversity in contemporary Europe. This pluralist model, however, is in contrast to the limitations that appear at the state level, which reflect an increasingly illiberal, secular Europe. Such contrast stems historically from tensions that exist between the national and transnational aspects of the model itself, but it also reflects the emerging debates on religious pluralism and the democratic state. With the settlement of post-colonial migrants (with Muslims constituting (...) a large majority) a public debate on the role of religion in Europe has resurfaced as these communities exist outside the historical formation of Western church-state relations and are challenging the very underpinning of what comprises a `liberal' democratic state. In particular, it is the role of Islam in secular Europe that frames several questions in this debate: to what extent is it necessary to regulate religious freedoms in the `public sphere' in order to protect the democratic state? What restrictions on minority religions should be considered `necessary in a democratic society’ and what limitations should be placed on state interference in minority religions as protection against the undue influence of a dominant social group? Against this backdrop, this article explores the historical social formation of religious pluralism in the European context and examines the legal and political frameworks at the national and regional levels to `regulate' diversity. (shrink)

Joseph Dunne’s essay begins by examining the ways in which schooling in modern liberal–democratic societies tend to function as the agent of cultural homogenization and alienation, and thus block liberal–democratic efforts to offer meaningful recognition of local cultures and to promote the skills and dispositions required for participatory democratic citizenship. The danger here, Dunne points out, is that when the homogenizing elements of modern schooling become dominant, they might serve to encourage an ‘insouciant cosmopolitanism that may fail to meet people’s (...) needs for identity ’. The chapter concludes by reflecting on some possible educational responses that might offer some hopeful ways of addressing such dismal extremes. In particular, he is interested in the educational possibilities offered by a reconfiguration of national identities and state institutions in the emerging European Community in the context of national, cultural, and religious strife that currently besets Northern Ireland. Thus, like Waldron, Dunne sees local cultural identities – be they national, religious, or cultural – as complexly related to, but potentially compatible with, cosmopolitan historical forces. (shrink)

This book defends the fundamental place of the marital family in modern liberal societies. While applauding modern sexual freedoms, John Witte, Jr also defends the traditional Western teaching that the marital family is an essential cradle of conscience, chrysalis of care, and cornerstone of ordered liberty. He thus urges churches, states, and other social institutions to protect and promote the marital family. He encourages reticent churches to embrace the rights of women and children, as Christians have long taught, and encourages (...) modern states to promote responsible sexual freedom and family relations, as liberals have long said. He counsels modern churches and states to share in family law governance, and to resist recent efforts to privatize, abolish, or radically expand the marital family sphere. Witte also invites fellow citizens to end their bitter battles over same-sex marriage and tend to the vast family field that urgently needs concerted attention and action. (shrink)

Society has to be understood as a process of fast changes and slow transformations . This is what has been happening in Central Europe, where the big changes of 1989–1990 were preceded by several small social, political and ideological transformations. When analysing Central European societies, one should also remember that there is an ‘official’ society and a ‘hidden’ society.In addition, the relation of state and civil society is deformed since in most cases the civil sphere is (...) repressed and undeveloped due to the predominance of the ‘official state’. In such societies, you cannot find real hegemony but only dominance, which is practiced by the state not only in the sphere of economy, society and culture, but also in and through ideology.The essence of modern totalitarian society cannot be understood without addressing the permanent existence of unofficial, ‘civil’ ideologies penetrating the ‘hidden’ society at the same time as the ‘official’ ideology. Apart from the slow transformation of ideologies and the crisis of ‘official’ ideology, the strengthening of ‘hidden’ ideology is also required for revolutionary changes. This is how a historically new situation with new ideologies can come into being, in clear contrast to the renewal of old ideologles, which generates a mixture of the old and the new. A look at what happened in Central Europe, but particularly Hungary, should clarify the point. (shrink)

Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process, which was published in German in 1939 and first translated into English in two volumes in 1978 and 1982, is now widely regarded as one of the great works of twentieth-century sociology. This work attempted to explain how Europeans came to think of themselves as more “civilized” than their forebears and neighboring societies. By analyzing books about manners that had been published between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, Elias observed changing conceptions of shame and embarrassment (...) with respect to, among other things, bodily propriety and violence. To explain those developments, Elias examined the interplay among the rise of state monopolies of power, increasing levels of economic interconnectedness among people, and pressures to become attuned to others over greater distances that led to advances in identifying with others in the same society irrespective of social origins. Elias's analysis of the civilizing process was not confined, however, to explaining changing social bonds within separate societies. The investigation also focused on the division of Europe into sovereign states that were embroiled in struggles for power and security.This article provides an overview and analysis of Elias's principal claims in the light of growing interest in this seminal work in sociology. The analysis shows how Elias defended higher levels of synthesis in the social sciences to explain relations between “domestic” and “international” developments, and changes in social structure and in the emotional lives of modern people. Elias's investigation, which explained long-term processes of development over several centuries, pointed to the limitations of inquiries that concentrate on short-term intervals. Only by placing short-term trends in long-term perspective could sociologists understand contemporary developments. This article maintains that Elias's analysis of the civilizing process remains an exemplary study of long-term developments in Western societies over the last five centuries. (shrink)

The chapter examines the political arcanum historically and conceptually and reflects on the implications of digital technology for the state and civil society relation.

This article examines the development, activities and effectiveness of women’s NGOs in 10 Central and Eastern European countries. It begins by examining the establishment of women’s organizations post-1989, identifying their structure, funding difficulties and the issues on which they focus. It also addresses the tension between the work of NGOs and the wider development of civil society. The article goes on to explore how negative perceptions of feminism have hindered efforts to develop a unified and coherent agenda among women’s (...) NGOs. Finally, it analyses how public attitudes have affected relations between women’s organizations and women politicians as well as how competition and fragmentation have complicated relationships between NGOs. (shrink)

Despite its long history of refugee crises, Asia lacks effective refugee protection mechanisms. Most Asian states resist ratification of the international refugee laws, and many international organizations are ineffective and lack concrete legal and political approaches to protecting refugees. Asian civil society, particularly Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, collaborates to protect refugees by employing alternative frameworks. This paper argues that Asian civil society aims to challenge the nature of refugee protection in Asia. Instead of encouraging states to ratify (...) the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, APRRN stimulates national-level implementation of refugee protection principles and practices from below. It engages its members in global decision-making by mobilizing and sharing resources with them. APRRN frames refugee protection as international human rights issue instead of as a national security concern. (shrink)

L'article se propose d'étudier la Francophonie dans la lumière de la transition post-communiste. L'objectif est d'opposer à l'approche quantitative, qui mesure souvent l'impact de la Francophonie dans les pays non francophones de l'Europe de l'Est par le nombre d'élèves, une autre approche qui cherche le lien entre la Francophonie et les problèmes stratégiques du développement des pays respectifs. Le prisme est moins celui de la diversité culturelle que celui de la démocratisation. L'article est structuré en trois parties. La première analyse (...) le volontarisme et l'incohérence de la politique d'adhésion à la Francophonie, la seconde étudie les nouvelles modalités et la dernière les acteurs émergents de la société civile qui remplacent l'État dans la réalisation de la Francophonie locale.The article aims to study Francophony in the light of the post-communist transitional period. The objective is to develop a different approach in opposition to the common quantitative one which consists of measuring the impact of Francophony by the number of students, an approach that focuses on its relations with the strategic problems of the respective countries. The prism is more the one of democratization rather than of cultural diversity. The article is structured in three parts. The first analyses voluntarism and the incoherence of the politics of adherence to Francophony, the second studies the new modalities and the last part deals with the emerging figures in civil society who are replacing the State in the implementation of Francophony locally. (shrink)

Despite growing public concerns around socio-scientific problems and the significance of these problems to everyday life, there is a dearth of sociological literature addressing the production and diffusion of the natural sciences in Australia. In particular, critical analyses of scientific knowledge production and diffusion relative to the actions of the state, the market and civil society are largely absent. This thesis sets out to mitigate this situation by contributing a critical historiography of scientific knowledge production and diffusion as (...) it relates to Australia since white settlement. It is anticipated that this work will open up the topic for further academic research and rational debate. This thesis explores the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge through the lens of social dynamics that have emerged in Australia between the 1770s and the 2010s. The research relies primarily on the theoretical work of Max Weber in order to identify and analyse the conception of rationality and its application to social action that is present in the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia. In particular, the relationships between the state, the market and civil society are analysed using secondary data drawn from published histories, official documents and the formal policies and practices of the state and the market during this period. A tripartite analytical model has been created specifically for this thesis and is utilised to trace scientific knowledge production and diffusion through the transformative social processes associated with instrumentalism, bureaucratisation, developmentalism, environmentalism, postmodernism and neoliberalism. Rationality is applied in three ways: as non-instrumental science produced to further human understandings of the natural world and to promote the development of civil society; as pre-instrumental science produced by the state to in order to develop markets and for other instrumental purposes such as national defense strategies; and as instrumental scientific knowledge produced by the participants in the market expressly to enhance their own position in the market. The research reveals that instrumental rationality has been an enduring concept in the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia. Moreover, this thesis finds that a strong tension is often present between non-instrumental notions of scientific knowledge and those practices that are predominantly instrumental. Through each of the periods studied the state and the market have been close confederates, often working together to realize instrumental outcomes through the knowledge produced by natural science. In particular, administrative and economic ends are seen to be primary; ends associated with more normative intentions, such as the nurturing of civil society, have been regularly overlooked in favour of strictly instrumental aspirations. This continuing instrumentality has altered the relationships between the state, the market and civil society during each period studied. On the current trajectory, the policy and praxis of the natural sciences in Australia may yet begin to compromise the sovereignty of that nation state and the authority of its citizenry. (shrink)