idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
06/06/2006 - 06/06/2006 | Berlin-Tiergarten
Modern societies have to be secular. There are two models of this. Both involve some kind of separation of church and state. The state can't be officially linked to some religious confession; except in a vestigial and largely symbolic sense, as in England or Scandinavia. But secularism requires more than this. The pluralism of society requires that there be some kind of neutrality, or "principled distance", to use Rajeev Bhargava's term.
Secularism is in fact a complex requirement. We can single out goods, which we can class in the three categories of the French Revolutionary trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity: (1) No-one must be forced in the domain of religion, or basic belief; (2) There must be equality between people of different faiths or basic belief; (3) All spiritual families must be heard and included in the ongoing process of determining the political identity of the society. Sometimes we have to balance these goods.
One kind of secularism claims to have resolved the question of how to realize these goals. It is claimed that one can determine them in the realm of timeless principle, and that no further input or negotiation is required to define them for our society now. The basis for these principles can be found in reason alone, or in some outlook which is itself free from religion, purely "laïque".
The problem with this is that there is no such set of timeless principles which can be determined, at least in the detail they must be for a given political system, by pure reason alone. Situations differ very much, and require different kinds of concrete realization of agreed general principles. Dictating the principles from some supposedly higher authority deprives certain spiritual families of a voice in this working out.
Charles Taylor is one of the leading political philosophers of our times. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at McGill University and Board of Trustees Professor of Law and Philosophy at North-western University. His numerous books include: Sources of the Self 1989; Varieties of Religion Today, 2002; Modern Social Imaginaries, 2004. At present, he is a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskol-leg zu Berlin.
WZB "Lectures on Democracy" are organized by John Keane and Wolfgang Merkel
Information on participating / attending:
Please reply by June 1, 2006 to Karolina May-Chu: may-chu@wz-berlin.de
Date:
06/06/2006 20:00 - 06/06/2006 22:00
Event venue:
Reichpietschufer 50, Raum A 300
10785 Berlin-Tiergarten
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
Journalists, Scientists and scholars
Relevance:
transregional, national
Subject areas:
History / archaeology, Law, Philosophy / ethics, Politics, Religion, Social studies
Types of events:
Entry:
05/09/2006
Sender/author:
Dr. Paul Stoop
Department:
Abteilung Kommunikation
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event17102
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).
