Author: Bart Labuschagne, Reinhard Sonnenschmidt
Publisher: Brill
Publication Place: n\a
Pages: 454
ISBN: 9780521517805
Category: n\a

Description

Modern, liberal democracies in the West living under the rule of law and protection of human rights cannot articulate the very values from which they derive their legitimacy. These pre-political and pre-legal preconditions cannot be guaranteed, let alone be enforced by the state, but constitute nevertheless its moral and spiritual infrastructure. Until recently, a common background and horizon consisted in Christianity, but due to secularisation and globalisation, society has become increasingly multicultural and multireligious. The question can and should be raised how religion relates to these sources of normative order in society, how religion, politics and law relate to each other, and how social cohesion can be attained in society, given the growing varieties of religious experiences. In this book, a philosophical account of this question is carried out, on the one hand historically from Plato to the Enlightenment, on the other hand systematically and practically.


Table of contents

Philosophical Refl ections on Religion, Politics and Law: An Introduction Bart C. Labuschagne and Reinhard W. Sonnenschmidt.

 PART A PHILOSOPHICAL-HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: WITH VOEGELIN BACK TO PLATO, ARISTOTLE, AUGUSTINE AND HEGEL

I. Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Law and Ethics: A Critique Andreas A.M. Kinneging; II. Plato’s Political Ontology: On the Nature of Man and Regime Benjamin Bilski;  III. Religion and Order:

Philosophical Refl ections from Augustine to Hegel on the Spiritual Sources of Law and Politics

Bart C. Labuschagne.


PART B POLITICO-RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES: A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, AND THE NEW APPROACH OF THE ‘POLITICAL SCIENCE OF RELIGION’

IV. Politics and Religion in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment I: Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Rousseau  Claus-E. Bärsch; V. Politics and Religion in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment II: Kant  Claus-E. Bärsch; VI. Basic Outlines of the ‘Political Science of Religion’ Claus-E. Bärsch


PART C SYSTEMATICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES: ON EVIL, LOVE, VIOLENCE, TOTALITARIANISM AND THE CURRENT MEANING OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

VII. The Diabolical Dimensions in the Shapes of Political Reality  Peter Berghoff; VIII. Love and Violence: Dialectical Refl ections on the Phenomenology of the Crusade  Timo J.M. Slootweg IX. Totalitarianism and Radical Islamic Ideologies  David A.J. Suurland; X. The Enlightenment in Contemporary Cultural Debate  Paul Cliteur and Geoff Gordon


PART D PRACTICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES: DEALING WITH RELIGIOUS PLURALISM UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OR: THE CHALLENGING VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

IN MODERN DEMOCRACIES


XI. The Religious Aspects of the Founding of America: A Design of Religion and Reason  Detlef David Bauszus; 
XII. Taking Pluralism Seriously: The US and the EU as Multicultural Democracies? Hans-Martien Th.D. ten Napel and Florian H. Karim Theissen; 
XIII. Law, Politics and Religion: In Search of Criteria for Understanding Modernity  Reinhard W. Sonnenschmidt; 
XIV. From Transcendence to Introcendence: The Consciousness of Political Reality and

Psycho-Esoteric Constructions of Salvation . Andreas Dordel and Andrea Ullrich