2000
Eurozine
Akadeemia
2008-12-18
Abstracts for 2000 11/2008
Jürgen Habermas: The dialectic of secularization
The opposition between "multiculturalism" and "Enlightenment fundamentalism" is misconceived, argues Jürgen Habermas. "The universalistic claim of the political Enlightenment does not contradict the particularist sensibilities of a correctly understood multiculturalism." First published in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 2008/4.
Wolfgang Ullrich: Religion versus the religion of art
German art critics were outraged after the bishop of Cologne found Gerhard Richter's new stained-glass window for Cologne cathedral to be insufficiently religious. Their response reveals the enduring Romantic ideology of artistic genius, writes Wolfgang Ullrich. First published in Merkur (Nr. 705), February 2008.
Mátyás Varga: Suspicious of suspicion
Aesthetic and theological reflections of a Hungarian Benedictine monk and teacher on contemporary art. How to listen to Harnoncourt?
Peter Berger: Two Kingdoms -- one principle
The great Rabbi Hillel once said that one could state the meaning of the Torah while standing on one leg -- and formulated the so called (moral) Golden Rule. Peter Berger, professor emeritus of sociology and theology, thinks that the values of liberal democracy can also be stated while standing on one leg: "The dignity of man is inviolable". A paper presented in the IWM "Political Salon" titled How Christian can a Democracy be?, Vienna, April 2008.
Vilmos Voigt: A mysterious work on the history of religion in Hungary
Is there anything like science of religion? Is there a special Hungarian tradition in science of religion? The folklorist Voigt on the forgotten book of Vilmos Tordai about the Hungarian history of occultism.
Pierre Hadot: Isis has no veils
Goethe against Newton and Creuzer. To see Isis i.e., Nature, all we have to do is look. She reveals herself without veils; she consists entirely in the splendour of her appearance. First published in P. Hadot: The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature (Harvard University Press, 2006).
Szilvia Ritz: Radical otherness in the first novel of Christoph Ransmayr
Austro-Hungarian explorers discovering the Nothing: the Francis Joseph's Land in the Arctic Ocean. The Hungarian literary historian on a polyphonic novel.