Quest for a good society has a long pedigree in sociological thought and critical reflections. It vibrates with many themes of liberation, morality and justice in classical sociology as pioneered by thinkers such as Marx and Durkheim and themes of decent society and creative society in recent theoretical discourses. The present essay discusses this quest for a good society in contemporary social sciences with a detailed discussion of the work of Robert N. Bellah, the pre-eminent sociologist of our times. It (...) discusses Bellah’s quest for a good society in Japan and the US and in the process it discusses related themes such as dynamic harmony and dynamic sunyata. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that a common view of Habermas’s theory of public reason, which takes it to be similar to Rawls’s ‘proviso’, is mistaken. I explain why that mistake arises, and show that those who have made it have thus overlooked the distinctiveness of Habermas’s theory and approach. Consequently, I argue, they tend to wrongly infer that objections directed at Rawls’s ‘proviso’ apply also to Habermas’s ‘institutional translation proviso’. Ironically, Habermas’s attempt to rebut those objections leads him to (...) advance a peculiar, and ultimately indefensible, thesis about the cognitive requirements of democratic citizenship for secular citizens. I argue that the underlying problem that Habermas takes the peculiar thesis to solve is not that the public reason requirements of the secular state are unfair towards religious citizens, or biased towards secular views of the world, but that the nature of religious arguments, and of scientism, as Habermas understands these, prevents citizens who adhere to them from participating in discourse. I end by suggesting a simpler, less controversial solution to that problem. (shrink)

The article addresses the theme of accommodating an imported model of international religious practice into a national context. The case in question involves an intentional ’translation’ of an American Pentecostal concept of a lay-based prayer service into a Nordic, rather secularised Lutheran context. This recent newcomer into the Finnish religious field is the Healing Rooms network which is a predominantly charismatic Christian, globally expanded, interdenominational intercessory prayer service. This study of Healing Rooms is based on material compiled by means of (...) ethnographic methods. According to the interviewees, the idea of a prayer clinic must be adjusted culturally and nationally, even though the basic function of the practice is the same everywhere. In Finland this means adjusting the service to fit a culture and society in which the mainline Lutheran Church has traditionally had simultaneously a distant and dominating role on the religious scene. (shrink)

This article explores the much neglected work of the German philosopher and cultural theorist Hans Blumenberg, a figure still relatively little known in the Anglophone world. The thesis is defended that Blumenberg's conception of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) offers valuable resources for addressing some important questions about the philosophical self-understanding of the modern social sciences in relation to theological and religious sources of thought and language. The article begins with an assessment of the contemporary relevance of Blumenberg's (...) critique of the idea of modern scientific culture as a merely `secularized form' of theological thinking. This critique is then compared with Blumenberg's account of the relationship of theoretico-scientific inquiry to mythological consciousness in his second major philosophical monograph of 1979, Work on Myth. The article concludes with a range of reflections on ways in which Blumenberg's work helps us understand how certain explanatory constructs and devices employed in the modern social sciences can be said to incorporate, assimilate, and at the same time critically transform figures of thought and language that display a mythic, religious and theological context of historical origination, provenance or genealogy. (shrink)

O debate entre Habermas e Rawls representa uma contribuição fundamental para a compreensão das questões sobre reconhecimento, multiculturalismo e pós-secularismo, introduzindo diferentes concepções filosóficas que podem contribuir sobre a temática acerca do uso público da razão, a fim de elucidar as diferentes percepções teóricas capazes de atender aos desafios propostos pelas sociedades pluralistas. Carlos Santiago Nino, por sua vez, estabeleceu uma estratégia teórica denominada “construtivismo epistemológico”, delineada a partir do debate Habermas-Rawls. Por conseguinte, pretendemos articular os fundamentos filosóficos atinentes à (...) concepção de razão pública delineada por Rawls e Habermas e ao construtivismo epistemológico de Carlos Santiago Nino com a análise da legitimidade democrática do STF na resolução de uma questão moral controvertida que é objeto de um desacordo moral razoável: o aborto de fetos anencéfalos.The Habermas - Rawls debate represents a fundamental contribution to understanding the issues about recognition, multiculturalism and post-secularism by introducing different philosophical views that can contribute about the issue of the public use of reason in order to elucidate the different theoretical insights that can meet the challenges of pluralistic societies. Carlos Santiago Nino, in turn, established a strategy called “epistemological constructivism” outlined from Rawls-Habermas debate. Therefore, we intend to articulate the philosophical foundations relating to the Rawls’s and Habermas’s conceptions of public reason and Carlos Santiago Nino’s epistemological constructivism with the analysis of democratic legitimacy of the Supreme Court to resolve a moral issue that is of a reasonable moral disagreement : the abortion of anencephalic fetuses. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that a common view of Habermas’s theory of public reason, which takes it to be similar to Rawls’s ‘proviso’, is mistaken. I explain why that mistake arises, and show that t...