RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Power and the Word: Religion, Politics, Communication

Università di Pisa

Abstract

The present research aims to clarify the relation between the power and the word from a political, philosophical and theological perspective. It will be focused on an analysis of the classics of political thought, and on promoting their dissemination through several printing and e-publishing activities.
We shall follow three intertwined directions.
1. The first aspect of our analysis deals with the relation between religion and politics on the background of the secularization process. Secularization was boosted by the multifaceted changes in European thought furthered by the Reformation, It will be analyzed starting from the thought of the Seventeenth Century French Jansenists (Pascal, Nicole, Domat, Arnauld) and, particularly, on its ethical-political and legal aspects. They will be compared with Locke and Hobbes, on the one hand, and with Rousseau, on the other hand. On this basis, our research will scrutinize some theoretical paradigms of secularization, like the model proposed by Foucault.
2. The second aspect studies the role that word and speech play in their relation with power and secular coercion. The focus of such an analysis will be the Enlightenment and in particular Immanuel Kant, because his reflection on the power and the word may be considered as a cornerstone of the idea of philosophy itself. For this reason, our reflection will move from a Kantian perspective in its broadest meaning, in order to elaborate its political and >>>

Principal Investigator

Giuliano MARINI Università di PISA

Research Objectives

To study the relation between the power and the word, we will focus on three main concepts: `Religion', `Politics', and `Communication'. Their relations will be analyzed on the basis of three major subjects:
- the nexus between religion and politics, and the relation between forms of communication, identity and power structures
- starting from Kant, the Enlightenment thought on "publicness" of philosophical and political logos
- the theological-political debate of the XXth Century, in order to understand its contemporary development
Our further practical goal is the development of digital tools to harvest and distribute the texts and documents produced by our research: we hope to offer other research groups in Italy and abroad a GPL software that can be easily usable by Humanities scholars.

1. Religion and Politics: categories and practices of secularization
The first goal to renew some fundamental questions on the meaning of secularization, in order to understand some of the current trends suggesting that religions play a new meaningful political role. We will follow two main directions. The first direction is a conceptual analysis. starting from the ethical, political and legal theory of Seventeenth Century French Jansenism.. The second one detects some special "practices" (in the meaning attributed to this word by M. Foucault's practical philosophy), which, while finding their roots in Christianity, were secularized in >>>

First Results

The expected results of the first stage are twofold:
1. an increase of literature on the research subject by issuing books, essays, review articles and bibliographical essays; this process will be helped by a new customized software, and especially by a public repository OAI-PMH compatible.
2. a better diffusion of knowledge on our topic both by traditional means (congresses and workshops, for instance) and new media, like a research web site, intended to the publishing of scientific information (bibliographies, review articles of books and scientific journals and so on) and guides (reasoned indexes of web links).As well as in the first year of research, during the second year we expect (1) to increase the number of publications, both on paper and on the Net; (2) to organize workshops and congresses. Moreover, we will work to increase the circulation of translations and critical editions. As a publicly funded research group, our intention is to improve the knowledge on the related subjects by producing public, open access hypertexts and websites. New kinds of software and the open standard we adopt (OAI-PMH) will increase the chance of a wider circulation of ideas.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

According to Eric Weil's well-known thesis, Christianity made democratic the ancient discovery of universality of reason. Ancient philosophy used to be aristocratic and exclusive; Christian doctrine, on the contrary, was preached everywhere. But its universality in scope follows two different tendencies. The first trend may be connected to St. Paul and his idea that the universality of Christianity transcends the ancient reason by replacing it with faith and grace: "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Romans III:21-22) The second trend may be detected in the beginning of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (I:1). Its heritage was received by the neoplatonic Church Fathers: faith and grace were connected to God's logos and sapience. From such a point of view, Christianity could be legitimized both as the "true" philosophy and as the successor of pagan wisdom. These early trends were subjected to two different political applications and to two different kinds of secularization. The former is inclined to submit the Word to the Power; the latter, that was followed by the devotio moderna humanists, is inclined, on the contrary, to celebrate the Power of the Word and tries to bring politics into consonance with reason.
1) TRANSCENDENCE AND POLITICS >>>