Soft power (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Sources of Religious and Political Power in Thought of
2011
Özet Karşılaştırmalı Yaklaşımla Ebu Mansur el-Maturîdî ve Saint Thomas Aquinas’ta Dinî ve Politik Gücün Kaynakları Bu makale ilahi ve dünyevi güç arasındaki ilişki kaynaklarına dair iki önde gelen kelamcı/teolog Ebu Mansur el-Maturidi ve Saint Thomas Aquinas’ın ortaya koydukları düşünceleri karşılaştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Öncelikle çalışma, bu iki düşünürün yaklaşım tarzlarına dair kısa bir bilgi ile din ile siyaset arasındaki ilişkiye dair temel fikirlerini ortaya koyacaktır. Daha sonra, Maturidi ile Aquinas’ın görüşleri arasında ortak bir zeminin olup olmadığı hususu tespit edilmeye çalışılacaktır. Anahtar Kelimeler: İktidar, Dini İktidar, Maturidi, Aquinas Abstract This paper aims to compare some reflections on relationship between divine and worldly powers and their sources presented by two prominent theologians Abu Mansur al-Maturidi and. First, the paper we will present a brief characteristic of these two theologians and emphasize some of their fundamental ideas concerning the...
Politicized religion: symbolism and the instrumentalization of the sacred
In the following pages, I support the view of various authors who argue that modern secularization has not produced a definitive separation between religion and politics (Beaman, 2003, 2016; Bellah, 2005; Cristi, 2001; Gentile, 1990, 2003; Mosse, 1991). In doing this, I argue that this separation is ‘blurry’ and ambiguous as both spheres share a common element: the symbolic. To demonstrate this, I outline two processes often characterized as ‘inverse’. I begin by outlining the so-called ‘sacralization of the secular’, primarily relying on the works of Cristi (2001), Gentile (1990, 2003), and Mosse (1991). Secondly, I expand on Beaman's (2003, 2016) analyses on the ‘secularization of the sacred’. To illustrate this, I draw upon the recent case of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The case in question allows us to see how the sacred and the secular are the result of socio-political processes of meaning; that being, instances of conflict and negotiation about what ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ mean. Ultimately, this unmasks the inherent politicization of the sacred in secular modernity.
The Secular Sacred, 2014
Given the failure of political grand narratives and religious cosmologies to redeem the human suffering and environmental disasters of the twentieth century, it is not surprising that intellectual and artistic circles display a chronic scepticism and disillusionment with either rational or spiritual claims to any kind of universalism – moral or otherwise. The moral universe has lost any traditional or metaphysical ‘givenness’ and has come to be seen as a construct. A construct that is radically and hopelessly contextual and relative. The response to injustice now often seems limited to impotent moralistic indignation. At the secular level this process has been characterised by the seemingly inevitable hegemony of relativism in its various forms. The most virulent of these is, unquestionably, the radical deconstructionism found in postmodernism. Important though postmodernism has been both as a cultural movement and a valued warrior against the monological philosophy of consciousness and grand meta-narratives, it is, in essence, a subclass of relativism. It is this relativism, in its philosophical and cultural appearances, that underpins the current scenario of a pluralism of worldviews, many of which contradict the now questionable ethos of multiculturalism in that they do not simply offer alternative ways of accessing reality, rather they offer competing and mutually exclusive views of the world. Drawing on Habermas (and many others), I believe that it is possible to reconstruct a form of rational universalism without falling into metaphysical illusions – particularly the illusion that rests on the discovery or assumption of some transcendent point beyond history, culture and language. The crucial step that enables this is the move to a communicative concept of rationality. From this basis I argue for the morally motivating power of a rationally based sense of the secular sacred and the identification with such through reflexive mythological narratives.
2012
Interrogating the relationship between religion and nationalism ultimately means interrogating the relationship between culture and politics, or rather what is - in the modernist mindset - considered as the separate fields of culture and politics. Interrogating this relationship is also the predicament in the study of nationalism. Nationalism already posits the relation between culture and politics as fundamental - albeit problematic - for its (re)production and its critique. The historical importance of religious institutions (for our purpose, Christianity in the European context), the analogy between the Church and the institutions of secular states (E. Hobsbawm) points a finger to their elemental correlation. The quasi-religious discourse in E. Renan's "What is nation?" (the notion of sacrifice e.g.) already suggests, for instance, how nationalist myths are closely related to and perhaps of the same nature as religious myths. It is in terms of cultural hierarchies (...