SFERA PUBBLICA, TRADIZIONE, MODERNITÀ: UNA PROSPETTIVA TRANSCULTURALE

Abstract

How can, or rather, how should the relationship between ‘modernities and traditions’ be more properly conceived? In other words, which is the more promising theoretical approach that allows scholars to investigate this relationship and the ways in which it has taken form in different cultures? In this framework our main analytical aim consists in problematising the relationships between modernity and tradition as far as the secularization of the ‘Public Sphere’ on one hand, and its contemporary transformations on the other, are concerned. Following the analytical path traced by scholars who carry out a theoretical and historical review of cultural roots of the Public Sphere in the Euro-Mediterranean cultures, (starting from the Axial and passing through the Classical ages and the moment of consolidation of Catholic and Islamic religious traditions, then focusing on the philosophical constitution of the ‘liberal public sphere’ in the modern age), this paper tries to assess origins and transformations of the Public Sphere in the Euro-Mediterranean cultures.