This thesis aims at clarifying the very basic characteristics of Wu Ze Tian&rsquo / s reign and her utilization of religious and symbolic propaganda for legitimizing her authority. Wu Ze Tian is the only female emperor of China&rsquo / s long dynastic history who founded her own dynasty, Zhou dynasty after overthrowing the Tang dynasty in 690. The political ideal presented by Confucianism, which is the traditional state doctrine of the imperial China, refuses female participation to political arena and identifies the emperor as the Son of Heaven. In order to overcome the Confucian obstacle, Wu Ze Tian referred to the symbols and rituals of the antiquity, highly appraised by the Confucians, which enabled her participation to the political sphere. Moreover, for legitimizing herself as a female ruler, she utilized the Buddhist scholarship and concepts as tools of political propaganda. It was also a matter of fact that due to the northwestern nomadic influence on the society, female rulership was not conceived to be impossible in the Tang dynasty, as it was in the previous dynasties. Benefitting from this sociopolitical atmosphere, Wu Ze Tian occupied the throne first as the empress and later as the empress dowager for almost 35 years and at last ruled over the whole Chinese soil as the female emperor of the Zhou dynasty for 15 years. Wu Ze Tian proved herself as a capable ruler under whose dominion the whole country reached its broadest borders and the economy flourished considerably. Not only owing to the power of her political propaganda but also mostly because of her talent in rulership and her social and political reforms, Wu Ze Tian is one the most important Chinese rulers who left a remarkable influence on the governmental tradition of China.

Cette thèse examine, depuis une perspective durkheimienne, le conflit politique en Allemagne sur le multiculturalisme, l’immigration, et l’identité nationale. L’analyse se fait dans la période entre le début de la crise des réfugiés en 2015 et l’élection fédérale allemande de septembre 2017. J’identifie quatre idéaux moraux, soit des visions idéales de la communauté allemande qui motivent les acteurs politique : l’idéal des Autonomen qui rejettent tout forme de pouvoir et de domination, l’idéal du Verfassungspatriotismus (le patriotisme constitutionnel) de la SPD (et une partie de la CDU), l’idéal de la nation (ethno)culturelle de la plupart de l’AfD (et la CSU et la WerteUnion), et l’idéal de la nation biologique de l’extrême droite. Au cœur de chaque idéal est un objet sacré qui sert d’autorité morale qui légitimant des prescriptions morales et qui amène à une série de vérités morales et de jugements moraux, la totalité duquel Émile Durkheim identifie comme un fait moral. Pour les Autonomen et les adhérents du Verfassungspatriotismus, l’objet sacré est l’individu conçu à travers le concept de la dignité humaine. Pour les autres, l’objet sacré est la nation allemande, conçue en termes (ethno)culturels ou en termes biologiques. Cette thèse argumente que ces idéaux moraux sont intrinsèquement profanatoires, dans le sens que les prescriptions morales d’un objet sacré (la dignité humaine) violent directement l’objet sacré de l’autre (la nation), et vice-versa. Ces idéaux sont tous en concurrence pour le pouvoir et l’influence, avec comme but d’avoir accès au pouvoir étatique allemand. Le résultat est un conflit politique qui traduit essentiellement un conflit moral. Ces conflits ont lieu dans le domaine légal, au sein des partis politique, et à travers la violence politique. Ces conflits touchent un nombre de sujets clés comme la liberté d’expression, le multiculturalisme, et l’extrémisme politique. La présente thèse cherche à comprendre ces conflits à travers le prisme du concept durkheimien du fait moral, et développe une sociologie du conflit moral durkheimien. Cette thèse s’inspire également de la théorie de conflit de Randall Collins, qui s’inspire elle aussi de l’œuvre de Durkheim. / This dissertation examines, from a Durkheimian perspective, political conflict in Germany around the issues of multiculturalism, immigration, and national identity within the context of the Refugee Crisis beginning in 2015 and ending roughly with the German Federal Election in September 2017. It identifies four moral ideals, or ideal visions of the German community, that motivated political actors during this period: the Autonomen ideal that rejects all forms of power and domination; the ideal of Verfassungspatriotismus (Constitutional Patriotism) of the SPD (and parts of the CDU); the ideal of the cultural or ethnocultural nation of much of the AfD (and the CSU and WerteUnion); and the ideal of the biological nation on the far-right. At the heart of each moral ideal is a sacred object that serves as a moral authority that legitimates certain moral prescriptions, and leads to a set of moral truths and moral judgments, the totality of which Émile Durkheim identifies as a moral fact. For the Autonomen and adherents of Verfassungspatriotismus the sacred object is the individual understood through the concept of human dignity. For others the sacred object is the German nation, understood either in an (ethno)cultural sense or a biological sense. As the dissertation argues, these different moral ideals are inherently profanatory to each other, such that the moral prescriptions inspired by one sacred object (human dignity) directly violate the sacred object of the other (the nation), and vice-versa. These ideals all compete with each other for power and influence within the German political sphere as a means to gain access to (or to dismantle) state power. The result is political conflict that takes place essentially within a moral framework. These conflicts occur in the legal domain, in battles over party leadership and membership, and through political violence; they touch on a number of key issues such as free speech, multiculturalism, and political extremism. This dissertation seeks to understand these conflicts through the prism of Durkheim’s concept of the moral fact and to develop a Durkheimian sociology of moral conflict. In this analysis, the dissertation draws on Randall Collins’ conflict theory, which Durkheim’s work also largely inspires.