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Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Niklas Luhmann: Boundary Negotiations Between Religion and Science in the Abbasid Empire

In the context of my involvement with the CASHSS Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities’ research programme, I chose Ghazali’s autobiography, and in particular his “crisis of indecision,” as an example of a pre-modern negotiation of the boundaries of religion at the micro level. The research programme suggests employing the analytical concept of secularity to investigate both non-Western and pre-modern forms of secularity, in terms of conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations between religious and non-religious social spheres. In this essay, I would like to propose a method of pursuing these goals from my own theoretical perspective. More specifically, I will argue that in Ghazali’s reflections on spiritual religiosity, theology, philosophy and science, we can discern the individual engagement of a prominent Muslim thinker with emerging communicative realms. In the Modern Systems Theory of Niklas Luhmann, these realms are taken to represent functionally differentiated subsystems of modern society.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:86844
Date14 August 2023
CreatorsJung, Dietrich
ContributorsKolleg-Forschergruppe 'Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersion, doc-type:workingPaper, info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaper, doc-type:Text
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relationurn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-167259, qucosa:16725

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