An examination of two different ways to look at the relationship between modernity and Orthodox Christianity, Kristina will present alternative viewpoints on the long history of clash-of-civilizations types of interpretations that depict Orthodox Christianity as standing at the sidelines of, or in opposition to, the Western trajectory of modernization. She distinguishes between an interpretative framework of “multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt) and of “post-secularism” (Habermas). Whereas the former looks at Orthodox religion as potential source of a modern development in its own right, the second asks what place Orthodox religion occupies in a post-secular, deliberative, but still unitary conception of modernity.
Kristina Stoeckl is a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (2009-2011). She holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute Florence (2007) and MA degrees in International Relations and European Studies from the Central European University (2003) and in Comparative Literature and Russian Studies from the University of Innsbruck (2001). Her research interests are: political philosophy, especially questions of liberty and community, theories of modernity and of the relationship between religion and secular modernity, and Orthodox thought in the twentieth century. Her PhD thesis was published as “Community after Totalitarianism. The Russian Orthodox intellectual tradition and the philosophical discourse of political modernity” in 2008 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang).
Suggested reading: Kristina Stoeckl (2009) “Modern Trajectories in Eastern European Orthodoxy: Responses to the Post-totalitarian and Post-Cold War Constellation”. Domains and Divisions of European History, edited by Johann P. Arnason and Nathalie Doyle. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 40-57.
For more information or to receive the recommended reading, please contact rsp@ceu.hu.