Contemporary Transformations of the Relations between Politics, Culture and Religion in Western Europe. Some Notes on the Spanish Case

According to Tilly, two laws shaped the process of transformation undergone by Western European societies since the Peace of Westphalia until the end of the 20th century: their increasing inner homogenisation and their growing heterogeneity between them. Cultural inner homogenisation affected, fi rst, those ethnic groups living within the territories of the said states. The second phase of homogenisation impinged on those groups that immigrated after World War II. This process followed different models according to the country considered, but the 1973 oil crisis revealed their general lack of success. During the last quarter of the 20th century and onwards, these European societies have been altered by two progressive and contradictory global logics: a process of cultural homogenisation at the world level (rather than society level) and a process of cultural re-creation led by those groups with an immigrant background, who have reacted against their integration shortcomings by searching for new sources of social and personal esteem in their respective cultural and religious traditions. This paper seeks to clarify these processes from a social differentiation and political representation theory perspective. The latter becomes indispensable, as the said processes have happened in a context in which the structure of relations (i.e. communication) between civil society and the democratic political sphere have experienced a radical crisis. In this way, the complex relations that exist between civil society, culture, religion and politics in these Western European societies are depicted.

Humanism is a violence typical of the beasts. Philosozing with a Hammer, using Levinas and Derrida, the Measure of the Human and the Human as a measure

Levinas’s reflections arose as a critique of traditional philosophy which, since it was based on presence and identity, leads to the exclusion of the other. Instead of an onto-logical thought the Lithuanian proposes that the ipseity of the human being be constituted by alterity, and that it be so ethically, because the subject is sub-ject, that is, that which upholds, responsibility. In an attempt to take the obligatory attention to the otherness of the other even further, Derrida would develop a radical critique of the Levinasian posture. Deconstruction of every trace of ipseity and sovereignty in the relationship with the other, the reading that we have done of the work of Derrida opts for a no definable understanding of the human. That is why every de-limitation of an ethical field as a properly human implies a brutal violence that the levinasian humanism of the other tried to exceed.

El acercamiento de la monarquía castellana a la Orden de los Predicadores durante el reinado de Juan II de Castilla (1406-1454)

Desde la llegada al trono de la dinastía Trastámara los diferentes monarcas castellanos llevaron a cabo una serie de actuaciones respecto a las órdenes religiosas. Durante los primeros años, éstas estuvieron dirigidas, en su mayoría, a la orden franciscana, a lo que habría que sumar la introducción en Castilla de la orden de la Cartuja y las primeras fundaciones jerónimas. Sin embargo, las reinas Beatriz de Portugal y Catalina de Lancaster, junto al infante Fernando de Antequera, fueron los protagonistas del cambio devocional que se produjo en Castilla y que alcanzó su cénit al alcanzar la mayoría de edad Juan II. Desde finales del siglo XIV vieron la luz una serie de fundaciones dominicas y se reformaron algunos conventos por parte de estos personajes; de manera progresiva, comenzaron a confiar en los frailes de esta orden diferentes cometidos espirituales, sociales y políticos.