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Die Praktische Theologie bildet die neuzeitlichen Konstitutionsbedingungen des Christentums in sich ab. Ihre Handlungsfelder werden zunehmend in einer kultur- und religionshermeneutischen Perspektive wahrgenommen. Die Reihe Praktische Theologie im Wissenschaftsdiskurs will einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Grundlagenforschung und zur kritischen Selbstreflexion des Faches leisten, indem sie zugleich das enzyklopädische Gespräch mit der Systematischen Theologie inklusive der theologischen Ethik und das interdisziplinäre Gespräch mit philosophischen und kulturtheoretischen Ansätzen verfolgt.

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Practical Theology reflects in its sub-disciplines the conditions of how Christianity constitutes itself in the modern age. It is increasingly perceived in a dual hermeneutic of culture and religion. The series Practical Theology in the Discourse of the Humanities aims to make a significant contribution to the fundamental research and critical reflexivity of the discipline by pursuing an encyclopaedic dialogue with systematic theology, including theological ethics, and at the same time engaging in interdisciplinary conversations with philosophical and theoretical cultural approaches.

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This book compares three approaches to public reason and to the public space accorded to religions: the liberal platform of an overlapping consensus proposed by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas´s discourse ethical reformulation of Kant´s universalism and its realization in the public sphere, and the co-founding role which Paul Ricoeur attributes to the particular traditions that have shaped their cultures and the convictions of citizens.The premises of their positions are analysed under four aspects: (1) the normative framework which determines the specific function of public reason; (2) their anthropologies and theories of action; (3) the dimensions of social life and its concretization in a democratic political framework; (4) the different views of religion that follow from these factors, including their understanding of the status of metaphysical and religious truth claims, and the role of religion as a practice and conviction in a pluralist society. Recent receptions and critiques in English and German are brought into conversation: philosophers and theologians discuss the scope of public reason, and the task of translation from faith traditions, as well as the role they might have in the diversity of world cultures for shaping a shared cosmopolitan horizon.

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Maureen Junker-Kenny, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

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