After Paris January 2015: Modernity, civil society and secularism - A comparative perspective

What is the real meaning of the January event in Paris? How does society respond to this type of disruption? What is its impact on political theory, on conceptions of "civil society" and "modernity"? Established explanations are questioned.
The goal is to open a collective construction of the meaning of the Paris event from a global and comparative perspective.

The seminar has two parts:
In the first part, Prof. Yamawaki will explain his present interpretation of his work. 
The second part will be an open debate on the concepts of civil society, secularization and modernization. The present world conjuncture is so complex that modern political theory and democratic institutions are overwhelmed. It requires a radical questioning of their presuppositions in order to reconstuct the theory, to reinvent a debate on political institutions and democracy.

Yamawaki Naoshi
Professor emeritus, Tokyo University
Department of advanced social and international studies
Dean, Life Network Science Faculty, Seisa University

Professor Yamawaki is an expert in political and social philosophy, very influential in Japan, China, Korean and Europe. He studies political economics and he has a doctorate frome the University of Munich. He taught political and social theory at Tokyo university and participated in various UNESCO projets. At the end of the 1990s, in response to Japan's long-term depression and to the globalization process, he participated in a major program to design a new conception of "civil society", "public sphere" and secularism articulating the local and global levels within a conception of "multiple modernities". The institutional conditions of the Fukushima catastrophe intensified interest for these issues. Since the Paris terrorist attacks, Prof. Yamawaki develops a further interest for secularism, for its meaning in different contexts.

Alain-Marc Rieu
Professor, Department of philosophy, University Jean Moulin
IETT, Trans-Science project

Alain-Marc Rieu studies from a comparative perspective the present mutation of the conception, organization and function of knowledge activities in advanced industrial societies. This includes political theory and conceptions of modernity. He is also exploring since March 2011 the construction of the philosophical and epistemological meaning of the Fukushima catastrophe.

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