Abstract
When in 1962 Habermas formulated his theory of the public sphere as “a society engaged in critical debate” he sought to describe something he felt was unique to the modern liberal democratic Western world. Yet the creation of discursive spheres where people across lines of social difference debate questions of the common good, mutual interest, and forms of equality long predates the modern era and flourished well outside the “Western” world. This essay adapts Habermas’ influential concept to highlight the emergence of a nascent public sphere at the earliest layers of Marathi literary creation in 13th century India. At this inaugural stage of a regional language’s full shift to writing, we see traces of a debate in the language of everyday life that struggled over the ethics of social difference, a public deliberation that might presage key aspects of Indian modernity and democracy today.
Acknowledgements
This essay draws substantially from sections of my book, The Quotidian Revolution (2016). All copyright for duplicated material devolves to Columbia University Press. I thank Christoph Uehlinger, Robert Leach, and Angelika Malinar for involving me in the Adheesh Sathaye “Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe” project in Zurich some years ago, and Whitney Cox, Shobha Kale, Sunila S. Kale, and Sucheta Paranjape for help with ideas, translations, and editing along the way.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Auf der Suche nach Erkenntnis zwischen Asien und Europa: al-Ġazālī, Descartes und die moderne Forschungswissenschaft
- Unfertige Studien 3: Die Nihāyat al-marām des Ḍiyāʾaddīn ar-Rāzī
- Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »
- L’analyse sur la Négation Explétive en Chinois-Mandarin à Travers sa Comparaison avec le Français
- Sondersektion „Religionsbegriff“
- Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe – Some Retrospective Preliminaries
- Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India
- ‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen
- Übersetzungen – Translations – Traductions
- The Chronicle of Jōe – A Translation of the Second Part of the History of the Fujiwara House
- Bedeutungswandel der Zivilgesellschaft oder das Elend der Ideengeschichte: Eine kommentierte Übersetzung von Kiyoaki Hiratas Aufsatz zum Begriff shimin shakai bei Antonio Gramsci (Teil 2)
- The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan
- Über die Idee und das Wirkliche (Teil III)
- Forschungsnotiz – Note de recherche – Research Note
- Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“
- Rezension – Compte rendu – Review
- Milburn, Olivia: The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Auf der Suche nach Erkenntnis zwischen Asien und Europa: al-Ġazālī, Descartes und die moderne Forschungswissenschaft
- Unfertige Studien 3: Die Nihāyat al-marām des Ḍiyāʾaddīn ar-Rāzī
- Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »
- L’analyse sur la Négation Explétive en Chinois-Mandarin à Travers sa Comparaison avec le Français
- Sondersektion „Religionsbegriff“
- Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe – Some Retrospective Preliminaries
- Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India
- ‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen
- Übersetzungen – Translations – Traductions
- The Chronicle of Jōe – A Translation of the Second Part of the History of the Fujiwara House
- Bedeutungswandel der Zivilgesellschaft oder das Elend der Ideengeschichte: Eine kommentierte Übersetzung von Kiyoaki Hiratas Aufsatz zum Begriff shimin shakai bei Antonio Gramsci (Teil 2)
- The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan
- Über die Idee und das Wirkliche (Teil III)
- Forschungsnotiz – Note de recherche – Research Note
- Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“
- Rezension – Compte rendu – Review
- Milburn, Olivia: The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan