The public sphere : liberal modernity, Catholicism, Islam / Armando Salvatore.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [267]-282) and index.

ntroduction. The genealogy of the public sphere -- Religion, civilization and the redefinition of tradition -- Bridging imagination, practice and discourse -- The public reason of the commoner -- The collective pursuit of public weal -- The implosion of traditions and the redefinition of common sense -- The modern public sphere : transforming practical reason into prudential communication -- Conclusion. After genealogy -- toward a pluralist theory of the public sphere.

This book is a theory-informed, comparative and historical exploration of the notion of the public sphere within Western and Islamic traditions. It situates the emergence of the modern public sphere in a wider historical and theoretical context than usually done in conventional analyses. The work traces cross-cutting genealogies spanning conventional borders between tradition and modernity, and in particular between the Western and the Islamic world. This approach unsettles received, evolutionary views of the public sphere as an exclusive legacy of Western political cultures. The public sphere is finally reconceived as a complex platform for the modern cultivation of culturally diverse, competing, yet intersecting discourses.