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Pierre Manent is viewed as a French thinker that develops in modern times the liberal tradition of political thinking. One of the most important issues of Manent's thinking that was not enough underlined it is the relationship between religion an politics and how this evolved from the beginning of Christianity until the main consequences of modernity. Manent view on religion and politics is the core of this paper analysis. The main contributions of Manent, such as Naissances de la politique moderne. Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (1977), Histoire intellectuelle du lib.ralisme (1987) La cit. de l'homme (1994), Cours familier de philosophie politique (2001), La raison des nations. R.flections sur la d.mocratie en Europe (2006) are analyzed from this perspective. Our conclusion is that in the way Manent deals with the relationship between politics and religion there are some constants that may be found in all his work. These are: the relationship between the Church and the different forms of political organization in Europe (Civitas, Imperium, monarchy); the fact that Christianity is one of the few current relevant concepts for political, due to the failure of totalitarian ideologies; the idea that secularization in Europe is not irreversible; we live in "an age of separations", and Church-State is one of these separations; we witness the religion transformation process and the .tat la.que cannot survive to .tat-nation; the role of Islam in modern societies and his perpetual finding of a political form; the relationship between Judaism, state and nation; the issue of the Christian identity of Europe.

Any reflection on the relationship between religion and politics in the Catholic thought cannot do without reminding the Augustinian distinction between the civitas Dei and civitas terrena. The goal and foundation of any just political community should be the orientation to wards the common good. In the contemporary catholic thought, Johann Baptist Metz proposes a political theology revolving around the concepts of the value of the human person, the necessary refusal, on the part of the Church, of any mundane ideology and the necessary use of the socially critical potential of theological thought. Hans Küng criticizes any politicization of theology. He insists on the development of an internal pluralism within the Church and advocates a self-limitation of the magisterial intervention in the world in the name of a necessary "eschato logical reserve". Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict the XVIth , invested with the magisterial authority, relies heavily on official documents of the Catholic social doctrine. He emphasizes the necessity of founding the state on the central value of justice and its acting according to the principle of subsidiarity. In this context, the Christian faith and the Church in particular may have a pedagogical role, as it may guide reason to follow the right priorities. All three thinkers agree on the public significance of the Christian vision of society and on the fact that it may help society both by its critical and by its constructive dimension.

The Church-State relationships in EU Member States are in a process of a radical transformation. This is the result of a rapid political integration and also of the major transformations of the modernity. Religion is still part of the European public space even if, according to modernity premises, it should be only a private matter. According to Max Weber and other authors, secularization diminishes the role of the religion in society. However, these theories are being contested in recent years, due to the interpretation of statistical data and to the emergence of fundamentalist religious movements spreading around the world. Consequently, secularization is a tendency and not an "iron law". As regards the current role of the religion, Silvio Ferrari developed the theory according to which there is a common European model. This model does not exist yet, but certainly we live in an era defined by the continuous searching of such a model. There is no European identity without common values. Some of these values, like toleration, do have a profound religious foundation. European integration is based on the action of different actors, including interest groups located in Brussels. The Churches and the religious organizations are also part of this category of actors and they try to be part of a process by which a common space for consultation will emerge.

The article raises the question how the attitude towards religion is influenced by the changes of relation with the meaning of matters which are ascribed to religion. With reference to M. Heidegger the peculiarity of public opinion is being disclosed. The author states that secularization functions as a machinery which appropriates any meaning: the public opinion appropriates religion, reduces it to political, economical or criminal dimensions, to that of cultural heritage, so religion assumes its essence and reality in these dimensions. The author demonstrates that public interpretation functions as an unmasking machinery which strengthens that reduction and appropriation of meaning. The analysis of religion in the context of globalization shows that there is some tendency to localization of religious meaning: the religious communities tend to direct towards the radicalism and isolation.

The article raises the question how the attitude towards religion is influenced by the changes of relation with the meaning of matters which are ascribed to religion. With reference to M. Heidegger the peculiarity of public opinion is being disclosed. The author states that secularization functions as a machinery which appropriates any meaning: the public opinion appropriates religion, reduces it to political, economical or criminal dimensions, to that of cultural heritage, so religion assumes its essence and reality in these dimensions. The author demonstrates that public interpretation functions as an unmasking machinery which strengthens that reduction and appropriation of meaning. The analysis of religion in the context of globalization shows that there is some tendency to localization of religious meaning: the religious communities tend to direct towards the radicalism and isolation.

The article raises the question how the attitude towards religion is influenced by the changes of relation with the meaning of matters which are ascribed to religion. With reference to M. Heidegger the peculiarity of public opinion is being disclosed. The author states that secularization functions as a machinery which appropriates any meaning: the public opinion appropriates religion, reduces it to political, economical or criminal dimensions, to that of cultural heritage, so religion assumes its essence and reality in these dimensions. The author demonstrates that public interpretation functions as an unmasking machinery which strengthens that reduction and appropriation of meaning. The analysis of religion in the context of globalization shows that there is some tendency to localization of religious meaning: the religious communities tend to direct towards the radicalism and isolation.

The article raises the question how the attitude towards religion is influenced by the changes of relation with the meaning of matters which are ascribed to religion. With reference to M. Heidegger the peculiarity of public opinion is being disclosed. The author states that secularization functions as a machinery which appropriates any meaning: the public opinion appropriates religion, reduces it to political, economical or criminal dimensions, to that of cultural heritage, so religion assumes its essence and reality in these dimensions. The author demonstrates that public interpretation functions as an unmasking machinery which strengthens that reduction and appropriation of meaning. The analysis of religion in the context of globalization shows that there is some tendency to localization of religious meaning: the religious communities tend to direct towards the radicalism and isolation.

This article deals with the question of religion in contemporary secular world, to be precise – the main questions are: what mean political and ethical aspects of religion which are in the focus of contemporary secular world, and what is the social sense (meaning) of religion? The author tries to answer these questions and to find theoretical origins of such attitude toward religion by analyzing the interpretations of religion in Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas. Both philosophers envisage the sense of religion in its social purpose. Kantian project of moral religion and Habermas' endeavor to overcome social disintegration, reviving the dialog between reason and religion, have been interpreted not only as the process of reduction of religion into social plane and an act of appropriation of the religious. One can see that both thinkers encounter the social contingency as the phenomenon (or prophenomenon) which itself is not very clear but appears as grounding the social sense of religion. Therefore the author comes to conclusion that social sense of religion in the secular situation means not only appropriation of the religious (immanentization) but also reveals social relationship as that which calls for religious sense (transcendence in immanence).

This article deals with the question of religion in contemporary secular world, to be precise – the main questions are: what mean political and ethical aspects of religion which are in the focus of contemporary secular world, and what is the social sense (meaning) of religion? The author tries to answer these questions and to find theoretical origins of such attitude toward religion by analyzing the interpretations of religion in Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas. Both philosophers envisage the sense of religion in its social purpose. Kantian project of moral religion and Habermas' endeavor to overcome social disintegration, reviving the dialog between reason and religion, have been interpreted not only as the process of reduction of religion into social plane and an act of appropriation of the religious. One can see that both thinkers encounter the social contingency as the phenomenon (or prophenomenon) which itself is not very clear but appears as grounding the social sense of religion. Therefore the author comes to conclusion that social sense of religion in the secular situation means not only appropriation of the religious (immanentization) but also reveals social relationship as that which calls for religious sense (transcendence in immanence).

This article deals with the question of religion in contemporary secular world, to be precise – the main questions are: what mean political and ethical aspects of religion which are in the focus of contemporary secular world, and what is the social sense (meaning) of religion? The author tries to answer these questions and to find theoretical origins of such attitude toward religion by analyzing the interpretations of religion in Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas. Both philosophers envisage the sense of religion in its social purpose. Kantian project of moral religion and Habermas' endeavor to overcome social disintegration, reviving the dialog between reason and religion, have been interpreted not only as the process of reduction of religion into social plane and an act of appropriation of the religious. One can see that both thinkers encounter the social contingency as the phenomenon (or prophenomenon) which itself is not very clear but appears as grounding the social sense of religion. Therefore the author comes to conclusion that social sense of religion in the secular situation means not only appropriation of the religious (immanentization) but also reveals social relationship as that which calls for religious sense (transcendence in immanence).

This article deals with the question of religion in contemporary secular world, to be precise – the main questions are: what mean political and ethical aspects of religion which are in the focus of contemporary secular world, and what is the social sense (meaning) of religion? The author tries to answer these questions and to find theoretical origins of such attitude toward religion by analyzing the interpretations of religion in Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas. Both philosophers envisage the sense of religion in its social purpose. Kantian project of moral religion and Habermas' endeavor to overcome social disintegration, reviving the dialog between reason and religion, have been interpreted not only as the process of reduction of religion into social plane and an act of appropriation of the religious. One can see that both thinkers encounter the social contingency as the phenomenon (or prophenomenon) which itself is not very clear but appears as grounding the social sense of religion. Therefore the author comes to conclusion that social sense of religion in the secular situation means not only appropriation of the religious (immanentization) but also reveals social relationship as that which calls for religious sense (transcendence in immanence).

At the end of World War I, Germany was neither politically, nor culturally
"attendable", for most of the European countries. In this context, one of the main
cultural aims of the Weimar Republic will be the resumption of the cultural and
academic relations with other countries. The foreign students were invested with a
major role in this respect. The Weimar Republic has taken institutional and financial
steps in order to intensify the student migration and to repopulate its universities
with foreign students, measures that have paid off in the mid 20s. In 1925, the
percentage of foreign students in Germany reached again the pre-war level. The
groups of foreign students best represented in the German universities were the
Romanians, the Bulgarians and the Polish. The paper also takes a look at the
evolution of the foreign students in Germany during 1918-1933, focusing on their
country of origin, the preferred institutions of higher education and fields of study,
as well as on the presence of female students from foreign countries in Germany.