Pedagogy & Education

Communicating scientific and academic know-how is extremely relevant to our modern, knowledge-based society. Not only do individuals make decisions and act on the basis of scientific and academic knowledge, but so do political, economic and other types of institutions. As a field of practice, scientific and academic communication is omnipresent, regardless of whether it takes the form of scientific journalism or scientific PR. This series of publications provides a forum for current research into communicating scientific and academic knowledge and the public sphere, academia and other areas of society, such as politics or economics, and scientists and academics among each other.

As a result of globalisation in the 21st century, philosophy is experiencing almost revolutionary change in all its dimensions – from logic via theoretical and practical knowledge of the world to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of history. Philosophy no longer focuses only on Europe; it is also looking for parallels in the Arab world, the Far East and Africa. Even the diversity of its own culture is becoming apparent. In this respect, philosophy can only be a point of reference for related disciplines, such as theology, philology, political science, social sciences and law, if it acquaints itself with intercultural issues. This series of publications contains outstanding monographs, collections of conference papers and anthologies which are devoted to the study of intercultural philosophy, employ a variety of interdisciplinary and methodological approaches, and which focus particularly on the tense relationship between religion and reason. These works also offer new thoughts on ethical questions, such as the relationship between universality or the culture of values and norms and human dignity and human rights, and focus on the relationship between law and political thinking. This series should be regarded as an international, interdisciplinary forum extending beyond the context of school and the common confines of this subject area.

Towards the end of the twentieth century ethnic conflict became the predominant expression of violent conflict. Studies on the causes, genesis, course and regulation of conflict are a necessary prerequisite for determining possibilities of prevention. If ethnic groups are simultaneously religious groups, conflicts between them are particularly unforgiving and bitter. On the other hand, religiously motivated tolerance can also reduce the propensity for violence. For this reason, it appears appropriate to examine whether and how religious teachings shape religiosity and, hence, conflict behaviour. A precondition for a lasting regulation of ethnic conflict is the agreement of majorities of all the population groups affected – and hence, in the final analysis, democracy. The studies in this series analyse the conditionalities of ethnic and ethno-religious conflicts in different countries with the focus on empirical investigations of attitudes to ethnicity, religion and democracy that can serve as the basis of comparative research.