EUROPEAN ORTHODOXY · Political Philosophy in Context: Democracy and Human Rights in Bulgarian, Serbian and Russia Orthodoxy

The project European Orthodoxy addresses the relationship between religion, democracy and human rights using Orthodox Christianity as a case study. It investigates how religious traditions reconcile their universal claims with democratic decision making and individual human rights in modern society both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective. From the theoretical angle, the project studies and makes a contribution to contextual approaches in normative political theory, investigating how democracy and human rights can be conceptualized without making recourse to universalist formulations and without submitting to arbitrary particularism. From the empirical angle, the project analyzes the standpoints of contemporary Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian Orthodoxy on democracy and human rights and compares them. The aim of the comparison is to draw together three studies of national Orthodox traditions into one picture and offer a transnational conceptual of approaches to democracy and human rights in European Orthodoxy. On the basis of the comparative case-study the researcher will reflect on the normative starting point of the research-project and elaborate on the potentials and theoretical and methodological challenges of contextualized political theory. The project proposed by the researcher (Austria) envisions a duration of 24 months, based at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.