This conference is dedicated to the study of the system of thinking of sociologist Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, especially focusing on his capacity to understand how plurality has been a major constitutive driving force at the basis of societies.

Programme

26 January

 Welcoming Address : 9:00 - 9:15

1st session: What is at stake with Multiple Modernities?

9:15 – 12:30

• Eliezer Ben Rafael (Tel AvivUniversity): Multiple Modernities and Beyond
• Alberto Martinelli (University of Milan): Varieties of Modernity: a Sympathetic Critique of Eisenstadt’sMultiple Modernities’ Approach
• Rajeev Barhgava (CSDS, Delhi): Multiple Modernities and Multiple Secularisms
• Gerhard Preyer (University Frankfurt amMain):  Globalization and the Third Research Program of Multiple Modernities

2nd session: Eisenstadt beyond Weber? Legacies and discontinuities

14:30-17:30

• Vittorio Cotesta (University of Rome 3), Axial Revolution: from Weber to Jaspers and Eisenstadt
• Hinnerk Bruhns (CRS, EHESS/CNRS), A la recherche de quellemodernité ? De S.N. Eisenstadtà Max Weber.
• Ilana F. Silber (Bar-Ilan University), S.N. Eisenstadt's Theory (ies) of Culture: A Case of Continuity and/or Change?
• Alain Rocher (EPHE), Le retour du pré-axial dans les traditions intellectuellesjaponaises

27 January

3rd session: Axial age, transcendence and civilizations

9:30-12:30

• Renee Koch Piettre (EPHE, Paris),Que faire de la synchronie entre la "naissance de la philosophie" en Grèce et l'apparition du monothéisme, du confucianismeou du bouddhisme?
• Victor Lidz (DrexelUniversityPhiladelphia), The Unity Among the “Multiple Modernities” of Contemporary Civilizations
• Peter Lintl (Institut of Erlangen-Nürnberg ), Eisenstadt’s Modernity and the Issue of Transcendence: A Problematization
• Mark Gould (HaverfordCollege), Natural Law, Human Fallibility and the Transcendence of God

4th session : Ancient and modern empires in Eisenstadt's thought

14:30-17:30

• Mohamed Cherkaoui (Paris Sorbonne/CNRS), Why empire failed in Morocco?
• Salih Dogan (CNRS), De l'empireà la révolutionkémaliste - surunecontroverseautour de la théorie de l'âge axial d'Eisenstadt
• Jean-Francois Laniel (Université du Québec à Montréal), S. N. Eisenstadt et la sociologie de la religion et du politique
• John Torpey (The City University of New York), The Three Axial Ages: Moral, Material, Mental

Scientific coordinators

• Vincenzo Cicchelli (Université Paris Descartes)
• Madalina Vartejanu-Joubert (INALCO)