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The architectonic is key for situating Kant’s understanding of science in the coming century. For Kant the faculty of reason turns to ideas to form a complete system. The coherence of the system rests on these ideas. In contrast to technical unity which can be abstracted a posteriori, architectonic ideas are the source of a priori unity for the system of reason because they connect our reasonable pursuit to essential human ends. Given Kant’s focus on mathematics, in the architectonic and his critical philosophy more generally, we must have some sense of the architectonic idea of mathematics. In this paper, I argue for the key principles of the architectonic idea of mathematics: 1) because mathematics is grounded in a priori intuition, it is a peculiarly human activity; 2) the method of mathematics is one of a priori construction, a method only mathematics can employ and: 3) the objects of mathematics are extensive magnitudes. Given these principles, we can use the architectonic idea to have some clarity about how mathematics has dealt with historical development.

The experience of our conscience belongs in the same category as feeling, thinking and wanting. However, it has a special aspect, namely the presence of other human beings as absolute entities. The process of experience is concerned with the way to best promote your own interests, with how far you will go in actualising your essential characteristics as an absolute entity. The discussion of our urge for survival shows that we can go quite far in that respect, and that to actualise that urge, there are in fact no boundaries; everything is permitted. The same can be said about actualising our other essential characteristics, but the difference is that our need to do so is perhaps less cogently present; it is not our life, or at least not our continued material existence, that is at stake. Nonetheless, we can and may even choose to go to extremes in this respect and thus to give ourselves priority over others. Respect for the interests of others is based on self-respect, which may lead you to decide to subject your dealings with other people to a set of standards for yourself. Here we enter the area of morals and ethics, to which we can attach a complete moral philosophy and on the basis of a belief, a moral theology. At the end of this road is total love of yourself and others, because you have come to realise that it is the only way that can lead to the fourth essential characteristic of human beings as absolute entities, namely self-fulfilment. You will then have developed in a way that allows you to give yourself and others the scope we need as absolute entities (compassion, solidarity). Self-fulfilment is achieved through self-development, i.e. discovering and honing our gifts and talents and thus finding our own identity (development), a process by which the lives of human beings as absolute entities acquire purpose (the search for meaning). Self-fulfilment is self-actualisation, the state that results from the realisation of the essential characteristics of human beings as absolute entities, and it leads to satisfaction derived from ourselves or our activities, a sense of being satisfied with what we have accomplished.

What is the state of democracy today? In the Western world, people often take the meaning of this term for granted, but do they genuinely know what democracy is? In this sense, how can we define democracy in today’s digitalized world? What is the relationship between democracy and information? Furthermore, do we really live in a democratic world? In Infocracy: Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy—the 2022 translation of the original German book Infokratie. Digitalisierung und die Krise der Demokratie, published in 2021 by MSB Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH—Byung-Chul Han reflects on these and other related issues. Han’s analysis of the current political, social, and technological situation indicates that a profound democratic crisis is emerging. The loss of interest in truth, the end of grand narratives, the replacement of reason with data analysis (even in philosophy), the fragmentation of the population due to digitalization, and the predominant role of information in everyday life are all symptoms of a radical transformation underway in Western society, with severe consequences for democratic stability. In these terms, Han’s vision, at times excessively pessimistic, orients us on the crucial issues of our time.

The main aim of this article, which is to express the essence of duʼa, starts with a question: what is duʼa, and doesn't it constitute a gap in the system of causality and rational structure of the creation of the world? A definition of the essence of duʼa and its dynamics is given through the presentation of the essential basis of the creation of the world according to some Quranic verses, as well as Islamic speculative Gnosticism according to which the world is based on desire and demand (talab). On this basis, the ontological status of duʼa and the fact that it does not contradict God's wisdom is underlined. The second part of the study is based on an interpretation of a Quranic verse according to which the reality of duʼa is made possible only thanks to God and through His creation of an innate divine human nature, which naturally searches its God and addresses its demands to Him. From this point of view, the special status of man in respect to all the other creatures who, through his supplications, is responsible of defining his ontological status in this world and the hereafter, is also presented