“Strange Fire at the Altar of the Lord”: Francis Bacon on Human Nature

2003 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi D. Studer
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
The Political ◽  
Final Cause ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World

Francis Bacon's pronouncement that “Man is the Center of the World,” the final cause of all nature, seems to unleash us from all guidance and restraint, providing no grounds for judging any human action to be better or worse than any other. The political implications of such a position—combined with Bacon's efforts to advance technological power—are enormous. There would be little support for natural rights or any other kind of “right” except what is based on force. This famous promoter of scientific power, however, was neither oblivious to the danger, nor politically irresponsible, in his assessment of man's position in the cosmos, and his counsel seems closer to classical political philosophy than is normally acknowledged. This essay provides an examination of and detailed commentary on Bacon's argument, as presented in “Prometheus, or the State of Man.” It reveals that Bacon expects us to deal with the problem in terms of properly ranking humans themselves, discarding the notion that all humans are equal. In light of such a ranking we may come to recognize natural standards for evaluating humans and their actions.

Citizenship For Sale?

2017 ◽  
pp. 788-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayelet Shachar
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Net Worth ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

“There are some things that money can’t buy.” Is citizenship among them? This chapter explores this question by highlighting the core legal and ethical puzzles associated with the surge in cash-for-passport programs. The spread of these new programs is one of the most significant developments in citizenship practice in the past few decades. It tests our deepest intuitions about the meaning and attributes of the relationship between the individual and the political community to which she belongs. This chapter identifies the main strategies employed by a growing number of states putting their visas and passports “for sale,” selectively opening their otherwise bolted gates of admission to the high-net-worth individuals of the world. Moving from the positive to the normative, the discussion then elaborates the main arguments in favor of, as well as against, citizenship-for-sale. The discussion draws attention to the distributive and political implications of these developments, both locally and globally, and identifies the deeper forces at work that contribute to the perpetual testing, blurring, and erosion of the state-market boundary regulating access to membership.

Characterizing Legislative Websites

2012 ◽  
pp. 258-274
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan ◽  
J. Ramon Gil-Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
The State ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cellular Phones ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
New Instruments

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is increasing in legislative bodies around the world. The use of computers, cellular phones, and email by elected leaders has promoted the implementation of new ICTs to support various legislative tasks. Mexico is no exception to this trend, and there are some interesting initiatives at the federal and state levels. Based on the experience of the State of Mexico, this chapter has two main purposes. First, it suggests a methodology to assess a legislative web site and applies it to the case of the legislature of the State of Mexico. Second, it discusses the political implications of a website redesign project and explains why the redesign proposal never became a reality. The experience of assessing this type of website, building new instruments, and developing understanding about the phenomenon could be used as the basis for future research related to e-parliament, e-legislature, or e-democracy more broadly.

scholarly journals D.G. Monrads liberale manifest fra 1839

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (107) ◽  
pp. 95-115
Author(s):  
Bertel Nygaard
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
World Market ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
The People ◽  
The World

D. G. Monrad’s Political Manifesto from 1839:The first issue of Ditlev Gothard Monrad’s Flying Political Papers, published in Copenhagen in 1839, may be regarded as a manifesto of the early Danish liberal movement in its struggle to overcome the existing absolutist conglomerate state in favour of a constitutional national state, a result gradually achieved with the constitution of 1849 and the national centralization of the ensuing years. Influenced by Hegelian political philosophy, Monrad regarded his own times as marked by a great historical crisis and transition, evincing the political acknowledgment of the ‘people’ and its national unity as the outcome of a long-term dialectical development towards a synthesis of order and liberty, with existing absolutism representing a historically necessary, though now obsolete, stage. Further strengthening of the nation and the state now implied the political involvement of the ‘core of the people’, i.e. the educated middle class, whose culture allegedly rendered it capable of representing the interests of the people as a whole. Thus, Monrad’s liberalism was an ideological defence of the rule of a quite narrow social layer, a particular political reflection of an internationally conditioned transition to capitalist commodity production carried out in Denmark mainly via the state as an avenue between a dominantly agrarian production and the world market.

scholarly journals OLD SAGE FOR NEW AGE? THE REVIVAL OF RELIGIOUS CONFUCIANISM IN CHINA

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-299
Author(s):  
Chaohua Wang
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Individual Existence

In recent years, Confucianism has been once again identified as the essence of Chinese civilization and a religion that was central to the Chinese people throughout China’s long history. Scholars are appealing to the Communist Party to make Confucianism the State religion (guojiao). What are the political implications of the phenomena? Can these claims stand to intellectual scrutiny? Conducting a brief historical survey of religious Confucianism in Chinese politics, in addition to an analysis of shared principles essential to various Confucianist positions today, this paper argues that religious Confucianism presented by its contemporary promoters is a constructed myth originated mainly from the Qing times (1644- 1911). The supposed Confucian teaching does not carry religious meaningfulness associated to either individual existence or social life in contemporary China. It remains powerful primarily in connection to the State, or a collective nation (Zhonghua), vis-à-vis the world outside ethnic Han communities. Despite this - or precisely because of this - a revived religious Confucianism may have the greatest potential to become a political force in China in our globalizing age, more so than any other major world religions, even if others may have larger Chinese following than Confucianism.

The Indirectly Political Word of the Church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Word Type ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Type 3 ◽  
The Church

This chapter continues the examination of Bonhoeffer’s first phase of resistance through an exposition of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” turning now to the modes of resistance proper to the church’s preaching office. Because such resistance involves the church speaking against the state, it appears to stand in contradiction with Bonhoeffer’s suggestion earlier in the essay that the church should not speak out against the state. This is in fact not a contradiction but rather the coherent expression of the political vision as outlined in the first several chapters of this book, which requires that the church criticize the state under certain circumstances but not others. The specific form of word examined here is the indirectly political word (type 3 resistance) by which the church reminds the messianic state of its mandate to preserve the world with neither “too little” nor “too much” order.

scholarly journals Neoliberalism is not dead – On political implications of Covid-19

2020 ◽  
pp. 030981682098238
Author(s):  
Miloš Šumonja
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
The State ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Hand Grip ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

The news is old – neoliberalism is dead for good, but this time, even Financial Times knows it. Obituaries claim that it had died from the coronavirus, as the state, not the markets, have had to save both the people and the economy. The argument of the article is that these academic and media interpretations of ‘emergency Keynesianism’ misidentify neoliberalism with its anti-statist rhetoric. For neoliberalism is, and has always been, about ‘the free market and the strong state’. In fact, rather than waning in the face of the coronavirus crisis, neoliberal states around the world are using the ongoing ‘war against the virus’ to strengthen their right-hand grip on the conditions of the working classes.

On the Harm of Genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
The Human Condition

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

Montaigne in America: The Political Theory of Judith Shklar

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-199
Author(s):  
Mark Hulliung
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Judith Shklar

For three decades Judith Shklar (1928-1992) was one of the dominant figures in the world of political theory. Not many minds can feel their way into romanticism and then coolly turn round to examine legal philosophy, its very opposite, but she did so with exceptional success. After diagnosing the decline of political philosophy, she surprised many onlookers by making herself a major force behind its revitalization. Writing on Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hegel, she both offered striking historical interpretations of their meaning and demonstrated how their outlooks could be lifted from their original contexts and pressed into service by the living.

«Razao e Liberdade. A Filosofia Politica de James Madison» Arguicao e Resposta

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (37) ◽  
pp. 217-240
Author(s):  
Alessandra Silveira ◽  
José Gomes André ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
The Relationship

This paper includes the exam of a Ph.D thesis about James Madison’s political philosophy, as well as the answers presented by the candidate to several criticai observations. Various themes are considered, though always surrounding Madison’s work: the peculiar characteristics of his federalism, the relationship between the idea of human nature and the elaboration of political models, the political and constitutional controversies that Madison entangled with several figures from its time (namely Alexander Hamilton), the problem of “judicial review” and the place of “constitutionality control” taken from a reflexive and institutional point of view, and other similar themes.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Mike L. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Law System ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Will ◽  
Subjective Rights

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.

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