Tocqueville’s Religious Terror

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Jason Frank
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
Social Question ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Collective Actor

One of the central ironies of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought was that the democratic era that promised to bring conscious human agency to an equal mankind, freeing human beings from their bondage to tradition and their submission to the sacred, actually threatened them with unprecedented forms of domination. Tocqueville’s sense of “religious terror” is engendered from the spectacle of everyone being “driven willy-nilly along the same road” and having “joined the common cause, some despite themselves, others unwittingly, like blind instruments in the hands of God.” “Religious terror” is both a symptom and a diagnosis of his concern with the deflated status of individual agency in democratic contexts, and with the related eclipse of the political by the social question. This chapter explores this dimension of Tocqueville’s thought and its relation to his denial of such agency to any collective actor, to deny heroism, and its associated grandeur, to the popular will.

Current issues in aesthetics and beyond: Revisiting lookism

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Peter Takáč
Keyword(s):  
Plastic Surgery ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common View ◽  
Aesthetic Medicine ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Public Status ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

AbstractLookism is a term used to describe discrimination based on the physical appearance of a person. We suppose that the social impact of lookism is a philosophical issue, because, from this perspective, attractive people have an advantage over others. The first line of our argumentation involves the issue of lookism as a global ethical and aesthetical phenomenon. A person’s attractiveness has a significant impact on the social and public status of this individual. The common view in society is that it is good to be more attractive and healthier. This concept generates several ethical questions about human aesthetical identity, health, authenticity, and integrity in society. It seems that this unequal treatment causes discrimination, diminishes self-confidence, and lowers the chance of a job or social enforcement for many human beings. Currently, aesthetic improvements are being made through plastic surgery. There is no place on the human body that we cannot improve with plastic surgery or aesthetic medicine. We should not forget that it may result in the problem of elitism, in dividing people into primary and secondary categories. The second line of our argumentation involves a particular case of lookism: Melanie Gaydos. A woman that is considered to be a model with a unique look.

Heraclitus’ Political Thought

Apeiron ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Maximilian Robitzsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Political Realm

Abstract This paper deals with Heraclitus’ political thought. First, in discussing the conception of cosmic justice, it argues that it is a mistake to separate Heraclitus’ political thought from his cosmological thought. Second, the paper works out two basic principles of Heraclitean political thinking by offering a close analysis of fragment B 114 as well as related texts. According to Heraclitus, (1) there is a standard common and relevant to all human beings in the political realm, namely, the logos, and (2) ruling well is a matter of grasping the logos and using it as a guide in all things political. Finally, the paper tackles the notoriously difficult question of whether there are certain forms of political order towards which Heraclitean thought is more or less inclined. According to what may be called the traditional view, Heraclitus is seen as a supporter of an aristocratic political order, while according to what may be called the revisionist view, Heraclitus is classified as a supporter of a democratic political order. The paper concludes that while Heraclitean philosophy is compatible with a plethora of different forms of political order, including democratic ones, the two basic principles of Heraclitean politics that were distinguished above are more conducive to aristocratic forms of political order.

Constructing human agency

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Natural Agents ◽  
The World ◽  
Theological Differences

This chapter argues that human agency is free agency. It is freedom, or dominium over one's own actions, which makes a human being different from all other animals; and it is the foundation of the world of the moral, the juridical, and the political, which are all continuous with one another and from which animals—and a fortiori all other natural agents—are excluded. However, during the sixteenth century, the idea that human beings are essentially and ineradicably free to control their own actions came under severe pressure from new and irreconcilable theological differences over the freedom of the human will—differences that therefore implicitly pressured the primary threshold of political space.

Conclusion—Rousseau’s paradox

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter binds the book together, recapitulating its general argument, and offering pointers as to how the study relates to some contemporary questions of political theory. It suggests that a classification that distinguishes between Weber the ‘liberal’, Schmitt the ‘conservative’ and Neumann the ‘social democrat’, cannot provide an adequate understanding of this episode in the history of political thought. Nor indeed can it do so for other periods. In this book, one part of the development of their ideas has focused on the relationship between state and politics. By learning from their examples, people continue their own search for an acceptable balance between the freedom of the individual and the claims of the political community.

Humans, Jews, and the Other Others

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Dynamic Key

The “Introduction” formulates the question of the political, and in particular of the emergence and erasure of the political from the horizon of currently predominant political thought in political theology and political ontology. The “Introduction” further attunes the readers to the dynamic key of “effacement” as both emergence and erasure, thereby defining the main register in which the book is proceeding -- as distinct from the keys of chronological periodisation, linear history, paradigm shifts, or other stabilizing approaches. The “Introduction” further draws a distinction between politics and the political, and advances the question of the political in relation to the Talmud as both a text and a discipline of thinking able to shed a new, contrasting, light on the paradox driven modern political notions of a singularizing and even singling out notion of a “Jew,” and a universalizing notion of the “human being.” The “Introduction” concludes by gesturing towards a much closer connection between the question of the political in the Talmud, the notions of the Jews and of the human beings in modernity, and the question of earth and territory as a part of political equation these concepts spell out.

scholarly journals UMA HISTÓRIA DA IDÉIA DE UTOPIA: O REAL E O IMAGINÁRIO NO PENSAMENTO POLÍTICO DE THOMAS MORUS

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Antônio Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Intensive Agriculture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Social ◽  
Agrarian Communities ◽  
Article Analysis ◽  
History Of

Morus não é o criador do pensamento político utópico, mas é o teórico que fez circular o ideal utópico, em sua corrente mais influente. Foi ele quem criou a palavra Utopia. Morus foi o primeiro a criticar a ordem social orientada pela exploração do trabalho e pela força do dinheiro. Ele é crítico da agricultura intensiva que leva à desestruturação das comunidades agrárias. Como Maquiavel, ele transita pela esfera do poder, uma esfera de ligações perigosas. De um modo diferente, ele tentou também separar a ética da política. Este artigo analisa estes aspectos de seu pensamento político. A history of the idea of utopia: reality and imagination in the political thought of Thomas More Abstract Morus is not the creator of the utopian political thought, but it is the theoretical that makes to circulate the utopian ideal, in its more important version. It went him who created to word Utopia. Morus was the first to criticize the social order guided by the exploration of the work and for force of the money. He is critical of the intensive agriculture that upside down the agrarian communities. As Maquiavel, he walk for the sphere of the power, a sphere of dangerous connections. In a different way, he also tried to separate the ethical of the politics. This article analysis these aspects of its political thought.

The Political Science Discipline in Argentina: The Political Scientist's National Association's Role

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 616-618
Author(s):  
Diego Mazzoccone ◽  
Mariano Mosquera ◽  
Silvana Espejo ◽  
Mariana Fancio ◽  
Gabriela Gonzalez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Science Discipline ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

It is very difficult to date the birth of political science in Argentina. Unlike other discipline of the social sciences, in Argentina the first distinction can be made between political thought on the one hand, and political science in another. The debate over political thought—as the reflection of different political questions—emerged in our country in the nineteenth century, especially during the process of constructing the Argentine nation-state. Conversely, political science is defined in a general way as the application of the scientific method to the studies on the power of the state (Fernández 2001).

Towards a New International Technological Order

1979 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Galtung
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Alternative Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Linear Movement ◽  
To Come ◽  
Capital Intensive ◽  
Mode Of Production

The main thesis of the paper is that technology is not merely a mode of production and therefore neutral; it carries within it a code of structures - economic, social, cultural, and also cognitive. The economic code that inheres in Western Technology demands that industries be capital-intensive, research-intensive, organization-intensive and labour-extensive. On the social plane, the code creates a ‘centre’ and a ‘periphery’, thus perpetuating a structure of inequality. In the cultural arena, it sees the West as entrusted by destiny with the mission of casting the rest of the world in its own mould. In the cognitive field, it sees man as the master of nature, the vertical and individualistic relations between human beings as the normal and natural, and history as a linear movement of progress. The transfer of Western technology is thus a structural-cultural invasion, which is not clearly seen as such parly because it is not accompanied by the West's physical presence (as in the days of colonialism), and partly because the fragmentation inherent in Western technology fragments the perception of the total picture. For techniques that create different structures to come into their own, a very clear perception of the interlocking of technology and structures is needed. Also needed is the political will to use alternative technologies as an instrument to bring about a structural change.

Calhoun and Popular Rule: The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Discourse By H. Lee Cheek, Jr. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 202p. $29.95.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 609-609
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Popular Rule

C. S. Lewis claimed that he was a democrat because he believed in the fall of man. He went on to suggest that it was not that some men did not deserve to be slaves, but that none deserved to be masters. While not exactly the sort of uplifting proclamation that many partisans of democracy would hope to rally their followers around, it does provide those among us who are persuaded that human beings are limited in their capacities to reject vice and sin with an avenue and persuasive rationale to join their ranks. It is with this sort of view in mind that H. Lee Cheek, Jr.'s provocative and cogently argued book on the political thought of John C. Calhoun ought to be read.

Politics and Morality in the Thought of Karl Popper

1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Minogue
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I FIND KARL POPPER BOTH FASCINATING and irritating. His vigour and lucidity are irresistible, and no one could complain that he fails to engage with the big questions. The problems begin when we consider his political thought. Some think him one of the great liberal philosophers of the century. I on the other hand, while being fascinated by The Open Society and its Enemies, am repelled by the grossness of its caricaturing of most of the thinkers it touches. The Poverty of Historicism is a marvellous text in the philosophy of the social sciences, but the idea of historicism is a straw man. The paradox seems to be that while there is a lot that refers to the political questions of the day, there is virtually nothing which takes up issues of political philosophy directly. The result is that he seems to me always to be on the wrong foot, and my problem is to discover why.

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