Humanism Against Religion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kline
Keyword(s):  
Small Sample ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Western Humanism ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
Secular State

Focusing on the broad epistemological and political effects of humanism in the modern West beginning in the European humanist movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this chapter will trance the emergence of a rudimentary discourse of “humanism against religion” that is rooted in the historical emergence of the modern state as a deconstructive movement against the theo-political order of Medieval Christian Europe. The chapter argues that the emergence of both a human-centric discourse of knowledge and the modern “secular” state out of medieval Christian Europe provide the most significant cultural and political conditions for the rise of western humanism and its wide-ranging critical perspectives of religion. Following this account of the discourse of humanism in the west, the chapter surveys a small sample of modern perspectives and authors that have offered direct humanist critiques of religion toward the service of explicit humanist philosophies or worldviews.

scholarly journals Kongen hersker, men regerer ikke - Guvernementalitet, statificering og statspraksis hos Michel Foucault

2018 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Nicolai Von Eggers ◽  
Mathias Hein Jessen
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Way Of Thinking

Michel Foucault developed his now (in)famous neologism governmentality in the first of the two lectures he devoted to ’a history of governmentality, Security, Territory, Population (1977-78) and The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-79). Foucault developed this notion in order to do a historical investigation of ‘the state’ or ‘the political’ which did not assume the entity of the state but treated it as a way of governing, a way of thinking about governing. Recently, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has taken up Foucault’s notion of governmentality in his writing of a history of power in the West, most notably in The Kingdom and the Glory. It is with inspiration from Agamben’s recent use of Foucault that Foucault’s approach to writing the history of the state (as a history of governmental practices and the reflection hereof) is revisited. Foucault (and Agamben) thus offer another way of writing the history of the state and of the political, which focuses on different texts and on reading more familiar texts in a new light, thereby offering a new and notably different view on the emergence of the modern state and politics.

The State and Violence

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Orders

Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009) offers a theory of the evolution of the modern state and an even more ambitious framework “for interpreting recorded human history.” The book raises fundamental questions about the political structuring of violence, the functions of the rule of law, and the establishment and maintenance of political order. In doing so, it speaks to a range of political scientists from a variety of methodological and subfield perspectives. We have thus invited four prominent political science scholars of violence and politics to comment on the book: Jack Snyder, Caroline Hartzell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Larry Diamond.

The Age of Transformation in Ottoman Political Thought

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Banu Turnaoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Political Language ◽  
The West ◽  
First Time

This chapter examines how the reigns of Sultan Selim III and Mahmud II witnessed significant changes in Ottoman political thought and the idea of a modern state. Concepts like republic, liberty, independence, equality, and nation began to appear widely in political writings. This change in political language was affected largely through the efforts of French missionaries, promoting republican ideas in the Ottoman sphere to win the support of the Porte. For the first time in Ottoman political thought, a republic was discussed as a form of a government, but still not as an alternative to the Ottoman monarchy. An extensive reform process changed the traditional ideas of nizam (order) and adalet (justice), improved relations with the West, and generated a modern bureaucratic centralized state.

An Ordinary Soviet Death

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
The West ◽  
Rational Argument ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter describes the timing and motivations of the USSR's promotion of atheist doctrine. At the outset, it seems, the Soviets expected Orthodoxy to wither away, invalidated by rational argument and the regime's own record of socialist achievement. This did not happen, but Soviet officialdom did not take full cognizance of the fact until the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Cold War. Then it was that the Soviet Union's confrontation with the West came to be recast in religious terms as an epic battle between atheist communism on the one hand and on the other that self-styled standard-bearer of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the United States. So, here indeed, in Soviet atheism, is a secular church militant—doctrinally armed, fortified by the concentrated power of the modern state, and, as many believed, with the wind of history at its back. It speaks the language of liberation, but what it delivers is something much darker. The chapter then considers the place of ritual in the Soviet secularist project.

7. Hard questions and new conflicts

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-123
Author(s):  
Andrew Copson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
The West ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Political Religion ◽  
Practice Education ◽  
Secular State

Secularism has always been controversial. But today both the official secularism of constitutional republics and the secular ethic of liberal democracies are also being rocked by rapid social changes, resurgent religious identities and nationalisms, increasing migration, and many other factors. Secularism is an idea under siege by its opponents at the same time as conflicts within secularism pit its different aspects against each other in new tensions. ‘Hard questions and new conflicts’ considers secularism in practice, education as a feature of secularism, blasphemy and criticism of religions, religious expression in a secular state, religious diversity in the West, and resurgent political religion.

14. War and world politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarak Barkawi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines how war fits into the study of international relations and the ways it affects world politics. It begins with an analysis of the work of the leading philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, to highlight the essential nature of war, the main types of war, and the idea of strategy. It then considers some important developments in the history of warfare, both in the West and elsewhere, with particular emphasis on interrelationships between the modern state, armed force, and war in the West and in the global South. Two case studies are presented, one focusing on war and Eurocentrism during the Second World War, and the other on the impact of war on society by looking at France, Vietnam, and the United States. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether democracy creates peace among states.

2. States, Nations, and Empires

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global Order ◽  
European State

This chapter discusses what is often regarded as the central institution, not only of domestic or national political order but also of current international or global order—the state. Alongside the state, we must also consider the idea of the nation and the ideology of nationalism—perhaps the most powerful political ideology to emerge in the modern world. There is, however, another form of international political order that has actually been far more common throughout history, and that is empire. With the rise of modernity from around the beginning of the seventeenth century, we also encounter the rise of the modern state and state system in Europe along with ideas about sovereignty, citizenship, the nation-state, and democracy. The chapter then looks at the effective globalization of the European state system through modern imperialism and colonialism and the extent to which these have been productive of contemporary global order.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document