Plato's Politics

2008 ◽  
pp. 310-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bobonich
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Perfect State ◽  
Important Contributor ◽  
Ideal State ◽  
Rational Actions

The dialogues of Plato that are of the most obvious importance for his political philosophy include the Apology, the Crito, the Gorgias, the Laws, the Republic, and the Statesman. Further, there are many questions of political philosophy that Plato discusses in his dialogues. These topics include, among others: the ultimate ends of the city's laws and political institutions and who should rule, and the forms of constitution and their ranking. Plato draws upon Socrates' idea of Apology where the former stalwart compares himself to a gadfly, which is placed upon the great horse of Athens. What is especially worth noting here is that Socrates claims to benefit Athens by benefiting its citizens, and this benefit consists in getting them to examine themselves and their lives with regard to virtue. Since Plato, throughout his career, believed that virtue was by far the most important contributor to happiness, and that the ultimate end of all of a person's rational actions is that person's own greatest happiness, such encouragement to virtue seems a reasonable way to proceed for anyone seeking really to benefit his fellow citizens. The middle dialogues and the. late dialogues wind up Plato's idea of a perfect state. However, the major idea that Plato draws upon is citizen's happiness, which will result in an ideal state.

scholarly journals Metafísica y política en El nacimiento de la tragedia

1999 ◽  
pp. 35-49
Author(s):  
José Emilio Esteban Enguita
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Essential Question

This text aims at throwing light on the political thought which is implicit in The Birth of the Tragedy, and in the Posthumous Writings. Although politics appears not to be important in a work on aesthetics and metaphysics, the author shows that tragic experience is intimately related with the need for a tragic state. The ecstasies of the Dionysian experience form the ethos of the citizen, and nourish the political institutions which, in their turn, allow the artistic liberation of Dionysian forces. Furthermore, the author shows that, to Nietzsche, Euripides represents not only the decadence of tragedy, but also the destruction of the Greek polis and the transformation of the citizen in a mediocre bourgeois. Politics is certainly not the base of existence, but is a mere normativity which changes with aesthetic conceptions. Nevertheless, in his view of politics, Nietzsche responds to the question concerning the value of politics and, accordingly, responds to the essential question of all political philosophy.

Greek and Roman Political Philosophy

Classics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed W. Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ancient Political Philosophy

In this bibliography “Greek and Roman political philosophy” is taken to mean philosophical reflection on politics in the Greco-Roman world from the 5th century bce to the 5th century ce. More particularly, ancient political philosophy involves reflection on the establishment of political institutions and laws; the nature of political rule; central social and political concepts such as liberty, justice, and equality; the rights and duties of citizenship and its relationship to a flourishing human life; civic education; and the different possible forms of constitutions or regimes. Scholars frequently distinguish political philosophy from political thought. Political thought encompasses any thinking about politics at all and may be expressed through a wide range of media and literary forms, from epistles to comedy to inscriptions. Political philosophy represents thinking about politics that is more specifically theoretical and systematic in nature. Thus, political philosophy may be seen as a subset of political thought. Because this bibliography is concerned with the narrower of the two categories, it focuses primarily on philosophers and theoretical discourse. This focus also informs the general organization of this entry, which adopts a chronological, author-by-author approach rather than the thematic approach sometimes utilized by historians of political thought. This bibliography covers Early Greek, Athenian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Christian political philosophy, extending from the Presocratics to St. Augustine.

Citizenship

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Involvement ◽  
Democratic Ideal

Within political philosophy, citizenship refers not only to a legal status, but also to a normative ideal – the governed should be full and equal participants in the political process. As such, it is a distinctively democratic ideal. People who are governed by monarchs or military dictators are subjects, not citizens. Most philosophers therefore view citizenship theory as an extension of democratic theory. Democratic theory focuses on political institutions and procedures; citizenship theory focuses on the attributes of individual participants. One important topic in citizenship theory concerns the need for citizens to actively participate in political life. In most countries participation in politics is not obligatory, and people are free to place private commitments ahead of political involvement. Yet if too many citizens are apathetic, democratic institutions will collapse. Another topic concerns the identity of citizens. Citizenship is intended to provide a common status and identity which helps integrate members of society. However, some theorists question whether common citizenship can accommodate the increasing social and cultural pluralism of modern societies.

Obligation, political

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. John Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Political Obligations ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Quality ◽  
The Subject

The problem of political obligation has been one of the central concerns of political philosophy throughout the history of the subject. Political obligations are the moral obligations of citizens to support and comply with the requirements of their political authorities; and the problem of political obligation is that of understanding why (or if) citizens in various kinds of states are bound by such obligations. Most theorists conservatively assume that typical citizens in reasonably just states are in fact bound by these obligations. They take the problem to be that of advancing an account of the ground(s) or justification(s) of political obligation that is consistent with affirming widespread obligations. Other theorists, however, anarchists prominent among them, do not accept the conservative assumption, leaving open the possibility that the best theory of political obligation may entail that few, if any, citizens in actual states have political obligations. Much of the modern debate about political obligation consists of attempts either to defend or to move beyond the alleged defects of voluntarist theories. Voluntarists maintain that only our own voluntary acts (such as freely consenting to the authority of our governments) can bind us to obedience. Because actual political societies appear not to be voluntary associations, however, voluntarism seems unable to satisfy conservative theoretical ambitions. Some individualists turn as a result to nonvoluntarist theories of political obligation, attempting to ground obligations in the receipt by citizens of the benefits governments supply or in the moral quality of their political institutions. Others reject individualism altogether, defending communitarian theories that base our political obligations in our social and political roles or identities. Individualist anarchists reject instead the conservative ambitions of such theories, embracing a voluntarism which entails that most citizens simply have no political obligations.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 459-476
Author(s):  
Tao Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political History ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Moral Transformation ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
Political Project ◽  
The Ideal

The Conclusion offers a reflection on the tragic fate of the Zhuangist idea of personal freedom in Chinese intellectual and political history. It scrutinizes the widely shared premise of self-cultivation, what the author calls the “regime of self-cultivation” in Chinese moral-political philosophy, among most classical thinkers including Zhuangzi, and explores its constraint on the development of personal freedom in the mainstream moral-political discourse as well as in the building of political institutions. In this respect, it was the fajia thinkers who built their theories on the givenness of ordinary human dispositions, instead of on the promissory note of moral transformation. The author reflects on a path that was not taken in Chinese history, i.e., the integration of the Zhuangist idea of personal freedom into the mainstream moral-political project in conceptualizing a polity that can accommodate the ideal of personal freedom institutionally.

Thomism, Personalism, and Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-173
Author(s):  
V. Bradley Lewis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Modern Politics

The Thomistic revival initiated by Leo XIII was late in having an effect on political philosophy. Many have charged Thomism with being inapt to contribute to political philosophy, either because it is at odds with modern political institutions and practices or because it is inflexibly moralistic. I address the former issue by way of an examination of Jacques Maritain’s Thomistic personalism, which provides distinctive and valuable resources for understanding modern politics. This requires examining the development of Maritain’s political thought in reaction to controversies over integralism in the 1920s and the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and ’40s. Throughout this period, Maritain was clear about the theological aspects of his personalism, and so I conclude by discussing contemporary pluralism as a challenge to Maritain’s project.

Yuan Dynasty

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Yuan Dynasty ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Yuan Dynasty

The Yuan dynasty sits awkwardly in Eurasian history. The dynastic name, Yuan, is Chinese, as is the practice of naming dynastic houses not by the leading family’s surname but by the place where the regime began or, as was the case with the Yuan, a term that carried auspicious meaning. In the case of East Asia, dynasty also calls to mind a package of political institutions and conventions (including a dominant role for the emperor; a highly articulated bureaucracy; written law codes regulating political, commercial, and family life; a court with extensive and minutely described rituals; a capital with a grand palace) and a well-developed political philosophy that explained the place of the Son of Heaven in the cosmos, and the interaction among the realms of man, nature, social life, and much more. Thus, one approach to the Yuan period has been to view it in the longer span of Chinese history. Yet, the rulers of the Yuan dynasty were Mongol conquerors whose family, the Chinggisids (descendants of Chinggis khan), subjugated much of Eurasia. Although Mongols had conquered much of northern China in the mid-13th century, the Yuan dynasty was not established until 1271. It is generally used to describe China under Mongol rule, but equating the Yuan dynasty with China is both factually inaccurate and highly misleading because Mongolian (or, more broadly, steppe) traditions of rulership and governance differed importantly from those of earlier and later Chinese dynasties. Much recent Japanese scholarship thus uses the term “Great Yuan ulus” (Mongolian for nation) rather than dynasty to highlight such differences.

Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘War Machine’ as a Critique of Hegel’s Political Philosophy

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-325
Author(s):  
Nathan Widder
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Rational Structure ◽  
War Machine ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Partisan Warfare

AbstractThis paper elaborates Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘war machine’ in relation to key theses in Hegel’s political philosophy, with the aim of showing how it illuminates the conditions under which politics and political institutions as Hegel understands them both emerge and are compromised. After first introducing the idea of the war machine and its appropriation by discussing it in relation to Carl Schmitt’s theory of partisan warfare, it examines both the war machine and Hegel’s theory of the State by way of a focus on Hegel’s discussions of drive (Trieb) and semblance (Schein). Regarding the first, the paper explores how both Hegel and Deleuze and Guattari conceive of social structure in terms of a structure of drives even while they differ in their understandings of the drives in relation to desire and subjectivity. Regarding the second, the paper explores how moments of semblance identified by Hegel as he develops his system of Right reveal points where the war machine can emerge from within State structures. The paper argues that the war machine concept challenges understandings of politics built on friend/enemy antagonisms and the use of external conflict to secure internal unity, the former being Schmitt’s explicit political project and the second being the place at which Hegel’s project ultimately finds itself when it fails to secure the rational structure of Ethical Life.

scholarly journals The epistemological crisis of Marxian economic theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Matias Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Marxian Economics

In Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre argues that neo-Aristotelians have much to learn from Marx’s economic theory, not only for understanding the nature of capitalism, but also for thinking about alternative social and political institutions. This article outlines the arguments given by MacIntyre for embracing Marxian economic theory and argues that if Marxian economics is a tradition of enquiry, in the MacIntyrean sense of the term, we should take seriously the debates within this tradition in order to conclude whether it has been able to withstand internal and external criticism. I argue that Marxian economic theory, as a tradition of enquiry, has been defeated by its opponents and that a synthesis between Aristotelian moral philosophy and Marxian economics is an obstacle to the development of MacIntyre’s political philosophy.

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