Politics, Epistemology and Method: Karl Popper's Conception of Human Nature

1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Rationalism ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Liberal Thought

Karl Popper's advocacy of freedom and toleration, his belief in the power of ideas, and the possibility of democratic social reform, place him in the more optimistic strand of liberal thought. Yet his awareness of the human needs for regularity and tradition bolster a largely conservative and pessimistic conception of human nature. Epistemologies have a central role in Popper's political programme and theory of history because they influence either the release or suppression of key human capacities. Elucidating Popper's conception of human nature shows the origins of Popper's understanding of dogmatism and violence and indicates the underlying rationale for critical rationalism. But it also explains why Popper prefers revolutions in thought among élites to those in politics among the masses. To the extent that Popper's conception of human nature is problematic, so the political theory and epistemology may also be misconceived.

Human Nature, Non-human Nature, and Needs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Biro
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Needs

This chapter assesses the relevance of Frankfurt School critical theory for contemporary environmental political theory. Early Frankfurt School thinkers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse developed a critique of instrumental rationality that provides a powerful framework for understanding the domination of nature in modernity, including an inability to articulate and defend human needs. Habermas subsequently attempts to mitigate this totalizing critique, countering instrumental rationality with a focus on communicative rationality. This Habermasian turn both provides new openings and forecloses certain possibilities for environmental political theory; deliberative democracy is emphasized, but with a renewed commitment to anthropocentrism. The chapter then explores whether Habermas’s communicative turn could be “greened,” either through an expansion of the subjects of communicative rationality, or by critically examining the extent to which human beings themselves can articulate their genuine needs.

The Puzzle of the Political Animal: Nature and Artifice in Aristotle's Political Theory

1994 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary J. Nederman
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Locomotion ◽  
Political Education ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Systematic Education

Several recent scholars have raised afresh the question of what Aristotle meant in Politics 1 by the statement that men are “by nature” political, that is, are political animals. This article addresses this quandary by reference to Aristotle's psychology and his notion of political education. It is argued that by concentrating on Aristotle's theory of human locomotion and its implications for moral choice, we may identify the relation he conceived between the polis and human nature. Specifically, the ability of humans to live according to their natures requires the systematic education afforded by the laws and institutions of the polis.

Taking People As They Are: Islam As a “Realistic Utopia” in the Political Theory of Sayyid Qutb

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW F. MARCH
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Sayyid Qutb ◽  
Political Origins

This article presents an interpretation of Sayyid Qutb's political theory based on a prominent feature of his thought: the claim that Islamic law and human nature (fitra) are in perfect harmony, and that the demands of Islamic law are easy and painless for ordinary human moral capacities. I argue that Qutb is not only defending Islamic law as true and obligatory, but also as a coherent “realistic utopia”—a normative theory that also contains a psychological account of that theory's feasibility. Qutb's well-known fascination with the earliest generation of Muslims (the salaf) is an integral part of this account that serves two functions: (1) as a model of the feasibility and realism of an ideal Islamic political order, and (2) as a genealogy of the political origins of moral vice in society. Qutb's project is thus an account of exactly why and how Islam requires politics, and how modern humans can be both free and governed.

Aristotle on the Foundations of the State

1988 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Everson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
In Virtue Of

Aristotle's Politics shows an apparent tension between a recognition of the desirability of individual liberty and his claim that ‘none of the citizens belongs to himself but all belong to the state’. We can start to resolve that tension by considering Aristotle's doctrine of man as a political animal. Artistotle offers a particular account of the nature of man according to which his specifically human capacities cannot be realized outside of the state. This is not an account adopted arbitrarily for Aristotle's political theory but follows directly from his analysis of substances in the Physics. On Aristotle's account of human nature, man is essentially rational and virtuous and the political theory allows the rational and virtuous man to be as free as possible without intefering with others. Some are less rational and are subject to authority in virtue of this. We can see that Aristotle's theory has advantages over rights-based theories since Aristotle has an account of what constitutes human flourishing, without which one cannot found rights claims.

scholarly journals Subramania Bharati and the Rhetoric of Enthusiasm

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-192
Author(s):  
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Keyword(s):  
Social Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Masses

Abstract This article identifies the rhetoric and sentiment of enthusiasm as a certain specifically Tamil historical-aesthetic-political conjuncture that operates in both an affective register and as a structure of publicity. The “people,” who emerge as a subject of politics within the crucible of the swadeshi movement, are both “the masses” (a populist political subject) as well as the anticipated citizens of a future sovereign democracy. To distinguish the Tamil conjuncture from the histories of European populism, Part I outlines the political implications of public enthusiasm in the European Enlightenment. Kant, in his articulation of enthusiasm as a form of reason, is the critical figure here. Whereas in English poetry enthusiasm was domesticated and contained, Bharati’s writings and their impact exemplify its very different trajectory in colonial India. In Part II, Bharati’s poetry is analyzed under three heads: the enthusiasm it manifests, its language and rhetoric, and its focus on nationalism and social reform. Part III describes the communicative technologies and the formation of Bharati’s public and then the colonial conjuncture in which his work encountered censorship and prohibition. The conclusion underlines the significance of Bharati’s writings and the relevance of the political enthusiasm they generated—and still do.

The Federalist and Human Nature

1959 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Substantial Contribution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Universal Applicability ◽  
Theory Of Human Nature

Students of American political theory find themselves in general agreement concerning the character and significance of their most celebrated document, The Federalist. Few deny that this series of essays in support of the Constitution by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay represents a substantial contribution to the literature of political theory. The nature of the contribution is also well established. The Federalist, it is agreed, is a skillful exposition of the principles of constitutional republicanism — an exposition not haphazard or fanciful, but controlled by constant reference to the capacities and limitations of the political animal. The latter point is often emphasized; Benjamin F. Wright states: “The aspect of The Federalist which is of universal applicability is … its recognition of the importance of human nature in politics, togetherwith its remarkably penetrating analysis of the motives and the behavior of men in a free society.” x Finally, there is agreement on the general outlines of this theory of human nature. The authors of The Federalist, it is said, were decidedly “realistic,” brooking no illusions of the inherent goodness or rationality of man, but holding firm to “a conception of human corruptibility.” 2 The adjective most often employed is “pessimistic.”

Kelsen’s Freudian Moment

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-93
Author(s):  
Robert Schuett
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conflicts Of Interests ◽  
The Core ◽  
Zoom In ◽  
The Impact

What makes Kelsen argue that we are no Kantian angels? Why is the Kelsenian state a centralised coercive order understood in terms of law as a system of norms? The chapter continues the exploration of Kelsen’s milieu and expands on it to examine how the impact of Freud’s psychology and philosophical anthropology on Kelsen’s thought relating to the dynamics of human nature, society, and the political as a problem of authority and obedience is shown to be real and profound. To zoom in on the core of Kelsen’s philosophy and political theory is to recapture a breathtakingly rich and realistic account of You and Me that makes clear, in the best of the Realist tradition, that where there is Us, the struggle for power and conflicts of interests are here to stay.

On a Certain Tension in Plato's Republic

Dialogue ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-508
Author(s):  
Avrum Stroll
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political

In this paper, I wish to explore a certain tension I find in Plato's Republic between two competing conceptions of human nature. One of these is set forth explicitly; the emphasis Plato gives it strongly indicates that he conceives of it as his “official” theory. The other is merely hinted at, or presupposed, by certain things he says about pre-social man. Since this is so, it may be more prudent for me to speak at this stage about two different accounts of human nature which occur in the Republic, leaving it open and thus as subject to proof whether the accounts do embody disparate conceptions. Accordingly, I will set myself two tasks here: first, to establish that Plato does espouse two such conceptions of human nature, and then to show how they differ from one another; and second, to explore some of the implications of this analysis for the political theory he constructs in the Republic. I will attempt to show in the light of these efforts that the plausibility of his political theory depends upon a subtle vacillation between these conceptions.

Human Nature and Political Theory: Can Biology Contribute to the Study of Politics?

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger D. Masters
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Understanding

As part of the continuing series of “Dialogues in Biology and Politics” panels sponsored by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences at its annual conventions, Professor Roger D. Masters was invited to review his own work over the past decade and a half in order to illustrate how that body of scholarship contributes to the political understanding of human nature.—The Editor“If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study of man.”—Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 1.645a

9. Marsiglio of Padua

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary J. Nederman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Vital Functions ◽  
Short Biography

This chapter examines Marsiglio of Padua's political theory, tracing it to his opposition to the pope's interference in secular political affairs, especially Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. Marsiglio formulates theoretical principles to explain the origins and nature of the political community that depend upon a strict distinction between the temporal and spiritual realms. For Marsiglio, government and law exist in order to support the civil peace. After providing a short biography of Marsiglio, the chapter analyses his views on peace, conciliarism, consent, and ecclesiology. It also considers Marsiglio's claim that all secular governments should oppose the ecclesiastical hierarchy, that political society arises from infirmities of human nature, and that citizenship derives from all vital functions in society.

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