Solar Theology and Civil Religion in Plato’s Laws

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-392
Author(s):  
Jacob Abolafia
Keyword(s):  
Civil Religion ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Charge

How is a legislator to harness the positive cohesive power of religion without falling prey to a charge of hypocrisy? As with so many theoretical puzzles, it was Plato who first recognized this paradox of civil religion. Consequently, the multi-tiered religion he proposes in the Laws should be understood as western thought’s first attempt to solve this problem. At the centre of the Laws stands a single icon – the sun – that fits within both the Olympian schema of polis-religion and a naturalistic, rationalist account persuasive to the more philosophically minded. Using the language and imagery of solar worship, Plato designed a shared ‘civil religion’ (to use an anachronistic term), that can reasonably claim to link the social forms of political life to the higher truths of reason, even if not all the city’s citizens will mean the same thing when they speak of the god and his rites.

scholarly journals Gudernes rum og menneskenes univers. I de mayatalende lakandoneres verdenssyn

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Odile Marion
Keyword(s):  
Rain Forest ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cosmic Space ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
The One

In their mythology, the Lacandons - Indians living in the rain forest of Chiapas, Mexico - conceptualise a tripartite space of heaven, earth, and the underworld. The Lacandons perceive themselves as placed by the gods in the middle of a cosmic space that is created, delimitated and controlled by the two great celestial bodies: the couple of sun and moon. Through a detailed analysis of the symbolic representations of the sun and the gods of wind and rain, it is shown how all the most important features of the Lacandon universe is thought of as the outcome of complex interactions between solar and lunar principles. On the one hand, the workings of the sun (male) and the moon (female) create and recreate the essential qualities of the meteorological, climatic, and ecological spaces that constrain the forms of productive life. On the other hand, the Indians conceptualise the opposition, the alternation, and the complimentarity that characterise the relations between sun and moon as homological to the social forms of Lacandon reproduction. The ambivalent, complex, and multifacetted dialectics of lunar and solar principles reveal that cosmic equilibrium centres round the male-female bipolarity. It is argued that although the male qualities of the sun are considered higher and dominant, it is in faet the mythic image of the moon that metaphorises stability, completeness and totality.

Pluralism and Reasonable Disagreement

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Larmore
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Moral Consciousness ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Stability

Liberalism is a distinctively modern political conception. Only in modern times do we find, as the object of both systematic reflection and widespread allegiance and institutionalization, the idea that the principles of political association, being coercive, should be justifiable to all whom they are to bind. And so only here do we find the idea that these principles should rest, so far as possible, on a core, minimal morality which reasonable people can share, given their expectably divergent religious convictions and conceptions of the meaning of life. No longer does it seem evident—as it did, let us say, before the seventeenth century—that the aim of political association must be to bring man into harmony with God's purposes or to serve some comprehensive vision of the good life. The causes of this transformation are various, and not all of them lie at the level of moral principle. But a change in moral consciousness has certainly been one of the factors involved. As Hegel observed, modern culture is inherently a reflective one: notions of principle are essential to our self-understanding and thus to the stability of the social forms in which we participate. Modern culture has no room for a dichotomy between “in principle” and “in practice.” It is worth determining, then, what new moral conceptions have been responsible for the emergence of modern liberalism. Not only will we thereby better understand how we have become who we are, we will also have a surer grasp of the principles that sustain our political life.

Women in Power and Decision making Positions : Conditions and Restraints

1970 ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Azza Charara Baydoun
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Slow Progress

Women today are considered to be outside the political and administrative power structures and their participation in the decision-making process is non-existent. As far as their participation in the political life is concerned they are still on the margins. The existence of patriarchal society in Lebanon as well as the absence of governmental policies and procedures that aim at helping women and enhancing their political participation has made it very difficult for women to be accepted as leaders and to be granted votes in elections (UNIFEM, 2002).This above quote is taken from a report that was prepared to assess the progress made regarding the status of Lebanese women both on the social and governmental levels in light of the Beijing Platform for Action – the name given to the provisions of the Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The above quote describes the slow progress achieved by Lebanese women in view of the ambitious goal that requires that the proportion of women occupying administrative or political positions in Lebanon should reach 30 percent of thetotal by the year 2005!

The Ideology of Socialism and the Armenian Political Parties

wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Gegham HOVHANNISYAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Given

The article covers the manifestations and peculiarities of the ideology of socialism in the social-political life of Armenia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. General characteristics, aims and directions of activity of the political organizations functioning in the Armenian reality within the given time-period, whose program documents feature the ideology of socialism to one degree or another, are given (Hunchakian Party, Dashnaktsutyun, Armenian Social-democrats, Specifics, Socialists-revolutionaries). The specific peculiarities of the national-political life of Armenia in the given time-period and their impact on the ideology of political forces are introduced.

A successful person, society and civic activism

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 1800-1816
Author(s):  
G.B. Kozyreva ◽  
T.V. Morozova ◽  
R.V. Belaya
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civic Activism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human And Social Capital ◽  
Person Model ◽  
Social Disparity

Subject. The article provides considerations on the formation and development of a successful person model in the modern Russian society. Objectives. The study is an attempt to model a successful person in the Russian society, when the ideological subsystem of the institutional matrix is changing. Methods. The study relies upon the theory of institutional matrices by S. Kirdina, theories of human and social capital. We focus on the assumption viewing a person as a carrier of social capital, which conveys a success, socio-economic position, social status, civic activism, doing good to your family and the public, confidence in people and association with your region. The empirical framework comprises data of the sociological survey of the Russian population in 2018. The data were processed through the factor analysis. Results. We devised a model of a successful person in today's Russian society, which reveals that a success, first of all, depends on the economic wellbeing and has little relation to civic activism. The potential involvement (intention, possibility, preparedness) in the social and political life significantly dominates the real engagement of people. The success has a frail correlation with constituents of the social capital, such as confidence in people and doing good to the public. Conclusions and Relevance. Based on the socio-economic wellbeing, that is consumption, the existing model of a successful person proves to be ineffective. The sustainability of socio-economic wellbeing seriously contributes to the social disparity of opportunities, which drive a contemporary Russian to a success in life.

The critical theory of democracy in Western political thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Ruqaya Saeed Khalkhal
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Church ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Or Applications ◽  
The Ideal

The darkness that Europe lived in the shadow of the Church obscured the light that was radiating in other parts, and even put forward the idea of democracy by birth, especially that it emerged from the tent of Greek civilization did not mature in later centuries, especially after the clergy and ideological orientation for Protestants and Catholics at the crossroads Political life, but when the Renaissance emerged and the intellectual movement began to interact both at the level of science and politics, the Europeans in democracy found refuge to get rid of the tyranny of the church, and the fruits of the application of democracy began to appear on the surface of most Western societies, which were at the forefront to be doubtful forms of governece.        Democracy, both in theory and in practice, did not always reflect Western political realities, and even since the Greek proposition, it has not lived up to the idealism that was expected to ensure continuity. Even if there is a perception of the success of the democratic process in Western societies, but it was repulsed unable to apply in Islamic societies, because of the social contradiction added to the nature of the ruling regimes, and it is neither scientific nor realistic to convey perceptions or applications that do not conflict only with our civilized reality The political realization created by certain historical circumstances, and then disguises the different reality that produced them for the purpose of resonance in the ideal application.

Жизнь и идеи Конфуция в контексте этико политического учения

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-119
Author(s):  
А. Дононбаев ◽  
Лили Сюй
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Ancient China ◽  
Spiritual Leader ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Norms

Аннотация: Конфуцианство - это учение, возникшее в Древнем Китае, которое затронуло не только политику, но также и этические и политические нормы правления государством. Именно это учение оказало невероятное влияние на развитие не только политической жизни, но также и на общественный строй и духовную культуру Китая, на протяжении периода становления страны, как отдельного государства. Данная статья рассматривает не только личную жизнь Конфуция, но и период становления его, как духовного лидера, а также рассказывает о том, какие преграды ему пришлось преодолеть, для того, чтобы его работа и навыки, которые были предложены им, были воплощены в реальность. Ключевые слова: Конфуций, этико-политическое учение, философия, этика, политика, идеология, общество. Аннотация: Конфуций илими Байыркы Кытайда пайда болгон бир гана саясатты эмес ошондой эле мамлекеттик бийликтин этикалык жана саясий ченемдерине таасирин тийгизген окуу. Бул доктрина гана саясий эмес, иштеп чыгуу боюнча укмуштуудай таасирин тийгизген, ошондой эле өзүнчө мамлекет катары өлкөнүн калыптануу мезгилинде коомдук тартипти жана Кытай рухий маданиятына жатат. Бул макала Конфуцийдин жеке жашоосун гана эмес анын руханий лидер катары мөөнөтүн, ошондой эле бул иш үчүн, ал кандай тоскоолдуктарды жоюусу айтылат, ал сунушталган көндүмдөр, чындыгында жашоодо колдонулган. Түйүндүү сөздөр: Конфуций, этикалык жана саясий доктрина, философия, этика, саясат, идеология, коом. Abstract: Confucianism is a doctrine that emerged in ancient China, which affected not only politics, but also ethical and political norms of government. His doctrines had an incredible impact on the development of not only political life, but also the social structure and spiritual culture of China, during the period of the country's emergence as a separate state. This article considers not only the private life of Confucius, but also the period of its formation as a spiritual leader, and also tells about the obstacles that he had to overcome in order for his work and the skills that were offered to them to be realized. Keywords: Confucius, ethical and political doctrine, philosophy, ethics, politics, ideology, society.

Feminism, Pragmatism or Both? Czech Radical Nationalism and the Woman Question, 1898–1914

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-552
Author(s):  
T. Mills Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
National Society ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Social

During a debate on the franchise reform bill in the Austrian Reichsrat on 12 September 1906, the Czech National Socialist Party deputy Václav Choc demanded that suffrage be extended to women as well as men. Otherwise, Choc asserted, the women of Austria would be consigned to the same status as “criminals and children.” Choc was certainly not the only Austrian parliamentarian to voice his support for votes for women during the debates on franchise reform. However, his party, the most radical of all the Czech nationalist political factions, was unique in that it not only included women's suffrage in its official program, as the Social Democrats had done a decade earlier, but also worked hard to change the political status of women in the Monarchy while the Social Democrats generally paid only lip service to this goal. Moreover, Choc and his colleagues in the National Socialist Party helped change the terms of the debate about women's rights by explicitly linking the “woman question” to the “national question” in ways entirely different from the prevailing discourse of liberalism infin-de-siècleAustria. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, liberal reformers, whether German or Czech, tried to mold the participation of women in political life to fit the liberal view of a woman's “proper” role in society. By contrast, the radical nationalists who rose to prominence in Czech political culture only after 1900, attempted to recast the debate over women's rights as central to their two-pronged discourse of social and national emancipation, while at the same time pressing for the complete democratization of Czech political life at all levels, not merely in the imperial parliament. In so doing, and with the active but often necessarily covert collaboration of women associated with the party, these radical nationalists helped extend the parameters of the debate over the place Czech women had in the larger national society.

scholarly journals The transformative public of Jane Addams

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095858
Author(s):  
Leena Ripatti-Torniainen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Inquiry

This article provides an alternative contribution to journalism studies on a foundational concept by analysing texts of Jane Addams, a public intellectual contemporary with the seminal scholars Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. The author uses methods of intellectual history to construct the concept of the public from Addams’s books: Democracy and Social Ethics and The Newer Ideals of Peace, showing that all three authors, Lippmann, Dewey and Addams, discuss the same topic of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life. Addams departs from Lippmann and Dewey in setting out from the standpoints of exclusion and cosmopolitanism. Her argument regarding the public, as constructed by the author, consists of two premises. First, public engagement is a method of democratic inclusion as well as social and political inquiry for Addams. She sees the extension of relationality across social divisions as a necessary method to understand society and materialise democracy. Second, Addams emphasises cooperative and reflexive involvement especially in the characteristic developments of a time. She considers industrialisation and cosmopolitanism as characteristic developments of her own era. Addams suggests an in-principle cosmopolitan concept of the public that includes marginalised persons and groups. Compared to Lippmann’s and Dewey’s accounts of the public, Jane Addams’s argument is more radical and far more sensitive to the social inequality and plurality of a drastically morphing society.

Robert Livingston (1654-1728): Businessman of Colonial New York

1956 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Leder ◽  
Vincent P. Carosso
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Business Enterprise ◽  
Business Organization ◽  
Manufacturing Enterprises ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
The Social ◽  
Business Functions

Robert Livingston's career provides the first opportunity to consider in detail the emergence of an early New York businessman. Trained in business in Rotterdam, he brought to the New World the experience, knowledge, and techniques of one of the most advanced commercial centers of his day. On the Albany frontier he applied the Old World's business methods to advantage and gradually emerged as a dominant figure in colonial New York. His records and business correspondence leave no doubt that Livingston belonged to that class of businessmen often referred to as sedentary or resident merchants, though he did not employ as many agents and partners as his later, more mature counterparts. Neither did he engage in as many ventures or perform as many functions as the Browns, Hancocks, and other late eighteenth-century merchants, nor did he create an impressive business organization at home or abroad as was customary among certain European contemporaries. Still, as a wholesaler and retailer, importer and exporter, shipowner and land speculator, Livingston was an early New York practitioner of diversified business functions and investments. His extensive land dealings, no doubt motivated in part by the social prestige attached to real estate, were undertaken primarily as a source of credit and revenue. Livingston Manor was operated as a business enterprise: some of it was cultivated on Livingston's behalf, parts were leased to tenants who provided for the Lord of the Manor not only rents but a steady market for the goods he obtained in overseas trading ventures, and other sections were devoted to various manufacturing enterprises. Livingston's political life was an integral and necessary part of his business ventures, which reflected at all points the total instability of most colonial institutions. From the details of Livingstons many-sided commercial life emerges a rare picture of an embryonic business society in which the means were sorely taxed to achieve the ends conceived by ambitious men.

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