The Intellectual Context of Solon’s Dike

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
John Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Abstract Principle ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Dispute Mediation

Solon is our only primary source for the intellectual context of archaic Athenian political thought. Dike is central to that context. The primary question of dike is the degree of abstraction it denotes. To Solon dike is neither an abstract principle with metaphysical proportions, nor merely the concrete procedures of dispute mediation. Solon understands Dike in a polis that is ordered by the thoughts and actions of particular human beings, not by divine dispensations. This re-alignment of political authority from vertical authoritarianism to horizontal citizen relationships is directly related to the views of nature found in the Milesian philosophers. Solon’s dike is immanent from the thoughts and actions of the citizens; it is not a divine power pushing down on the polis. Solon’s dike has three distinct functions. First, it is the inevitable result of unjust thoughts and actions; this is ‘natural dike’. Second, dike is a process of dispute mediation; this is ‘procedural dike’. Third, dike is a nascent ordering principle in the polis, found in one passage in Solon as distinct from the consequent retribution. Dike is an archaic concept standing for a comprehensive inevitability in the interactions of the citizens.

Epilogue and Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-272
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Church

This chapter draws together the themes of the book and looks forward to the later-seventeenth century. It argues that for much of the sixteenth century politics was subordinate to religion; temporal authorities needed the additional sanctions provided by religious belief if they were to exert any power over the consciences of individuals. The effect was to entangle temporal power in the deepening conflicts over religious truth, and thus to reveal the brittleness of any conception of political authority which relied on the support of the Church. At the same time, older traditions of political thought did not go away and often became stronger. The circulation of classical ideas, the discovery of new peoples, the growing interest in historical change and development all suggested alternative ways of legitimizing political power, often using natural law and avoiding any reliance on specifically Christian commitments. What happened in the early-seventeenth century, and most obviously in the writing of Hugo Grotius, was a move not only to ground political society in a particular conception of human nature (conceived of juridically, as a source of rights and obligations) but also to detach Christianity from that view of human nature. It was this understanding of human beings which enabled the development of a social contract tradition through the seventeenth century and beyond, and became an important source for modern liberalism. The questions it raised would help to shape the thought of the next century.

The Many-Colored Cloak

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Malik Mufti
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Ibn Rushd ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
The Many ◽  
Religion And Democracy

This articles argues (a) that democratic discourse has already become hegemonic among mainstream Islamist movements in Turkey and the Arab world; (b) that while this development originated in tactical calculations, it constitutes a consequential transformation in Islamist political thought; and (c) that this transformation, in turn, raises critical questions about the interaction of religion and democracy with which contemporary Islamists have not yet grappled adequately but which were anticipated by medieval philosophers such as al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. The argument is laid out through an analysis (based on textual sources and interviews) of key decisions on electoral participation made by Turkey’s AK Party and the Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Particular attention is focused on these movements’ gradual embrace of three key democratic principles: pluralism, the people as the source of political authority, and the legitimacy of such procedural mechanisms as multiple parties and regular elections.

‘The most beautiful of wars’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibylle Scheipers
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
Political Agent ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
The Individual

Clausewitz’s writings from the reform period combine themes that were central to his thought from his earliest texts and his correspondence, such as the value of the individual as the primary political agent. At the same time, they reflect a thorough engagement with the intellectual context of his time. In the Bekenntnisdenkschrift he presented a notion of war that emphasized its existential and emancipatory qualities. Clausewitz formulated his notion of war in its existential form against the backdrop of contemporary intellectual, political, and cultural discourses in Prussia and Germany more broadly. After the experience of the French Revolution’s descent into terror, the key question facing Clausewitz and his contemporaries was how to advance the liberation of the individual and society more broadly from traditional forms of political authority without risking a degeneration of all political institutions.

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.

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 COUNSELS OF PERFECTION AND REFORMATION POLITICAL THOUGHT

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-330
Author(s):  
SARAH MORTIMER
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Good Works ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
The Church

AbstractThe debate over counsels of perfection was a crucial aspect of the formation of political and ethical thought in the sixteenth century. It led both Protestants and Catholics to consider the status of law and to consider how far it obliged human beings, rather than simply permitting particular actions. From Luther onwards, Protestants came to see God's standards for human beings in absolute terms, rejecting any suggestion that there were good works which were merely counselled rather than commanded, and therefore not obligatory. This view of ethics underpinned the Protestant theological critique of Catholic doctrines of merit but it also shaped the distinctively Protestant account of natural law. It enabled Luther and his allies to defend magisterial control over the church, and it also formed a crucial element of Protestant resistance theory. By examining the Lutheran position on counsels, expressed in theological and political writings, and comparing it with contemporary Catholic accounts, this article offers a new perspective on Reformation theology and political thought.

scholarly journals Precarious housing in the Salvokop neighbourhood: A challenge to churches in the inner City of Tshwane

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ezekiel Ntakirutimana
Keyword(s):  
Inner City ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World Cafe ◽  
Daunting Challenge ◽  
Precarious Housing

This article describes the daunting challenge of precarious housing in Salvokop located in the southern part of inner City of Tshwane, Gauteng Province. Insecure tenure, unmaintained dwellings, overcrowding, mushrooming of backyard shacks and the rise of the informal settlement, all that led to deep levels of vulnerability and neighbourhood deterioration. Current conditions show that life in that neighbourhood is fraught as substandard housing degenerated into slum and squalor. This concern emerged among other salient pressing issues of poverty and vulnerability from the World Café and Focus Groups with the inner city churches including those from Salvokop. The article set out to describe precarious housing, unpleasant living conditions owing to the fact that human beings stay in unsuitable dwellings while the environment deteriorates. Taking into account their circumstances, the article’s aim was to recapture the extent to which the residents suffer as a result of living in dwellings unfit for human habitation, rethinking an alternative model to respond. A theological agenda for future ecclesiological engagement was discerned forthwith recommendations. The article makes a contribution towards the theology of the city in that it stimulates church practices and housing of poor people in Tshwane. It does so by engaging in a unique way grassroots knowledge from the different inner city congregations. This process used the platform of surveys, World Café style gatherings and Focus Groups. In conversation with the primary source, this article also contributed with original data generated with the Salvokop residents whose stories helped to expend on horizons of housing, which is acknowledged. All the inner city church contributors of the realisation of the study objectives are also recognised.

The Knack of Selling: scientific salesmanship, relational themes and military metaphors in early marketing thought

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-262
Author(s):  
Mark Tadajewski ◽  
D.G. Brian Jones
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Personal Selling ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
The One ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Early Training

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an historical analysis of an important early contribution to the history of marketing thought literature – the six-book series titled The Knack of Selling – which was published in 1913 and intended as an early training course for salesmanship. Design/methodology/approach This research utilized a close, systematic reading of The Knack of Selling series and places it in the professional and intellectual context of the early twentieth century. Books published about marketing are primary source materials for any study of the history of marketing thought. In this case, The Knack series constitutes significant primary source material for a study of early thinking about personal selling. Findings Echoing A.W. Shaw, Watson offers a more sophisticated interpretation of the “one best way” approach associated with Frederick Taylor. Watson’s advice did not entail the repetition of canned sales talks to each customer. His vision of practice was more complicated. Sales presentations were temporally and locationally relative. They were subject to ongoing evolution. As the marketplace changed, as customer needs and interests shifted, so did organizational and salesperson performances. To keep sales talks relevant to the consumer, personnel were encouraged to undertake rudimentary ethnographic research and interviews. Unusually, there is oscillation in the way power relations between marketer and customer were described. While relational themes are present, so are military metaphors. Originality/value This is the first systematic reading of The Knack of Selling that has been produced. It is an important contribution to the literature inasmuch as this book set is not in wide circulation. The material itself was significant as an input into scholarship subsequently hailed as seminal within sales management.

Liberalism and Locke's Philosophical Anthropology

2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-205
Author(s):  
Graedon Zorzi
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
Divine Law

AbstractPerhaps in part because of an issue related to chronology of publications, the connections between Locke's liberalism and philosophical anthropology are underappreciated. This essay addresses that issue and re-examines Locke's account of the person, treating it as an interpretive key to Locke's political thought. Locke'spersonis, contra the standard readings, a relational concept that refers to beings capable of law in terms of their accountability to law; descendants of Adam are equal as persons in that they hold identical rights (or prerogatives) and duties under the divine law. This philosophical anthropology leads to a principle—eschatological accountability delimits legitimate moral and political authority, so authority over a person is necessarily limited by that person's accountability to God—that helps to clarify certain misunderstandings of the status of moral authority within Lockean liberalism and to explain how Locke set the terms of subsequent debates about the limits of political authority.

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.

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