To choose one’s company: Arendt, Kant, and the Political Sixth Sense

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan P Schwartz

This essay explores the phenomenon of common sense through a contextual analysis of Hannah Arendt’s political application of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. I begin by tracing the development of Arendt’s thinking on judgment and common sense during the 1950s which led her to turn to the third Critique. I then consider the justification of her move by examining the philosophical context and political applications of the third Critique, arguing that within it Kant made an original and profound discovery: that the phenomenon of common sense contains a hidden faculty that may anchor moral and political judgments. I conclude by arguing that Arendt was on firmer ground than is often thought in adapting Kantian common sense to politics, a fact that may afford new possibilities for the practice of moral and political thought.

Humaniora ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 335
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Indrajaya

Article is an outcome from writer’s reflection from his reading on Homo Sacer, Sovereign Power and Bare Life, a book by Giorgio Agamben, an Italian 20th century philosopher. The reading concerns with the three chapters which are Homo Sacer, The Ambivalence of The Sacred, and The Sacred Life, and also the preface of chapters. Generally, this article proposes two main things. First, Agamben’s description on Western modern political practice, developed from the Greek until today. Second, writer’s reflection on educational system in Indonesia, especially the higher education level in nowadays, through Agamben’s perspective. Structurally, article is divided into three parts. First, the Preface, is a general view to Agamben’s political thought which will stand as a background to the second part from this article, Homo Sacer. On the third part, Education as Bare Life, is writer’s reflection on higher education system in Indonesia borrowing the political perspectives from Agamben.    


Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan

This chapter will explore the varieties of political thought informed by divine revelation as understood in the Christian tradition. It will do so with reference to the metaphysical assumptions of what happens when transcendence meets history, and accordingly divide the inquiry into three archetypes. The first are the monists, for whom transcendence collapses into the temporal. The second are the dialecticians, for whom the uncrossable distinction between heaven and earth results in a struggle between the two. The third are the participationists, for whom the transcendent and the historical can harmoniously cohere through a ‘mediating third’ plane. For each mode, a brief sketch will be given of the writings of exemplary thinkers, and of the promises and pitfalls. In highlighting this variety, the aim of charting this map is to nuance the discussion currently taking place concerning the motivations and modus operandi of religiously informed political actors.


Author(s):  
Krzystof Małysa

Messianism is generally a belief in Messiah, who will come and change the relations inthe world. Messianism has taken many different forms, depending on the political andenvironmental conditions. Polish researcher, Andrzej Walicki, claimes that literature onthe issue has a tendency to use this term in a broad sense, including a conviction about thespecific role of the nation. From this viewpoint, the idea of Poland as “bulwark of Christianity”and then the nineteenth century beliefs in the mission of our nation should be considered asa kind of Messianism. Yet Walicki is a follower of a narrow definition, but many researchers,such as Jacob Talmon, use the term as a general descriptive concept. The term of Messianismis a simplification which makes the extension of the research possible and it enables to finda general plane of understanding this term. Polish romantic Messianism wasn’t a school, but rather a spontaneous expression after the treaty of third partition and then the collapse ofthe November Uprising. A growing popularity of messianism marked of the 20th century.Messianism claimed that the Polish nation should initiate the new organising of internationalrelations, propagating moral values in politics. Polish messianism was composed ofcatholicism, specifically polish myths, exacerbated nationalism. Now, messianic ideologymerges description and prescription according to a common sense of entrenched myths andspecific social demands.Key words: History of political thought, messianism, utopia


Author(s):  
Banu Turnaoğlu

This chapter analyzes how the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had provided a different conception of what politics should mean and how it should operate in the Ottoman Empire, along with a new conception of state and society. Drawing on the political language of the French Third Republic, democracy and liberal republican ideas slowly transformed the terminology and categorization of central issues in Ottoman politics and laid the most salient intellectual and institutional foundations for the young Republic. The revolution opened the Second Constitutional period (1908–18). Its first phase revitalized the liberal constitutionalism of the Young Ottomans. Political thinking drew heavily upon Montesquieu's formula for the separation of powers in combination with the ideas of the Third Republic and Ottoman positivism.


Utilitas ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
D. D. Raphael

Professor Maurice Cranston, who died suddenly on 5 November 1993, was a man of many talents. Pre-eminent as a biographer of Locke and Rousseau, he was also distinguished for his own contribution to political philosophy and for his capacity to expound the political thought of others in clear, simple language. He did this with great success not only in the lecture room but also in numerous broadcast talks and discussions, notably on the Third Programme (later called Radio 3) of the BBC. In his academic work he was particularly well informed on French political thought, contemporary as much as classical, and he wrote extensively on Sartre and more briefly on Camus and Foucault. He was himself fluent in the French language (though he spoke it with a pronounced English accent) and he translated Rousseau's Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality for the Penguin Classics series. He was proficient in German and Italian too, and he knew enough Danish to translate a book on Wittgenstein written in that language. His love of literature often led him to illustrate philosophical points with apt examples from classical novels. He even wrote a couple of novels (of detection) himself in his youth. It will be plain from this brief catalogue that he was an eminently civilized person. He was, in addition, an exceptionally friendly man and engagingly modest about his own abilities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 349
Author(s):  
Maciej Marszał

Zygmunt Wojciechowski’s Assessment of the History-Based Policy in the Interwar PeriodSummary This paper will provide an analysis of the History-Based Politics in thoughts of Zygmunt Wojciechowski (1900–1955) – history profesor at the University of Poznań, co-founder of the Baltic Institute (Instytut Bałtycki) in Toruń, publicist of the “Avant-garde” and expert on PolishGerman relations. Wojciechowski in Polish political thought was a representative of the Integral Polish nationalism (polski nacjonalizm integralny), which meant synthesis of national and state’s demands. He opted for the ideological formula in order to reach an agreement between the political heritage of Roman Dmowski and the Józef Piłsudski’s political reforms. For Wojciechowski, a professor of history, an important element of national consciousness was the historical awareness that the Polish state must continuously maintain through History-Based Policy. According to him, this policy should focus on three main issues: First, the expansion on the tradition referring to the beginning of Polish statehood. Second issue would be to make Poles aware of their international situation, especially in the context of their struggle with the Germanic and Prussian element. And the third issue would be to revise and update the values of the Constitution of May 3. It should be noted that the views of Zygmunt Wojciechowski on History-Based Policy in the interwar period were a part of a political discourse. His bold and uncompromising thoughts of the Polish-German relations and the demand to return the “Lands of Piasts” (ziemie Piastów) constituted an important element of the Integral Polish nationalism. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that the desire to carry-on the political will of Jan Ludwik Popławski and bring the Poles back to their “ancestral lands” (ziemie macierzyste) was present in Polish historical consciousness of the interwar period.


2018 ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
David Lloyd

“The Aesthetic Regime of Representation” focuses on the work of German idealist aesthetic thought in the political context of the bourgeois revolutions of America and France. Analyzing Kant’s Critique of Judgment, it considers the “turn to the aesthetic” as a means of forestalling the immediacy of revolution and installing an implicitly pedagogical and developmental system of representation that defines the human and the political subject as universal and disinterested. That system relies on a notion of common sense that separates the civil subject from the Savage, who remains fixed at the threshold of humanity. The foundations of aesthetic philosophy are at the same time the foundations of a “regime of representation” that offers not a means to inclusion, but a mode of regulating access to recognition as a fully human and politically capable subject.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Habib Ashayeri ◽  
Mohammad Reza Mayeli

<p>The study of the component of the political legitimacy in particular from the perspective of Islamic-Iranian intellectual trends during the third to eight centuries A.H. shows the drawing of a pyramid-shape society either from the viewpoint of political philosophy or other trends. In this case, the views of Farabi, Avicenna, Khajeh Nasir and other thinkers can be referred to, such that it will be possible to establish a common attribute among the ideal king society, philosopher king and Imam or Sultan within the framework of Iranian – Islamic political thought.</p><p>Of course all thinkers consider some distinguishing features for the head and ruler based on their own thoughts and analyses. However, accepting the belief of “Imamate”, [The Shia Islamic Doctrine], the Shiites placed the concept of legitimacy within a specific framework based on the rule of grace and also Qur-anic exact text.</p>Imam is the legitimate ruler and he is the one who has been determined and appointed based on the exact text from the predecessor of Ali (a.s.), from the generation of Fatemeh (s) and from the branch of Hussein ibn Ali, so if it occurs, it is legitimate, i.e. it is based on religious laws.


2018 ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Bogdan Szlachta

The text presents remarks on four issues political scientists often take into consideration when reflecting on the borders of their research. The first issue concerns the call to scrutinize the course of legislative procedures, the second one – the need to recognize and note various traditions of political thought in the platforms of political parties and the statements uttered by politicians; the third – the fundamental question of whether political topics are grasped in the structure of sensual perceptions reflected in language; and, finally, the disputable postulate that the philosophy of politics, approached as an element of reflection on political science, clarifies exclusively the notions and concepts applied in the political sciences. These considerations pose problems rather than solve them, and they are completed by a warning that political science should not be developed towards common knowledge, and it should not become increasingly indeterminate and blurred.


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