scholarly journals The Notion of δῆμος and its Role in Byzantium during the Last Centuries (13th-15th c.)

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Anastasia KONTOGIANNOPOULOU
Keyword(s):  
Urban Population ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Stratum ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Byzantine Period

The notion of “demos/demes” (people/circus factions) has been a favorite subject in the modern research and various opinions have been formulated with regard to their organisation and the role they played in the political developments. In the modern bibliography referred to the period under examination (13th-15th c.) the term “demos” denotes generally the lower strata of the urban population. However, through the systematic study of that period’s sources thinner nuances can be detected in the meaning of the term “demos”, which apart from the lower social stratum, it also seems to include members of the the middle social class and to denote a larger group that contains the two social categories mentioned above. This study intends to examine the concept of “demos” and similar expressions, the social composition of this body and its role in the political life of the era. The research is based primarily on narrative sources of the late byzantine period (13th-15th c.). The fragmentary material extracted from these sources is complemented by information come from the monastery archives, the lives of saints, the correspondence and other literary sources of the era.

scholarly journals ‘The Chapters on Physics’ by Gregory Palamas: Historical Context, the Motivation of the Author, Addressee

2021 ◽  
pp. 259-273
Author(s):  
Timur Schukin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Program Text ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Social Stratum ◽  
The Social ◽  
Entire Text

Introduction. In spite of the fact that major researchers of Gregory Palamas’ theology, Robert Sinkewicz and John Demetracopoulos, offered detailed explanations of when and for what ‘The chapters on physics’ of Gregory Palamas were written, it seems that this issue was not finally resolved. Methods. This article, therefore, has two goals. The first is to answer the question why in ‘The chapters on physics’ the polemic against Barlaam and Akindynos, although it occupies a large part of the treatise, is presented as a part of the broader theological and philosophical program of Palamas, and what role does the cosmological part (1–14 chapters) play in the structure of the treatise. In the author’s opinion, such a statement of the question will allow us to understand what Gregory Palamas was guided by when writing the text. The second objective is to offer a social portrait of the addressee of this treatise, delivering some of representatives of the stratum on which the Palamas was oriented. Analysis. In answering the first question, special attention is paid to chapter 81 of the treatise, which, in the author’s opinion, reflects the intent of the entire text, namely, to demonstrate that the logic according to which something indivisible can be thought of as divisible without ceasing to be indivisible, works not only in the case of essence and energy, that is, in theology, but also in cosmology and anthropology. In answering the second question, the focus is on the figure of Matthew Kantakouzenos, who was at the time of writing the treatise in conflict with his father, emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, thereby causing discord in the political party, which at that time was a defender of the ideas of Hesychasm. It was Matthew Kantakouzenos, in the author’s opinion, or the social stratum behind him, who could be the recipients of the treatise. Results. The analysis of the treatise and its historical context shows that it was written largely for political reasons as a program text of Hesychasm, equipped with natural science and philosophical tools, since its recipients were both the broad educated strata of Byzantine society and direct participants in political life in the middle of the 14th century.

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.

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.

Partito, rivoluzione e guerra. Il linguaggio politico di un transfuga: Nicola Bombacci (1879-1945)

2009 ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
Steven Forti
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Language ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

- Nicola Bombacci was an important PSI's leader during the First World War and the biennio rosso (1919-1920). After his expulsion from the PCd'I, of which was one of the founders, he approached fascism and became one of the last supporters of it since he had been shooted by partisans and died in Como Lake, and had been exposed in Loreto Square beside to Mussolini. After a short historical mention of the Bombacci's political life, these pages will analyse deeper the question of the passage from the left to fascism in interwar Italy, through the analyse of his political language. The method executed in order to analyse the question foresees the use of a biography by dates and the identification of the political interpretation's categories, which permit to carry out a comparison between the social-communist and fascist period. In conclusions, the article proposes a thesis of interpretation: the political passion.Parole chiave: Fascismo, Nazione, Rivoluzione, Classe, Guerra, Passione politica Fascism, Nation, Revolution, Class, War, Political passion

Thumos in Aristotle’s Politics VII.7

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Marguerite Deslauriers
Keyword(s):  
Physical Phenomenon ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Political Value ◽  
Political Realm

Abstract Aristotle claims that the citizens of the best city should be both intelligent and spirited at Politics VII.7 1327b19-38. While he treats intelligence as an unqualified good, thumos (‘spirit’) is valuable but problematic. This paper has two aims: (i) to consider the political value of spirit in Aristotle’s Politics and in particular to identify the ways in which it is both essential to political excellence and yet insufficient for securing it, and (ii) to use this analysis of the role of spirit in the political realm to explain Aristotle’s exclusion of women from political authority, even in the context of the household. I analyze spirit as a physical phenomenon and as a type of desire, before considering its moral and affective aspects. I then return to the role of spirit in political life and examine its importance for the activity of ruling. In the last section I consider the implications of this analysis of spirit for the social and political roles Aristotle assigns to men and women.

The King's Affinity in the Polity of Yorkist England

1973 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. L. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Formal Group ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Scene

The rise and fall of the house of York is a story which sits uneasily towards both revolutionary and evolutionary interpretations of fifteenth-century England. Indeed, in general, attempts to tidy away the political process of Lancastrian and Yorkist times into the displacement of one type of régime by another always fail to convince. They do so because as a régime neither Lancaster nor York kept still long enough to be impaled on a categorical definition. The political life and death of both dynasties composes the pattern, changing yet constant, of a set of variations on the theme of an aristocratic society pre-dominantly kingship-focused and centripetal rather than locality-focused and centrifugal. In so far as the political process conformed to the social order, the households of the great were the nodal connections in which relationships of mutual dependence cohered. Those retinues, fellowships, affinities (for the vocabulary of the time was rich in terms overlapping but with nuances of descriptive emphasis) have now been studied both in their general conformation and in several particular instances; I have here attempted for the central affinity of the king over one generation not a formal group portrait but a sketch focused on the middle distance of figures in a landscape. The meagreness of household records in the strict sense is a problem we must learn to live with. But it would seem sensible to make a virtue of necessity and follow the life-line of what evidence there is to the conclusion that if an understanding of the household is only possible by attending to its wider context, so an understanding of that wider political scene requires some attention to the household.

The cult of Awo: the political life of a dead leader

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wale Adebanwi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
African Society ◽  
Elite Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the ‘posthumous career’ of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late leader of the Yoruba of Nigeria. It focuses on why he has been unusually effective as a symbol in the politics of Yorubaland and Nigeria. Regarding Awolowo as a recent ancestor, the essay elaborates why death, burial and statue are useful in the analysis of the social history of, and elite politics in, Africa. The Awolowo case is used to contest secularist and modernist assumptions about ‘modernity’ and ‘rationality’ in a contemporary African society.

Time, Death, and the Next Generation: The Early Elizabethan Recusancy Policy, 1558–1574

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-117
Author(s):  
John J. LaRocca
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Character ◽  
The Church

In a recent article, Caroline M. Hibbard noted that recent work on Tudor-Stuart recusancy has focused on the enforcement of royal and statutory policy on the local level and has examined the social composition of the recusant community. These studies have revealed that the recusant community was not dominated by priests, not subject to the political directives of the papacy, and not plotting rebellion. The problem inherent in these local studies, as Professor Hibbard points out, is that they do not explain why the English were anti-Catholic and they do not examine the international character of the English Catholic Community. This article is an attempt to view the recusant problem from the perspective of the monarch and the privy council, because both monarch and privy council were aware of the international character of Catholicism and both stated clearly in their policies toward recusants the grounds of their objection to the Catholic community. An analysis of the recusancy policy established by Elizabeth between 1559 and 1574 reveals that her primary objection to the recusants was not religious but political. The recusants denied a fundamental claim of the monarch: the headship of the church and, therefore, the claim that the monarch was the source of all power within the realm. This article, then, will examine the ways in which she wished to contain a minority who denied her supreme power in the realm and the circumstances which caused the queen and the council to change that policy.

The Poles as an Integrating and Disintegrating Factor

1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henryk Wereszycki
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The question of whether the Poles were an integrating or a disintegrating factor within the Habsburg monarchy has yet to be fully studied by Polish historians. Up to now they have concerned themselves mainly with the part played by the Austrian empire in the history of the Polish nation after the eighteenth century partitions and have overlooked the role of the Poles in the Austrian empire. They have concentrated their attention on the fate of the territories of the historic Polish state which fell under Habsburg rule and have studied the social, cultural, and political transformations which affected Galicia during the century and a half of Austrian domination. Polish historians have even studied the contributions made by former Habsburg subjects to the reconstruction of the Polish state after the dissolution of the monarchy, but they have rarely discussed the part which the Poles took in the political life of the multinational empire.

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