scholarly journals Justification of Russia: political views of Russian cosmists

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
D.V. Baranovsky
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Governance ◽  
Russian Idea

The article is devoted to the investigation of Russian cosmists’ political views. The political theory touched upon in the works of the cosmists is an essential feature of the entire trend. At the same time, a paradox in the political views of cosmists is observed. On the one hand, the project of cosmism is universal, worldwide. On the other hand, not a single cosmist ignored the question of Russia's place in the world, and this reflects the nature of Russian thought. We can see that the problem of political power in cosmism is both universal and national. Unfortunately, not enough attention has been paid to this problem, although Russian cosmism is recognized as the core of all Russian philosophy and as an important element of the Russian idea. The study of the political thought of Russian cosmism is an important step in understanding the political characteristics of Russian culture. For a complete review the cosmists’ philosophy of politic, we analyzed the works of Russian cosmists – N.F. Fedorov, V.S. Solovyov, K.E. Tsiolkovsky V.I. Vernadsky, S.G. Semenova and lesser known figures – N.A. Setnitsky, V.N. Muravyov, B.B. Vakhtin, I.M. Borzenko. Dialectical and hermeneutic methods were used to solve the research problems. As a result of the study, the key features of various political concepts of cosmists are identified, the palette of political views of cosmists is presented, including N.F. Fedorov’s autocracy, V.N. Muravyov’s republic, B.B. Vakhtin’s skepticism of the possibility of stable political governance. The philosophical and historical causes of changes in the political views of cosmists are proposed. The proposition that the political views of Russian cosmists synthetically combine the universal and the individual, thereby removing the contradiction between the global and the national, is substantiated. It is noted that various political concepts of Russian cosmists is reduced by a general intention towards a global and cosmic essence of the political structure. This intention is one of the main features of Russian cosmism.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

The Political Theory of the Disruption

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Church

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?

The Political Creed of Thomas Cromwell

1956 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 69-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Elton
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theoretical Issues

TWO views are current concerning the political views of Thomas Cromwell. One—the more common—holds that he believed in absolute monarchy and desired to establish it in England. The Abbé Constant, summarizing (as was his wont) other people's views in language free from other people's reservations, stated it most starkly: he thought that Cromwell aimed at making Henry ‘tout-puissant’ and that his ministry was the golden age of Tudor despotism. Quite recently, an ingenious theory, buttressed with a misunderstood document, based itself on this general conviction. This view has suffered curiously little from the growing realization that the Henrician Reformation rested on conscious co-operation with Parliament and that the propagandists of the time never produced a theory of absolute monarchy. Pollard, the defender of Henry VIII's constitutionalism, seems to have held that, though the king had no ambitions for a genuine despotism, Cromwell certainly harboured such ideas. The other view, recently given support by Dr. Parker, holds that Cromwell did not bother at all about theoretical issues, that his ‘resolutely Philistine type of mind’ despised political theory, and that he never thought beyond the establishment of a sovereign monarchy. Thus, too, Mr. Baumer thought that Cromwell saw in Parliament ‘only a means of executing the royal will’, but also that he ‘had no theoretical views whatever about the relation of the king to the law’—passages hard to reconcile but suggestive of Dr. Parker's views rather than M. Constant's.

The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois'sThe Souls of Black Folk

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
MELVIN L. ROGERS
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
The One

In recent decades, the concept of “the people” has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of “the people”—what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions—and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work,The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive–affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory,Soulsdraws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

Athenaion Politeia 34, 3, about Oligarchs, Democrats and Moderates in the Late Fifth Century Bc

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-327
Author(s):  
Laura Sancho Rocher
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Political Group ◽  
Political Program ◽  
Ancient Constitution ◽  
The One

The prevailing historiographic reconstruction of the political struggle in Athens during the last years of the fifth century originates from the discovery of the text of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia [Ath.]. According to this reconstruction, three political options and three political programmes were in effect. These were, on the one hand, traditional democracy and opposing oligarchy; on the other, a new third way, that of ‘the moderates’, who under the leading of Theramenes represents a solution to the stasis. The political program of themoderates is supposed to include the following fundamental items: a return to an ancient constitution (patrios politeia), the reduction of the number of citizens and their political rights, the sovereignty of law, and the recuperation of accord (homonoia) between citizens. This paper tries to highlight the weakness of this interpretation by analysing the difficulties in grasping from the sources this whole program and their adscription to a leader and to a distinctive political group. The misinterpretation was already implicit in the author of the Athenian Constitution, perhaps a disciple of Aristotle. He wrote influenced by the Aristotelian political theory and thereby he interpreted all that he had read about Theramenes, the Five Thousand and the patrios politeia as if the Aristotelian ideals of the mesotes (as a virtue) and of mese politeia (as the best possible constitution) were actually proposed and temporally achieved in Athens by the efforts of Theramenes and his supporters.

scholarly journals Geographical aspects of the changes of Hungary’s deconcentrated state administration system between 1990 and 2012

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 59-69
Author(s):  
Gábor Kozma ◽  
Attila Barta
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
County Level ◽  
Administration System ◽  
State Administration ◽  
Territorial Structure ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract One of the most important segments of the post-1990 transformation of territory-based administration in Hungary was the changing of the geographical structure of deconcentrated state administrative organisations. The study, on the one hand, provides a brief overview of the history of deconcentrated state administrative organisations in Hungary, and discusses the regional characteristics of the organisational transformations after the political changes, taking six moments in time (the middle of 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2012 respectively) as the basis. On the other hand, using the same six snapshots in time, it examines which settlements experienced favourable or unfavourable changes, and what factors influenced the selection of the seats for these institutions. The results of the survey indicated that the alignment of territorial structure of deconcentrated state administrative organizations to the planning-statistical, NUTS 2 regions has already begun at the end of the 1990s. The government formed in 2006 took significant steps in the area of aligning the spatial structure of the organizations with the planning-statistical regions; however, in the period after 2010 the significance of the county level increased again. In the period examined, no significant changes took place at the top and at the bottom of the list according to the number of seats: the largest settlements of the individual regions reinforced their leading positions.

scholarly journals Modern Confucian Objection against Communism in China

Asian Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Téa SERNELJ
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

The article investigates the political views of one of the most prominent representatives of the so-called second generation of Modern Confucianism, Xu Fuguan. It reveals his unique position within this intellectual movement. Even though all other adherents of Modern Confucianism were focused upon metaphysics and ontology rather than political theory, Xu believed that these lines of thought could not contribute enough to solving the various urgent social and political problems of modern China. In this regard, the present article focuses upon a critical analysis of Xu’s critique of the Chinese Communist Party. The author presents and evaluates his critique mainly with regard to his search for a resolution of the problematic and chaotic political and social situation of China during the first half of the 20th century. In conclusion, the author provides a critical evaluation of Xu’s social democratic thought and particularly of his attitude towards the Chinese Communist Party.

Freiheit von Religion?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Fioole
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
The Public ◽  
Institutional Ethics ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

How much freedom from religion can a secular individual claim in a liberal democracy? How much freedom from religion is justified when considering religious individuals' liberties? By means of new realistic methods (Geuss), this study of political theory tries to give practical answers to these questions. In this book, we find that previous solutions generated by the public justification paradigm (Rawls, Audi, Habermas, Gaus, Cooke et al.) systematically result in a democratic trilemma. Instead, the individual sphere is proposed. This interplay between freedom, autonomy and privacy has an obligation to liberal institutional ethics. On the one hand, the theory of the individual sphere allows an individual to act according to his or her religious or secular ideas of what is good; on the other hand, it identifies contexts in which majority rule is justified.

scholarly journals How social democrats may become reluctant radicals: Thomas Piketty's Capital and Wolfgang Streeck's Buying Time

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Ronzoni
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Review Article ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

The continuing ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 have forced social scientists to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism, democracy and inequality. In particular, Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying Time focus on, respectively, the economic and the political contradictions of capitalistic societies. Piketty argues that capitalism naturally tends towards the exacerbation of rent-based wealth inequality, whereas Streeck suggests that capitalism and democracy are ultimately incompatible. A striking feature of these two contributions is that their authors are social democrats, not Marxists or radical anti-capitalist thinkers. In this review article, I illustrate how the combination of social democratic convictions and the acknowledgment that capitalism cannot be tamed generates interesting tensions between the diagnosis offered by the two monographs and the solutions that are proposed. I end the piece by raising two remarks on the implications that this tension might have for normative political theory. On the one hand, it is time for theory to do more work on political action and agency. On the other, liberal egalitarian theorists might have to acknowledge that they are in the same predicament as Piketty and Streeck: social democracy is their ideal, yet it is perhaps unattainable. If this is the case, liberal egalitarians might be committed to adopt a more confrontational attitude towards capitalism: they might have to become reluctant radicals.

The politics of the individual: Luhmann reading Durkheim

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-381
Author(s):  
Éva Debray
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labour ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Critical Investigation

In his introduction to the first German translation of Durkheim’s Division of Labour in Society, Luhmann hails the work as a “classic” of sociology, stressing its continued relevance and the need to persist in thinking with Durkheim. The present study focuses on this interpretative gesture, that is, on how Luhmann read Durkheim and set out a research program for sociology by defining its field of investigation, paying particular attention to his discussion of Durkheim’s approach to modern individuality. According to this interpretation, the French sociologist worked out a “sociological” conceptualization of the individual. On the one hand, in Luhmann’s view, Durkheim’s theory sheds light on a decrease in social control. On the other hand, he stresses that this inquiry into individuality was closely connected with a critical investigation of another conception of the individual that seems to derive from it, namely, the idea of human beings as “self-constituting.” Nevertheless, a complete examination of Luhmann’s interpretative gesture must also consider what is overlooked, namely the political conception of the individual Durkheim aimed to develop. In an attempt to fill this gap, this article highlights the political effects that such an occultation may entail.

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