scholarly journals Philosopher in the Service of the Thermidorian Republic and Emperor: to the Political Biography of Maine de Biran

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
Artem A. Krotov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Political Biography ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Continuous Sequence

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the political philosophy of the ancestor of French spiritualism based on documents published at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. The specificity of his worldview in the early period of philosophical activity is considered, as well as the reasons that prompted him to turn to politics after the Thermidorian coup. Negative attitude towards the Jacobeans, regrets about the fall of the monarchy are very characteristic of his views during this period. He meets the Thermidorian republic and then the empire with hopes for close peace, social stability, based on strict observance of laws. At first, he praises Napoleon as a genius who “pacifies and comforts”. But then comes disappointment, a continuous sequence of wars leads him to condemn the Napoleonic policy as part of the “commission of five” of legislative corps in December 1813. The philosopher meets the restoration as an event consistent with the plans of Providence. Undoubtedly, the appeal to religious philosophy was largely motivated by Biran's political experience.

Philosophical Anarchism

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Edmundson ◽  
Bas van der Vossen
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Philosophical Anarchism

Philosophical anarchism is a branch of political philosophy that is highly skeptical and sometimes even eliminative of the state. At their most ambitious, anarchist theories endorse a comprehensive ideal of social and political (if there should be such a thing at all) life in which the state does not play an essential role. Less ambitious versions attempt primarily to deny the legitimacy of the state. The reasons animating anarchist theories are diverse. Some regard the state as essentially an unjustifiably coercive institution. Others regard the existence of the state incompatible with important values, such as community. Yet, others merely object to the pretensions of authority by existing states. Philosophical anarchism has provided both negative and positive theses. Among its negative theses are the claims that existing states are illegitimate, that the typical uses of coercion by existing states are morally unjustified, and that citizens do not have a moral duty to obey the law. Among its positive theses are the claims that social stability is possible without centralized powers of legislation and enforcement as well as the more fundamental claim that people would in principle be able to treat each other justly if no state existed. Philosophical anarchism, then, refers to a particular set of philosophical views about the nature of political society. It should be distinguished from the political movement of anarchism, which typically calls more directly for resistance, including violent resistance, to the state. In the first instance, philosophical anarchist theories are committed only to regarding all existing state institutions as unjust, and not yet to any practical responses to these.

Introduction: Contexts

Cicero ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Malcolm Schofield
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Biography

This chapter presents contexts of different kinds in which Cicero’s political philosophy may helpfully be set. It offers first some brief reminders of Cicero’s prominence in the rhetoric of the Western republican tradition, followed by a brief sketch of his political biography, including those periods of relative or almost total political inactivity in which he composed much of his philosophical oeuvre. A third section identifies three main reasons—respectively philosophical, literary, and historiographical—for his rehabilitation as a serious and seriously interesting philosophical thinker in the scholarship of recent decades. A further section considers Cicero’s ideas about what qualifies someone to write good political philosophy. Finally, some comments are made on the response that his own writings in that mode make to the political crisis of his times, together with a short sketch of key theoretical themes that are to be explored in the chapters that follow.

Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Static View ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn Apropos of Russia’s Future: Specific Outlook Features Depending on Different Historical Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 327-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova ◽  
Elena I. Khokhlova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pessimistic Attitude ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Images Of The Future ◽  
The Church

The article considers the dependence of the images of future on the socio-cultural context of their formation. Comparison of the images of the future found in A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s works of various years reveals his generally pessimistic attitude to the future in the situation of social stability and moderate optimism in times of society destabilization. At the same time, the author's images of the future both in the seventies and the nineties of the last century demonstrate the mismatch of social expectations and reality that was generally typical for the images of the future. According to the authors of the present article, Solzhenitsyn’s ideas that the revival of spirituality could serve as the basis for the development of economy, that the influence of the Church on the process of socio-economic development would grow, and that the political situation strongly depends on the personal qualities of the leader, are unjustified. Nevertheless, such ideas are still present in many images of the future of Russia, including contemporary ones.

Presentation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agenagn Kebede Dagnew
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Concept

AbstractThis paper focuses on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)’s political philosophy of state and individuals. In this paper , we will see the political concept of state and state’s relation with individuals.

ROUPAS COMO CORPOS: O AGENCIAMENTO POLÍTICO DO VESTUÁRIO POR CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI / Clothes as bodies: the political agency of clothing by Christian Boltanski

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Angélica Adverse
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Political Experience

O artigo aborda o agenciamento das roupas no trabalho do artista Christian Boltanski. Partindo da dimensão do poder dos corpos têxteis, analisaremos como as roupas investem-se das palavras emudecidas dos corpos ausentes, constituindo-se como alegoria do testemunho e do documento histórico. A ideia central é pensar como as roupas explicitam a aniquilação humana provocada pelos regimes políticos totalitários. Analisaremos como as instalações Prendre la Parole (2005) e Personnes(2010) desvelam a presença-ausência da vida-morte na experiência política do discurso têxtil.  Palavras-chave: Roupas; Corpos; Agenciamento; Política; Memória.AbstractThe article addresses the agency of clothes in the work of the artist Christian Boltanski. Starting from the dimension of the power of the textile bodies, we will analyze how the clothes invest themselves with the muted words of the absent bodies, constituting themselves as an allegory of the testimony and of the historical document. The central idea is to think about how clothes make explicit human annihilation brought about by totalitarian political regimes. We will analyze how the installations Prendre la Parole (2005) and Personnes (2010) reveal the presence-absence of life-death in the political experience of textile discourse.Keywords: Clothes; Bodies; Agency; Politics; Memory. 

Plato’s Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 574-604
Author(s):  
Christopher Bobonich
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Plato's Political Philosophy ◽  
Status Of Women

The dialogues that are most obviously important for Plato’s political philosophy include: the Apology, the Crito, the Gorgias, the Laws, the Republic, and the Statesman. Further, there are many questions of political philosophy that Plato discusses in his dialogues. These topics include, among others: (1) the ultimate ends of the city’s laws and institutions; (2) who should rule, the forms of constitution, and their ranking; (3) what institutions and offices there should be; (4) the nature and extent of citizens’ obligation to obey the laws; (5) the proper criterion of citizenship; (6) the political and social status of women; (7) the purposes of punishment; (8) private property; and (9) slavery. This chapter attempts to provide an overall picture of Plato’s political philosophy, focusing on three moments: the “Socratic” dialogues, including the Apology and the Crito; the great middle-period work, the Republic, along with the Phaedo; and finally, two works from Plato’s last period, the Statesman and the Laws.

Coleridge's “ideal Realism”: an alternative to the “doctors of the Absolute”?

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mary Anne Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
First Time

A few months ago I read Peter Nicholson's The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists for the first time. In the index I found more than a hundred references to Hegel and only one to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. However, as many of the latter's writings, published for the first time in recent years, become generally accessible there is an increasing sense that he has been unfairly deprived of his due status as a philosopher. This is partly, no doubt, the syndrome of the prophet in his own country and partly the inevitable consequence of much of his later work remaining unpublished until recent years. Coleridge himself, with what some would take to be confirmation of an over-sensitivity to criticism, felt the neglect of his work went deeper and betrayed an anti-philosophical trait in British character. Despite his close reading of the work of many of his German contemporaries it seems that he did not read more than sixtyone pages of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik. His margin notes to this work are, on the whole, negative in their criticism. However, despite significant disagreements, there is much common ground in theme, argument and conclusion between his many drafts of the ‘Logosophia’, his intended magnum opus, and Hegel's system.

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