scholarly journals Democratic values, emotions and emotivism

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-738
Author(s):  
Bojan Vranic
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Evaluation Criteria ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Political Agents ◽  
The One

The aim of this paper is to explore the relation between democratic values and emotions. The author argues that democratic values and emotional judgments are inter-reducible: political agents use emotional judgments to reflexively evaluate normative paradigms of political life. In the first part of the paper, the author describes the state of emotions in contemporary political philosophy and identifies Charles Stevenson?s ethical conception of emotivism as the first comprehensive attempt to neutrally conceptualize emotions in moral and political thinking. The second part of the paper explores the shortcomings of emotivism and finds an adequate alternative in Martha Nussbaum?s concept of emotional judgment as the one that contains beliefs and values about social objects. In the final part of the paper, the author identifies that moral and political disagreements emerge in democracies from ranking of the importance of political objects. The evaluation criteria for this type of ranking is derived from democratic values which are reducible to agents? emotional judgments.

The Muslim Tradition of Political Philosophy

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrough Akhavi
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Epistemological Foundation ◽  
The Individual

The doctrine of salvation in Islam centers on the community of believers. Contemporary Muslim political philosophy (or, preferably, political theory) covers a broad expanse that brings under its rubric at least two diverse tendencies: an approach that stresses the integration of religion and politics, and an approach that insists on their separation. Advocates of the first approach seem united in their desire for the “Islamization of knowledge,” meaning that the epistemological foundation of understanding and explanation in all areas of life, including all areas of political life, must be “Islamic.” Thus, one needs to speak of an “Islamic anthropology,” an “Islamic sociology,” an “Islamic political science,” and so on. But there is also a distinction that one may make among advocates of this first approach. Moreover, one can say about many, perhaps most, advocates of the first approach that they feel an urgency to apply Islamic law throughout all arenas of society. This article focuses on the Muslim tradition of political philosophy and considers the following themes: the individual and society, the state, and democracy.

scholarly journals POLITICAL AND CIVIL ACTIVITY OF RUSSIANS

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-10
Author(s):  
Юрий Говоров ◽  
Yuri Govorov ◽  
Борис Невзоров ◽  
Boris Nevzorov
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
The State ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Dominant Type ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
The Masses

The authors of the current paper have analyzed data obtained from opinion polls among Russian citizens (including those conducted among students and staff of various Russian universities). The surveys have revealed significant coincidences in the results obtained by different research centers regarding the reduction in the level of political and civic engagement of Russians in recent years. According to the surveys, this is largely due to the alienation of the significant part of the population from the government and the state. These people believe they are not able to influence the state decisions, which, in their turn, have little effect on the improvement of their everyday life. In the post-Soviet period, practically all the elective procedures were designed in such a way that they allowed the officialdom to be self-sufficient and independent from public opinion. As a result of formalized elections, the society in general, as well as separate communities, legitimizes this situation as democratic, since the governing structures are formed in the course of a multistage procedure involving a significant part of the population (employees). Thus, as sociological studies show, "the attitude of the population towards the authorities is greatly influenced by the discrepancy between the perception of the value of democracy and its implementation in real political practice. On the one hand, democracy values have rooted quite firmly in the society. On the other hand, the processes of democratization in public perception are of a nominal nature, i.e. they do not correspond with their purpose ". In a situation like this, management assumes a bureaucratic form, and the dominant type of political behavior in modern Russian society is paternalistic and subject-imposed. Individual liberties and democratic rights, although important, are not decisive and get diminished by other considerations, e.g. the interests of the community. It is obvious that everyone’s aim is adaptation and maintenance of the today’s status quo, because things might get worse tomorrow. It applies both to the behavior of the so-called political power and to the behavior of the so-called “unsinkable” officials on different levels, who belong to the top of the new nomenclature, as well as to the behavior of their subordinates. The situation described above indicates ritualization of political life, which is connected, on the one hand, with the divergence between the power elite and the masses, and, on the one hand, with the mutual interest of the authorities and the electorate in preserving the currently stabilized political and psychological situation in the country.

Early Christian Political Philosophy

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Coherent System ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Social Pressures

Early Christian political philosophy is not a unified, theoretical, and coherent system, but is embedded in a range of Christian works of apology, theology, and exegesis. Literate (and therefore elite) Christians from the apologists to Augustine were subject to a range of political and social pressures, and their political thinking was often contingent and incidental. What is the ultimate goal of political life for Christians? What is the good life for Christians? Between Constantine's reign and that of Theodosius at the close of the fourth century, emperors veered from the pious to the “heretical,” with a single pagan interruption. It was a common rhetorical conceit for Christians to redefine philosophy as Christianity, and one that became more urgent during Julian's reign. He attempted to wrest Greek philosophy and culture from the Christians for his revived paganism, dubbed “Hellenism,” and even barred Christians from teaching in his school edict of 362. This article focuses on early Christian political philosophy as well as ecclesiology, eschatology, and asceticism.

Exactitude and Indemonstrability in Kant’s Doctrine of Right

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Katrin Flikschuh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The chapter states that while the Doctrine of Right is often seen as Kant’s contribution to legal theory, it is primarily a work in political philosophy. Flikschuh argues for a reading of the Doctrine of Right as a work that includes a concern with law but is not confined to that concern alone. She claims, however, that the state is a less comprehensive idea for Kant than it is for some of his immediate predecessors and successors on the one hand, and for most contemporary political philosophers on the other hand.

The country at a standstill: Yugoslavia and Slovene politics in the 1930s

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236
Author(s):  
Jure Gašparič
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
National Life ◽  
Repressive Regime ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Groups

King Alexander's dictatorship in Yugoslavia (proclaimed in January 1929) was an expression of a real political need for consolidation in the country; however, in essence, it was an autocratic and repressive regime. More decisive moves toward a return of democracy did not occur, even later, after the replacement of his regime in June 1935. The political methods in the internal political life followed the pattern from the first half of the 1930s to the very eve of World War II. Such a situation also defined the relationship between the Slovenes and Yugoslavia. Slovene politics continued to look at the state from two angles – a unitary/centralist angle on the one hand and an autonomist/federalist angle on the other. Both camps (as well as other Yugoslav political players), however, failed to create an environment that would enable truly democratic compromises. The state was stuck at a “standstill,” but in spite of all its flaws, in the view of the Slovene political groups it represented the most suitable environment for the political and national life of Slovenes. Any serious political calculations that would go beyond this framework hardly existed.

scholarly journals The Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum in the Realities of Social-Political life in the 1920s and 1930s

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-131
Author(s):  
Natalia I. Ivanoskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Ideological Attitudes

The article is devoted to the one of the most important problems in the history of museum studies, namely the state museum policy. Museums participate in the historical and cultural process, relying not only on the concepts and the objectives of academic disciplines, but on the public needs of a particular historical era and the influence of power structures as well. The purpose of the study is to analyze the influence of state ideological attitudes on the research works in the field of museum ethnography and on personal fates of employees of the Russian Museum Ethnographic Department in the 1920s and 1930s, using archival sources. The author introduces into scientific circulation previously classified directive documents which regulated museum activities during that period. Considerable attention is paid to the study of the museum employees’ field reports which give an indication of the shift in the methodological approach to ethnographic studies at the time. The paper involves personal archival documents which shed a light on the details of everyday life and lifestyle, the nature of relationships between people, determined by the political organization of society, among other things.The study leads to the conclusion that the powerful ideological pressure of the state that took place during those years negatively influenced not only ethnography and museology disciplines turning them into an instrument of socialist propaganda for a certain period of time, but led many ethnographers to tragic fate.

scholarly journals Dwa oblicza stanu wyjątkowego w filozofii Giorgia Agambena

Politeja ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2(59)) ◽  
pp. 233-253
Author(s):  
Piotr Sawczyński
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
The Core ◽  
The One

Two Faces of the State of Exception in Giorgio Agamben’s Political Philosophy The aim of the article is to analyze Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception. His controversial argument is that contemporary law functions according to the logic of exception, which is its inner matrix. In Agamben’s view, the state of exception is highly ambivalent: on the one hand, it is responsible for turning law into the domain of sovereign power; on the other, it has a potential of deactivating legal violence and thinking of law beyond power relations. To explicate the dual nature of this political and legal phenomenon, I scrutinize the mechanism of inclusive exclusion, considered by Agamben as the core of the state of exception. I further critically examine Agamben’s theory against the background of the messianic turn in today’s humanities and hypothesize that he predominantly reads the state of exception as a messianic concept which promises structural transformation of law. To show what this transformation might look like, I refer to the tradition of Jewish messianism which is a primary source of inspiration for Agamben’s critical theory.

scholarly journals What is “Restrained” by the katechon? The Finitude of the State in Conservative and Socialist Thought

2021 ◽  
Vol V (2) ◽  
pp. 13-33
Author(s):  
Ilya Budraitskis
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The One ◽  
End Times ◽  
Marxist Concept ◽  
Imperial State

The concept of katechon (“that which withholds”), essential to both the theological tradition and modern political philosophy, originates in Second Thessalonians by Paul the Apostle. This withholding force which resists the coming of the end times has often been identified with the Roman Empire (and later with the Christian imperial state), the latter seen as a protected space that enabled the spread of the Good Tidings. This mission of containment, on the one hand, endowed the state with a sacred character, but on the other, it marked the state's finitude and imperfection. By withholding time, the katechon does not remove but preserves contradictions and heterogeneity, accepting its incompleteness as the burden of its own mission. In its secularized form, the restraining state conceives of society as an antagonistic space of struggle and conflict, and the function of political power is linked to the establishment of a temporal equilibrium with historically contingent and relative forms. In conservative thought, the katechon state guards society from unifying equality and rationalization, and individuals from the illusion of perfection and moral harmony. The understanding of the state as a force that rises above the disparate elements of society and preserves it against its inherent chaos was also at the core of the Marxist concept of the state. This article, based on a wide range of authors (T. Hobbes, K. Marx, K. Schmitt, K. Leontiev, D. Agamben) will consider conservative and leftist interpretations of the state, which accept and develop the idea of katechon and its interpretations not directly connected with the concept of state power.

scholarly journals ARTISTIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE PERSON IN OSSETIAN LITERATURE

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-126
Author(s):  
Р.Я. ФИДАРОВА
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Feudal Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Relationship

Человек и государство тесно взаимосвязаны. Антропологическая ориентация государства развивается исторически. Само государство зародилось на заре политической истории человечества, в эпоху рабовладения или в феодальном обществе, как у алан-осетин, и тогда же формируется первый этап взаимосвязей человека и государства. Процесс становления социально-исторических связей человека и государства на первом этапе обусловлен своеобразием формирующегося государства. Оно состояло из двух социальных образований: из господствующих классов и из низших слоев. Соответственно отношение государства к ним было разное. Государство отстаивало социально-политический статус господствующего класса, чьи интересы оно и обслуживало, утверждая позиции данного класса. В целом государство так или иначе регулировало отношения между людьми. Новый этап во взаимосвязях человека и государства начался в эпоху капитализма, со становлением товарно-денежных отношений. Обусловлен он был объективными обстоятельствами жизни осетин, когда существенно изменились общественное бытие и общественное сознание. Изменился и человек, субъект общественной жизни. Если в эпоху феодализма государство составляли господствующие и зависимые субъекты, то в XIX в. на арену истории вышел класс буржуазии, появилась интеллигенция, вышедшая не только из буржуазии, но и из низших слоев. Данное обстоятельство существенно меняло, обогащало функции государства, и предъявляло к нему определенные требования. Скажем, требование быть политическим по характеру, т.е. решать политические задачи и обращать внимание на каждого человека, гражданина. По-другому сказывались отношения между человеком и государством в советскую эпоху. С одной стороны, целью своей оно ставило всестороннее и гармоничное развитие советского человека, с другой, – во всех сферах жизни укреплялось жесткое партийное руководство. В результате происходили серьезные трансформации во взаимоотношениях человека и государства. Значительно активизировались процессы демократизации общественно-политической жизни, что в итоге привело к распаду Советского государства. Осетинская литература, верная своему родовому свойству отражать правдиво социальную действительность, реалистически раскрыла все этапы становления взаимосвязей человека и государства. Person and state are closely interconnected. The anthropological orientation of the state develops historically. The state itself arose at the dawn of the political history of mankind, in the era of slavery or in a feudal society, like among the Alan-Ossetians, and at the same time the first stage of the relationship between man and the state was formed. The process of the formation of socio-historical ties between a person and the state at the first stage is due to the originality of the emerging state. It consisted of two social entities: the ruling classes and the lower strata. Accordingly, the attitude of the state towards them was different. The state defended the socio-political status of the ruling class, whose interests it served, asserting the position of this class. In general, the state somehow regulated relations between people. A new stage in the relationship between man and state began in the era of capitalism, with the formation of commodity-money relations. It was conditioned by the objective circumstances of the life of the Ossetians, when social life and social consciousness changed significantly. The person, the subject of social life, has also changed. If in the era of feudalism the state was made up of dominant and dependent subjects, then in the 19th century the bourgeois class entered the arena of history, an intelligentsia appeared, emerging not only from the bourgeoisie, but also from the lower strata. This circumstance significantly changed, enriched the functions of the state, and made certain demands on it. Let's say the requirement to be political in nature, i.e. solve political problems and pay attention to every person, citizen. The relationship between man and state in the Soviet era had a different effect. On the one hand, it set its goal the all-round and harmonious development of Soviet people, on the other hand, tough party leadership was strengthened in all spheres of life. As a result, serious transformations took place in the relationship between a person and the state. The processes of democratization of social and political life became much more active, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet state. Ossetian literature, true to its generic property to reflect truthfully social reality, realistically revealed all the stages of the formation of the relationship between man and state. Ключевые слова: государство, человек, осетинская литература, роман, повесть, рассказ, герой, характер.

HOBBES'S CONVENTIONALIST THEOLOGY, THE TRINITY, AND GOD AS AN ARTIFICIAL PERSON BY FICTION

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 915-941 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARASH ABIZADEH
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Person ◽  
The One ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
First Mover

AbstractBy the time Hobbes wrote Leviathan, he was a theist, but not in the sense presumed by either side of the present-day debate concerning the sincerity of his professed theism. On the one hand, Hobbes's expressed theology was neither merely deistic, nor confined to natural theology: the Hobbesian God is not merely a first mover, but a person who counsels, commands, and threatens. On the other hand, the Hobbesian God's existence depends on being constructed artificially by human convention. The Hobbesian God is not a natural person; he exists as a person only insofar as he is by fiction represented. Like the state and pagan gods, he is an artificial person by fiction. The upshot is that Hobbes was a sincere theist and that his seventeenth-century critics were right to think that, in their sense, he was an atheist: he did not steadfastly believe in an independently existing deity who precedes human convention. Hobbes was agnostic on this question. He nevertheless believed that God is brought into being as an artificial person. This ‘personal theology’ not only involved a heretical interpretation of the Trinity, it also came to play a significant role in his moral and political philosophy.

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