Reason, Value Theory, and the Theory of Democracy

1944 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 855-875
Author(s):  
J. Roland Pennock
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Present Treatment ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Complete Treatment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

No serious consideration of the theory of democracy needs explanation or apology today. The scope and limitations of the present treatment of the subject, however, should be made clear at the outset. The object of this article is to deal with the political philosophy of democracy, or, more precisely, with attempts to ground democratic doctrine on first principles of right. Clearly this does not constitute a complete treatment of democratic theory. Such a treatment would have to deal, inter alia, with the practical operation of democratic processes under varying conditions. Probably the bulk of any full-length discussion of the theory of democracy should be devoted to such matters. Yet, essential though these considerations are, the problem with which this paper deals is of fundamental importance. For, in general, it may be said of all the “practical” arguments about democracy that whatever validity they have must depend upon some theory of ethics, upon some assumption as to the things that are valuable in this world. In other words, I shall not here concern myself with arguments that in practice democracy is less objectionable than other forms of government, because I feel the inadequacy of such arguments considered by themselves.

Liberdade e Direitos Humanos no Pensamento de Richard Price

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
pp. 119-145
Author(s):  
José Gomes André ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This paper is concerned with the political philosophy of Richard Price, analysing the way this author has developed the concept of liberty and the problem of human rights. The theme of liberty will be interpreted in a double perspective: a) in a private dimension, that sets liberty in the inner side of the individual; b) in a public dimension, that places it in the domain of a manifest action of the individual. We will try to show how this double outlook of liberty is conceived under the optics of a necessary complementarity, since liberty, which is primarily understood as a feature of the subject taken as an individual, acquires only a full meaning when she becomes efective in a comunitary field, as a social and political expression. The concept of human rights will appear located in this analysis, being defined simultaneously as condition and expression of the human dignity and happiness, at the same time natural attributes of an individual that should be cultivated and public effectiveness that contributes to the development of society.

Meno’s Paradox and First Principles in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Oriens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 320-344
Author(s):  
Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Syllogistic Reasoning ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Fundamental Knowledge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Implicit Response

Abstract This article examines Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 606/1210) epistemology and his understanding of syllogistic reasoning through a consideration of Meno’s paradox. It focuses on later works, namely, al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya, Kitāb al-Jabr, and al-Tafsīr al-kabīr as well as his treatment of the subject in al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī l-ḥikma. Informed by the theories of epistemology developed through the philosophical tradition of Meno’s paradox and first principles, Rāzī views all knowledge formed through syllogistic reasoning as dependent on axiomatic truths (al-badīhiyyāt), a concept with roots in both the philosophical and theological traditions. These first principles are formed immediately upon the presence of the requisite concepts in the mind, and thus comprise Rāzī’s implicit response to the paradox in that all subsequent knowledge does indeed require previous fundamental knowledge that is not sought nor acquired voluntarily. Finally, the article discusses a separate paradox implicit in Rāzī’s works, namely that he both asserts in sections treating divine determinism that no knowledge can in fact be acquired whatsoever while elsewhere emphasizing the fundamental importance of knowledge acquisition.

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Bodily Difference ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Advanced Teaching

Assembling research from an international cohort of scholars dedicated to inquiry in the field, this volume investigates relationships between dance and politics, adding detail and dimension to existing research, illuminating epistemological and theoretical topographies, and forging new pathways for related inquiry. Opening up its critical terms in two directions, the project illuminates how dance achieves its politics and how notions of the political are themselves expanded when viewed from the perspective of dance. Conceiving the subject matter in mutually informing ways, through problematics that come from philosophy, social science, humanities, and history, the authors seek to participate in an ongoing conversation that is both interdisciplinary and international in scope. This Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics comes through a turn to dance from within a range of fields such as political philosophy, interests in social movements, and approaches to bodily difference such as disability, postcolonial, critical race, and queer studies. The editors have brought together writers with intimate engagement in these dialogues and close encounter with various dance practices. The result is a book that is at once essential reading for advanced teaching and research within various dance studies curricula and that intervenes in key discussions of political theory in the current climate.

What is a Complex? Freudian Resistances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Morgan Wortham
Keyword(s):  
Value Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War

This chapter evaluates the question of the ‘complex’ in a range of scientific, political and psychoanalytic contexts, asking not only where lines of connection and demarcation occur among specific distributions of meaning, value, theory and practice; but also probing the psychoanalytic corpus, notably Freud’s writings on the notion of a ‘complex’, in order to reframe various implications of the idea that this term tends to resist its own utilisation as both an object and form of analysis. This section establishes connections between three sets of theoretical questions: the common practice of describing modernity and its wake in terms of a drive towards increasing complexity; the meaning and cultural legacy of phrases such as ‘military-industrial complex’ and sundry derivations in the political sphere; and the intricacies and ambiguities subtending the term ‘complex’ within psychoanalytic theory. As a concept that Freud both utilised and repudiated, the provocative power of the term ‘complex’ is linked to the way it thwarts various attempts at systemization (providing nonetheless an apparatus of sorts through which contemporary science, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Freud, Eisenhower, and post-war politics can be articulated to one another).

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.

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.

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.

Politonomy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
State Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scientific Significance

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt’s contribution to political jurisprudence. It approaches the issue through the concept of politonomy, a concept first alluded to by Schmitt but which he never developed. Politonomy seeks a scientific understanding of the basic laws and practices of the political. The chapter situates Schmitt within the German tradition of state theory and shows that his overall objective was to build a theory of the constitution of political authority from the most basic elements of the subject. It suggests that Schmitt occupies an ambivalent position in political jurisprudence and that this is because of his distrust of the scientific significance of general concepts. To the extent that he acknowledged the existence of a ‘law of the political’, this is found in Schmitt’s embrace of institutionalism in the 1930s and later in his account of nomos as the basic law of appropriation, division, and production.

Fundamental Rights and the Integrity of Union Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio Baquero Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Understanding

This chapter analyses another area of Union law that is highly controversial and relevant in structural terms—the protection of fundamental rights. It discusses the scope and standard of the protection offered at Union level, the consequences for national law, and the implications of the future accession of the Union to the European Convention on Human Rights. These issues are of fundamental importance for the integrity of Union law and of wider significance for the political understanding of the Union.

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