scholarly journals THE CONCEPT OF GNOSTICISM IN THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF E. VOEGELIN

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-62
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Western World ◽  
New Science ◽  
Eric Voegelin

The article discusses the concept of political Gnosticism, developed by the philosopher Eric Voegelin. This concept is one of the main elements of Voegelin’s political philosophy, in which he answers the question about the essence of modern politics. Voegelin believes that modernity is the result of the historical victory of the ideology of “Gnosticism”. The historical roots of Gnosticism, says Voegelin, should not be sought in late antiquity, but in the Middle Ages. Based on the ideas of Christian mystics, such as Joachim of Flore, an ideology of Gnosticism was formed, which spread in the Western world and became a powerful political force. This force accomplished the “great Gnostic revolution” and shaped modern society. Examples of modern Gnostic regimes are progressivism, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, National Socialism. Modern political science is not able to give a critical understanding of Gnosticism, since it itself is a product of Gnostic ideology. Therefore, modern political science needs to restore its fundamental principles, which were established by ancient philosophers, the founders of the philosophy of politics. Voegelin calls this the reteoretisation of political science. The author of the article analyzes the theoretical and historical grounds of Voegelin’s concept and concludes that one of the sources of his theory of political Gnosticism is Hegel’s doctrine of unhappy consciousness. The article also proves that Voegelin’s concept of Gnosticism is not identical with historical Gnosticism. The author also analyzes the reasons why political science of the twentieth century did not accept this concept and did not draw conclusions from criticism of political science in the work “New Science of Politics” by Voegelin. The article concludes that the changes that are taking place in the modern world force us to reconsider and overestimate Voegelin’s concept, which, in our opinion, has great heuristic potential.

Russia-West: Civilizational War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Багдасарян ◽  
Vardan Bagdasaryan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Valuable Alternative ◽  
The World ◽  
Deep Sources ◽  
World Development

Relevance of the presented book determined by escalation of international tension in the modern world, strain of relations of Russia on the block of the western states. To Identify the reasons and deep sources of this conflict – a task which is put and solved in the monograph "Russia – the West: civilization war". The author shows the historical reproducibility of the Russian-western opposition which is standing out through the entire periods of history from the Middle Ages till our time. The conflict relations with the Western world reveal in the book through the category of "civilization war". In the monograph it is shown the fundamental differences in the civilizational values of the West and Russia why the agenda of world development offered by them led objectively to the conflict differed. The content of the western global historical project and the Russian valuable alternative are considered. The book can have practical interest for the state managers, and also for all who think of the due strategy of Russia, of its positioning in the world.

scholarly journals Barbarigenesis and the collapse of complex societies: Rome and after

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0254240
Author(s):  
Doug Jones
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Central Regions ◽  
First Millennium

“Barbarism” is perhaps best understood as a recurring syndrome among peripheral societies in response to the threats and opportunities presented by more developed neighbors. This article develops a mathematical model of barbarigenesis—the formation of “barbarian” societies adjacent to more complex societies—and its consequences, and applies the model to the case of Europe in the first millennium CE. A starting point is a game (developed by Hirshleifer) in which two players allocate their resources either to producing wealth or to fighting over wealth. The paradoxical result is that a richer and potentially more powerful player may lose out to a poorer player, because the opportunity cost of fighting is greater for the former. In a more elaborate spatial model with many players, the outcome is a wealth-power mismatch: central regions have comparatively more wealth than power, peripheral regions have comparatively more power than wealth. In a model of historical dynamics, a wealth-power mismatch generates a long-lasting decline in social complexity, sweeping from more to less developed regions, until wealth and power come to be more closely aligned. This article reviews how well this model fits the historical record of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe both quantitatively and qualitatively. The article also considers some of the history left out of the model, and why the model doesn’t apply to the modern world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Ethical Life of Modern Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Joshua Mauldin
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Democratic Societies

Turning to the 1930s and 1940s, this chapter explicates how Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflected on modern society amid the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Bonhoeffer’s insights are relevant beyond the confines of theological studies, as Nazism has become a central motif in reflections on the legitimacy of the modern age. Whether National Socialism is seen as modernity’s culmination, or conversely as a warning against any temptation toward backsliding from the progress of modern society, the historical events in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s are a focal point in any narrative of modernity. Bonhoeffer thought about these matters in real time, even while being held in a Nazi prison. Bonhoeffer’s reflections on ethics in the modern world have implications for the viability of modern democratic societies.

Phenomenon of Risk in Some Theories of the Humanities Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-64
Author(s):  
А. Батухтин ◽  
A. Batuhtin
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
Behavioral Aspects ◽  
Science Management

The modern world is full of risks, so the theory of risk, its properties and processes of management, are nowadays of particular interest. There are many theories, which contain different concepts and identifies the fundamental characteristics of this phenomenon. This paper aims to study the processes of effective risk management and prediction of the future, an important task of social management. The article discusses the postmodern (sociological) and perceptibility (psychology) risk-taking. Sociological theories of the postmodern approach to the concept of “risk” through the analysis of social relations. In turn, perceptivity approach treats risk through the “behavioral aspects” of human existence. The task of this article is to define the properties of risk in sociological theories and the search for such properties, the risk that would be inherent in any type of society. Analyzed the risk profile, offered by postmodern theory by U. Beck, N. Luhmann and A. Giddens, with the result that the basic properties of the risk applying to the Foundation. As well as identified behavioral aspects of risk that were considered in the context perceptivities approach, in D. Kahneman and A. Tversky. In the end, we offer a conclusion that common property, as an individual and the society as a system in General is an irrational risk aversion. This property does not depend on the era and type of society and retains its relevance from ancient times to the present day. The results obtained in this article can find its practical application in Sciences such as social philosophy, political science, management, Economics, psychology, sociology. Highlighted in the sociology of properties of a society built on risk, can be useful indicators or explanations of any of the events. In political science, Economics and management knowledge of the characteristics of the risk society (modern society) and people's attitude to risk will provide an advantage and will indicate any possible human behavior that will help in prediction and management. And this, in turn, could facilitate the implementation of industrial, corporate, or state objectives.

Values and the Methodology of Political Science: A Comment

1971 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Barry Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Eric Voegelin

Readers of Thomas H. Greene's article, “Values and the Methodology of Political Science,” may have detected a theme of importance to political philosophy, a theme which, however, the author did not explicitly identify. Greene divided his essay into five parts: the first, third, and fifth parts contain what I believe to be an argument in favour of the reconciliation of social science and political philosophy; the second and fourth parts are devoted, in some measure, to a criticism of two contemporary political philosophers, Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss. Greene argues, in effect, that the reconciliation of political philosophy with social science will have taken place when political philosophy is understood within the categories of social science, specifically within “Robert Merton's categories of theoretical range” (p. 274). The truth of Greene's argument depends, in part at least, upon the correctness of his understanding of Voegelin and Strauss. Correlatively, his argument is vitiated to the extent that he has not understood what Voegelin and Strauss have written about politics and theory and why, on the basis of such writings, they object to social science. What the author does not consider, but which ought to be considered, is the possibility that if social scientists and political philosophers have little of creative import to say to each other, it may be for sound reasons.

From Themistius to al-Farabi: Platonic Political Philosophy and Aristotle's Rhetoric in the East

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Watt
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Early Middle Ages

Abstract: Aristotie's Rhetoric appears to have had little influence on rhetorical theory in Greek or Latin during late antiquity or the early Middle Ages, but it was closely studied by some Islamic philosophers, notably al-Farabi. Behind al-Farabi's interest in Aristotle's Rhetoric lay his adoption of Plato's doctrine of the philosopher-king, Whitch had an eloquent exponent in late antiquity in the philosopher-orator Themistius. An allusion to the Rhetoric in an oration of Themistius suggests that al-Farabi's assessment of the Rhetoric also had roots in late antiquity, possibly in circles around Themistius. The content of the Syriac Rhetoric of Antony of Tagrit confirms the likelihood that in thèse matters, as in many others, the Syrians were the intermediaries between Greek late antiquity and the classical renaissance in Islam.

Three questions to political economy (An attempt of system introspection)

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. B. Kleiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Linear Component ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Economic Space ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
System Paradigm

The development of the system paradigm in economic science leads to the formulation of a number of important questions to the political economy as one of the basic directions of economic theory. In this article, on the basis of system introspection, three questions are considered. The first is the relevance of the class approach to the structuring of the socio-economic space; the second is the feasibility of revising the notion of property in the modern world; the third is the validity of the notion of changing formations as the sequence of “slave-owning system — feudal system — capitalist system”. It is shown that in modern society the system approach to the structuring of socio-economic space is more relevant than the class one. Today the classical notion of “property” does not reflect the diversity of production and economic relations in society and should be replaced by the notion of “system property”, which provides a significant expansion of the concepts of “subject of property” and “object of property”. The change of social formations along with the linear component has a more influential cyclic constituent and obeys the system-wide cyclic regularity that reflects the four-cycle sequence of the dominance of one of the subsystems of the macrosystem: project, object, environment and process.

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