scholarly journals HOMO DEMOCRATICUS (On the Universal Desirability and the Not So Universal Possibility of Democracy and Human Rights)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Spagnoli

The subject of the thesis - the universal value of human rights and democracy - is highly topical in view of the 'democratic imperialism' of the current (dd 2002) US-government. While leaving aside the problem of the acceptability of war as a means to promote democracy (e.g. the second Gulf War), the thesis focusses on a philosophical, moral and pragmatical defence of the universal application of democracy and human rights. Only if this defence is successful can the discussion on the means and tactics of democratic imperialism begin.The originality of the thesis is its defence of the universal value of both democracy and human rights. Whereas the defence of the universality of human rights has a long tradition, there is as yet almost no literature on the universal desirability of democracy. The defence is partly philosophical, ethical, political, legal and practical. It draws on the history of philosophy and ethics, as well as on political science.

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEVIN O. PENDAS

When the late Kenneth Cmiel undertook the first systematic analysis of the emerging historiography of human rights in 2004, he surveyed a field that was ‘refreshingly inchoate’. In the ensuing seven years, the scholarship on the history of human rights has burgeoned considerably. Yet one might still reasonably characterise the field overall as inchoate. Like any new subfield of historical inquiry, there is a clear lack of consensus among leading historians of human rights about even the most elementary contours of the subject. What are human rights? When and where did they emerge? How and why did they spread (if, indeed, they spread at all)? Who were the crucial agents in this history? Few historians working in the field seem to agree in their answers to any of these questions.


1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. McIlwain

At the meeting of the Political Science Association last year, in the general discussion, on the subject of the recall, I was surprised and I must admit, a little shocked to hear our recall of judges compared to the English removal of judges on address of the houses of parliament.If we must compare unlike things, rather than place the recall beside the theory or the practice of the joint address, I should even prefer to compare it to a bill of attainder.In history, theory and practice the recall as we have it and the English removal by joint address have hardly anything in common, save the same general object.Though I may not (as I do not) believe in the recall of judges, this paper concerns itself not at all with that opinion, but only with the history and nature of the tenure of English judges, particularly as affected by the possibility of removal on address. I believe a study of that history will show that any attempt to force the address into a close resemblance to the recall, whether for the purpose of furthering or of discrediting the latter, is utterly misleading.In the history of the tenure of English judges the act of 12 and 13 William III, subsequently known as the Act of Settlement, is the greatest landmark. The history of the tenure naturally divides into two parts at the year 1711. In dealing with both parts, for the sake of brevity, I shall confine myself strictly to the judges who compose what since 1873 has been known as the supreme court of judicature.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Vanja Radakovic

In the history of philosophy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is mainly considered as an atypical philosopher of the Enlightenment, as a pioneer of the revolutionary idea of a free civilian state and natural law; in literary history, he is considered the forerunner of Romanticism, the writer who perfected the form of an epistolary novel, as well as a sentimentalist. However, this paper focuses on the biographical approach, which was mostly excluded in observation of those works revealing Rousseau as the originator of the autobiographical novelistic genre. The subject of this paper is the issue of credibility of self-portraits, and through this problem it highlights the facts from the author?s life. This paper relies on a biographical approach, not in the positivistic sense but in the phenomenological key. This paper is mainly inspired by the works of the Geneva School theorists - Starobinski, Poulet and Rousset.


Dialogue ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Thomas Mathien

Some writers about the history of philosophy in Canada have wondered why it should be studied. That is a worthy question, but it is not the one I want to discuss here. I am going to assume there are good reasons for doing so because I want to consider some general features of the subject of such studies and to determine what has to be done to establish certain descriptive claims about it. I will also point out some concerns I have about the proper explanation of certain interesting features of Canadian philosophic activity, and I will present a brief evaluation of one major study. I will do this with the aid of a contention that the study of the history of an intellectual discipline is a little like an evolutionary study of a biological species, but I will close by pointing out one reason for doing history which goes beyond description, and even explanation, of the past.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaco W. Gericke

J.H. le Roux had a passion for philosophy. His writings contain recourse to the history of philosophy in a way that bespeaks a deep underlying interest in the subject. This much is relatively well-known. This contribution, by contrast, aims at reconstructing something hitherto mostly covert: Le Roux�s philosophy of religion. Of interest is what his writings presuppose about the nature of religion, religious language, the nature of God, the existence of God, religious epistemology, the relation between religion and morality and the problem of religious pluralism.


Author(s):  
Andrey Aleksandrovich Yurasov

The subject of this research is the concept of free will. The modern philosophical discussions either do not explicate it, or interpret far from the traditional meaning that has been instilled into this term throughout the centuries, The goal of this article lies in the historical-philosophical reconstruction of the concept of free will. However, the interest towards achieving this goal is not limited to the sphere of history of philosophy. Understanding of the key term largely determines the fruitfulness of theoretical constructions aimed at solution of the problem of free will. The article expounds and substantiates the methodological principles the reconstruction concept of free is based upon. It is demonstrated that free will features two characteristics that can be designated as conformity and independence. Therefore, free will can be defined as the will that corresponds to the value system of an individual and is independent of external factors. Such definition summarizes the practice of utilization of this term in history of philosophy. However, since the late XIX century, and namely in the XX century, there has developed a strong tendency towards distortion of the traditional concept of free will, which implies exclusion of the characteristic of independence and defining free will through the concept of moral responsibility.


Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 404
Author(s):  
William Large

Kant marks a fundamental break in the history of philosophy of religion and the concept of God. God is no longer interpreted as a being necessary to understand the existence of a rational universe, but as an idea that makes sense of our morality. Cohen supplements this idea with the concept of personality, which he argues is the unique contribution of Judaism. For Rosenzweig and Levinas, the monotheistic God is neither a being nor an idea, but the living reality of speech. What would the atheism be that responds to this theism? Linguistics makes a distinction between direct, indirect, and free indirect speech. In the latter form, the origin of speech is not a subject, but narrated language. It is this difference between direct and indirect speech that is missing in Rosenzweig and Levinas’s description of God. It would mean that God is produced by language rather than the subject of language. What menaces the reality of God is not whether God exists, or is intelligible, but the externality of language without a subject.


2021 ◽  
pp. 6-9
Author(s):  
Rebecca Buxton ◽  
Lisa Whiting ◽  

This history of philosophy is a history of men. Or at least, that’s how it has been told over the past several hundred years. But, over the last few decades, we’ve begun to see more and more recognition of women philosophers and the huge impact that they have had on the course of our discipline. There have always been philosophers who happened to be women. Hypatia of Alexandria was known by her contemporaries simply as The Philosopher, and hundreds of young men travelled from throughout the region to attend her public lectures. Philosophers who happen to be women, then, are nothing new. But our failure to recognise them as full contributors to the subject makes them appear to us as something of a surprise. A result of this is that women are often remembered as women first: they are seen more as women than they’re seen as philosophers.


2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moran ◽  
Anthony Payne

The articles in this special issue survey comparatively the shape of power and finance. The introduction sketches the history of the study of the political role of financial markets and examines the reasons for the comparative neglect of the subject by the discipline of political science.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
V. N. Belov

The article analyzes the creativity of one of the most famous Russian neokantians Boris V. Yakovenko. Despite the fact that the work of Yakovenko becomes the subject of analysis of an increasing number of researchers both in Russia and abroad, it has not yet taken place in a systematic analysis. The article attempts to consider the philosophical creativity of the Russian philosopher systematically, revealing both the main directions of European thought that had the greatest influence on the position of Yakovenko and the main areas of philosophy to which the efforts of the national thinker were directed. These, according to the author, include the history of philosophy and the system of so-called transcendental pluralism. It is pointed out that the history of philosophy for Yakovenko is a single holistic process and therefore is the history of the development of philosophical ideas, and not the history of life and work of individual philosophers. According to Yakovenko, the general philosophical scheme of historical development looks like this: from Greek cosmism to German epistemology and the beginning ontological turn in modern philosophy. There is also the belief of B.V. Yakovenko that there is no national philosophy. In his opinion, philosophy, as well as science in General, can only be international. His second main thesis concerning the development of philosophy is that philosophy should be independent from other branches of human knowledge and knowledge. She must not be a servant of theology or science. The article also presents various stages of the Russian philosopher's development of his version of the concept of pluralistic philosophy. According to Yakovenko, only pluralistic philosophy is able to know the essence as the main object of philosophy.


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