scholarly journals Clamo Ergo Sum: Establishing a Fundamental Right to Protest from Christian Theologies of Liberation

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Marc V. Rugani

The prevailing particular historical narratives that established the modern rights system greatly affect the participation, tenor, and limits of rights discourse today, too often ignoring or suppressing voices of those suffering or silenced. This essay is a contribution to the subversion of those histories, adverting to inconsistencies, in particular histories of modern rights, the need to amplify the voices of those suffering on the margins of that history, and the dangerous consequences if we fail to do so. By applying Enrique Dussel’s political philosophy and Gustavo Gutiérrez’s theology of liberation significant contributions can be made toward affirming a fundamental right to protest. The right to protest articulates a right co-foundational with the rights to life, liberty, and property, and this right is well grounded in a Christian account of the dignity of the human person.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
SeyedAmirHossein Asghari

<p>It is essential to ask why there is so little attention paid to political philosophy among these scholars? Or, if there is, why does it remain a minor or marginal conversation? Did they consider the discussion on governance under the other areas of their expertise, such as jurisprudence (<i>Fiqh</i>)? And, if yes, what motivated them to do so? Or, at least in Shia Islam, did this arise from their general belief that if there is an Imam, he is the right person to govern the community, and if we are in the occultation era, then our only choice is to wait for the Imam to return? Consequently, there is no need to philosophize an ideal society, an occurrence of which only happens with the presence of an Imam. Clarifying the questions mentioned above requires another investigation. We leave these questions aside here and focus instead on contemporary Shia philosophers to examine their thoughts on political philosophy, Utopia, or any discussion of governance. Our goal is to identify the al-Fārābīan heritage of the Islamic intellectual tradition in a more recent period.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
SeyedAmirHossein Asghari

<p>It is essential to ask why there is so little attention paid to political philosophy among these scholars? Or, if there is, why does it remain a minor or marginal conversation? Did they consider the discussion on governance under the other areas of their expertise, such as jurisprudence (<i>Fiqh</i>)? And, if yes, what motivated them to do so? Or, at least in Shia Islam, did this arise from their general belief that if there is an Imam, he is the right person to govern the community, and if we are in the occultation era, then our only choice is to wait for the Imam to return? Consequently, there is no need to philosophize an ideal society, an occurrence of which only happens with the presence of an Imam. Clarifying the questions mentioned above requires another investigation. We leave these questions aside here and focus instead on contemporary Shia philosophers to examine their thoughts on political philosophy, Utopia, or any discussion of governance. Our goal is to identify the al-Fārābīan heritage of the Islamic intellectual tradition in a more recent period.</p>


Profanações ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Sandro Chignola ◽  
Augusto Jobim do Amaral ◽  
Evandro Pontel

O texto procura refletir sobre as três modalidades em que classicamente a filosofia política ocidental dispõe a relação entre política e violência: aquela que procura excluir a violência, a opção que estabelece uma relação de domesticação/ funcionalização da violência e aquela que estabeleceria uma dialética entre violência de dominação e violência revolucionária. Para tanto, concentra-se na análise do texto benjaminiano “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” (1921), objetivando apontar a crítica de autor alemão contra a mediação jurídica própria do poder e da violência, desde as tentativas de conter e de normalizar a violência no ordenamento jurídico. Noutros termos, a crítica aponta para uma violência que é uma ameaça e um risco ao direito quando ela permanece externa ao circuito jurídico e resiste à formalização como meio para sua conservação. Enfim, como alguma coisa de podre há no Direito, ela não é demonstrada pela alternativa entre o caos e a ordem, entre barbárie e a civilidade, entre guerra e a paz, mas pela indeterminação que a lei, tendo que reproduzir continuamente em cada aplicação o rito da sua fundação, faz agir e deixa subsistir entre eles.AbstractThe text seeks to reflect on the three modalities in which the Western political philosophy classically disposes of the relation between politics and violence: that which seeks to exclude violence, the option that establishes a relation of domestication / functionalization of violence and that which would establish a dialectic between violence of domination and revolutionary violence. In order to do so, it concentrates on the analysis of the Benjaminian text "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" (1921), aiming at pointing out the criticism of German author against the legal mediation of power and violence, from attempts to contain and normalize violence in the legal order. In other words, the criticism points to violence that is a threat and a risk to the right when it remains outside the legal circuit and resists formalization as a means for its conservation. Finally, as something rotten in the law, it is not demonstrated by the alternative between chaos and order, between barbarity and civility, between war and peace, but by the indetermination that the law, having to reproduce continuously in each application the rite of its foundation, causes it to act and lets it subsist among them.      


Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski

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.


Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-254
Author(s):  
Jan Mieszkowski
Keyword(s):  

This essay explores the conceptualization of warfare in Romanticism. The focus is on two plays by Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea and Prince Friedrich von Homburg. I begin by discussing Carl von Clausewitz's influential understanding of conflict and the problems that arise when he attempts to explain the interdependence of warring parties. I go on to argue that in Kleist's dramas war is a competition between different languages of authority. When no coherent paradigm of agency emerges from this contest, the right to wage war is revealed to be anything but a guarantee that one knows how to do so.


Author(s):  
Joseph Chan

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, this book argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of the right. The book examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. The book decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, it grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. The book then explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. The book critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era.


Author(s):  
Timothy Zick

This book examines the relational dynamics between the U.S. Constitution’s Free Speech Clause and other constitutional rights. The free speech guarantee has intersected with a variety of other constitutional rights. Those intersections have significantly influenced the recognition, scope, and meaning of rights ranging from freedom of the press to the Second Amendment right to bear arms. They have also influenced interpretation of the Free Speech Clause itself. Free speech principles and doctrines have facilitated the recognition and effective exercise of constitutional rights, including equal protection, the right to abortion, and the free exercise of religion. They have also provided mediating principles for constructive debates about constitutional rights. At the same time, in its interactions with other constitutional rights, the Free Speech Clause has also been a complicating force. It has dominated rights discourse and subordinated or supplanted free press, assembly, petition, and free exercise rights. Currently, courts and commentators are fashioning the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in the image of the Free Speech Clause. Borrowing the Free Speech Clause for this purpose may turn out to be detrimental for both rights. The book examines the common and distinctive dynamics that have brought free speech and other constitutional rights together. It assesses the products and consequences of these intersections, and draws important lessons from them about constitutional rights and constitutional liberty. Ultimately, the book defends a pluralistic conception of constitutional rights that seeks to leverage the power of the Free Speech Clause but also to tame its propensity to subordinate, supplant, and eclipse other constitutional rights.


Author(s):  
Don Garrett

Like Hobbes, Spinoza prominently invokes promising and contracts (covenants) in his discussion of the foundations of the state—primarily, but not exclusively, in his Theological-Political Treatise. His understanding of their nature and significance, however, differs in important ways from that of Hobbes. This chapter poses four related puzzles concerning Spinoza’s claims about promises and contracts as they invoke or relate specifically to Hobbes: “whether the right of nature is preserved intact”; whether “reason urges peace in all circumstances”; whether breaking a promise is ever “in accordance with reason”; and whether one is obligated to keep a pledge extorted by a robber. Next, it analyzes and compares the doctrines of Hobbes and Spinoza on several key topics: rights and powers, good and evil, reason and passion, and faith and deception (both “evil deception” [“dolus malus”] and “good deception” [“dolus bonus”]). Finally, it employs these doctrines to resolve the four puzzles.


Author(s):  
Andrew McNeillie
Keyword(s):  

It is now widely acknowledged, and far beyond Ireland, that Tim Robinson’s two volumes jointly known as Stones of Aran (‘Pilgrimage’ and ‘Labyrinth’) are modern classics, exemplary in every way of how to write about place and to do so with a formal, literary accomplishment that more than earns the right to nod at Ruskin’s own classic. In 2012, Robinson went back to Árainn, the largest of the three islands, for the first time in nearly ten years. He did so at the urging of Andrew McNeillie, with whom he spent two and a half days revisiting old haunts. This chapter makes account of the occasion and uses, in the process, a unique document provided by Robinson as an experiment in annotating his work. This prompts McNeillie to investigate some of his own annotations and footnotes to Aran.


Author(s):  
Geoffrey Parsons Miller

This chapter explores the thesis that the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible address abstract ideas about politics, government, and law. Taking issue with critics who view the Bible’s spiritual and theological message as incommensurable with political philosophy, the chapter argues that the stories of politics and kingship in the Hebrew Bible’s historical books set forth set forth an impressive political theory that rivals, in some respects, the work of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers. The key is to bring out the general ideas behind the specific narrative elements. The chapter illustrates this thesis by examining the Hebrew Bible’s treatment of a number of classic problems of political theory: anarchy, obligation and sovereignty, distributive justice, and the comparative analysis of political organizations.


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