scholarly journals The Critique of Leo Strauss to Modernist Political Thought

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
Mohammad Abedi Ardakani ◽  
Mohammad Ali Tavana ◽  
Gholamreza Mohebzadeh Nobandegani

As a conservative philosopher, Leo Strauss reconsiders and criticizes modern political thought methodologically and epistemologically, in that he believes it has faced crises leading history of philosophical thinking to deviate. To put simply, Strauss claims that the major part of critical thinking arisen in the West is the by-product of the modern political thought. According to this, the present paper reviews Strauss’s critique of modern political thought, putting the question “what kind of insights and enlightenments does Strauss’ critique of modern political thought encompass?” As a finding of the research, we can hold that Strauss attempted to show that methodology of historical and epistemology of relativism governing modern political thought disregard trans-spatial and timeless principles of natural law; as a result, it substitutes suspicion for real knowledge and certainty.Thus, it encourages nihilism; on the one hand, it introduces any form of autonomous agreement by human beings as fair right, as it neglects universal morality on the other hand, turning it to the matter of validity. Therefore, it resorts to irresponsibility, and eventually introduces human reason as the only instrumental benchmark for living rules, which in turn encompasses the emergence of totalitarianism. The method of the research is an analytical-descriptive method.

Author(s):  
Shadia B. Drury

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish émigré political philosopher and historian of political thought, who wrote some fifteen books and eighty articles on the history of political thought from Socrates to Nietzsche. Strauss was no ordinary historian of ideas; he used the history of thought as a vehicle for expressing his own ideas. In his writings, he contrasted the wisdom of ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the foolhardiness of modern philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke. He thought that the loss of ancient wisdom was the reason for the ‘crisis of the West’ – an expression that was in part a reference to the barbarities of the Holocaust. He therefore sought to recover the lost wisdom. He studied the classics and was a great devotee of Plato and Aristotle. However, he developed unusual interpretations of classical texts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-43
Author(s):  
Elena A. Glukhova ◽  
Pavel I. Safronov ◽  
Lev M. Burshtein

The article presents the one-dimensional basin modeling performed in four wells to reconstruct the thermal history of deposits and reconstruct the effective values of the heat flow density.


Author(s):  
محمد خليفة حسن

يعرض البحث جهود إسماعيل الفاروقي في مجال تاريخ الأديان؛ وإسهامه في التأسيس المنهجي لهذا العلم على المستوى الدولي وعلى مستوى المنهج والمضمون. درس الفاروقي طبيعة التجربة الدينية في الإسلام، وعلاقتها بالتجارب الأخرى. وانخرط في الدرس الديني الحديث في الغرب، ومناهج فهم الدين ودراسته. وأبرز البحث دور الفاروقي في تطوير نظام من المبادئ الماوراء دينية؛ والمصدر الإلهي للأديان والحاجة إلى الدراسة النقدية للتراث الديني، أملاً في تعاون البشر في إقامة دين الفطرة، الذي يُوحِّد كل الأديان. This paper presents the efforts of Ismail al-Faruqi in the field of history of religions and his contributions in the methodological establishment of this field on the international level, particularly in the areas of methodology and content. Al-Faruqi studied the nature of the religious experience in Islam, and its relationship with other experiences.  He engaged in the modern religious studies in the West, and the methods of understanding and studying religion. The paper highlights Al-Faruqi's role in developing a system of Meta-Religious principles, the divine source of religions, and the need for critical assessment of religious heritage, in the hope that human beings would cooperate to establish the religion of Fitra (natural disposition), which unites all religions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Thomas Joseph White

The Chalcedonian confession of faith asserts that Christ is one person, the Son of God, subsisting in two natures, divine and human. The doctrine of the communication of idioms is essential to the life and practices of the Church insofar as we affirm there to be properties of deity and humanity present in the one subject, the Word made flesh. Such affirmations are made without a confusion of the two natures or their mutually distinct attributes. The affirmation that there is a divine and human nature in Christ is possible, however, only if it is also possible for human beings to think coherently about the divine nature, analogically, and human nature, univocally. Otherwise it is not feasible to receive understanding of the divine nature of Christ into the human intellect intrinsically and the revelation must remain wholly alien to natural human thought, even under the presumption that such understanding originates in grace. Likewise we can only think coherently of the eternal Son’s solidarity with us in human nature if we can conceive of a common human nature present in all human individuals. Consequently, it is only possible for the Church to confess some form of Chalcedonian doctrine if there is also a perennial metaphysical philosophy capable of thinking coherently about the divine and human natures from within the ambit of natural human reason. This also implies that the Church maintains a “metaphysical apostolate” in her public teaching, in her philosophical traditions, as well as in her scriptural and doctrinal enunciations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (12) ◽  
pp. 946-956
Author(s):  
Rani Salsabilla ◽  
Marie Yuni Andari ◽  
Monalisa Nasrul

Congenital cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in children. Lens opacity in early life has the potential to cause permanent visual impairment if not treated promptly. Cataract surgery performed at the right time can prevent children from amblyopia (lazy eye). This study aims to determine the characteristics of congenital cataracts at the West Nusa Tenggara Provincial General Hospital in the 2018-2019 period. This research uses descriptive method. The data used is secondary data from medical records of congenital cataract patients at the West Nusa Tenggara Provincial General Hospital in the 2018-2019 period. In the 2018-2019 period, 40 children had congenital cataracts. Most of the cataract sufferers were women (52.5%); living outside the city of Mataram (92.5%) with an age distribution of under 12 months (95%) and the rest over 12 months. For infants under 12 months, 53 percent have been diagnosing at the age of 1-2 months. The characteristics of congenital cataracts found were generally bilateral (52.5%), had standard birth weight (52.5%), history of natural birth delivery (67.5%), and had other extraocular congenital abnormalities (72.5%). Most patients with congenital cataracts in the West Nusa Tenggara Provincial General Hospital have been diagnosing at a (pretty/moderately) early age of 1-2 months at the beginning of their lives. So, with appropriate and prompt therapy, hoping that it can reduce the risk of amblyopia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Jesús Víctor Alfredo Contreras Ugarte

Summary: Reflecting on the role humans take into nowadays society, should be of interest in all our social reflections, even for those that refer to the field of law. Any human indifferent and unconscious of the social role that he ought to play within society, as a member of it, is an irresponsible human detached from everything that surrounds him, regarding matters and other humans. Trying to isolate in an irresponsible, passive and comfortable attitude, means, after all, denying oneself, denying our nature, as the social being every human is. This is the reflection that this academic work entitles, the one made from the point of view of the Italian philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo. From a descriptive development, starting from this renowned author, I will develop ideas that will warn the importance that human protagonism have, in this human product so call society. From a descriptive development, from this well-known author, I will be prescribing ideas that will warn the importance of the protagonism that all human beings have, in that human product that we call society. I have used the descriptive method to approach the positions of the Italian humanist philosopher and, for my assessments, I have used the prescriptive method from an eminently critical and deductive procedural position. My goal is to demonstrate, from the humanist postulates of Rodolfo Mondolfo, the hypothesis about the leading, decision-making and determining role that the human being has within society. I understand, to have reached the demonstration of the aforementioned hypothesis, because, after the analyzed, there is no doubt, that the human being is not one more existence in the development of societies; its role is decisive in determining the human present and the future that will house the next societies and generations of our historical future.


their own natural seats laid to the view, that we seem by many readers today as humanly constructed, its not to hear of them, but clearly to see through them’ reconstruction in the poem is where we meet. (Defence of Poetry 86). In other words, we do not In his Discourse on Civil Life (1606), Lodowick see beyond, or outside, the virtues to something else Bryskett writes that Spenser is known to be very but rather through them as lenses. Only by so seeing well read in philosophy, both moral and natural, and through them may we share Spenser’s vision of that he intends to appeal to him to learn what moral human life from his moral perspective. It follows that philosophy is, ‘what be the parts thereof, whereby finally nothing outside the poem is needed to under-vertues are to be distinguished from vices’ (21). stand it, except (for us) the shared primary culture of Spenser rightly terms his poem ‘this present treatise’ its first audience. (I adapt the term ‘primary culture’ (in the current sense of the term) for his task is ‘True from the account by N. Frye 1990b:22–23 of ‘pri-vertue to aduance’ (V iii 3.8–9). One chief problem mary mythology’ or ‘primary concerns’ in contrast to is to separate virtue from vice, for what used to be ‘secondary concerns’, such as ideology.) called virtue ‘Is now cald vice; and that which vice To gain ‘an exact knowledge of the virtues’ was hight, | Is now hight vertue, and so vs’d of all’ (V needed to write The Faerie Queene, Spenser calls proem 4.2–3). Raleigh makes the same point in the upon the muses to reveal to him ‘the sacred noursery History of the World 1614:2.6.7: ‘some vertues | Of vertue’ (VI proem 3.1–2). Since he goes on to and some vices are so nicely distinguished, and so claim that the nursery was first planted on earth by resembling each other, as they are often confounded, the Gods ‘being deriu’d at furst | From heauenly and the one taken for the other’; and he praises The seedes of bounty soueraine’, for him the virtues exist Faerie Queene because Spenser has ‘formed right true transcendentally. As this nursery provides what vertues face herein’ (CV 2.3). The problem is noted Sidney calls ‘that idea or fore-conceit’ by which the in the opening cantos of the poem: in the argument poet’s skill is to be judged rather than by the poem to canto i, the Red Cross Knight is called ‘The itself, his effort as a poet is to plant its garden of Patrone of true Holinesse’, but he is so named only virtue in the minds of his readers so that they may after Archimago assumes his disguise. Then readers share his state of being ‘rauisht with rare thoughts are told – in fact, they are admonished – that ‘Saint delight’. Since ‘vertues seat is deepe within the mynd’, George himselfe ye would haue deemed him to be’ (ii however, he does not so much plant the virtues in 11.9), as even Una does. them as nurture what is already there. Today Spenser’s purpose may seem ideologically To spell out this point using the familiar Platonic innocuous but in his day those who called virtue vice, doctrine of anamnesis: while Spenser needed an exact and vice virtue, may well have regarded the poem knowledge of the virtues in order to write his poem, as subversive. But who were they? Most likely, the his readers need only to be reminded of what they pillars of society, such as Burghley (see IV proem already know (even today) but have largely forgotten 1.1–2n), theologians, such as John King who, in (especially today). What he finds deep within the 1597, complained that ‘instead of the writings of minds of his readers may be identified with the Moses and the prophets . . . now we have Arcadia, primary culture upon which his poem draws. It led and the Faëry Queene’ (cited Garrett 1996:139), him to use allegory, which, as Tuve cited by Roche and those religiously-minded for whom holiness 1964:30 explains, ‘is a method of reading in which meant professing correct doctrine; temperance we are made to think about things we already know’; meant life in a moral strait-jacket; chastity meant the and to use proverbs extensively, as Cincotta 1983 rejection of sexual love; friendship meant patriarchal explains, as a means to give authority to his poem. family ties; justice meant the justification of present Being primary, this culture is basic: simply expressed, authority; and courtesy meant the conduct of it is what we all know as human beings regardless of Elizabeth’s courtiers – in sum, those for whom virtue gender, race, religion, and class. It is what we just meant remaining subject to external law rather living know and have always known to be fair, right, and in the freedom of the gospel. just, both in our awareness of who we are and also Although generally Spenser overtly endorses the our relation to society and to some higher reality claims of noble blood, his poem values individual outside ourselves, both what it is and what it ought worth over social rank by ranking middle-class nur-

2014 ◽  
pp. 29-29

1968 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Walzer

Throughout much of the history of political thought in the West, the Bible was at once a constitutional document and a kind of case book, putatively setting limits to speculation as well as to conduct. Theologians and political theorists were forced to be judges interpreting a text or, more often, lawyers defending a particular interpretation before the constituted powers in church and state or before the less authoritative court of opinion. The Bible became, like other such texts, a dissociated collection of precedents, examples and citations, each of which meant what the lawyers and judges said it meant.


2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Rudolph ◽  
Roman Seidel

AbstractThe Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World. Drawing on Aristotle, various forms of the argument were appropriated by both rational Islamic Theology (kalām) and Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. Whereas the argument, reshaped, refined and modified, has been intensively discussed throughout the entire post-classical era, particularly in the Islamic East, it has likewise been adopted in the West by thinkers such as the Hebrew Polymath Maimonides and the Medieval Latin Philosopher and Theologian Thomas Aquinas. However, these mutual reception-processes did not end in the middle ages. They can be witnessed in the twentieth century and even up until today: On the one hand, we see a Middle Eastern thinker like the Iranian philosopher Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī re-evaluating Kant’s fundamental critique of the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence, in particular of the ontological proof, and refuting the critique. On the other hand, an argument from creation brought forward by the Islamic Theologian and critic of the peripatetic tradition al-Ghazāli has been adopted by a strand of Western philosophers who label their own version “The Kalām-cosmological Argument”. By discussing important cornerstones in the history of the philosophical proof for God’s existence we argue for a re-consideration of current Eurocentric narratives in the history of philosophy and suggest that such a transcultural perspective may also provide inspiration for current philosophical discourses between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.


2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-82
Author(s):  
Sean Noah Walsh

The aim of this article is to address the recently renewed debate pertaining to esotericism, secret messages encoded within writings from antiquity, especially in the writings of Plato. The question of esotericism has assumed a prominent role within debates concerning the history of political thought. Ever since Leo Strauss offered his suspicion that there were secrets ‘buried in the writings of the rhetoricians of antiquity’, the idea that philosophers deliberately concealed their true beliefs in a way that few could detect has been fiercely debated. More recently, the research of J.B. Kennedy has made international headlines for discovering a musical pattern embedded within Platonic writings, a pattern that Kennedy insists is evidence of Plato’s Pythagorean allegiance. The theses proffered by Strauss and Kennedy are empty doctrines of esotericism, or empty esotericisms. These doctrines insinuate the presence of secret or coded writing within Platonic dialogues but reveal no actual secret. These theses of esotericism falsely represent Plato as hyper-cryptic.Without actually providing substantive content, these notions of esotericism compel the reader to merely negate the exoteric writings of Plato, which actually render his already heterodox writings as commonplace and orthodox.


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