Politics and Religion: Luther's Simplistic Imperative

1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheldon S. Wolin
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Natural Scientist ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Intellect

The encounter between the human mind and the outside world is the essence of speculation. The dramatic element in the encounter has been provided by man's assertion that mind is capable of comprehending and ordering the world about him. This same “epistemological presumptuousness,” which we associate instinctively with the spectacular successes of the natural sciences, has also been implicit in the enterprise of political theory. Here, too, the claim is that the human intellect can understand all of the complex interrelationships of a political order. In some ways this claim is even more assertive than that of the natural scientist. The theorist seeks not only to analyze and explain certain phenomena, but to prescribe more satisfactory patterns.Given the complexity of the subject matter of politics and the finite character of the human mind, it is not surprising that the ideas of political theorists lend themselves to diverse interpretations at the hands of later commentators. Disagreement in interpretation, however, can take one of two forms: it may turn on a question concerning a particular idea, meaning, or emphasis; or it may find the interpreters taking diametrically opposed positions concerning the basic tendency of a given set of political ideas.

scholarly journals MEREFLEKSIKAN TUHAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF METAFISIKA, DAN RELEVASINYA BAGI MULTIKULTURALISME INDONESIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Agustinus Wisnu Dewantara
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Analogical Approach ◽  
Human Intellect ◽  
The Relationship

Talking about God can not be separated from the activity of human thought. Activity is the heart of metaphysics. Searching religious authenticity tends to lead to a leap in harsh encounter with other religions. This interfaith encounter harsh posed a dilemma. Why? Because on the one hand religion is the peacemaker, but on the other hand it’s has of encouraging conflict and even violence. Understanding God is not quite done only by understanding the religion dogma, but to understand God rationally it is needed. It is true that humans understand the world according to his own ego, but it is not simultaneously affirm that God is only a projection of the human mind. Humans understand things outside of himself because no awareness of it. On this side of metaphysics finds itself. Analogical approach allows humans to approach and express God metaphysically. Human clearly can not express the reality of the divine in human language, but with the human intellect is able to reflect something about the relationship with God. Analogy allows humans to enter the metaphysical discussion about God. People who are at this point should come to the understanding that God is the Same One More From My mind, The Impossible is defined, the Supreme Mystery, and infinitely far above any human thoughts.

Two Currents in Contemporary English Political Theory

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 487-495
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Peardon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Self ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The World ◽  
Eric Voegelin

There is widespread discontent today with the state of English political theory. This does not seem to have been so a generation ago. In 1915, Ernest Barker certainly revealed uneasiness about some intellectual tendencies of the time, but his overriding belief was that the new psychology and the new awareness of the personality of groups within society would enrich thinking in the long run. Ten years later, Lewis Rockow was distinctly optimistic at the end of his Contemporary English Political Thought. Having surveyed the first quarter of this century, he was impressed by “the richness of the contemporary mind” and the boldness of its political speculation. How different is the self-judgment of our own day. “In the present generation,” declared Professor Catlin in 1952, “England is in a poorer way as a fount of political ideas than she has been for centuries.” There were only a few men—Laski, Barker, Oakeshott, E. H. Carr—whom he would put in a high category, while apart from them he went on to say, “a drear darkness has fallen on British political theory which was so bright.” A little later, and speaking of the world in general rather than of England alone, Professor Cobban lamented “a general tendency to cease thinking about society in terms of political theory.” He could find no original thought since the eighteenth century and concluded that the idea of democracy had become a mere shibboleth—and not even a serviceable one, since all camps used it. He felt that the study of politics had taken a wrong turn, being corrupted by a neglect of the moral element, by an indifference to the practical problems besetting men, and by a deep pessimism about the possibility of resolving the dilemma between “moral man and immoral society.” Eric Voegelin seems at first to strike a more cheerful note when he speaks of “the revival, not to say the outburst, of political philosophy at Oxford in recent years,” but his article is critical of some of its tendencies and even goes so far at one point as to refer to its “distressing state.”

scholarly journals The phenomenon of human alienation: socio-ontological aspect

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Kirill Prozumentik
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Fundamental Ontology ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject

This article is dedicated to one of the key problems of social philosophy – the phenomenon of human alienation. The subject of this research is the ontological grounds of alienation. The goal consists in determination of the existential foundation of alienation as a complicated socio-ontological phenomenon, as well as differentiation of the narrow and broad sense of the concept of “alienation”. In the narrow sense, alienation implies the process, when the products of human activity and activity itself obtain the status of autonomous agents opposing to human. In a broad sense, alienation is interpreted as an ontological distinction within the structure of being. For revealing the ontological grounds of alienation, the author attracts and reconsiders the ideological arsenal of philosophical anthropology, fundamental ontology, existentialism, personalism, Marxism, and post-phenomenology. The ontological interpretation allows comprehending the anthropogenesis, historical development of human, and evolution of human mind in the context of the terms of alienation. Thus, the first is interpreted as a self-alienation of the world; the second – as alienation of human from himself; and the third – as an ideal of appeal of the world towards itself, realized through human spiritual activity. All elements of the triad form an ontological basis doe alienation in the narrow sense.

Auslagerung des Intellekts

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Christina Vagt
Keyword(s):  
Technological Complex ◽  
Alternative Facts ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Machine Systems ◽  
Matters Of Concern ◽  
Human Intellect ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Insight Into

Worum geht es in den aktuellen Vorwürfen, die Postmoderne hätte den aktuellen populistischen Diskurs um alternative Fakten vorbereitet? Ausgehend von Latours Elend der Kritik diskutiert der Artikel die Genealogie von Wahrheits- und Evidenzkritik vor und nach den Anfängen des Computers. Dabei lässt sich zeigen, dass vor aller Wahrheits- und Evidenzkritik zunächst ein Misstrauen in den menschlichen Intellekt steht, welches in den frühen Entwürfen künstlicher Intelligenz und der Auslagerung des Intellekts in lernende Maschinensysteme ein vermeintliches Ende findet. Nicht zufällig ruft Herbert A. Simon 1969 in seinem Standardwerk The Sciences of the Artifical Arthur Schopenhauers Welt als Wille und Vorstellung auf, wenn er schreibt, dass die Welt viel mehr eine künstliche, vorgestellte als eine natürliche sei. Anders als im 19. Jahrhundert verspricht jedoch nun die Computersimulation Einsichten in bisher unzureichend verstandene Komplexitäten menschlichen Verhaltens. Das Resultat dieser maschinellen Kritik ist ein ökonomisch-technologischer Komplex, in dem Rationalität nicht mehr als Funktion des Subjektes, sondern als Funktion der Maschine interpretiert und das Politische auf die Ebene des Affektiven reduziert wird. What is really behind the recent accusations of postmodernism being responsible for preparing the current populistic argument about alternative facts? Based on Bruno Latour’s »Why has Critique Run out of Steak? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern«, this article discusses the genealogy of truth- and evidentness critique before and after the beginnings of the computer. This will lead to the realization that before all critique concerning truth and evidentness there is already a distrust in the human intellect which comes to an alleged end in the early drafts of artificial intelligence as well as in the outsourcing of intellect into adaptive machine-systems. It is not by accident that Herbert A. Simon refers to Arthur Schopenhauer’s Welt als Wille und Vorstellung in his standard reference work The Sciences of the Artificial from 1969 when he states that the world resembles more of an artificial, imagined one than a natural. Different from the 19th century, the computer simulation these days promises insight into the complexities of human behaviour that have until now been understood only incompletely and insufficiently. The result of machine-based critique is an economic-technological complex in which rationality is no longer interpreted as the function of the subject but as the function of the machine, while politics is reduced to the level of affect

American Political Thought and the Study of Politics

1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theory Lead

The title of this essay poses not one vexing issue but two, and each of them sharply challenges the student of American political thought. The first might be called the common problem of political theory—the question of its relevance to the institutional facts of life. How, it is asked, can the analysis of political ideas help to illuminate our understanding of political action? Can theory lead us to a surer knowledge of why governments and electorates behave as they do? Can it help us to diagnose and prescribe? Or is the study of theory, on the contrary, justified simply on the ground that the words of Plato and Hobbes and Locke are part of what Matthew Arnold called culture: “the best that has been thought or known in the world”? This is, I take it, a problem universal among students of political thought, whether they choose America, Europe, or China as their realm; and it lends itself to no easy answers.

scholarly journals MEREFLEKSIKAN TUHAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF METAFISIKA, DAN RELEVANSINYA BAGI MULTIKULTURALISME INDONESIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustinus Dewantara
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Dogma ◽  
The One ◽  
Analogical Approach ◽  
Human Intellect ◽  
The Relationship

Talking about God can not be separated from the activity of human thought. Activity is the heart of metaphysics. Searching religious authenticity tends to lead to a leap in harsh encounter with other religions. This interfaith encounter harsh posed a dilemma. Why? Because on the one hand religion is the peacemaker, but on the other hand it’s has of encouraging conflict and even violence. Understanding God is not quite done only by understanding the religious dogma, but to understand God rationally it is needed. It is true that humans understand the world according to his own ego, but it is not simultaneously affirm that God is only a projection of the human mind. Humans understand things outside of himself because no awareness of it. On this side of metaphysics finds itself. Analogical approach allows humans to approach and express God metaphysically. Humans clearly can not express the reality of the divine in human language, but with the human intellect is able to reflect something about the relationship with God. Analogy allows humans to enter the metaphysical discussion about God. People who are at this point should come to the understanding that God is the Same One More From My mind, The Impossible is defined, the Supreme Mystery, and infinitely far above any human thoughts.

scholarly journals ANTI-SOFT POWER IN POLITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-71
Author(s):  
A. Fenenko
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
World Order ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Thus, the present article aims at answering the question whether there exists an anti-soft power, both as ideology and practice, which could be efficient enough for the state to protect itself from the impact of external informational and cultural influence. The theory of soft power is based on the idea that its object accepts normative subordination. Consequently, such object should not pursue major political ambitions, should be ready to collaborate within the established world order and, above all, agree with superiority of the world leaders and the rules they impose. Anti-soft power is different. The core idea is that its holder is not willing to comply with the opponent’s superiority as well as its rules of the game. The subject of anti-soft power is politically ambitious and never recognizes its dependence or inferiority. Regardless of being strong or weak, it will not admit its junior or secondary position in a community. We saw a few such subjects during the era of globalization. However, the globalization crisis may change the situation and thus give rise to a new political trend, that is the resurgence of anti-soft power. The article states that anti-soft power has repeatedly blocked the attempts of one country to influence another country. In the course of history, we can single out three main types of policy: 1) the policy based on supremacism, or chauvinism; 2) the policy based on ideological alternatives; 3) the policy based on segment restrictions of the oppo nent’s soft power. Each of these, though, can bring its subjects both political benefits and unwanted costs.

scholarly journals Introductory remarks

1979 ◽  
Vol 293 (1402) ◽  
pp. 211-211
Keyword(s):  
Light Scattering ◽  
Light Field ◽  
Structure And Properties ◽  
Sense Organs ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Valuable Book ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Wide Experience ◽  
The Many

The subject of light scattering can hardly fail to be of interest to a body of scientists since the eye is the most delicate of our sense organs, but we shall not on this occasion be concerned so much with direct visual experiences as with the evidence concerning the objects of our study obtained from elaborately planned experiments and by the use of highly developed apparatus. Of the many possible ways in which the field might have been divided, it seemed to the organizers that there was a useful distinction to be made between the structure and properties of the scattering objects, which will be our theme on the first day, and the interactions and dynamics, to which we shall turn on the second. I should make it clear at the outset that these terms relate to what can be discovered by the process of light scattering about the objects themselves. The interaction of the light field with the scattering objects is another matter. I have no doubt that our speakers in both sessions will touch upon this from time to time, but some recently studied aspects of this particular interaction will form the subject of Dr Cohen-Tannoudji’s paper. It is a matter of great regret to all of us that Academician Fabelinskii, whom we had invited to give the opening scientific address to this meeting, found himself unable to accept our invitation for reasons beyond his control. Many of us would have wished to thank him personally for having made available to the world of science his wide experience and knowledge by the publication, some ten years ago, of that most valuable book which is to be found on many of our shelves: we were looking forward to hearing of his more recent work. We are indeed sorry that he is unable to be with us.

scholarly journals Трансформация культурных ценностей в России. Зарисовка проблематики

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 35-49
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Mazuś
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The transformation of cultural values in Russia. An outline of the issue of culture in the broadest sense of the world is the entirety of various manifestations of human life. Therefore it is one of the most commonly used concepts in humanistic works. One can refer to culture by raising a number of topics – arts, literature and human mind. When there is a need for a precise definition of culture, certain problems occur. Polish scholar Bronisław Malinowski points out that culture can be understood as human activity in general, including ideas, religious and spiritual issues, art, literature, and politics. Such an approach to culture can lead to the neglection of the historical process. The subject of the present study are selected religious pieces from the period of tsar Peter I.Key words: Russia; Peter I; history vs. literature; Eastern Orthodox Church;

Meindert Fennema: Political Theory in Polder Perspective

2001 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-804
Author(s):  
Dante Germino
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eric Voegelin ◽  
The University

The polder—a strip of land redeemed from the sea—is a symbol in the Dutch collective consciousness for the successful struggle against threatening inundations. Implicit in this struggle is the idea of strong civic communities, because cooperation is mandatory in the building of dikes to keep out the water. It is therefore appropriate to describe the work of Meindert Fennema currently one of the Netherland's leading political theorists, as a view of political reality from the perspective of the polder. This is not meant in a provincial sense, however, for the polder is a form of shelter and as Eric Voegelin wrote in the Introduction to his long unpublished notes on the “History of Political Ideas,” “the function proper of [political] order is the creation of a shelter in which a man may give to his life a semblance of meaning.” “Political Theory in Polder Perspective“ is therefore a fitting title for this review article on the work of the contemporary Dutch political theorist, Meindert Fennema, longtime member of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam.

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