Research in Theoretical Politics
Year:2011 | Volume:- | Issue:9|Papers Count:8

The present article is an attempt to depict three types of government establishment in the process of political philosophy, based on technology, i.e., the field of practical thought and unconscious capability. Government establishment is to adjust communal behavior of humans in a political affair in an acceptable way, to reduce possible threats from it and to increase the occurrence of benefit, joy, and pleasure. Accordingly, the three ideal types of political consciousness-metaphysics, physics, and information- form three eras. The present article studies the process of theoretical and practical politics as its negative and positive aspects, and introduces the theory of chance studying crises and transitions. It discusses what different types of government establishment are. Is any regularity in them when the history of political philosophy is involved? What is the realization of government establishment in three eras of consciousness? The purpose here is to offer government establishment in an unbiased theory, which can move from its state as a negative constituent in the era of information to cover all the area of political thought.

After the triumph of Islamic Revolution in Iran, scholars in the fields of religion and politics faced many new issues in the areas of politics and interpreting religious texts. Among them Mohammad Mojtehed Shabestari and Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi dealt with religious texts either using traditional ways or hermeneutical ones. Having different methods, tendencies and intensions, they offered to interpretations of religious texts and issues like freedom. Using Quentin Skinner’s methodology of intentional hermeneutics, the authors of the present article try to clarify the main cause of the difference in their political views and its effect on their political views on issues like freedom. Shabestari, taking interpretative and hermeneutical method, with the purpose of preserving fate and human aspect of the believers, interprets religion in a way that can accept freedom and open socio-political conditions with tolerance. Mesbah, focusing on traditional jurisprudential ways, with the purpose of preserving the status of religion in political and social affairs as he believes that religion has perfect and comprehensive teachings and instructions for humans in achieving transcendental goals, limits human freedom and denies liberal social and political conditions.

One major claim of liberalism in the latter half of the twentieth century was that it can be considered as a normative system due to value-based pluralism, a concept of its. The first scholar to introduce this in terms of a systematic thought was the English political philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin. Defining liberalism as a school placing negative freedom on top of value hierarchy, he argues that liberalism is inferable from the principles of value pluralism. He tries to confirm a logical entailment between value pluralism and preference of negative freedom in three ways, including, giving importance to having choice, opposition to utopia, and belief in existence of universal values. We will see how these ways fail to confirm such an entailment. The article discusses the possibility of inferring any value preference from the above mentioned relying on its anti-rationalist feature and decision making patterns.

This article tries to cast a new light on the political implications of Saint Augustine’s City of God. Considering Peter Burnell views as in his “the status of politics in St. Augustine’s city of god”, we will show that in Augustine’s theology there is no room to discuss “politics” as an autonomous subject. For him, politics is a matter of worldly and post Descent status. At best, politics in can be a means of maintaining peace and security at this temporal world, and as an abode for the pilgrims of “the City of God”. Though man is naturally considered as a“social being” in Augustine’s thought, he believes this feature has been faded at the result of “politicization” which has been imposed on him by his post Descent condition. So Augustine, completely detaching from Greek tradition of political philosophy and denying of civic relations, depicts his own city of God in non-corporeal utopia.

The current upheavals suggest that nation-state has lost its functional tenability; that is because the supposed basic functions of such systems that were maintenance of ideology, economics, culture, and so on at the national level are facing crises.Nation-state can no longer fully implement their political ideals at national areas. In the functionalist approach, the existence of institutions depends on their functions, so with no place for their functions, the survival of nation-state will be unintelligible.The principle objective of this paper is to study a possible future of nation-states and their successors. The method of the study is reasoning. The results of this paper include two important points: the development of statehood and the formation of global political order based on democracy.

Portraying different approaches towards contemporary international relations which attempt to study the structures of its present order and depict the future horizon, this paper poses the main questions of what the current structure of international system and its dominant order is, and what approaches best explain the prospect of the future: liberalism, unipolar system, clash of civilizations, jihad against new colonialism, or anarchism. Can any of these systems explain future scenarios by itself or they are just parts of the paradigm of current world system when put together may provide answers to the question? The main idea of the article is that any discourse about world order has to cover four aspects: political and military balance of power, strengthening international institutions and global sovereignty, emphasis on shared human values, and explaining the structure of world political economy and finance production and distribution.

Regionalism has been one of the main topics of social science, comparative politics, international economy, international relations, and international political economy in the last two decades. There is no consensus about its meaning among scholars. It is often considered as integration in international politics.Perhaps one of its reasons is the more objectivity of it in the regional level.Sometimes regionalisms perceived as intergovernmental, and increased cooperation of different states. The main question of this essay is “what are the causes of development of regionalism theory? ”; the assumption of the authors is that intra and supra theoretical factors have lead to changes in these theories.