Research in Theoretical Politics
Year:2017 | Volume:NEW | Issue:21|Papers Count:9

What is necessary to understand the procreation of Greek political thought and it's flourishing and development in the fourth century BC, is contemplating on "polis" category and its place in the concrete life of ancient Greeks. We will take into account, Plato and Aristotle’s attempts as prototypes of the classical political philosophy in the course of discussing polis and its implications, and thereby try to articulate arguments in favor of principal thesis in which Plato' s political philosophy and Aristotle's one, in spite of some individual inconsistencies in political thought-those related to their distinct metaphysics- but at the end of the day, they should be considered as a polis-oriented thinking. In the other words, by analyzing Greek political philosophy from a general point of view, sometimes we can grasp some insights that sometimes diminished under the haphazard and detailed commentaries. Perhaps we can exploit this phrase so that "agreement between the ideas of the two philosophers" is more plausible from Greek political thought’s individual elements point of view than metaphysical one. In this article through the extension of this study to the philosophers’ works of Greek period, We attempt to show that polis-based thinking as a dominant pattern in the contemplating on "the political" affairs, have been survived in the mental world of the Greek philosophers, even at the period of Hellenism in which the actual context of its premier procreation had been perished.

Although Socrates did not write a word and just sufficed to oral instruction during his life, Plato is considered among the best authors and literarians… through writings his different pieces of works. Plato spent most of his life on writing continuously and death was the only thing that stopped him. The result of this long period of writing is a collection of works with various topics and titles including defining moral virtues like Religiousness and courage and self-control to philosophical arguments about the universe, law and the government. Even though his works’ chronological order is not clear, Plato has written a lot of works about all these various topics. For instance, with regard to politics and governing, he also has written ' Republic", ' statesman', and ' Laws'. This collection with such a variety has made its understanding a bit complicated from some respects that this complicacy has led to some misunderstandings of Plato's thoughts. To avoid such misunderstandings requires one how to read and deal with them. Due to differences in the method of interpretation and dealing with text and subject of the classic period with the contemporary issues and problems, before discussing Plato's thoughts, this paper tries to focus on reading and dealing of Plato's works. Meanwhile, this study seeks a way to read Plato's works through investigating his writing style, complicacy and multi-dimensionality of his texts, viewing the artistic atmosphere of cities in Greece, using myth and allegory and showing the effects of socio-political status. The requirements of such interpretation shows in understanding Plato’s works, Questionable and hermeneutic dealing with texts can works, rather than having Strauss's esotericism.

Studies show that there is a significant relationship between political participation of individuals and their social class. In other words, a similar behavior pattern can be seen regarding political participation among individuals belonging to a special social class that can be extended to all of this class. Here in urban middle class, knowing political behavior and the kind of its political participation based on this class’ significance in urban democratic class is very important, because of the importance of this class in modern democratic systems. Iranian urban middle class has played an important role in important historical intervals and in political and social events especially after constitution revolution. In this essay, it is cleared through the political participation of middle class that high political consciousness among the middle class along with high education and their high job position has been led to reducing political participation and shaping political discontent among the members of the middle class. The findings of this research show that the main problem of middle class is the political problem. In fact, Iranian new middle class feels the most inability and incapacity in the politics due to its fairly appropriate economic status.

Ethnic conflict and its related factors is one of the social sciences’ main research areas, especially in the recent decades. Ethnic conflict revolutions’ parallelism with transition process to democratization, especially after 2th half of 20th century, make political sociology of ethnic conflicts focus on this scientific scope that what requirements and circumstances can be provided by transition of democracy for revolution of ethical conflicts. The main question is, whether democratization transition and its process, inevitably is concomitant with ethnical conflicts or transition process can provide an opportunity that prevents ethnical conflicts through the promotion of political negotiations in innovative democratic governments? Regarding lack of theoretical researches in this scope, using qualitative analysis, we studied the conditions through which, democratization transition provides a background both for ethnical conflicts’ moderation and also exacerbation. Institutional strategies that prevent ethnical conflicts, ethnic conflicts and democratic processes’ flourishing and authoritarian regimes’ typology across ethnic variation are the present study’s other interesting areas that have been investigated.

Theories of justice are bound to look at the future when it comes to outline the requirements of justice. Intergenerational concerns that have been aggravated by environmental problems and natural resource depletion have brought out new issues including the realm, pattern, and criterion of intergenerational justice. Although Dworkin has not discussed independently about intergenerational justice, the theory of equality in resources, providing uniform images of values of human societies such as justice, has the capability to respond to these issues. The principles of independence and Interpretation of values, together with the specific interpretation of rights, make it possible provide the theory of intergenerational equality of resources using the deconstruction method. This theory is individualistic considering all future generations along with preserving the human dignity of everyone. This goal is achieved by observing the two principles: first, it must show equal concern for the fate of every person throughout the ages. Second, it must respect equally the personal responsibilities of each person towards their lives.

Mutual relations between people and political system and also factors, political effects and functions of this interaction, are one of the most important discussions in field of political society, obviously political socialization. The arrival of information Technology (IT) into the new world, affected all the structures and aspects of human life. Following these effects, the flow of the formation of political socialization and its elements changed, which has been examined as the focal point in this paper. On the one hand, the performance process of institutions such as family, peer group, mass media, education and the government which have the political reproductivity role and from the other hand the process Information Technology influence on the pattern of political socialization and consolidation of values in political behaviors of people and its consequences, are the subjective goals of this paper. Findings of this study, which have been presented through documentary method in the framework of an analytic model, shows that through two raising mechanisms of individuals political awareness and civil involvement Information Technology, imposes its political effects on political socialization process within the framework of political culture of the society.

This paper aims to examine the question of how we can respect multiculturalism and at the same time defend the rights of the individuals against ethnic minorities and cultural groups? In response to the question, we examined Rawls's strategy mentioned in his book of "political liberalism" emphasizing on the separation of rationality from reasonableness. But at the end it becomes clear that Rawls' s definition of reasonableness is extremely strict and restrictive, and in spite of the distinguishing rationality and reasonableness can be a good basis for tolerance in multicultural societies, but this definition is highly detrimental to this goal. This research has exploited interpretive approach, conceptual analysis and critical assessment as the theoretical strategies and based on this fact, it deals with the issue of cultural diversity as a context of forming the subject introduction and also considering Rawls's theory of justice as background in which the idea of reasonableness and rationality was born and grown.

Baruch Benedict Spinoza’s theoretical constellation formulates a theory of right and law that prepares bases for his special rationalism and humanism that is specific to republican political philosophy. This philosophy of right and law relies on metaphysics of power and prefigures the “Multitude” and the “Commune”. This philosophy of right and law is one of the many unique aspects of Spinoza`s practical philosophy. Spinoza`s theory of right as articulated in his political essays Ethica and Tractatus Politicus is as following: The more right extends, the more power extends and since society or commune produces more power, it produces more right. This unique aspect of practical philosophy of Spinoza relies on some aspects of old theory of right and law. In other words, the right and law theory of Spinoza can be considered one of Spinoza’s bonds with old traditions. The right and law Spinoza theory relies on “power” and considers “Multitude” and “Commune”.