political science
Behnam Joodi
Abstract
The main focus of this article is a review of Spinoza and Politics by Etienne Balibar. Balibar's idea is that Spinoza's philosophy is essentially political. Balibar begins his study of Spinoza's philosophy with the argument that it cannot be understood as if it existed only on the transhistorical plane ...
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The main focus of this article is a review of Spinoza and Politics by Etienne Balibar. Balibar's idea is that Spinoza's philosophy is essentially political. Balibar begins his study of Spinoza's philosophy with the argument that it cannot be understood as if it existed only on the transhistorical plane of pure theory and that, on the contrary, each of his major works must be understood as an intervention in a specific political and philosophical conjuncture. For this reason, according to Balibar, it is impossible to separate Spinoza's metaphysics from his politics, as if the latter were an application of the former. Instead, Spinoza's philosophy must be seen as political in its eternity, even its most speculative utterances constitute responses to certain political imperatives and are tied to specific historical stakes. It can be said that Balibar was influenced by Althusser in his study of ideas and uses Althusser's term "conjoncture". Accordingly, while examining innovation, methodological features, and Balibar's interpretation of Spinoza, we will point out the mistake of Persian translators in translating the "conjuncture" (conjoncture).
political science
Behnam Joodi; Mohammad Yeganeh
Abstract
This article reviews the book Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements Written by Donatella Della Porta. Della Porta’s main question in this book is, "Can democracy be saved?” And his response is to “going beyond its liberal model, broadening reflection ...
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This article reviews the book Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements Written by Donatella Della Porta. Della Porta’s main question in this book is, "Can democracy be saved?” And his response is to “going beyond its liberal model, broadening reflection on participation and deliberation inside and outside institutions" through social movements. Della Porta's book is two books in one. The first part of the book deals with the normative discussion of the evolution of the concept of democracy from liberal to deliberative in the last two centuries. The second part is the practice of democracy by social movements in the contemporary world in light of the evolution of the Internet and social networks, which seeks to move from representative democracy to direct democracy. This book is a discussion of the New Left and radical democracy, which seeks to transition from representative democracy to deliberative democracy through social movements. Contemporary social movements, according to Della Porta, are no longer labor movements, unlike in the past, but include a wide range of people and have a high capacity for mobilization using new communication media.
political science
Behnam Joodi; Majid Tavassoli Roknabadi
Abstract
The main focus of this article is a review of Critique and Crisis, Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society by Reinhart Koselleck. Critique and Crisis was first published in German in 1959 and published in English in 1988 by The MIT Press. Koselleck’s book attempts to explain the Utopian ...
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The main focus of this article is a review of Critique and Crisis, Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society by Reinhart Koselleck. Critique and Crisis was first published in German in 1959 and published in English in 1988 by The MIT Press. Koselleck’s book attempts to explain the Utopian ideas of the twentieth century by looking at their origins in the eighteenth. The main idea of Critique and Crisis is that the Enlightenment itself became Utopian and even hypocritical because-as far as continental Europe was concerned-it saw itself excluded from political power-sharing. The structure of Absolutism, which was rooted in the dichotomy between sovereign and subject, between public policy and private morality, prevented the Enlightenment and the emancipation movement produced by it from seeing itself as a political phenomenon. Instead the Enlightenment developed patterns of thought and behaviour which, at the latest from 1789 onwards, foundered on the rocks of the concrete political challenges that arose. The Enlightenment succumbed to a Utopian image which, while deceptively propelling it, helped to produce contradictions that could not be resolved in practice and prepared the way for the Terror and for dictatorship. The main idea of Koselleck’s book seems to be based on the idea of Carl Schmitt in The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, which he explains and expand in this book. Koselleck’s critique and its historical entwinement with twentieth-century totalitarianism is a biased or willfully selective picture.
