Garbės idėja kaip prieiga demokratijai suprasti. XVIII-XIX a. politinės filosofijos perspektyva ; The Idea of Honor as a Means to Understand Democracy. The Perspective of XVIII-XIX Century Political Philosophy

Abstract

The purpose of the doctoral dissertation "The Idea of Honor as a Means to Understand Democracy. The Perspective of XVIII-XIX Century Political Philosophy" is to present the notion of honor as a relevant idea for political philosophy and to prove the necessity of the idea of honor for understanding modern representative democracy. It is claimed that the idea of honor helps to analytically identify and understand two fundamental inner structural contradictions of modern democracy: 1. between the democratic idea of equality and the concept of a political regime; 2. between the model of representative government applied by modern democracies and the principle of political hierarchy that is crucial for political representation to work. Philosophical conceptualization of honor in terms of a political idea is made possible by referring to the democratic and monarchist political theories of XVIII-XIX century. The paper claims that honor serves as an analytical tool to understand both intrinsic tensions of modern democracy, as well as to justify the necessary conditions for political representation to work.