Suchergebnisse

The author analyses Arendt's attempt at a rehabilitation of political thinking. He describes the influence of Greek and Roman practical philosophy on Arendt as well as her distancing from Martin Heidegger as a non-political thinker. In the end, the author offers an insight into the failure of the Western metaphysics of the political when confronted with the factuality of a specific political life. (SOI : SOEU: S. 65)

The author outlines the modern universalistic theories which assume the natural and historical unity of humankind and, using this as a starting point, predict a cosmopolitan and Eurocentric outcome of world history. Contrary to these universalistic theories, the contemporary globalist theories, the author claims, are pluralistic and multicultural and thus paradigmatically different from the panoptical theories of classic modernism. (SOI : PM: S. 100)

Due to the increasing globalization and the danger of reducing all beings to things, it is central to point out again and again that a human being is not a thing among other things, and that the appreciation and realization of their life requires nurturing and cultivating the variety of human knowledge pertinent to different spheres of the historical world of life. Thus, the relevance and the role of practical philosophy is gaining significance regarding the - to the historical Being - proper understanding and fulfilIment of human potentials in today's world. (SOI : PM: S. 25) + The author first defines the various facets of globalization in today's world and emphasizes the key changes that are stepping up and intensifying communication among peoples, nations, and cultures all over the world. However, parallel to this there are other pressing problems: from the ecological crisis, to the realization of human rights, to the anomie of life and work. All this proves that globalization is not only an economic and technical but, ultimately, practically an ethic/political issue. Along the lines of Hegel's philosophy of world history and Aristotle's practical philosophy, the author has come to view the contemporary globalization as a step forward of world civilization, i.e. as a possibility of the realization of freedom and good life. Globalization, of course, scares people with its unpredictability and the erratic development of "global society" which (in line with Beck's distinction between the First and the Second Modernism) today is represented as a society of nation-states on the one hand, and as a "global society of transnational actors" on the other

The author analyzes two famous critiques of the bourgeois state: Marx's thesis on the withering away of the state as an instrument of force of the economicall dominant bourgeois class which, by means of the quasi-neutral state as the higher third instance controls the the class antagonisms whose disappearance will make the state as an instrument of repression obsolete; and Carl Schmitt's thesis that the state will become unnecessary in the world in which there are no longer any enemies, only offenders who violate humanistic norms and human rights. (SOI : PM: S. 68)

The study is a contribution to the discussion on the definition of war in modern era and focuses on contemporary debates. By exploring the essence of politics and nation, in line with Carl Schmitt's theory of politics and by taking into consideration the forms of national liberation wars, the author points to the inadequacy of von Clausewitz's instrumental/political definition of war and lists most critical remarks to this theory. The author describes other theories, such as the pure war theory (war separated from politics) and the existential war theory (a political entity is being shaped and coming into being). Then he systematically lays out the modern concept of the nation and the corresponding definition of war. In defining wars, the author relies on the modern philosophy of the subject, particularly by G.W.F. Hegel, and on Scheler's theory of nation and war. Finally, the study shows that international relations are still to a large extent determined by the nationally-based politics, and that contemporary wars include many features of international and national-liberation wars. (SOI : SOEU: S. 78)