Suchergebnisse

This article brings to bear contemporary discussions on Machiavelli and republicanism on Kharkhordin's discussion of Russian republicanism and autocracy and its reception of models from Venice and Byzantium.

Much of the secondary literature about machiavellian religion is circumscribed to Christian and Roman religions, omitting from consideration the Florentine and Italian reception of other non-Christian monotheisms (be they pagan or semitic), the reception of Arabic and Jewish medieval political philosophy (viz. prophetology), as well as the new Platonism brought to Renaissance Italy by the so-called «diaspora» of Byzantine philosophers. If one takes into account these other contexts, then it becomes increasingly harder not to acknowledge that the culture of Ficino's, Savonarola's and Machiavelli's Florence was deeply affected by knowledge of what is called «ancient theology» as well as of Jewish and Arabic «prophetology, especially by the Alfarabi´s works. In this text, I argue that the conjunction of «ancient theology» and «prophetology», which took place in Florence in the decades prior to the start of Machiavelli's writing career, sheds new light on his conception of civil religion, that is articulated by a retrieval of the model of the Hebrew Republic and of Mosaic prophecy. ; Hasta ahora gran parte de la literatura crítica sobre la cuestión de la religión en Maquiavelo ha limitado su atención a las religiones romana y cristiana, sin haber considerado la recepción italiana y florentina de otros monoteísmos no cristianos (ya sean semitas o paganos), la filosofía política medieval árabe y judía (es decir, la profetología), o el nuevo platonismo que fuera introducido en la Italia renacentista por la llamada «diáspora» de los filósofos bizantinos. Una vez que se tienen en cuenta todos estos elementos se hace muy difícil no reconocer que la cultura florentina que albergó a Ficino, Pico, Savonarola y Maquiavelo se vio profundamente influenciada, como analizamos en el presente trabajo, tanto por la recepción de lo que se conoce como «teología antigua» (prisca theologia) como también por la «profetología» árabe y judía, especialmente en la obra de Alfarabi. En el presente texto sostengo por tanto que el análisis de la estrecha relación entre la «teología antigua» y la «profetología» que tuvo lugar en Florencia décadas antes de que Maquiavelo compusiera su obra nos permite comprender mejor la concepción maquiaveliana de la religión civil, que estaría fuertemente condicionada por una interpretación de la república romana desde la perspectiva de la república hebrea y la profecía mosaica.

AbstractThe aim of this article is to give a new reconstruction of the conception of human dignity as a pre-associative yet legal status. Such a legal conception of human dignity carries a universal legal obligation to respect the "innate" right to independence and enables us to move beyond the impasse between moral and political views of human rights. The argument has a normative and a genealogical component. The normative component shows why a legal conception of human rights is grounded on the Kantian idea of an innate legal right to independence, as well as showing that Kant adopted a legal status concept of human dignity. The genealogical component shows that the conception of human dignity as legal status undergoes a transvaluation from its ancient aristocratic to its modern democratic meaning in Dante's political thought, which is itself rooted in the western reception of Arabic philosophy, in particular political Averroism. By contrast to the Christian elaboration of dignity, the Averroist genealogy of dignity better describes the modern pursuit of an ideal of worldly happiness essentially linked with the collective attainment of public happiness through the unrestricted public use of reason facilitated by republican constitutions crowned by human rights.