Essays

PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHY OF POLITICS

Zvonko Posavec ; HAZU, Strossmayerov trg 14, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

Philosophy of politics is currently going through an extremely grave crisis.
The crisis of the political is apparent everywhere. Political interpretation in
the conditions of the contemporary age is seriously shaken. This in turn brings
into question the segment of society which is an essential part of the cultural
identity of the West. One might say that, throughout the 20th century, no one
inquired into the position of politics as thoroughly as Hannah Arendt. Her major
contribution had to do with understanding the relation between philosophy
and the application of its principles in politics, and her basic estimation was
that the application of principles of philosophical thought on politics had devastating
consequences. Although philosophy as metaphysics, since Plato and
Hegel, contributed greatly to consideration of the political, Hannah Arendt
was nonetheless of the opinion that the original sense of the political was
lost in such philosophy and that the application of principles of philosophical
thought on politics caused the political to be forgotten. The text provides a
brief outline of Plato’s perception of the relation between philosophy and politics,
postulating the philosophical ideal that the veritable political community
(polis) must be measured according to philosophical thought, and on the basis
of principles of constitution of thought itself. On the other hand, Aristotle
calls upon the ethos of the existing polis, but he always analyses the political
under the primacy of philosophical principles. Arendt thus deems that Aristotle
also considers the relevant knowledge of the political to be philosophical.
She points out that political philosophy always discriminated against opinion
and variety, and consequently also against the political as such. Aristotle and
Kant are partly excluded from this judgment. Since the political categories
created in the philosophy of politics determine our understanding of politics
to this day, Arendt subjects them to criticism. Her different understanding of
the political is manifest in her analyses of the fundamental political categories
(government, power, force, authority, freedom), which can be adequately
grasped only on the basis of relations between people, and not of some substantial
and unquestionable domain.

Keywords

philosophy; politics; philosophy of politics; Plato; Aristotle; H. Arendt

Hrčak ID:

81907

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/81907

Publication date:

14.5.2012.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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