Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31823/d.25.3.4
The Metaphysical Orientation towards the Other as the Foundation of the Political Idea of Community
Goran Sunajko
; The Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography, Zagreb, Croatia
Ratko Podvorac
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of metaphysics for the questions of good and friendship as preconditions for the social and political community. It is obvious that the idea of friendship today is seriously impaired by interest and egoistic postulates based on material existence, therefore, it is necessary to put the question on
existence into its metaphysical frameworks of orientation towards the Other, which is the fundamental substratum of Christian metaphysics based on Plato’s and Aristotle’s postulates. The paper will focus on Plato’s, Aristotle’s, Augustine’s and Thomas’ insights which open up the possibility of thinking of the Other as a precondition of a philosophy
and politics of friendship. The aim of the paper is only to indicate some relationships that connect the metaphysical and political insights about the importance of the idea of good and friendship as a precondition of openness to others and thus the possibility of achieving any form of community.
Keywords
Plato; Aristotle; Augustine; Thomas Aquinas; good; friendship; egoism; political community
Hrčak ID:
186521
URI
Publication date:
18.9.2017.
Visits: 1.502 *