Roots of Western Political Thought PDF

1 Chapter 1: Roots of Western Political A penetration of Asia and Africa lasted - Japan embraced some western Thought....

1 Chapter 1: Roots of Western Political A penetration of Asia and Africa lasted - Japan embraced some western Thought. for several Centuries; ways with a zeal not seen in the - Egypt for example, was a christian original projector of the country. 20th century has been one of country before the advent of islam. tremendous change. - But it was in Europe that Less than 300 years old, the United States - Politically greco-judeo-christian civilization is now the center of civilization in terms of - Economically thrived. economics, politics, culture and military - Historically - Spain and Portugal created a new powers. (Echos kaya lahat tungkol na - Environmentally world in south and central america america even our constitutions) Year 2000 - England transplanted language, customs, law and religion to North Antiquity; Athen, Jerusalem and Rome Primary Guarding force in this century America and Australia. have the leading points. is one of the ideologies of the western - The French create their own - During the Dark Ages, Byzantium tradition; civilization in “Quebec” (not Rome) was the most important Western century is one of the 20th century Europeans remained the small minority, a site of cultural literary and basics. master of race exploitation subjected to administrative leadership. - Western Civilization is not a indigenous majorities. geographical concept. Paris was the undisputed cultural capital of - It's the birthplace of Greece, Western Civilization has often been the west. Palestine and italy. venerated over enduring non-western - in the 19th Century, London - Western civilization should not be civilization. inherited that place. confused with mere colonial - In this century, New York became expansion. (Mostly transplanted) Example, Spanish part of Latin America, the leading artistic, scientific and British in India, Africa and Dutch in intellectual clearing house in the (Why? Colonial expansion is yung thing Indonesia. world. where yung isang country is may control - The following centuries, Tokyo over the other country, pero in western Japan is a partial exception of western became the effective world center. civilization it was stated na transplanted civilization through the actual development ang nangyari and gumagawa din ng of europeans. Western Civilization is not a fixed paraan to expand their own civilization. - Forced initial Western Civilization geographical area because it revolves in 1895 and 1945. around potentially universal ideas rather Civilization is an advanced state of human society containing highly developed forms of government, culture, industry, and common social norms. Non-Western” cultures would be the nations and cultures of Asia and Africa and the indigenous cultures of North and South American and Australia.  2 than the limited core of racial or ethnic - Nazi Germany provides the most Marx derived his economic ideas from links. glaring examples of Europeans British Economies, his political ideas from - Like the traditional Chinese nations' intentional renunciation of French revolutionary politics. outlook. western values. - Non-westerners communism - Tropical garden to the Frozen Artic appeared as a quickest way of (Dahil kagaya ng tokyo and new york mas has not felt an impact of Western modernization and westernization. nag eexpand sila ng hindi nakadepende sa civilization. In terms of space and western civilization kumbaga nagkaroon time. The questions we have to answer are, what sila ng new ideas and knowledge with is so essential in the structure of western everything.and also the western civilization Asian and African; societies only gained civilization that repairs; and, on what is not tied to a particular race, nation saka independence after they developed a class principles are its ethical, legal, economic, geographical area.) of leaders trained in the west according to social, and political structures founded? western methods. - We shall find the roots of western Supra-national and Supra-racial quality - They don’t revolve against the civilization and its political of Western Civilization; west, but against its failures to theories when, in going back into - Best in distinctive features that has practice its own teachings in the past. made it adaptable, dynamic and dealings with non-western people. - The belief in reason, and the use of enduring. - The revolt of non-western reason are not inventions of the countries against their western twentieth century. Western Civilization is a center of gravity overload occurred following - France and irradiated throughout that has been shifted throughout its indoctrination by the west in the the entire western world. evolution from the Eastern Mediterranean concept of individual rights. - France did not invent the cult of through Europe to a community of nations. reason -rationalism as a way of In both the eastern and western (Hindi against ang non-western people sa life—and so we go back and back hemisphere. western civilization kung hindi sa hindi until we finally find the origin: nila pag deal ng maayos with non-western sixth-century BC. Greece. (It was evolving every years/century kaya people, inequality ang atake) di din siya fixed) Greek Civilization was original; it was not - The conditions of many colonial derived from other earlier people in the Not all Europeans successfully people were worse than same direct way. demonstrated the Western outlook. colonialism during and after. - Other people borrowed some of the basic ideas from the greek.  3 Rationalism was the core political concept basis of people's relation with God, - Second (and a reason which is of antiquity and again in modernity. and, more importantly, each other. often overlooked), these three - Christian thought, love is not in the sources of western thought are not 2nd root of the west: periphery of life, in the rare completely complementary. Th - Jewish believe in one god moments of ecstasy, but in the (Monotheism) with the concept of center of life: Love is life itself. Old and New Testaments have been brotherhood of mankind. invoked to justify slavery and human - (all men and women being the The Greeks were intensely interested in freedom, obedience to government and same children of a same father) love; Plato's dialogue Symposium is one of revolution, democracy and monarchy and and one of world ruled by higher the great conversations on love in world capitalism and socialism, to mention but a law which is above human whim literature. few. and arbitrariness. - Symposium is primarily the mutual embrace of two souls soaring (Greeks and Jews were not overly fond of Jews were the first to build their whole life together to the heights of one another) around their own beliefs in one god, to perfection in the life of reason. base their thoughts, ethics and laws, and governments. (Greek nor the Jewish conception of love Chapter 2: The Greek Faith in Reason - Later on transmitted sa has the unconditional, universal char- Essence of both Judaism and Christianity Christianity. acter of Christian love.) can be grasped; - Belief in one god is reflected in the - Old Testament and the Prophets, moral code that remains the The 3 roots of western life-Greek combined with the post-Biblical foundation of western law and rationalism, Jewish monotheism, and Talmudic literature (commentaries ethics. Christian love—are so encompassing that on the Bible), convey an adequate it is difficult, if not impossible, to derive understanding of the essence of 3rd western root: specific social, economic, or political classical Judaism. - Christian Western conception of systems from them. - The New Testament, supplemented love - These contradictions have two perhaps by Augustine, Thomas - Christianity incorporated Greek causes. First, the conceptions of Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, rationalism and absorbed Jewish Greek ration- alism, Jewish enables one to intellectually monotheistic ethics, and added a monotheism, and Christian love understand the inner meaning of new dimension that went beyond have never fully been lived up to in Christianity. both: the principle of love as the the western world.  4 (Authority makes for simplicity.) early American colonists came from all received the attention it deserves is over Britain), and thus were relatively free the influence of Christianity. Their sudden rise of civilization to heights of tribal beliefs and taboos, allowing them never before imagined, much less ascended to look at the world from a less traditional (Greek elements ni Christianity are distinguishes the Greeks. Seemingly perspective, both scientifically and primarily Platonic and Aristotelian. There instantaneously. politically. They were the first to organize is not a single element of pre-Socratic - Scientific theories and political city-states and learn self-government. Greek thought in Christianity.) philosophies emerged fully grown, as did Athena (the goddess of Sixth-century BC; Ionian thought marks Christian theologians with respect to wisdom for whom Athens was the beginning of western science aptly pre-Socratic Greek thought was in- herited named) from the head of Zeus in described as "the Greek way of thinking from Plato, as were so many other of his Greek mythology about the world." preferences and animosities. - Their concepts and contributions in - The most important Ionian city - The very concept of "nature" mathematics, science, philosophy, was Miletus, a rich port and (physis) is itself a Greek literature, politics, and the arts commercial center, the first intellectual discovery and continue to be examples of bourgeois civilization in the west. invention. In the pre-Greek, excellence. - The birthplace of the first three nonscientific world there is no great Greek thinkers, Thales, concept of nature as a system of The source of Greek thought is Greek life Anaximander, and Anaximenes, universal laws and regularities over eight centuries, from the sixth century the founders of the "Milesian graspable by reason. BC to the end of the second century of the School." - The primitive outlook of the world Christian era. is animistic; it sees a demon, The nature and influence of pre-Socratic spirit, divinity in every rock tree. The birth of western science and Greek thinkers can be analyzed through the world view become irrational and philosophy occurred in the sixth century reactions of their contemporaries and, more dominated by the supernatural and B.C. The place was not mainland Greece, often, of later writers still close enough to mythical but the Ionian settlements on the west coast give us an authentic reflection of of Asia Minor and on the islands off the pre-Socratic thought. The modern distinction between scientist coast. - The second reason, in addition to and philosopher was, incidentally, mere paucity of sources, that unknown to the Greeks. "Philosophy" The migrants to the Ionian settlements pre-Socratic thought has not means in Greek "love of knowledge" or came from various parts of Greece (as the "love of wisdom."  5 - Called today as a branch of - sabi ng xenophanes hindi naman accepting, for the first time in learning. daw kasi ni reveal lahat ng Gods history, the limitations as well as ang lahat simula una palang. the potentialities of human Greek religious conceptions were Xenophanes thus suggests that the intelligence and creativity. intimately connected with the rational road to truth is long and endless, comprehension of nature. and that there is no short-eut Humanistic view, man was neither a worm through revelation. of no value and significance (as in the Xenophanes first attack traditional greek Oriental despotisms of Egypt and religious beliefs. Sophists express a similar view about the Babylonia), nor was he a demigod. The - whose early ties with ionian nature and limitations of human story of Prometheus, as dramatized by philosophy stimulated him to knowledge: "Concerning the gods, I Am Aeschylus, clearly illustrates Greek describe the processes of nature as unable to know whether they exist or not, humanism. the result of natural laws which nor what form they have; many things one can clearly read by careful prevent this knowledge: the obscurity of the Protagoras and Democritus, who was observation of natural phenomena. problem and the brevity of man's life." originator of the atomic theory, adhered to - attacked Homer and Hesiod, the - Protagoras' famous saying that the philosophy of empiricism, holding that two greatest Greek poets, for "man is the measure of all things" knowledge derives solely from experience "attributing to the gods all things expresses a similar viewpoint. (and not from revelation), and that that are a shame and a disgrace (pero hindi daw ibig sabihin nito knowledge is therefore subject to constant among men: theft, adultery, and magkakalat na ng kung change and improvement. deception." ano-anong fake news. kailangan - favored liberal democracy in maging responsible sila sa lahat politics: The parallelism between ( Ginagawa lang daw yung images ng god ng actions nila) philosophical empiricism and like us lang example “the Ethiopians - What Protagoras tried to say is political liberalism has often been visualized their gods black, whereas the that, unless we claim to have repeated in western thought, as can Thracians (in Greece) imagined their divinely revealed truth (which he be seen from the later examples of gods to have blue eyes and red hair”. then denied), we can only mobilize our Locke, Thomas Jefferson, John sabi ng xenophanes "If oxen or horses human resources in trying to Dewey, and Bertrand Russell. could draw and make statues as men do, discover knowledge about oxen would draw the pictures of gods like mankind and nature. Plato in the Laws reversed Protagoras' oxen, and horses like horses.") - The greatness of pre-Platonic saying of man being the measure of all humanism consisted precisely in things into the statement that "God ought  6 to be the measure of all things, and not practice of the Greeks; for them, Philosophy of empiricism, from the man. philosophy assumes a different knowledge of sense of experience. - the anti-empirical and meaning—a life of meditation, maintains a middle position between anti-humanist view of Plato is contemplation, withdrawal, and skepticism or doubt of finding out the truth reflected in his political self-denial. (according to which no knowledge is philosophy. possible). And metaphysical idealism (no - truth and error — right and wrong (Plato passed this conception of truth is absolutely certain) is certain, because it ultimately philosophy on to Christianity, another derives from a mystic vision of illustration of how Plato differed from (wala siyang difference between the 2 kasi God. But only a few are capable of typical and representative Greek thinking.) empiricism is a sense of experience attaining, after a long preparatory kumbaga paniniwala nila if ano nakikita education, such absolute certainty; Philosophical origins of democracy in nila so parang yun na yung pag find out these are to rule as ancient Greece are not based, as is often nila ng truth and also para sa kanila yun philosopher-kings. mistakenly asserted, on the shallow na yung truth kahit di sila doon sigurado.) rationalistic ground of the perfectibility of The ancient Greeks, those who have held mankind. Sophists great period within 450-350 BC that truth is certain, have also generally - The pre-Socratic thinkers saw the - They are now considered as a held the parallel view that only a few are imperfection and fallibility of method of reasoning which capable of reaching that truth. human judgment and knowledge. perverts truth by cuptious and cunning logic. In short The philosophy of the early Greek (pre-socratic saw na andaming mali sa “dishonesty” thinkers was both practical and knowledge and judgement ng mga humans - Sophists means “Craftsman and speculative; kumbaga when it comes to “God” kasi nila more generally wise and prudent - The Babylonians were skilled in before may mali sa mga pananaw nila, man” observing the stars, but their pinaniniwalaan lang nila if ano nakikita - They were the first people who primary interest was astrology, not nila) undertook the education of the astronomy. wholeman. - The Egyptians were skilled in If there is no absolute standard of right and - Platonic dialogue named sophists some measurements, but they did wrong, the opinions of the majority decides “Protagoras” not push mathematics further. what’s the best for the majority. Which - He presented that instead of - Christian era rejected the rare even less satisfying than the democratic teaching geometry and anatomy he harmony between theory and solution. wants to teach the “art of politics”.  7 without the political leaders or well known - Their Government is called Old aristocratic society, the character of ngayon satin as gobyerno) democracy because it's in the hand the political ability was not formally (Sophists shocked the people regarding sa of many. acquired, but inherited through ties and pagtuturo nila kasi pinakilala nila ang - Laws secure and equal justice for blood and social atmosphere. social reality rather than sa kung anong all in their private disputes. alam nila that time.) - Public opinions welcome and (Kumbaga be para silang dogs ganon by honors and talents in every kind of breed sila pasa-passa ng knowledge hindi Status quo prefers to see it presented as achievements. siya sa school dati and privilege fam lang universal truth and justice (Kung ano - Our military is different from our nakakaranas nito.) sinabe ni sophists) opponents. - Our city is thrown into the open Political leadership no longer depended on - Sophists is the one who world. We never expel a foreigner inherited virtues, then only one alternative progenitors of the “Social or prevent him from learning was open-educating citizens in those Contract“ anything that is useful to an enemy. spiritual and intellectual qualities. - They held that social and political - Education for leadership institutions are not the product of Socrates method and this is what makes superhuman or divine forces, him a teacher second to none was to The democratic city-states understood that endowed with the absolute truth proceed by question and answer. Helping a democracy like any other form of state and and justice; laws and institutions. person to use his own mind in finding the society could not maintain itself against Are nothing other than social answer. internal or external threats without conventions agreed upon utilitarian - He asked “what is the meaning of imaginative and competent political reason. justice, courage and beauty, the leaders. good?” By abducting practical - They produced the rival political (so unlike sa ibang paniniwala ng mga concepts, Socrates helped his parties and factions philosophers si sophists nag established ng fellow debaters and interlocutors to - The art of persuasion “rhetoic” isang paniniwala where in hindi siya faith gradually arrive at a general Includes both content and form of or divine related.) definition. political oratory. - If the moral life depends on While most of the Athenians of Pericles knowledge, then virtue or doing (sa tingin nila hindi magwowork or day were not citizen for those were, his real good and philosophy or the mamamaintain ang isang political country words meaning: knowing good become identical. Living the right life comes in  8 endless search of knowledge of the right principles of living. - Humanity is saved but not (as christianity) by outside divine grace - Socrates was a profoundly religious man yet his religion knew of no reward to transcend. As in judeo-christian theology Plato assumes that Truth with a capital “T” is eternal and unchanging. and that only few can contemplate it after years of systematic - The nature of idea, form , or the good is rational verifiable terms.