{"title":"The Ontological Nature of Politics","authors":"V. Levytskyy","doi":"10.30570/2078-5089-2023-108-1-25-39","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The article is devoted to clarifying the understanding of the nature of politics. Having documented the lack of consensus in the scientific discourse even regarding the very concept of politics, the author proposes an approach that, from his point of view, allows to obtain the most consistent conceptualization of the political. In his study of the nature of politics, the author relies primarily on the analysis of the phenomenon of polis, because, despite serious disagreements in the scientific circles about what politics is, its origin is generally associated with polis. Based on the works of Plato and Aristotle and drawing on the works of modern historians and political philosophers, he demonstrates the inadequacy of the interpretation of polis as a city, state or society, and proposes to consider polis as a sphere of “supra-physical” and “supra-economic” activity of citizens in external and internal harmonization of public space. In the development of the transcendentalist tradition, the article shows that polis is primarily an ontological reality, a place where (in the eyes of the Greeks) the existence of being was manifested. Taking into account the connection between polis and politics in the ancient world, the author comes to the conclusion that politics as a practice of organizing life in polis is an activity for the formation and maintenance of ontological reality. Such an understanding of politics, in his opinion, is valid not only in relation to antiquity. Therefore, he defines politics as an ontological action, in which a struggle for the fate of being unfolds every time. In this respect, the nature of ancient politics differs little from the nature of medieval and modern politics. Despite all the differences between modern and pre-modern political discourse, this definition quite adequately characterizes the nature of the political per se.","PeriodicalId":47624,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Political Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.30570/2078-5089-2023-108-1-25-39","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The article is devoted to clarifying the understanding of the nature of politics. Having documented the lack of consensus in the scientific discourse even regarding the very concept of politics, the author proposes an approach that, from his point of view, allows to obtain the most consistent conceptualization of the political. In his study of the nature of politics, the author relies primarily on the analysis of the phenomenon of polis, because, despite serious disagreements in the scientific circles about what politics is, its origin is generally associated with polis. Based on the works of Plato and Aristotle and drawing on the works of modern historians and political philosophers, he demonstrates the inadequacy of the interpretation of polis as a city, state or society, and proposes to consider polis as a sphere of “supra-physical” and “supra-economic” activity of citizens in external and internal harmonization of public space. In the development of the transcendentalist tradition, the article shows that polis is primarily an ontological reality, a place where (in the eyes of the Greeks) the existence of being was manifested. Taking into account the connection between polis and politics in the ancient world, the author comes to the conclusion that politics as a practice of organizing life in polis is an activity for the formation and maintenance of ontological reality. Such an understanding of politics, in his opinion, is valid not only in relation to antiquity. Therefore, he defines politics as an ontological action, in which a struggle for the fate of being unfolds every time. In this respect, the nature of ancient politics differs little from the nature of medieval and modern politics. Despite all the differences between modern and pre-modern political discourse, this definition quite adequately characterizes the nature of the political per se.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Political Philosophy is an international journal devoted to the study of theoretical issues arising out of moral, legal and political life. It welcomes, and hopes to foster, work cutting across a variety of disciplinary concerns, among them philosophy, sociology, history, economics and political science. The journal encourages new approaches, including (but not limited to): feminism; environmentalism; critical theory, post-modernism and analytical Marxism; social and public choice theory; law and economics, critical legal studies and critical race studies; and game theoretic, socio-biological and anthropological approaches to politics. It also welcomes work in the history of political thought which builds to a larger philosophical point and work in the philosophy of the social sciences and applied ethics with broader political implications. Featuring a distinguished editorial board from major centres of thought from around the globe, the journal draws equally upon the work of non-philosophers and philosophers and provides a forum of debate between disparate factions who usually keep to their own separate journals.