What is now needed is a combination of factual study with ethical inquiry. The former would draw on the results of social psychology, the psychology of moral development, the social sciences of morals, and (philosophical) moral psychology. I In the light of a well-known distinction between participant moral attitudes and objective ones, the traditional issue of free will and morality is rephrased, in P.F.Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (henceforth FR), as follows: Could, or should, determinism lead us always to look on everyone exclusively in the objective way? The negative answer is defended and ... ... middle of paper ... ...egal punishment, and the sociology and anthropology of morality. As far as the latter is concerned, that would amount to a sort of revival of the late l9th Century and early 20th Century studies in the social sciences of morals.
The various critiques of democratic theories and practices question the purpose and progress of political systems in carrying out promises for its citizens. Realists, such as Max Weber, argue that politics is exploitative because of its ability to perform both evil and good acts. Therefore, to study and endure political life is to know of the dangerous consequences it presents. Norberto Bobbio, a noted neorealist thinker, posits that democracy is represented as a struggle among groups and individuals for power and democracy. Bobbio offers the observation that politics is contradictory and paradoxical, since it often includes unavoidable broken promises.
By unpacking a unique case of power research in a resettlement area, this th... ... middle of paper ... ...s was compared to the participatory mechanisms of the barangay officials which merely supported government views, the former can foster resistance to spur more people into action. The efforts of the power-holders to establish a meritorious participation of the silenced people in decision-making were very debilitated and subjugated. A closer look at the legal aspect of participation in decision-making revealed that it was discriminatory and participation in general, was exploited to mobilize participation during implementation processes. In a positive light, even though inequality of power exists, there is more active participation when a controversial issue is at stake. Bargaining power for the purposes of decision-making between the powerful players allows the less powerful voices to be clamorous by popular pressure alongside collaborative forms of participation.
This paper thus serves to look into the validities of Balkin’s claims with regards to Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. Balkin’s first criticism against hegemony is that it is too monolithic a model, as it deals with only a dominant ideology in a society. Balkin argues that in reality, ideology is a confluence of many different types of cognitive mechanisms - a group of heterogenous and partly reinforcing ideological effects (Balkin,1998). He uses the term “conceptual bricolage” to bring forth the point of the dynamism of ideology as a whole. Balkin felt that Gramsci has a dualistic approach of just dominant and the subaltern, which does not account for real life scenarios.
Chomsky’s concept however greatly undermined the viability of the behaviourist theory which was, at the time, the primary and dominant paradigm. Chomsky, and indeed other generativists contended that behaviourism lacked enough scientific adequacy to be a foundational theory upon which a deeper and more inherent understanding of human behaviour and psychological processes could be understood. Apart from lack of scientific adequacy, there were also some political aspects to the argument. Chomsky argued that behaviourism allows social and political oppression to thrive by cloaking their interpretation (Chomsky 2004 165). Most of the proponents of behaviourism believed that society could only be reformed by managing the causative factors of behavioural manifestations (Diessel,
Standing in disagreement to Dahl’s conclusions, Michels uses a rather social/psychosocial approach, in order to demonstrate what he though was the true nature of governmental politics, the unavoidable elite-mass relation, and the inevitable sociological tendency towards oligarchy (Michels 1915, 384). Granted, both thinkers have the concept of power embedded at the core of their respective work, a brief analyt... ... middle of paper ... ...tinuing our search, in labouring indefatigably to discover the indiscoverable, we shall preform a work which will have fertile results in the democratic sense” (Michels 1915, 405). In due course, what is demonstrated by both Dahl and Michels’ work is how research from a relatively similar project, can lead a philosopher to incredibly different conclusions. For Dahl, his specific focus into the inner political workings of New Haven led him to conclude that pluralism is alive and well in America. However, with a much broader realm of focus, Michels work steered him into quite the pessimistic view of modern day politics, arguing that oligarchy is unavoidable due to certain instinctive features in human organization.
In the same manner, Erika Harris also highlights the negative consequence of civic nationalism, in his words, he asserts that” Civic nationalism is articulary in character, inclined towards and inclusive definition of the nation ‘’ Pg. 29. (Haaris 2008) In other words, civic nationalism is a Particularistic ideology that seeks to satisfy and acknowledge the need of only one part of a country. In fact, Craig Calhoun also adheres to the downside of civic nationalism. In his words, he conveys that ‘’we live in a world system where society, is organized into states; thermalizes certain cultural differences as constituting ‘’ cultures’, while others are suppressed as unimportant internal or cross-cutting variations’’pg.55 (Calhoun 1952) Hence, due to the exclusiveness and inclusiveness that civic nationalism promotes, it stresses on the solidarities between the poor and the rich, the Orient vs. the other, the property less and capitalist.
At the same time social norms seem to decipher the complications of human rights; they construct a particular problem for politics because they appear to manipulate laws that govern social norms for their own personal use. Theorist challenge the thinking of these such norm compliances to explain a principle that people always act in their own self-interest, to maximize the greediness of their social power. Moreover, Human Rights in this situation are described at presents as a mutual exploited problem. Such as “institutional practice of human rights promotion propagates an unduly abstract idea about people, politics and society (Kennedy p111).” Because of these general expectations, politics can simply construct this space of lawlessness to circumvent and established social norm traditions. The avoiding of certain taboo like deploying nuclear weapons or tripping the waiters falls into this complicity that society follows.
The Limitations of Reason Exposed in Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment illustrates an important idea. The idea is that "reason," that grand and uniquely human power, is limited in reach and scope. Social critic Friedrich August von Hayek commented once that, ". it may be that the most difficult task for human reason is to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles we cannot hopefully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization may depend."
He saw society as a web of intricate multiple relations between individuals. He said society was merely a name for a n... ... middle of paper ... ...thoughts on economics and positivist thinking, Simmel gathered his thoughts on social differentiation by extensive reading and his own way of not interacting with his intellectual peers, while Mead was heavily influenced with the intellectual perspectives of his time. In contrast, each one of these theorist brings it own intellectual perspective to the study of sociology. Simmel’s thoughts on web affiliation contradict the views of Pareto’s in that Pareto thought that the individual’s relationship to society was not as important as the society’s effect on the individual. Meads view on the individual role taking determining the structure of social forms is in contrast to Simmel’s ideals on web affiliation in that society is structured on individual relationships with others not associations with one’s mind or self.