Understanding the State: Branches, Sovereignty, and Citizen Rights
Understanding the State and its Role in a Democracy
The State: The state is the set of institutions through which political power is exercised in a given society. In a democracy, the rule of law serves to ensure the rights of all citizens. As citizens, we must also fulfill our duties. The state has supreme authority, exercised as sovereignty over the entire population inhabiting a certain territory.
Sovereignty in a Democracy
In democratic regimes, sovereignty resides in the people, that is, all the
Read MorePre-Socratic to Kant: Key Philosophers & Ideas
Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Philosophy comes from the Greek words “philo” (love) and “sophia” (wisdom). The first recorded use was by Pythagoras in the 6th century BC. The first philosophers were from Miletus: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. They searched for the natural beginning of things (arche).
- Thales believed the arche was water and that all things were full of gods (hylozoism).
- Anaximenes believed the arche was air.
- Anaximander based the arche on the apeiron (the unlimited or indefinite).
The
Read MoreTotalitarianism: A Regime of Terror and Ideology
Totalitarianism is not only more radical but also different from other known forms of political oppression since it has created completely new institutions and destroyed all social traditions of the countries in which it came to power. Beyond its ideological form, both in the Stalinist and Hitler forms, it has transformed classes into masses, has replaced the party system with a new mass movement, transferred the center of army power to the police, and pursued a foreign policy openly directed to
Read MoreNietzsche’s Critique of Traditional Metaphysics
Traditional metaphysics has introduced an ontological dualism by distinguishing between the real world of the permanent, grasped by reason, and the apparent world of change, perceived by the senses. As a result:
- Ontology is considered static because the Self is seen as something fixed and immutable.
- True reality, the Self, cannot be perceived as it truly is in this world, where everything is appearance and falsehood according to the senses.
- The Self has a world of its own. Since what we know in this
Nietzsche’s Critique of Metaphysics and the Will to Power
Nietzsche’s Critique of Metaphysics
Critique of Ontological Metaphysics
Metaphysics is based on a traditional error: the belief in the antithesis of values. Dogmatic philosophers have believed that things of supreme value have an origin in themselves, that they come directly from God, from another world. For Nietzsche, Western philosophical thought succumbed to the temptation to negatively assess the sensible world, contrasting it with an eternal, true, and good world. The wise man looks at the ideal,
Read MoreDescartes’ Proofs of God’s Existence: Innate Ideas & Causality
Item 2: Demonstration of the Existence of God
In philosophy before Descartes, the existence of God could be demonstrated based on certain “facts of the world.” For Descartes, it must come from your consciousness. Images are for Descartes, whose way of thinking is through immediate perception, becoming conscious of that thought. They are characterized by forms of thought; ideas determine thought to become thought of this and nothing else, to be automatically picked up, and by having a representative
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