Understanding Citizenship: A Historical and Philosophical Perspective
Understanding Citizenship
The Political Animal
Humans cannot survive in isolation. Coexistence is crucial for our survival as individuals and as a species. It also fuels our development as persons and the transmission of our culture. Living in a society requires establishing rules and some form of authority—a politically organized society.
Political Animal: Someone living in an organized manner within a polis (a society or political community).
Reasons for Living in a Polis (According to Aristotle)
Read MoreHumanistic Psychology: A Third Force
Classification and Purpose
Humanistic psychology emerged in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s as a “third force,” alongside psychoanalysis and behaviorism.
Key Figures and Concepts
Bühler: Focused on fulfillment and satisfaction in human life. Key trends include meeting needs, adaptive restraint, creativity, and expanding domestic order.
Maslow’s Eupsychia: A vision of a healthy society where individuals are spontaneous, creative, and confident, embracing new ideas and adapting to change.
Rogers:
Read MoreThe Origins and Justification of Political Power
Ethics and Moral Conduct
Ethics is a philosophical discipline that examines morality and seeks to establish its foundations. Moral conduct is behavior guided by rules and moral values, encompassing norms and values consciously embraced. A prerequisite for moral behavior is freedom. When default behavior contradicts laws due to rigid nature or uncontrollable instincts, judgment is unwarranted. However, freely chosen moral behavior can be judged or valued by others as good or bad, considering the individual’
Read MoreInduction Problem & Correspondence Theory of Truth
The Problem of Induction
The results of observation and experimentation provide evidence for a scientific theory, but cannot prove the theory is correct. Even a modest empirical generalization, such as that all water boils at the same temperature, goes beyond what can be strictly deduced from evidence. If scientific theories expressed no more than the evidence supporting them, they would have little use. They could not predict the course of nature and would lack explanatory power.
The non-demonstrative,
Read MoreRousseau, Bentham, and Mill: Exploring Social Contracts, Utilitarianism, and Individual Liberty
Rousseau: The Social Contract and the General Will
The Corruption of Society
Rousseau argued that society corrupts individuals. He believed that humans are inherently good but are corrupted by unjust societal structures. He posited a constant tension between the ideal and the real.
The Social Contract
Rousseau believed in the possibility of moral regeneration through a social contract, an agreement between individuals to harmonize individual freedom with the needs of society. This contract involves
Read MoreThe Existence and Essence of God: A Thomistic Perspective
II. The Existence of God
II.1. The Problem of Demonstration
We might think that while God is not perceptible to the senses, He can be perceived by reason. Examples of this type of knowledge are “men are rational animals” or “triangles have three sides”. St. Thomas Aquinas called these propositions self-evident, meaning that the essence of the objects in question is the property referred to in the proposition (the predicate is included in the subject). The examples above are evident to us because we
Read More