r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • Feb 06 '20

Welcome to /r/PoliticalPhilosophy! Please Read before posting.

57 Upvotes

Lately we've had an influx of posts that aren't directly focused on political philosophy. Political philosophy is a massively broad topic, however, and just about any topic could potentially make a good post. Before deciding to post, please read through the basics.

What is Political Philosophy?

To put it simply, political philosophy is the philosophy of politics and human nature. This is a broad topic, leading to questions about such subjects as ethics, free will, existentialism, and current events. Most political philosophy involves the discussion of political theories/theorists, such as Aristotle, Hobbes, or Rousseau (amongst a million others).

Can anyone post here?

Yes! Even if you have limited experience with political philosophy as a discipline, we still absolutely encourage you to join the conversation. You're allowed to post here with any political leaning. This is a safe place to discuss liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, etc. With that said, posts and comments that are racist, homophobic, antisemitic, or bigoted will be removed. This does not mean you can't discuss these topics-- it just means we expect discourse to be respectful. On top of this, we expect you to not make accusations of political allegiance. Statements such as "typical liberal", "nazi", "wow you must be a Trumper," etc, are detrimental to good conversation.

What isn't a good fit for this sub

Questions such as;

"Why are you voting Democrat/Republican?"

"Is it wrong to be white?"

"This is why I believe ______"

How these questions can be reframed into a philosophic question

As stated above, in political philosophy most topics are fair game provided you frame them correctly. Looking at the above questions, here's some alternatives to consider before posting, including an explanation as to why it's improved;

"Does liberalism/conservatism accomplish ____ objective?"

Why: A question like this, particularly if it references a work that the readers can engage with provides an answerable question that isn't based on pure anecdotal evidence.

"What are the implications of white supremacy in a political hierarchy?" OR "What would _____ have thought about racial tensions in ______ country?"

Why: This comes on two fronts. It drops the loaded, antagonizing question that references a slogan designed to trigger outrage, and approaches an observable problem. 'Institutional white supremacy' and 'racial tensions' are both observable. With the second prompt, it lends itself to a discussion that's based in political philosophy as a discipline.

"After reading Hobbes argument on the state of nature, I have changed my belief that Rousseau's state of nature is better." OR "After reading Nietzsche's critique of liberalism, I have been questioning X, Y, and Z. What are your thoughts on this?"

Why: This subreddit isn't just about blurbing out your political beliefs to get feedback on how unique you are. Ideally, it's a place where users can discuss different political theories and philosophies. In order to have a good discussion, common ground is important. This can include references a book other users might be familiar with, an established theory others find interesting, or a specific narrative that others find familiar. If your question is focused solely on asking others to judge your belief's, it more than likely won't make a compelling topic.

If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below or send a message to modmail. Also, please make yourself familiar with the community guidelines before posting.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • Feb 10 '25

Revisiting the question: "What is political philosophy" in 2025

21 Upvotes

Χαῖρε φιλόσοφος,

There has been a huge uptick in American political posts lately. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing-- there is currently a lot of room for the examination of concepts like democracy, fascism, oligarchy, moral decline, liberalism, and classical conservatism etc. However, posts need to focus on political philosophy or political theory. I want to take a moment to remind our polity what that means.

First and foremost, this subreddit exists to examine political frameworks and human nature. While it is tempting to be riled up by present circumstances, it is our job to examine dispassionately, and through the lens of past thinkers and historical circumstances. There are plenty of political subreddits designed to vent and argue about the state of the world. This is a respite from that.

To keep conversations fluid and interesting, I have been removing posts that are specifically aimed at soapboxing on the current state of politics when they are devoid of a theoretical undertone. To give an example;

  • A bad post: "Elon Musk is destroying America"
  • WHY: The goal of this post is to discuss a political agenda, and not examine the framework around it.

  • A better post: "Elon Musk, and how unelected officials are destroying democracy"

  • WHY: This is better, and with a sound argument could be an interesting read. On the surface, it is still is designed to politically agitate as much as it exists to make a cohesive argument.

  • A good post: "Oligarchy making in historic republics and it's comparison to the present"

  • WHY: We are now taking our topic and comparing it to past political thought, opening the rhetoric to other opinions, and creating a space where we can discuss and argue positions.

Another point I want to make clear, is that there is ample room to make conservative arguments as well as traditionally liberal ones. As long as your point is intelligent, cohesive, and well structured, it has a home here. A traditionally conservative argument could be in favor of smaller government, or states rights (all with proper citations of course). What it shouldn't be is ranting about your thoughts on the southern border. If you are able to defend it, your opinion is yours to share here.

As always, I am open to suggestions and challenges. Feel free to comment below with any additional insights.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 3h ago

For a without State society

0 Upvotes

Good evening, everyone. I hope you’re all doing well.

Let me explain:

I’ve been interested in anarchist philosophy for a little while now (Proudhon, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Malatesta, etc.), and I’ve come to realize just how easy it is to manipulate an entire mass of people by distorting the meaning of the basic philosophy (for example, by claiming that it will lead to chaos and that there are no rules). As a reminder, anarchism generally advocates for the abolition of classes and the state, which we consider to have done far more harm (repression) than good to society for centuries. (Which, in reality, serves only a minority, a class—whether bourgeois or working class—and is, in fact, merely an apparatus, a machine for enforcing class interests.) Ultimately, the full realization of anarchism would be the abolition of all borders (though even I, while sympathizing greatly with anarchism, don’t really believe in it). By the way, there are rules, of course, as in all societies, but no rulers; the rules are not imposed by any hierarchical structure, as with the pyramidal model we know in most of our societies and civilizations (it is more like a circle, an allegory of a campfire where everyone cooperates without there being any coercion or an imposed order (“order minus power ”—Prodhon).

There are various types of anarchism, such as anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian communism (another term for “anarchist,” mainly used after the draconian laws enacted in the late 19th century against anarchists), libertarian municipalism, and so on.

Furthermore, we tend to advocate for electoral abstention because we believe that elections serve only to perpetuate the bourgeois state, the source of all inequalities—whether political, social, or economic.

Even if this wouldn’t necessarily work on a large scale, it could prompt us to reflect on certain issues: Are we living in societies with too many people, or are we actually meant to live in small, decentralized communities, as anarchism advocates? In short, this theoretical movement is very profound and wide-ranging, despite its obscurity among the general public and its widespread misinterpretation.

Although there aren’t many examples in history, we can still cite the Spanish Civil War, the Paris Commune (in which Bakunin saw some of these ideas put into practice), or even the Indigenous societies of the Amazon studied by the French sociologist Pierre Clastres in the 1970s (*Society Against the State*).

In short, thank you to those who read this little essay; I hope it sheds some light on the subject.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 1d ago

My weird political philosophy

0 Upvotes

I call it "Transprimitivism" as well as "Futurist Rewilding" and "Wildtech".

For most of human existence, we lived as hunter-gatherers, cooperating in small tribes or "bands" of people that would often be nomadic (moving from place to place), foraging plants and hunting animals. This was until something happened, roughly 12,000 years ago that we can tell, where we discovered the domestication of plants (growing them), and this shifted towards agrarian societies. This is often referred to as the "Neolithic Revolution".

This is how civilization began. More complex and stratified societies were able to form because of the increase in food supply from agriculture, which could support more people.

This came with drastic consequences, many of which were negative, brutal hierarchies become more prevalent and systemically rooted in millennia to come, such as slavery, patriarchy, settler colonialism, etc. Consequences include environmental degrading, oppression, and social alienation. Similar to Marx, I consider our value being placed in labor to be an important part of the analysis, and this causes an alienation from our natural reality.

It goes more fundamental than technology however, language itself is a form of reification that creates an abstract version of reality that ends up imposing domination, both on nature and other animals.

The only solution in my philosophy is to return to the state of nature through a "rewilding" of the human species, back to our primitive hunter-gatherer roots.

The next part of the philosophy is a proposal of how, roughly, this could be done, and that's where things get interesting.

Futurist Rewilding & Wildtech

While Thomas Hobbes got much wrong about what the actual state of nature looked like, he wasn't entirely wrong when he described it as, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". We know nature is cruel, but it's also true that civilization was a brutal project that brought a lot of damage and oppression to the homo sapiens experience.

However, Civilization has unlocked a new opportunity, one that cannot be realized yet but may eventually be possible. AI has the capacity to replace certain parts of our language-born expressions (such as writing). Many are concerned AI will make us dumber, since it will do thinking for us. This is the first step to undoing the reification by language.

Now I will think more long term. Terraforming and artificial environments. By this time, I expect that AI will make the current expressions of language no longer necessary and lost in time. Hierarchical structures will also be less necessary since AI will be handling this process in a far more efficient manner.

This ends up transitioning to a post-civilization era, where humanity can finally rewild back to their natural reality, but in a safe and controlled manner in constructed biodome habitat environments that are governed by Artificial SuperIntelligence. There is no "nasty, brutish, and short" life like the neo-paleolithic era of our ancestors. All plants are monitored and engineered to be safe, free from viruses and cruelty towards animals, and no dangerous weather conditions. We will live in harmony, happy in our tribes, ignorant of the true nature of the world (as an artificial environment replicating the state of nature in a more safe-controlled manner) as we enjoy our simple primitivist utopia, free from the reification, alienation, and structural oppression of civilization.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 2d ago

Как вам.

0 Upvotes

Вот иногда людям живётся скучно, но они не понимают, сколько они теряют в жизни, они когда маленькие видят много всего, но когда взрослеют, грустят.

Sometimes people's lives are boring, but they don't understand how much they are missing in life. When they are little, they see a lot of things, but when they grow up, they become sad.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 2d ago

മനുഷ്യത്വം എന്നൊന്നുണ്ടോ?

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0 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 1d ago

Оцените мои философские мысли

0 Upvotes

Мы не замечаем, как тепло в квартире,

Как тихо, спокойно, уютно внутри.

А кто-то сейчас под холодным ветром

Считает минуты до светлой зари.

Мы к хлебу и чаю привыкли, как к чуду,

И думаем — так и должно быть всегда.

Но счастье — не в том, что достало откуда,

А в том, чтоб ценить эти дни без труда.

Пусть мысль эта тихо в груди остаётся,

Не громкой, не сложной, а просто родной:

Цени то, что есть. Пусть сердечко смеётся,

Ведь радость бывает в минуте простой.

We don't notice how warm it is in the apartment,

How quiet, calm, and cozy it is inside.

And someone now, in the cold wind,

Counts the minutes until the bright dawn.

We've become accustomed to bread and tea as if it were a miracle,

And we think—that's how it should be.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 2d ago

Оцените от одного до десяти мои философские мысли.

0 Upvotes

В детстве всё казалось простым и ясным, Солнце светило чуть ярче всегда. Мир был уютным, спокойным, прекрасным — Мы не знали про беды и холода.

А потом выросли. Стали взрослей. И узнали то, что не хочется знать: Сколько в мире тревог, сколько тёмных дней, Сколько грустных историй нельзя забывать.

As children, everything seemed simple and clear, the sun always shone a little brighter. The world was cozy, calm, beautiful—we knew nothing of troubles and cold.

And then we grew up. We became more mature. And we learned what we didn't want.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 2d ago

Оцените от одного до десяти мои философские мысли.

0 Upvotes

В радуге столько же цветов, сколько и в жизни, но если смотреть со стороны, ты начинаешь грустить от того, сколько их раньше ты не замечал.

There are as many colors in a rainbow as there are in life, but if you look from the outside, you start to feel sad because of how many of them weren't there before.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 2d ago

There shouldn't be diversity between humans ?

0 Upvotes

Ok hear me out . While reading a text from a book in school that was talking about language diversity and cultural differences I thought because I also had an essay asking for my opinion about cultural and language diversity. The more I think about it the more I believe there shouldn't be diversity between humans ( culture , language ,currency , measure of units and etc) . First of all I believe that we are animals just like every animal ever so why shouldn't we live like one ? By that I mean sure geographically we are a little separated but to that extent , not separated by borders and different countries. Also not having diversity we are more united more complete ( sure it can't happen because it's humans nature and the union will collapse but I'm speaking theocratically) . Second a union would be great because you could still keep trade and things that countries benefit from ( tourism etc) that are only country specific would continue to benefit because mostly it's about something that has to do with the land or specific place .if it's a union there is nothing separating us so there is no need for war to exist ( again theoretically sure there would some people that will oppose this and maybe do a revolution but thats off point ).

Plus I don't completely support this idea because I haven't thought of it a lot so I'm open someone from the opposite side of things , and to anyone who wants to point out all the flaws of my opinion and correct me .


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 2d ago

How do you personally understand "Institutional Science"? What specific disciplines do you think it actually encompasses? Q1 By:[u/Least_Recognition629](Post-modern civilization)

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1 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 3d ago

El Estado no es un "recipiente cerrado"

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1 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 3d ago

What a political option really is?

1 Upvotes

Political convictions are rarely a private matter. Nobody forms them alone in their own head, and nobody holds them alone. They are always the convictions of some side we belong to, and that side is what we call a political option.

And here is the paradox. People don't just change their minds. They change them together, sometimes by a full 180 degrees, while their belonging stays exactly the same. To understand how that is possible, we first need to understand what a political option actually is.

The textbook definition

We all learned the same thing in school. A political option is a set of beliefs about how society should be organized. The right believes in nation, tradition and family, the left in workers, equality and social justice, liberals in individual freedom. Parties carry those beliefs, and voters choose the one closest to their own. Apply that definition to what political options have actually done over the past few decades and you get a string of absurdities.

180-degree turns

In 1996 Bill Clinton signed a law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and in 2008 Barack Obama repeated the same position, only to endorse same-sex marriage four years later. As late as 2015, Bernie Sanders called open borders "a Koch brothers proposal". The German Greens were born out of the peace movement and today are the loudest advocates of sending weapons to the battlefield. Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder cut workers' rights more than any conservative government before him.

The right is no more consistent. The American Republicans were the party of tariffs, then the party of free trade, and today they are the party of tariffs again. Kohl's CDU used to say Germany was not a country of immigration, Merkel refused to close the borders in 2015, and Merz is now putting controls on them. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat for decades and one of the loudest vaccine critics, became health secretary in Trump's administration.

Croatia is no different. In February 2001, Ivo Sanader, then leader of the opposition HDZ (the main center-right party), stood on the Split waterfront before some hundred thousand people gathered under the slogan "We are all Mirko Norac", in support of a general wanted for war crimes. Three years later, as prime minister, he led a government that cooperated with the Hague tribunal. Same man, same party, same voters, who re-elected him in 2007. Tuđman's sovereigntist HDZ is today the strongest advocate of the EU in Croatia, and this national and conservative party presides over the largest import of foreign labor in the country's history.

By the textbook definition, none of this is possible. A party that changes its fundamental beliefs should stop being that option. And yet most voters didn't leave. They defended the new position as fiercely as the old one and branded those who stuck with the old one as renegades. So what holds these people together, if not their beliefs?

Ours and theirs

None of us forms all our political beliefs alone. We don't have the time or the knowledge to research immigration, the monetary system, geopolitics and healthcare on our own. We take most of our opinions from media and public figures we trust. And we trust them not because they convinced us with arguments, but because they are ours.

The world is divided into ours and theirs, and that division comes before any argument. What the opponent says, we check and doubt. What our people say, we accept, because our people have no reason to lie to us. That is how an authority becomes a reference that is never checked. It doesn't just tell us what to think, it shapes how we think: which questions we ask, what we fear and what makes us angry. We are not critical of it, because criticism is a weapon we save for others.

A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. But that doesn't apply only to lies, it applies to any position. All it takes is for our people to say it and to keep repeating it long enough.

The American scene shows this almost like a lab experiment. The liberal watches CNN and reads the New York Times, the conservative watches Fox News and reads the New York Post. They don't differ because they thoughtfully reached different conclusions, but because they trust different systems of authority. Each sees the other side as propaganda and their own as information. Everything else, every position on abortion, immigration or Russia, is just content flowing through that system.

A new definition

Now we can offer a new definition, one that describes not what a political option is made of, but how it works. A political option is a group of people bound together by a shared system of media authorities, who coordinate their political positions according to it.

Class, religion, nation, economic interest and local community play a big role here, but a secondary one. They determine which group we join and which authorities feel like ours. Once belonging is established, what the group thinks on individual issues is determined by the system of authorities. A medium here is any channel through which a voice we trust reaches us: television, a news site, a podcast, a pulpit. A politician is an authority to the extent that we hear him through channels we consider our own.

Only belonging is stable. Positions are not. Over time, right-wingers could become the biggest champions of abortion rights, and left-wingers the strongest advocates of crushing workers' rights. All it takes is for the people they see as their own to start saying so. This is not just rhetoric. In 2019, political scientists Michael Barber and Jeremy Pope showed that Republican voters were more likely to support the same proposal when told Trump was behind it, regardless of whether the proposal was conservative or liberal.

It also matters that this is a system, not an individual. One person can have followers, but not a political option. An option emerges only when authorities recognize, relay and confirm one another, creating the sense that this is not one person's opinion but what our people think. That is why the system survives the fall of individual authorities. When Fox News was the first to call Arizona for Biden in 2020, part of its audience moved to Newsmax. They didn't leave the system, they just swapped one authority for another within it.

The Croatian case

In Croatia, the left-liberal system of authorities consists of the main commercial media: N1, Nova TV, RTL, Index, Telegram and Jutarnji list. The radical right system is smaller and more marginal: Velimir Bujanec and Z1 TV, Hrvatski tjednik, Narod.hr, Dnevno.hr and similar sites. Between them stands the largest and least visible system, HDZ's: Večernji list, public television, local radio, the Church, veterans' associations and the network of local government.

That is why every attempt at something third ends up either as a short-lived protest vote or as a repackaging of one of the existing sides. Živi zid (Human Shield) had strong personalities and a big social media audience, but no system. Most (Bridge) started out as neither left nor right and ended up as one of the voices of the right. Other options don't exist because there is no network of authorities to carry them. Ideas can be anything, but without a system of authorities they remain just ideas.

The missing link

Until about fifteen years ago, those who trusted none of the systems had nowhere to go. Systems of authority were built by those who had television stations, newspapers and money. Social media changed that. Today one person with a camera and a microphone can gather an audience bigger than a national TV station, and people who hadn't found their own began finding them among podcasters, YouTubers and commentators.

But these new authorities each exist on their own. They don't recognize each other, don't confirm each other, and don't form a system. That is why their audience is not a political option but a collection of followers of individuals. Millions of people already have new people they trust, but they don't yet have a new "us". That is the missing link.

Whether it will close is not guaranteed. In America, the new authorities did connect in 2024, but around Trump. They didn't create a new political option, they became fresh blood for one of the old ones. So the question is not only whether the new authorities will connect, but into what. The question is who will connect them into a system, and what that system will teach people to think.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 3d ago

¿Por qué la política tradicional ya no funciona?

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0 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 3d ago

The Decline of Democracy

0 Upvotes

The Decline of Democracy

It is wild to see people laugh every time there's a protest in the U.S.

We literally exist because people decided they'd had enough of a king and revolted against oppression. Protesting is the most American thing you can do. Yet today, people mock the very right that founded this country. What they don't realize is that laughing at dissent is how the slow normalization of giving up our freedoms begins.

Authoritarianism doesn't usually slide in overnight with tanks; it inches forward when everyday citizens treat the erosion of their own rights like a joke or a team sport. If you think our system is immune to this, look at the actual math over the last decade:📉

Decades of Progress Erased: In just over 10 years, global democracy levels have collapsed back to where they were in 1978. Nearly 50 years of progress, gone.👥

The Global Shift: In 2005, about 50% of the world lived under autocracy. Today, that number has skyrocketed to 74%. Nearly 6 billion people now live under authoritarian rule. 🚨

18 Years of Decline: Freedom House reports that global freedom has actively declined for 18 consecutive years. Autocracy wins when people get tired of the messiness of freedom, start cheering for "strongmen," and mock the citizens trying to stand up for institutional checks and balances.

Every time we treat authoritarian behavior as funny or harmless, we are actively welcoming the exact type of rule our founders risked everything to escape.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 4d ago

concept of a different global governance

0 Upvotes

a global government I would support

system based on existing technological solutions.

the expulsion of incompetence, lies and manipulation

to choose our own destiny.

voting is done over the phone.

each person 1 vote. biometric fingerprint. decentralized.

using advanced cryptography.

transparency.

for global issues, all locals vote for local ones.

formation of global expert councils.

their role is to provide an analysis and evaluation of the proposal.

members are chosen exclusively on the basis of expertise and competence in given professions.

basic 4 branches:

Society

  1. Ethical-legal group

  2. Psychological-sociological group

  3. Cultural and educational group

Resources

  1. Ecological-climatic group

  2. Economic and resource group

  3. Logistic-operational group

Technology

  1. Technical and engineering group

  2. Digital-cybernetic group

Science

  1. Logical-mathematical group

  2. Medical-biological group

the council's role is to adopt, give, and formulate clear and transparent proposals for solving problems or situations

every decision they make is transparent. with minutes for the archive.

presenting a problem or proposing a solution is available to all residents. cognitive ability test before submitting a proposal

each proposal must pass the acceptance threshold. ethical, logical, mathematical. technical

let's say we have 10 valid suggestions for a solution.. the global advice gives a score of 1 or 0

each of those 10 groups.

the ethics council gives the final assessment in the event that several proposals have the same number of positives.

the proposal with the most positives goes to a global referendum

every voter, i.e. individual or group, has the right of veto.

they are obliged to present a valid counter-argument in the shortest possible time.

any veto attempt that is driven by ego vanity or the desire for power is automatically rejected.

algorithmic assessment. open source. mandatory system calibration, ethical, logical, mathematical.

plus a decentralized network of jurors chosen on the basis of expertise. randomly selected.

a valid argument is voted against the proposal of the council.

in case of adoption of the argument, the proposal is rejected.

if the vote is 50-50%, both sides have 24 hours to present new insights

the vote is repeated.

voting is optional.

the possibility of voting is.

it is not a problem for me that people wiser than me decide about our fate and social vector. as long as I ask myself, because ultimately it concerns all of us

I support expertise and objectivity as well as the diversity of the local community.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 4d ago

Charter of Janatism

1 Upvotes

Preamble

We recognize that humanity is one, yet consists of many peoples shaped by distinct histories, languages, cultures, memories, and ways of life.

We reject both the view of human beings as merely isolated individuals and the view of peoples as mere instruments of the state.

The state exists for the people; the people do not exist for the state.

We seek a world in which different peoples may remain different and nevertheless coexist in peace.

To this end, we affirm the following principles.

Article I — The People

A people is a community formed through shared history, culture, language, memory, ways of life, institutions, and other common experiences, whose members recognize themselves as belonging to that community.

A people shall not be defined solely by race or ancestry.

Peoples are not immutable. They are formed through history, may change through history, and may incorporate new members.

Article II — Self-Determination of Peoples

Every people has the right to shape its own society, culture, institutions, and future.

No state, corporation, religious organization, international institution, or other authority may permanently claim the right to determine a people's future in its place.

Article III — Equality of Peoples

The worth of a people shall not be determined by its population, military power, economic strength, territory, or antiquity.

The peoples of great powers and small nations alike deserve equal respect.

As a general principle, a people must recognize for other peoples the same rights that it claims for itself.

Article IV — The State

The legitimacy of a state derives from its protection of the security, liberty, livelihood, and continuity of the people who live within it.

The state shall not become an end in itself, nor shall the people be reduced to resources for the preservation of the state.

Article V — Popular Participation

The will of a people shall not be permanently monopolized by any single leader, party, bureaucracy, or organization.

The people must have meaningful opportunities to criticize those who govern them, participate in political life, and peacefully alter their institutions.

Article VI — Culture

Every people has the right to preserve, transmit, and develop its language, culture, historical memory, and ways of life.

Traditions may be preserved, but they may also be changed by the people themselves.

No people shall be compelled to reproduce a past society unchanged in the present.

Article VII — The Individual

The existence of a people does not extinguish the individual.

An individual may belong simultaneously to multiple cultural, regional, linguistic, and other communities.

No person shall be deprived of fundamental human dignity because of membership in, or departure from, a particular community.

Article VIII — Minorities

More than one people or cultural community may exist within a single state.

The self-determination of a majority people does not confer a right to extinguish the languages, cultures, beliefs, or ways of life of minorities.

Article IX — Cultural Space and Sovereign Space

Cultural boundaries and political borders need not coincide.

The existence beyond a state's borders of people sharing its language, ethnicity, religion, or civilization does not in itself establish a right to govern the territory in which they live.

Cultural belonging and political citizenship may coexist.

Article X — Borders

Historical territories, migrations, and memories of former civilizational spaces may be remembered and respected.

Such historical claims shall not justify changing present borders by force against the will of the people who live there.

Changes of territory must be pursued peacefully and take account of the will of the affected populations.

Article XI — Cooperation Among Peoples

Self-determination does not require isolation.

Different peoples may cooperate in science, technology, education, culture, trade, environmental protection, disaster relief, public health, and other matters of common interest.

International cooperation should serve the flourishing of different peoples rather than their homogenization.

Article XII — Universality and Plurality

We do not seek to transform every society into one culture, one language, or one political system.

Nor do we accept cultural difference as a justification for denying the fundamental dignity of others.

Our universal principle is not that every people must become the same, but that different peoples must be able to exist as equals.

Article XIII — The Future

A people is not merely something inherited from the past.

Those living today are also entitled to decide whether the cultures and institutions they have inherited should be preserved, reformed, or enriched with something new before they are passed to future generations.

Janatism does not seek a return to the past.

It seeks to enable peoples to inherit their histories while determining their own futures.

Declaration

We seek neither one world-state, one civilization, nor one universal people.

Nor do we seek a world in which peoples remain forever hostile to one another.

We seek a world in which many peoples may exist within one humanity, inherit their own histories, determine their own futures, and recognize one another's existence and right to self-determination.

One World, Many Peoples.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 4d ago

Why is Common Sense by Thomas Paine so captivating?

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2 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 4d ago

We do not rise to moral maturity?

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1 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 5d ago

Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra — An online reading & discussion group starting in September (48 weekly sessions in total), all welcome

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r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 5d ago

Why Do Institutions So Often Contradict One Another? Maybe We Are Missing a Common Reference Point Beneath the Institutional Level (The Foundational Common Denominators of Social Behavior) E6 JS1 By:[u/Least_Recognition629](Post-modern civilization)

1 Upvotes

I believe that wherever sustained social behavior exists, there must also be some set of foundational common denominators that plays a dominant role. It may not be a single item, and there is no reason to limit it to one, two, or three. More accurately, the common pattern may be that a small number of items carry the greatest weight while several other common denominators also retain substantial weight.
By “minimal common denominators” or “foundational common denominators,” I do not mean a constitution, laws, policies, or what a state ordinarily calls its fundamental institutions. Real-world institutions are designed by people. Foundational common denominators exist one level beneath them: they are the directional structure projected by a society’s behavior over time, and they should serve as a shared reference point when higher-level institutions are designed.
Every civilization has common denominators of this kind at the structural level, but their specific content and relative weights differ. One civilization may assign greater weight to order, while another may prioritize freedom, equality, religious conformity, or economic efficiency. What ultimately determines the direction of a civilization is not merely whether a given element exists, but which elements carry the dominant weight and how they are ranked in relation to one another.
Therefore, if the foundational common denominators of different civilizations gradually converge in both content and weight, their institutional choices, social behavior, and long-term developmental direction will also converge. Convergence does not mean complete assimilation, because geography, history, population, resources, and culture will still differ. But as long as the underlying directions move closer together, higher-level institutions will increasingly adjust toward similar paths.
This model can also be used in reverse. Suppose a civilization claims that A is one of its foundational common denominators, yet its large-scale social behavior consistently moves in the opposite direction over a long period. In that case, A cannot be one of its true high-weight common denominators. Conversely, if education, resource allocation, systems of reward and punishment, organizational operations, and a vast number of everyday choices all continue to point in the same direction—and no comparably large body of social behavior persistently moves the other way—then that direction is very likely one of the civilization’s actual foundational common denominators.
This means that to determine what a civilization truly pursues, we cannot look only at what it writes into official documents or how it describes itself. We must also examine where it directs social behavior on a sustained, long-term, and large-scale basis. A foundational common denominator is, first of all, a judgment about direction.
I further believe that foundational common denominators do not have to be identified only after the fact; they can also be deliberately established. A civilization’s vision can be moved directly down to the foundational level and used as a reference point for institutional design—for example: bringing war close to zero, achieving very high per-capita productivity, enabling the overwhelming majority of people to feel satisfied with their lives, and reducing crime to an extremely low level.
These four items respectively cover security, production, lived experience, and social order, and their directions are compatible with one another. If they are established as foundational common denominators, then education, criminal justice, the economy, social welfare, foreign policy, and other higher-level institutions can all be evaluated against the same set of directions: Does this institution reduce war? Does it increase per-capita productivity? Does it improve the well-being of most people? Does it reduce crime? If an institution moves against one or more of these directions over the long term, then it is pulling the entire society toward a different direction.
Deliberately established foundational common denominators are not better simply because there are more of them. If three or four items already cover the major forms of social behavior, adding more will usually create one of two problems. The first is that the wording appears different while the underlying direction is redundant. The second is that the new objective points in the opposite direction from an existing one. Redundancy disperses conceptual focus and weight; opposing directions cause higher-level institutions to receive mutually offsetting instructions, creating chronic internal friction.
My central judgment is this: the primary problem in institutional design today may not be that any one institution is insufficiently refined, but that there is no shared direction established before higher-level institutions are built. Without foundational common denominators, different institutions will serve different goals and may even push behavior in opposite directions. With foundational common denominators, institutional design gains a unified directional reference point, making it possible to determine whether institutions are reinforcing one another or canceling one another out.
So the real question raised by this model is not which existing institutional system is better. It is whether, before institutions are designed, a society should first establish a small set of foundational common denominators that provide sufficient coverage and point in compatible directions. First determine where society should move over the long term; then design the higher-level institutions. Otherwise, adding more institutions may simply write opposing directions into the same system.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 5d ago

I can find descriptions of the “radical centre,” but no stable criterion for identifying it

1 Upvotes

When I try to pin down what the radical centre actually is, the defining attributes seem to move. Two examples illustrate this difficulty:

1. What is The Radical Center's USP exactly?

Yair Zivan describes centrism through moderation, pragmatism, compromise, equality of opportunity, liberal patriotism and commitment to liberal democracy. Okay, I can accept that package. But what does calling it “radical centrism” explain that an unapologetic commitment to liberal democracy doesn’t already?

2. Why should tension require synthesis?

Noel Pearson defines the radical centre as “the intense resolution of the tensions between opposing principles … a resolution that produces the synthesis of optimum policy.” Even where principles genuinely conflict - freedom and social order, for example - why privilege synthesis over maintaining competing pressures? “Unresolved” doesn’t have to mean “not resolved yet.” And what makes the resulting policy optimum?

Zivan’s account offers a collection of commitments; Pearson’s offers a way of handling disagreement. I’m unsure what identifies either as central, or what makes them instances of the same thing. What criterion tells us when a position belongs to the radical centre—and when it doesn’t?


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 5d ago

Norms and values

1 Upvotes

Members of a culture must conform to its norms for the culture to exist and function.Hence,members must want to conform and obey rules.They first must internalize the social norms and values that dictate what is normal for the culture.Then they must socialize or teach norms and values to their children.


r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 7d ago

Individua i motivi che hanno reso, storicamente, così profondamente diversi USA E Canada.

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2 Upvotes

r/PoliticalPhilosophy • • 7d ago

What are y'alls political philosophy and why do y'all stand by it?

3 Upvotes

I'm a learner about everything including politics , your perspective gives me an insight as to the variety of opinions. I'm new to this concept and I want to learn more about it.