Autor: Sokolowski, Robert

Buch: Christian Faith & Human Understanding

Titel: Christian Faith & Human Understanding

Stichwort: Person und Politik, Unterschied 2 (moderner Staat - Republik): Natur vs Geschichte; Staat als Höhepunkt d. Geschichte (Kojève, Fukuyama); Philosophie nicht bloß Produkt d. Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: The state is a necessary thing—generated by historical if not cosmic necessity— ... Nature has been overcome by history ... In contrast with this view of modern politics, I would claim that human nature has not changed

Textausschnitt: 193b The second point I wish to make is that modern political thought considers the state to be an inevitable development in the history of humanity. For Aristotle, the various constitutions come and go as events move along and people respond to them. There is no necessary destiny driving them on and nothing is definitive; circumstances and choices permit now this form, now that to prevail, and sometimes the political society falls into tyranny. Aristotle encourages us to do the best we can in the situations in which we find ourselves. Political life is an exercise of prudence. (Fs)

193c In the modern understanding, and especially in the twist that German idealism and Hegel have given it, the modern state is a definitive achievement. No further prudential and philosophical reflection is necessary concerning political society, because the final answer has been reached in the evolution of world history. This is why we take it for granted that what we call democracy should be installed everywhere, and why we call countries in which it does not exist "undeveloped" countries, or, more hopefully, countries "on the way to development." This belief in the historical necessity of the modern state might also explain why political philosophy has been studied in departments of political science, not in departments of philosophy, in Catholic and non-Catholic institutions alike. The political question is not open any longer. The state is a necessary thing—generated by historical if not cosmic necessity—and hence it is an object of social science, not of fundamental philosophical reflection. Nature has been overcome by history, and the unsettled arguments about who should rule and what form of government should prevail, the disputes among parties, can now be put to rest. The declarations of the end of history proposed by Alexandre Kojève and Francis Fukuyama are related to this understanding of the modern state. (Fs) (notabene)

194a In contrast with this view of modern politics, I would claim that human nature has not changed, and that political life is the same now as it always has been, and that what is truly civic and political in modern states is precisely what is still functioning as a republic, as a rule of laws, in which people are citizens and not subjects, in which it is still possible to deliberate and voice opinions about how we should live, where we can still express ourselves about the noble and the just, and can ask whether the laws we live under are or are not in conformity with the ends of human nature and the truth about man. (Fs)

194b In order to foster true political life, it is necessary for us to change our understanding of the history of philosophy. It is necessary for us to overcome the segmentation of philosophy into ancient, medieval, and modern. We must avoid thinking that we can only understand philosophers as the products of their historical circumstances, the products of their epoch. We must recover the idea that philosophy is a perennial thing, that there are philosophical truths that persist throughout all the periods and ages, and that there is a truth about human nature and about political life that has been there all along. Human nature does not change, and the nature of political life does not change either. The only thing we have to relativize historically is the modern state, not the political life that we find described in Aristotle. The modern state can be explained by its historical circumstances and it can be transcended. Aristotle has brought to light the nature of political life, while Machiavelli, Hobbes, and their followers have described and fabricated a construct, one that is not in keeping with human nature, human reason, or the human person, one that can be explained by the historical circumstances of its emergence. (Fs)