Polıtıcal Thought

Yanıt Açıklaması: Augustine believed that the universe was created by the God from nothing. According to him, the God created everything from nothing only in six days. His motto was “God and spirit. That is all I would like to know. Nothing else is needed”. This was a strong negation of reason and philosophy. He thought knowledge was impossible for human being. Human beings were deficient and transgressor. The only way of reaching knowledge would be faith and the scare of God. According to Augustine, justice was a relationship between the God and people.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Jean-François Lyotard is a French philosopher and sociologist. He also worked on the literary theory. He is accepted as one of the major proponents of the postmodern turn

Yanıt Açıklaması: Natural law, in other words, ius naturale, is a system of right or justice held to be common to all human beings and derived from nature, rather than from the rules of society, i.e., positive law.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Al-Ahka^m As-Sulta^niyyah is a work in which Al-Ma^wardi theoretically and legally positioned the ima^mah and the status of the caliph again within the boundaries of the shari‘ah. It had set limits for the power of the caliph, too, via strict requirements and demands for religious and secular accountability; and this really had been extraordinary given the circumstances of the place and time Al-Ma^wardi had lived.

Yanıt Açıklaması: In Sparta, another political institution was Apella, something similar to the popular assembly. The drafts, prepared by Gerousia were approved by Apella. The members of the Apella were Spartans who were over thirty-years old and they were not allowed to debate about the drafts.

Yanıt Açıklaması: The political writings of Al-Mâwardi may be seen as the sum of two distinct styles: 1. The format focusing on the individual ruler as a social figure, as well as his ideal characteristics and lessons learned from the preceding generations, the “Mirrors for Princes” format, which has an important role in the advising tradition in Islam (nasîhatnâmah); 2. The format in which the theory of the caliphate (imâmah) is put forward, which is more complicated in structure and focused on issues of government. Within the context of the first style, it is convenient to count The Advice to Kings (Nasîhat Al-Muluk); and within the second, Al-Ahkâm As-Sultâniyyah. Al- Mawardi’s main political thought is embodied in his Al-Ahkam As-Sultâniyyah. Only a small part of the work seems to be on political theory, while the rest is a discussion on the details of public administration and rules of government (Sharif, n.d.). But his small portion is extremely important because it is the first attempt in Muslim history to evolve a comprehensive theory of the State and because it has left an enduring influence on the course of Muslim political thought up to our own day. As also be understood from the information given, the correct answer is B. “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” was written by Al-Ghazâlî. Kitab-al Shifa is a book written by Avicenna (Ebu Ali Husayn Ibn Abdullah Ibn Sînâ). Fasl al-Maqâl was written by Averroës (Ibn Rushd).

Yanıt Açıklaması: Agora, gymnasium, and theatre all together were institutions of ideological re-production of the society since they served for helping people to realise that they lived in a society.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Since the formation of the first social groups, human beings have always been in need to reflect upon three issues concerning the politics: Power and authority, the way rulers should act/decide and how the system of ruling should be formed, revised or challenged.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Legibus solutus means solved/released from laws; and used to denote the situation when the ruler is not subject to the sanctions of laws, or, when the ruler- a tyrant, or a dictator in this case- sees himself as “above the laws”

Yanıt Açıklaması: Two cities, the city of God and the earthly city, are distinguished by two loves, love of God and (misdirected) love of self, which are destined to end up in heaven and hell, respectively.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Epicurus developed his philosophy based on four different sources: Platonic lecturers of Athens, atomist doctrine of Democritus, septic views of Pyrrhus, and hedonist philosophy of Aristippus. Even though he was affected by all these philosophers, he was a strong critic of them. Unfortunately, he taught his ideas like dogmas and his school gained almost a semi-religious character. Thus, while the further contributions were restrained by this feature, the Epicurean philosophy became easy to be studied. Investigating only Epicurus’ personal philosophy is adequate for understanding the general conception of Epicurean school indeed.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Eschaton is a theological term, meaning the final event in the divine plan; the end of the world. It stems from the Greek word eskhatos, meaning “the last”.

Yanıt Açıklaması: John of Salisbury argues that what nature provides as foundation for human capabilities are only potentialities. “ The beginning of each thing is from nature”, says John of Salisbury, but people may (and should) develop their natural capacities by means of practice until they master their art, a principle that “obtains in liberal and mechanical occupations” alike

Yanıt Açıklaması: The first celebrity of Greek philosophers is Socrates who gained his fame through help of his students, namely through Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle. According to Socrates, virtue is a form of knowledge and thus something that could be taught to people. Only the virtues citizens should hold is the power of ruling. He was not interested in dealing with logic, nor chemistry and physics. Socrates was an admirer of knowledge and wisdom. According to him, everyday life of society should not be governed by ordinary citizens, who do not have adequate wisdom and knowledge.

Yanıt Açıklaması: ‘Voluntary poverty’, as mentioned in the Bible, refers to sharing goods which might be related to Communism. Thus, the correct answer is A.

Yanıt Açıklaması: In The Muqaddimah , one of the meanings ‘umrân includes is “ to be settled with, as humans and animals with regard to the place itself.”

Yanıt Açıklaması: In aesthetics and art, the postmodern movement was characterized with eclecticism.

Yanıt Açıklaması: In political thought, as well as in metaphysics, Avicenna followed the path built by his predecessor, Al-Fârâbî. For Al-Fârâbî, the conditions for ideal rule are mostly related with the functions of the soul and the intellect. Avicenna thoroughly studied the soul in its totality and in all its functions, whether rational, animal, or vegetative. He charted the operations of all the senses in detail, including the five external senses and especially the five internal senses located in the brain-namely, common sense, imagery (where the forms of things are stored), imagination, estimation (judging/guessing the imperceptible significance or connotations for us of sensed objects, like friendship and enmity, which also includes instinctive sensing), and memory-and how they could help or prevent or slow down the intellect in finding out the middle term and perceiving intelligibles more generally. As also understood from the information given, the correct answer is E. Avicenna charted the operations of all the senses in detail, including the five external senses and especially the five internal senses located in brain-namely, common sense, imagery, imagination, estimation and memory.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Finally, there were also some philosophers, such as Democritus and Epicurus, who tried to understand the transformation of the universe and the movement of cosmos . These early investigations only partly aimed to deal with the social life.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Except for the statement in (D), all the other statements are true of the Straussian approach.  The statement in (D) is true of the postmodern theory.