SİYASAL DÜŞÜNCE

Various views of the Ancient Greek philosophers have been the ground for modern political thinking for a long time. They have double effect on political thinking: First, their ways of approaching the concepts and issues provided the tools for succeeding philosophers, who attempted to handle pervasive problems of politics. Second, the Ancient Greek philosophers drew the dominant framework and determined the themes of political thinking to a great extent.

In ancient Rome, the elderly and the prominent members of the society, most of who were actual members of the Senate were thought to have auctoritas. The term implied that their words were to be trusted and they should be respected. The word authority comes from auctoritas and can be defined as legitimate power.

Weber is considered as one of the founders of sociology, with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Among his other contributions, his way of classifying ideal types of authorities under three categories, as charismatic, traditional, and legal, was a seminal work.

Legitimacy can be defined as rightfulness. It should not be limited to being legal, or in accordance with the laws, despite rightfulness to a great extent stems from the legal framework.

In abstract terms, ideology refers to the production of meanings, symbols, and ideas to be drawn on whilst interpreting various dimensions of the social reality. The interpretation of social reality rests on forms of thought that are not necessarily compatible with each other. Yet again, the apparent incompatibility is not an obstacle against the use of contradictory meanings and symbols by a particular ideology.

The origin of the terms left and right that refer to particular political perspectives and stances can be found in the French Revolution, in which Tiers état (the third estate referring to the people in general, who were neither aristocrat nor members of clergy) overthrew the monarchy and paved the ground for the First French Republic. Representatives of the third estate named Jacobins generally sat to the left side of the Estates General during the National Convention Period (1792-1795), while those who were supportive of the traditional institutions of the ancien régime, i.e. Girondins, sat to the right, and representatives from various streams sat at the centre (Plaine) (Ağaoğulları et al, 2015, p. 605). In the 19th century France, the terms left and right were used to delineate the supporters of the Republic vis-á-vis the supporters of the monarchy. Traditionally, the left came to be associated with social change and progress, while the right came to be associated with order and preservation of the prevailing and dominant social values.

It is said that “the recent re-birth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in 1971”. Rawls is one of the greatest philosophers of the political philosophy in the 20th Century.

As it can be seen clearly, the liberal understanding of society narrows the role of the state and prescribes limited intervention. Indeed, the logical implication of a methodologically individualist understanding would be ignoring the common good. On the other hand, a republican or statist understanding in which the state is burdened with dealing with the ills of the society, the scope of state intervention is much larger.

For Strauss, studying political thought is “primarily and in a way chiefly... listening to conversations between the great philosophers... the greatest minds, and therefore... studying the great books.” It consists of a desire to have wisdom and rests on an inquiry to answer questions regarding what the good life is and how a good social order can be built up.

Free riding is a concept of economics and not political thought.