state of nature Quick reference
Andrew Reeve
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
... of nature The condition of mankind before a (specified) event, intervention, or artifice. Whether treated as a historical reality or as the result of a mental experiment, the concept of a state of nature has been used to point up various contrasts important to particular writers. For Hobbes , the state of nature depicted conditions in the absence of political power or authority—in the absence of the artifice of the state. For Rousseau , the state of nature was associated with man in a pre‐social, pre‐linguistic world. In Christian thought, man’s natural...
state of nature Reference library
Crina Gschwandtner
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4 ed.)
... of nature Associated especially with the political philosophers Hobbes , Locke , and Rousseau , a thought experiment that envisions human existence without law or government: in Hobbes’s view, a state of war (where life is ‘nasty, brutish, and short’) that requires the social contract or Leviathan to escape it; in Locke, a more benign state of plenty, governed by a law of nature, in which everyone is equal. Because these laws can be violated a civil contract and government become necessary. Rousseau thinks of the state of nature as a wholesome, natural...
state of nature Quick reference
A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.)
... of nature The state of human beings outside civil society, invoked by philosophers such as Hobbes , Locke , and Rousseau , in order to clarify what is explained by nature as opposed to what is explained by convention, and what is justified in each way. For Hobbes the state of nature is a war of all against all, and the life of man ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Society is justified as the remedy to this appalling state ( see also social contract ). Others such as Rousseau have been more optimistic, up to the vision of noble anarchy with...
state of nature Reference library
Ronald D. Milo
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2 ed.)
...the state of nature as a pre-political state, but insists that ‘the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions’. Because of this he views the state of nature as merely involving certain inconveniences. These inconveniences consist in (1) the lack of an established, known law that gives an authoritative interpretation of the law of nature, ...
state of nature
Islam: The Religion of Reason and Nature Reference library
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khān
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...is the Creator of heaven and earth and what is in them, and of all creatures; so is He also the Creator of nature. What a tremendous slander is it, therefore, when my opponents state that I call nature Creator or—God forbid—nature God. What I declare to be created, they accuse me of calling Creator. [This path is not entirely new in the history of Islam.] Can anybody say that the path I have outlined above is not apt to strengthen Islam? . . . No doubt it is a new path, and yet in it I have followed the ancient ‘ ulamā .’ As they developed a theology [...
Islam in Secular India Reference library
Mushīr Ul-Haq
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...He has been a member of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Simla and is presently Chairman of the Department of Arabic Studies, Jamia Millia University. In this piece written in 1972, the author notes that before the partition of India, Muslims endorsed the secular nature of the state because of the protection such a state gave to them as a minority community. They were, however, instructed by the Muslim ulema (clergy) to reject secularism as a philosophy. Since partition, many Pakistani intellectuals have stated that their faith can coexist...
The Islamic Welfare State Reference library
Chapra M. ‘Umar
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...Adequacy of resources is a relative term and is to be judged against attainable standards in the light of the stage of economic development. Nature and Identity The above discussion indicates that the Islamic state is essentially a welfare state and is duty-bound to play an important role in the economy for the fulfilment of the goals of the Sharī‘a in the economic field as briefly specified above. This welfare role is, however, to be played within the framework of individual freedom which Islam values greatly. The most important pillar of the Islamic...
Poetry Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...illusion of the system of nature can be known, which is to say, can be named. The truth of Nature, for Blake, is that it is fundamentally fallen—‘sick with Love’, as this text and the famous lyric ‘The Sick Rose’ both declare. Its illusion is that such Love is ‘joy’. On the contrary, in his Milton the sick loves of the plants are ‘The cruel joys of Luvahs Daughters lacerating with knives / And whips their Victims & the deadly sport of Luvahs Sons’. For Blake, Nature will always betray the heart that loves her. That is the (satanic) nature of Nature. So it is...
Islamic Socialism Reference library
Mustafā Sibā‘ī
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...of society, on condition also that economic experts agree that it is in the obvious interest of the nation. Henceforth, when the state has recourse to nationalization in cases of social or economic necessity, it is obliged to afford adequate compensation to the dispossessed proprietors. The principles of Islam, our social situation, and the obligation placed upon us by our religion to wipe out oppression and give human dignity to the peasants—all this renders the limitation of landed property legal in the eyes of the law and makes it one of the duties of...
Islam and the Socialist Revolution Reference library
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...Islam is one of our strongest defenses against all attempts at depersonalization. In the worst hours of colonial domination, the Algerian people, driven by a sense of justice and equality, entrenched themselves in a militant, austere Islam and drew from it that moral energy and that spiritual sense that preserved them from despair and allowed them to overcome. The decline of the Muslim world cannot be explained by moral causes alone. Other factors of a material, economic, and social nature such as foreign invasions, internal struggles, the rise of despotism,...
Political Theory of Islam Reference library
Mawdūdī Abū-L-‘Alā’
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...that the human society has ever evolved. . . . Islamic State is an Ideological State Another characteristic of the Islamic State is that it is an ideological state. It is clear from a careful consideration of the Qur'ān and the Sunna that the state in Islam is based on an ideology and its objective is to establish that ideology. The state is an instrument of reform and must act likewise. It is a dictate of this very nature of the Islamic State that such a state should be run only by those who believe in the ideology on which it is based and in the Divine Law...
A Separate Muslim State in the Subcontinent Reference library
Muhammad Iqbāl
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...a polity in favour of national polities in which religious attitude is not permitted to play any part? This question becomes of special importance in India where the Muslims happen to be in minority. The proposition that religion is a private individual experience is not surprising on the lips of a European. In Europe the conception of Christianity as a monastic order, renouncing the world of matter and fixing its gaze entirely on the world of spirit, led by a logical process of thought to the view embodied in this proposition. The nature of the Prophet's...
Humanity and Islam Reference library
‘Ali Shari‘ati
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
...the point that what their wants are does not exist in nature. This is indicative of the fact that humankind was created. So long as humans are contented with what nature offers them, they are a natural animal pursuing what nature provides them. If, however, they reach a point when nature alone cannot satisfy them, their needs and feelings evolve beyond the totality of nature's powers, creativities, and possibilities. This is the point at which, as [Martin] Heidegger [German philosopher, 1889–1976] stated, “humankind feels lonesome” because it feels that it...
On the Future of Women and Politics in the Arab World Reference library
Heba Raouf Ezzat
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...instead of contradictory and exclusivist. So far theorizing political participation was done within the boundaries of social sciences. At best, it was linked to the central role of the state. It is worth mentioning here that the changing nature of the state power as the overarching actor in politics resulted in a confusion of researchers facing new phenomena. See how the emigration of many men in the seventies to the Gulf States resulted in the emergence of millions of mother-headed families. Is this to be seen as empowerment or disempowerment of women? Is...
Natural Philosophy (Science) Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...his support of revolutionary causes. Inspired in 1758 by the electrical performances of the American patriot Benjamin Franklin , he began to connect the pursuit of electrical and chemical knowledge to the ideas of social reform shared by other members of Dissenting and radical circles, such as James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Richard *Price , and Thomas *Beddoes . Priestley regarded the phenomena of nature not as something to be gazed at in a passive state of wonder before the power of God, but as something to be understood as part of a process of active ...
History Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...state of the globe, we find that, in many parts of it, the inhabitants are so destitute of culture, as to appear little above the condition of brute animals; and even when we peruse the remote history of polished nations, we have seldom any difficulty in tracing them to a state of the same rudeness and barbarism.’ In such a framework one can describe peoples of two different historical moments as belonging to the same state of civilization: in this case the same state of ‘rudeness and barbarism’. It none the less remains true that being in the state of...
The Downhill Path and Defense, Not Surrender Reference library
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
...of how far they may be violated in practice. They are, in any case, less principled than theocracy, which is a higher-order system of rule. Principled autocracy is constantly in danger of becoming a de facto unprincipled dictatorship. The next step in the process of degeneration from principled autocracy is democracy, in which, according to Plato, the dominant concepts are those of freedom and equality. Democracy, by its very nature, is a forerunner of dictatorship or demagogy. (Whether modern advocates of...
The Necessity of Renewing Islamic Thought and Reinvigorating Religious Understanding Reference library
Nurcholish Madjid
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
...it will determine, out of the state of spiritual purity, the form and value of motivation for all acts in life or culture. This cannot but come from the desire to achieve a higher level of divine appreciation, toward the ultimate completion of the sense of purity—the “consent” or rida of God Himself. Indeed the motivation, desire, and inclination to attain the good, the pure, and the true are qualities intrinsic to man because of his humanity. In accordance with his fitra or “original nature” which is pure, man is...
Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy Reference library
Carol Meyers
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...the rise of the Israelite state, or any state, can never be separated from difficult philosophical problems of justice and equity in human affairs, of the sanction of violence, of the nature of political power and its abuses. Linking the Israelite state with the concept of divine favor makes the issue of morality all the more difficult, overshadowing all critical assessments. Yet the profound moral questions about the consolidation of power in the hands of a few should remain in the larger field of vision on which the specific shapes of Israelite...
