POL108 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Parrhesia, Civilizing Mission, Eurocentrism

• School: Macquarie University
• Department: Politics and International Relations/Politics
• Course: POL108
• Professor: any

Document Summary

The conceptualisations of dominant systems of politics. How political thought about the state has developed over the centuries : how have states developed from the time that humans rst formed settled communities . Will it hold centre stage as the principal political institution in the international system? . This contrasts with : ethnocentrism: a self-proclaimed belief or attitude that one ethnic group is superior to another or to all other ethnic groups. Usually the person who has the belief/attitude is a member of the group that they consider to be superior . Other societies have their own forms of ethnocentrism. That the state is central to politics, and that is emerged naturally. Advocates of the normative logic: socrates: the unexamined life is not worth living , critical social and political practices, gn thic seauton (know thy self, epimeleia heautou (self-care, parrhesia (speaking truth to power; always free speech against authority) Neither the state nor social conventions were natural.