Annotation
The main goal of this course is to introduce students to social and political philosophy with a focus on the concepts of liberal democracy and populism. Students will get acquainted with the historical development of the main concepts of social and political philosophy and their current interpretation, in order to understand the ideological foundations of liberal democracy and populism. Students will learn how to understand these concepts in broader cultural, historical and social contexts, and to connect them with the challenges of current social development. After passing this course, students should be able to orient themselves in contemporary discussions on these topics, and be able to match theoretical issues of social and political philosophy with their actual forms in social life, as it corresponds to the intentions of the philosophy of education.
Content:
● The development of the basic concepts of social and political philosophy in modern thinking. Hegel's conception of civil society and the state. Marx's distinction between citizenship and social being. Negative and positive understandings of freedom (Isaiah Berlin, Gerald Cohen). Fukuyama's thesis on liberal democracy as the end of history. The main issues regarding human rights in the past and present world.
● What are the definitions of liberal democracy? Liberal conception (Berlin, Hayek, Nozick); procedural and normative concepts (Rawls, Habermas); radically democratic conception (Mouffová, Balibar, Rancière). Critiques of the concept of liberal democracy (Marx, Schmitt, Agamben).
● The concepts of populism and illiberal democracy in social and cultural contexts. The relationship between populism, democracy and oligarchy in the history of political thought (sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Rousseau). The contemporary debate on populism (Panizza, de la Torre, Laclau, Mouff). The concept of illiberal democracy (Zakaria). The theory of metapopulism as a transition phase between liberal democracy and the hitherto developed political and social model.