Democracy in Iran pp 1-8 | Cite as
Introduction
Abstract
The modern history of Iran has been a narrative of violence in the form of conflicting discourses between the religious and the secular or between the modernists and the traditionalists. However, the ethical moment of nonviolence has become an ethical standard for the Iranian civil society against the absolutist nature of politics in contemporary Iran. The use of violence in contemporary Iranian politics has continuously diminished the power of those who use it. But the power of Iranian civil society has never grown out of the barrel of a gun. It has removed tyrants and changed social values by using its moral capital and practicing nonviolence.
Keywords
Collective Memory Political Violence Modern History Extreme Violence Iranian PeoplePreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
- 1.George Santayana, Life of Reason: Vol.1, New York: Scribner, 1953, p.397.Google Scholar
- 2.Akbar Ganji, “The Struggle Against Sultanism,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 16, no. 4 (2005): 38–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 3.Quoted in John P. McCormick, “Fear, Technology, and the State: Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and the Revival of Hobbes in Weimar and National Socialist Germany,” Political Theory Vol. 22, no. 4 (November 1994): 619–652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 4.Peter Steinberger, “Hobbes, Rousseau and the Modern Conception of the State,” Journal of Politics Vol. 70, no. 3 (2008): p. 604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 5.David van Mill, “Hobbes and the Limits of Freedom,” paper prepared for the Australasian Political Studies Association, October 4–6, 2000.Google Scholar
- 6.Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson. London: Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 376–377.Google Scholar
- 7.See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006.Google Scholar
- 9.Peter Steinberger, “Hobbes, Rousseau and the Modern Conception of the State,” Journal of Politics Vol. 70, no. 3 (2008): p. 598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 10.Hannah Arendt, On Violence. New York: Harvest Books, 1970, pp. 153–155.Google Scholar