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.
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Notes
George Santayana, Life of Reason: Vol.1, New York: Scribner, 1953, p.397.
Akbar Ganji, “The Struggle Against Sultanism,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 16, no. 4 (2005): 38–51.
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.
Peter Steinberger, “Hobbes, Rousseau and the Modern Conception of the State,” Journal of Politics Vol. 70, no. 3 (2008): p. 604.
David van Mill, “Hobbes and the Limits of Freedom,” paper prepared for the Australasian Political Studies Association, October 4–6, 2000.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson. London: Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 376–377.
See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Peter Steinberger, “Hobbes, Rousseau and the Modern Conception of the State,” Journal of Politics Vol. 70, no. 3 (2008): p. 598.
Hannah Arendt, On Violence. New York: Harvest Books, 1970, pp. 153–155.
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© 2013 Ramin Jahanbegloo
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Jahanbegloo, R. (2013). Introduction. In: Democracy in Iran. The Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330178_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330178_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
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