Scienze Politiche

The influential essay of Wendt is basically a response and a critique of the 'rationalist' theories, the neo-liberalism and neo-realism approaches; especially criticizing the structural realism theories of Kenneth Waltz, and their assumption of Anarchy. From a constructivist approach, Wendt explains that Anarchy is not something given, it is socially constructed. So, the main point of this article is 'anarchy is what states make of it'.

After almost three decades of ups and downs, witnessing different colors of politics; from violence and bloodshed to democracy and women rights, Afghanistan is once again confronting another historical period. While different environment wouldn’t allow to compare it with times of 1989 or 1992 but perhaps it is as important as that time. Since the Soviet occupation to civil war, Taliban, and then the war on terror that brought thousands of foreign forces and millions of dollars to this country, yet Afghanistan now remains prone to become a safe haven for terrorism and fundamental Islamist groups. Today after 18 years of different approaches and tactics, once defining the Taliban as brothers and once as enemies – for the first time this long war has made its way to a progressive peace negotiation. However; an ambiguous positioned role of the unity government remains vulnerable to political stability. This research paper intends to examine current US-led peace negotiations with Taliban, the opportunities and rooms for the Afghan political elites in making the situation in their benefit, the current cold leaning position by the unity government towards peace agreement, and importantly the role and the future of women in peace negotiations and in a future Afghanistan.

As I have read one of the interesting things that can be interpreted from Steve Coll’s Directorate S is how many times the United States has gone into war in Afghanistan within their (war against terror in Afghanistan). However; putting of a very extreme care and in-depth endogenous and exogenous details away for the sake of clarity and not starting another big discussion which it is two times. The first one was when the United States just intervened and sent the Taliban to the mountains rest for a while. At that time, seems a victory both from the United States side....

In an explicit way, the tripartite model of freedom by Honneth, which is heavily inspired of and indebted to Hegel, in a way is a response and critique to Isaiah Berlin's 'Two Concepts of Liberty'. Berlin's two concepts of liberty does not seem complete and adequate for Honenth and he sets the notion of freedom into three components: the first component comes with the use of Hegel's critique of abstract right in showing the incompleteness of the "negative freedom" underlying the liberal theory. The second component which he calls it "reflexive freedom" involves stimulating Hegel's critique of Kant. Honneth's argument is that reflexive freedom goes beyond negative freedom through requiring autonomy and authenticity in what individuals will is troubled by the difference between the good and the real. The third component that Honneth adds is "social freedom" which comes as the sublation of the first two forms of freedom. It represents freedom recognized by others so actualized within a community which of course from the Honenth's point of view in the modern terms it will be the institutions such as family, civil, society, or state. Consequently, his argument is that social freedom is not distinct from the first two components, but we also cannot abandon it for our self-understanding.

More than the philosophical perspective of the book from the structural perspective this book expresses a historical account of the formative period of modern theories of international law. Richard Tuck previews a widespread and detailed history of the international relations from the times of antiquity to the seventeenth century. The arguments over the moral basis for war and its relation with the ideas and thoughts of theorists, like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, and Kant makes another significant part of this book. It will be ignorance of a major part of this book if to call it only an account of international law; as the author meanwhile illustrates thoughts about international relations which were the foundations to the establishment of modern liberal theory, like the concept of the modern state provided by liberalism. In this order, the book brings up the arguments about the presuppositions on current political theory but through a new lens the relation between liberalism and imperialism. Originally this book of Richard Tuck is based on the Carlyle Lectures of Oxford University in the Hilary Term 1991. The Carlyle Lectures were to challenge the connection between the liberal political theories of the seventeenth century which mainly relied on the concept of natural rights and the political theories of the previous century-the humanist political theories. Thomas Hobbes, one of the very leading liberal philosophers-or let's say the first individualistic liberal philosopher-of the age of enlightenment stands as the central character of this book. It was the ideas of Hobbes that brought up and stated the relationship between humanism and natural rights. Also, he spoke of the connection between the old jurisprudence of war and the new political theory. Whereas on the other hand, on the critics of mainstream rights theories Hobbes has been criticized of being divergent. Throughout the book, with very detailed chapters Richard Tuck digs the notions of 'humanist' and the 'scholastic' describing the humanist and scholastic theories of war. In pursuit of it, the book continues with chapters on leading political theorists; starting with Hugo Grotius, the main character Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, the rejection of the ideas of Hobbes and Grotius but similarizing Locke and Vattel to Hobbes and Grotius, and the last figures-as the most interesting readers of Hobbes-Rousseau and Kant come at the end.