Humanities and Social Science Research

The Concept of Sovereignty in the Political Philosophy – From Antiquity to the Contemporary Epoch

2021-08-04T22:35:20+08:00

The concept of state power represents the dominant theme of the whole political philosophy. The concept of sovereignty, which in contemporary epoch became the norm of constitutional law and unanimously recognized principle of international law, has concerned philosophical minds since antiquity to nowadays. The best minds of humanity contemplated about the essence of the state power. The major thinkers of all times were finding out the answer to the question “How should be organized the state so that all people to be happy?” The answer to this question is connected with the concept of sovereignty, which was developed during the humanity’s history. The idea of sovereignty refers to the state body or the person who exercises state power. So, for each epoch is characteristic its own vision of this concept, that reflects, on the one hand, the entire structure of society, and, on the other hand, the state’s ruler position. The sovereignty, which appeared as the concept in the Greek Antiquity, was developed in the Meddle Age and Modern Era and fully formed in the contemporary era, being the component part of majority national constitutions. This article is a study dedicated to determining the specific aspects of sovereignty in the background of the idea’s history. A doctrinal and practical interest in the concept of sovereignty is based on the political and legal dimension of this notion in the actual state construction. As a result of this research, we aimed to determine the role and the regulation of sovereignty in the cotemporaneous state order at national and international level. This research paper focuses on the presentation of the philosophical aspects of this concept of constitutional law.

Terrorism Threat in Doctrine Formulating of Military Campaign Scenario to Achieve National Security

2021-08-14T14:50:08+08:00

Based on the estimation methodology on the potential of the war against terrorism on the transformation of doctrine, the conclusions based on the predictive analysis are: (1) The potential for the war against terrorism has a very strong relevance to the prediction of changes in military campaign doctrine in the long term by producing new war strategies both in terms of ends-means-ways as a result of High Impact Low Probability, (2) Through predictive analysis with extrapolation model, it is found that threats, strategic environment and tradition or history are variables that are expected to remain unchanged, especially in the short term in influencing the preparation of Military Campaign Doctrine, (3) The Projection Model determines if Threat is the variable that changes the most so that it will affect changes in the Military Campaign Doctrine in the short to medium term, (4) Looking for the best solution in realizing the best Military Campaign Doctrine. This can be followed by designing a simulation of the New War Strategy as a result of forecasting the Military Campaign Doctrine.

Weather and Natural Catastrophes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Storms, Floods, Fires, Earthquakes, and Pandemics

2021-08-19T16:21:52+08:00

Ecocriticism and Medieval Natural Catastrophes Literary Evidence?

Ecocriticism in the Humanities has alerted us in the last few years to the considerable potentials of building significant bridges between the Sciences (Meteorology, Atmospheric Sciences, Vulcanism, etc.), on the one hand, and Literary and Historical Studies on the other, and to draw insights from both sides of the equation for an increased understanding of universal phenomena of great importance for all human societies.[1] Climate change, for instance, is not something we can understand today by simply looking at samples or data reflecting current conditions, as if our current situation had emerged only in the last fifty or so years. Major changes in our natural environment are mostly the result of long-term forces impacting our material and cultural world, and weather patterns and significant disruptions have had a huge impact on human society throughout time. Nevertheless, we can probably agree that the current situation of our physical conditions have dramatically deteriorated over the last decades because of human-made factors, if we consider the daunting global warming affecting us all right now in the twenty-first century as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the modern consume society which endangers the survival of our world (Anthropocene).

Long-term and short-term processes and phenomena must be taken into account when we want to pursue cultural-historical ecocriticism, especially within a medieval context. It has thus become mandatory to examine, for instance, the history of the forest or the history of water through a variety of lenses, one of which can be fruitfully provided by chronicles, especially those dating not only from the twentieth or nineteenth centuries, but also those which shed light on medieval and early modern conditions and events. [2] In fact, medieval approaches to ecocriticism prove to be eye-opening for the latest scientific investigations and can lay the foundation for a better understanding of the relationship between humans and their environment, and this already thousand and more years ago. [3] Both weather and natural catastrophes have always been highly impactful on human history and culture, but it continues to be a huge challenge to establish the concrete correlations, such as between the rise of the Gothic age or the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century with the Medieval Warming Period.

A late medieval example, however, might shed some light on this phenomenon, though I will not examine it here at great length. On July 2, 1505, when Martin Luther, the later famous founder of the Protestant Church, returned from his home in Mansfeld to Erfurt, where he was enrolled as a student of law at the university, he was surprised by a major thunderstorm in the hamlet of Stotternheim (a short distance north of Erfurt), which frightened him so deeply that he immediately changed his entire outlook toward life. He begged St. Anne to save him from the lightening, and since that was then the case, he fulfilled his pledge and turned into a monk, joining the Augustinians in Erfurt. As a monk, however, he began to recognize the evils of the Catholic Church and began with his efforts to reform it from within. This study will attempt to bring to light some parallel cases in the early and the high Middle Ages.