CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Critical Analysis

Critical Analysis

Introduction

The author Ball in his article believes that the business of world affairs as we know it today is based on political endeavors of peace, war, economics, and government. When most people think of politics, they envision electoral campaigns, military operations, democrats arguing with republicans, Liberalists brawling with the GOP and the citizens protesting all of them. Politics and the philosophy of politics is a great deal above politicians squabbling over potential laws and the governing of countries. The study of political philosophy involves the state, its justification, the proper organization of its ethics, and the best form for the politics to contemporarily to exist (Ball, 1995, 549). Political philosophy incorporates the study of liberalism, communism, fascism, and conservatism.

Critical Analysis: Ball, T. & Power in Goodin, R.E. & Pettit, P. (Eds) A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Blackwell 1995, pp. 549-57

By analysing Ball's article we have found that the earliest recorded political philosophy begins with Aristotle and Plato. These great thinkers reflected one another in their beliefs of politics and how the Greek city-states were to be governed. These men were not egalitarians, (egalitarians believe that all humans are equal in sociology, politics, and economics.) Plato and Aristotle believed in five forms of political titles, Plato's perspective of government was aristocracy, tyranny, Timocracy, democracy, and plutocracy. Whereas, Aristotle believed in monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, polity, and democracy (Ball, 1995, 549).

Being and becoming, individuality and multiplicity, perpetual and short-lived existence was the belief of the early Greek philosophers. The undivided meaning of whole reality was argued about the relationships between these terms.

In contemporary times, there are four revised categories of political philosophy. The first is liberalism; Liberalism can be understood as a political tradition, a political philosophy, and a general philosophical theory, encompassing a theory of value with the conception of the person and a moral theory as well as a political philosophy (Stanford). (Miller, 2006, 12) In the layperson point of view, liberalism is the belief that individuals should have the same freedoms as others. After all, don't the people govern the people?

Ball (1995) noted that the term fascism originated from Italy in 1932 with the ascension of Benito Mussolini and continued with Adolf Hitler and remained as late as Saddam Hussein. The application of fascism is the total belief that dominance of a state, government, and its leadership by an individual who embodies the trust, intelligence and the will of the people are fundamental and necessary. The essence of fascism, therefore, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people. Men who believed in a liberal philosophy of individual rights wrote the U.S. Constitution. These same men sought to protect those rights from governmental infringement and fascism. The Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Bureau of Investigation is good examples. Where is the irony? Fascism is still practiced today by totalitarian extremist groups and political regimes.

Ball in his article states that, Similar to the fascist is the ...