Prolepsis y justicia en el epicureísmo
The influential 19th century philosophical historiography did not recognize in Epicureanism a political philosophy worthy of study. Based on an analysis of the Principal Doctrines and texts of Hermarchus, Polystratus and Lucretius, this paper aims to show that Epicureans developed a relevant political theory that connected two traditions: the Ionian naturalism and the Socratic reformulation of philosophy as the only true politics. In the establishment of justice through covenants and its continuity in the language through the prolepsis of what is just, they saw a finding that offered man the required security to satisfy his necessary natural desires and his survival.
Social and political thought
According to Hegel's rich and powerful dialectical philosophy of history and history of philosophy, the characteristic philosophies of the Hellenistic era, and Stoicism in particular, express the alienation of political impotence, and indeed the transition from Sittlichkeit and the oneness of man with community to Moralitat and the emergence of the individual moral agent. This complex of fact, pseudo-fact and interpretation is what in one version or another sustains the prevailing climate of opinion about Hellenistic political and social thought. The best evidence for the character of Hellenistic kingship treatises comes from two documents, one dating from the second century BC, and the other at least thirty years after that. Polybius draws on a variety of philosophical sources, some still identifiable, some not, to produce a striking exercise in constitutional analysis. According to Epicurus, social security is not enough; freeing men's minds from fear of death and the gods is of much greater importance.
Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?
By a potential person I shall mean an entity which is not now a person but which is capable of developing into a person, given certain biologically and/or technologically possible conditions. This is admittedly a narrower sense than some would attach to the term ‘potential'. After all, people of the twenty-fifth century, if such there will be, are in some sense potential people now, even though the specific biological entities from which they will develop, i.e. the particular gametes or concepti, do not yet exist. For there do exist, in the reproductive capacities of people now living and in the earth's resources, conditions adequate to produce these future people eventually, provided of course that various possible catastrophes are avoided. Indeed, in some sense of ‘potential’ there have been countless billions of potential people from the beginning of time. But I am concerned not with such remote potentialities but with currently existing entities that are capable of developing into people.