Dutch Revolt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Dutch Revolt - Essay Example In Middle Ages there were tree independent dukedoms: Gelderland and Brabant, counties of Holland, Zeeland and Flanders, and episcopacy of Utrecht. In 1370 in order to protect own interests the cities of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht as well as the episcopacy of Utrecht established trading-political Hanseatic League. It carried out in practice the intermediation between West, North and East Europe and had a trading hegemony in Northern Europe. In the XV century there was a beginning of state main political institutions formation. The protoplast of future parliament - The States-General - was framed in 1463. Since 1482 the territory of Nederland was a part of Habsburg's realm, and since 1556 a part of Spanish Habsburg's realm. During the times of Charles V regiment (1500 - 1558), there was completed the process of integration with contemporary Belgium and Luxemburg and later on formed the one and undivided state of Hole Roman Empire. In this period of time the term "Dutch Republic" came into existence. In economically developed regions there were circulated monetary rent and different kinds of short-term lease; there were formed the order of farmers who do for on the entrepreneurial basis. There was forming the bourgeoisie and was germinating proletariat. The "proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons; the term was initially used in a derogatory sense, until Karl Marx used it as a sociological term to refer to the working class"2.Notwithstanding Spanish authorities were constantly trying to suspend the development of Netherlands. There was inquisition put into action, all people that were in bed odor with it were put to torture. In this time of spiritual oppression and political coercion in Netherlands the new religion doctrine of Calvinism, that is a "system of Christian theology and an approach to Christia n life and thought within the Protestant tradition articulated by John Calvin, a Protestant Reformer in the 16th century, and subsequently by successors, associates, followers and admirers of Calvin, his interpretation of Scripture, and perspective on Christian life and theology"3. Calvinism got its broad spread and opposed itself to theological system of Catholicism.Impassioned and filled inside with religious protest the population of Netherlands excited iconoclast movement destroying icons, statues of Saints and other matters of religion cult. . Relegated Spanish vindicatory army started the severest terror. Finally it flamed up the nationwide war, which got the name of Eighty Years War or Dutch Revolt (1566 -1648).The laboratory movement was headed by William of Orange. It should be mentioned that the struggle against Spanish enslavers pushed forward the increase of national self-consciousness. Exactly this period of time is connected with becoming of Dutch nation and language.

Rousseau Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Rousseau - Essay Example Rousseau was among those social philosophers who explored the paradox that radical political theorists, remain unable to raise to democratic politics, a duality of social interests and diverse conceptions for a modern man in the form of ‘democracy’ and ‘totalitarian’ context. He was such a versatile in his opinion that on one hand he held the opinion to experience democracy, while on the other he felt the urge to be totalitarian. No doubt Rousseau’s ideal of a self-sovereign people along with the conception of democratic control over social life, informed the moral and political vision of nineteenth and twentieth century democratic mass movements, as well as non-democratic variants thereof.Although Rousseau have been the first political theorist to outline the form of a democratic social contract, his obsession with social solidarity precluded his conceptualizing the content of modern democratic political life . What he believed was a modern democrati c policy within which general will involved the establishment of a democratic consensus, among divergent social interests and distinct moral conceptions of the good, on those shared constitutional practices and public goods that reach beyond one’s identity with a particular sub community.Rousseau was among the very few political philosophers and theorists who gave a touch of taste of totalitarian to a full democratic region. He comprehend that if democracy were to be a stable and viable order, a commitment to its political practices and public goods would have to be an integral part of the will of each of its citizens, regardless of their propertied status. Although Rousseau acknowledged that in a free society the existence of such a shared "general will" should not obliterate individual wills, his attitude toward the role of associational life in a democratic order was profoundly ambivalent. Perhaps because he never witnessed a functioning pluralist democracy and vigorously opposed the status and economic inequalities of a commercial, monarchical society, Rousseau could not envision a democracy in which the political interactions of divergent interests forged a commitment to a common political life 3. In his day, status-based interests were a profound barrier to the creation of an egalitarian, democratic order; thus Rousseau never witnessed free associations playing a central role in the life of a demo cratic polity. Although Rousseau is theoretically committed to the sovereign authority of the people, he could be thought of as such a political symbol that severely curtailed the arena for democratic politics by denying any role for particular interests groups or sub communities in political deliberation. He believed a democratic society to be partly constituted through popular participation in the election of government and in popular deliberation about the constitutional structure of society, the nature of the basic laws. But it is also shaped by particular interests defending their concerns in both civil society and the political arena. In a vigorous and egalitarian democratic order, a complex dialectic would persist between the activities of secondary associations and their regulation by broader democratic cultural norms and legislative practices. Although the citizens of a democracy must at times achieve a measure of reflective distance from their particular attachments in order to reason ab out shared institutions and practices, a complete distancing from particular identities will never be fully achieved 4. This mediation between particular and collective identities, and between partial interests and the common good, can only occur politically. There is no Archimedean resolution to this inherent democratic dilemma. For Rousseau the essence of both "natural freedom" and "civil freedom" was the absence of personal dependence on others. In a society characterized by a healthy civic culture, all