Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Associate Professor, Department of Political, International and Legal Studies, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran.
2
PhD student in Political Science, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The state, as a social and political institution, has long been the subject of extensive debate in the fields of philosophy and political thought. Political philosophy, in general, examines the principles, institutions, and power relations in society, seeking to answer questions such as "What kind of government should govern the people?" and "What is the basis of the legitimacy of government?"In this regard, various theories have been proposed throughout history by scholars and philosophers in both Western and Islamic fields. This article seeks to comparatively analyze the foundations of the philosophy of the state and political system in the theories of Western and Islamic scholars and to conduct a comparative study between these two approaches. This research focuses specifically on the question of how the political theories of Western and Islamic scholars about the state and political system are consistent with or differ from each other. The assumptions of this research are based on an extensive study of the opinions of Western thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, along with the opinions of Islamic thinkers, such as the theories of Farabi, Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra, Allamah Tabataba'i, Imam Khomeini, and other thinkers. In this regard, this article, while examining the foundations of these theories, provides an analysis of the "theory of Velayat-e-Faqih" in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The methodology of this research has been conducted in an analytical-comparative manner, and in order to examine the philosophical and political foundations of these theories more precisely, historical and comparative analyses have been used.Also, in this research, the position of the theory of Velayat-e-Faqih within the framework of the Islamic Republic of Iran system has been examined with an emphasis on “religious democracy.” As a result, this article seeks to demonstrate the prominent role of Islamic philosophy in the formation of specific government models such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, on the basis of which it continues to resist Western systems.
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