Document Type : Research Article (Political Thought)

Author

• Farshad Shariat

Associate Professor of Political Science, Islamic Teachings & Political Science Faculty, Imam Sadiq University

Abstract

This article attempts to study the interactions between the two religious and secular domains in three intellectual periods in the history of Western political philosophy before Christ, in the ecclesiastical period and in the modern era, in which the separation of religion and state in Western political thought is a two-tier phenomenon in theory and practice. In other words, the internal layer of the philosophy seeks to reread and mentally separate political from nonpolitical matters so as to prescribe a just or a relatively not unjust criterion for political actors although, in practice, political actors and the others cannot avoid interacting. Again in other words, this article, while researching the just rights of citizens and the need for interaction and a link between political and nonpolitical actors, shows why and how in order for politics and the like to outline a moral theory that would fit a political theory in practice, cannot avoid separating and distinguishing the two in theory.

Keywords

• Western political philosophy
• religion and politics
• political matter
• Secularism
• Justice

Main Subjects

• Political Thought