Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Kharazmi University
10.22034/jpiut.2025.70491.4360
Abstract
Various schools of political philosophy seek to answer major questions concerning the nature of government, the types of desirable political systems, the qualifications of rulers, governmental structures, and the criteria of legitimacy, popular acceptance, and efficiency of governments. They also examine citizens’ expectations of governments and the nature of the relationship between the people and the state. In reality, the type of answers given to such questions is fundamentally dependent on the worldview, philosophical anthropology, and political philosophy from which thinkers draw their assumptions. This study aims to examine the nature of these questions, and their corresponding answers, through the lens of socially constructed (iʿtibārī) concepts. Social constructs encompass all social principles, ideas, structures, and laws that human beings establish, which arise from human needs and function on the basis of those needs; they do not exist independently prior to such needs. The theory of social constructs demonstrates that rational responses to the aforementioned political questions are increasingly shaped by variables such as time, place, culture, traditions, customs, social classes, collective mentalities, as well as people’s needs and expectations. Since these variables are themselves fluid and subject to historical and geographical change, the core questions of political philosophy also lack fixed, immutable answers. Instead, the answers fluctuate in accordance with the evolving nature of these social constructs. it is possible to identify certain stable foundations rooted in historical experience, such as the centrality of knowledge, virtue, efficiency and skill, public satisfaction and acceptance, justice, freedom, welfare, security, and ethical life,
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