Socrates is nowadays well-known as a philosopher, opponent of the Sophists of second half of the fifth century B.C., and the forerunner of a philosophical tradition cultivated by Plato and Aristotle, endured along with the whole history of philosophy with some alterations and moderations. But his contemporary ATHENIANs sentenced him to death as a sophist, a heretic and a seducer of the youth. Was there anything in his character, method, behavior and sayings which led the ATHENIANs to such a sentence? The present article answers this question. The conclusion is that there are some similarities between Socrates and the Sophists in the subject matter of discussion, in method, in individual character and in the content of teaching; these similarities can be seen in Plato’s dialogues too.

The author attempts to view the Greek tragedy as a literal- dramatic genre and a kind of work which its creation prepared during particular social-political conditions in Athens 5th century B. C. Tragedy as one of the Greek dramatic genres had importance more than merely a dramatic performance. This was exactly due to the ATHENIAN democracy which governing manner, but rather to its cultural aspect. So, the article examines the ATHENIAN democracy as a cultural phenomenon which differs from democracy as a form of government.

The main purpose of this article is to find the relation between political implications of Sophocles's Antigone and "ATHENIAN Democracy". To do so, we have used a structuralist approach the main feature of which is exploring binary oppositions in the text which in turn results in finding the oppositions within the political-social life that provides a ground for the creation of the text. From the point of view of political thought, the most prominent opposition in the tragedy of Antigone which creats a network of oppositions around itself, is the one drawn between "family"- with its values- and"political system" and the relationships among the citizenry. The importance of this opposition has been confirmed by Christian Meier, Jean Pierre Vernant, Charles Segal, and even Micheal Zelnak.It reveals a transition to the epoch of citizenry's relations. It also caused the confrontation between "unwritten divine laws" and "manmade written laws", the opposition that is the main focus of the present article.

In the late 18th Century C.E., decades after the Western ENLIGHTENMENT, an Enlightening movement appeared among the European Jews. This movement was established by the important Jewish thinker, Moses Mendelssohn in Germany and particularly in Berlin. Then it gradually spread to other cities and countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including France, England, Austria, Poland, Italy and Russia and lasted more than one century. The adherents of this movement were called Maskil (pl. Maskilim) that means "an intellectual and open-minded". The central theme of the movement was rationality and criticism of traditional Jewish life and thought. In practice, it was going to remove seclusion of the Jews and to assimilate them in the non-Jewish societies. Therefore, the Maskilim struggled with those symbols of Jewish life which caused their separation and isolation from the rest of the society. The specific characteristics of Haskalah were rationality, critical and Philosophical-mindedness, opposition to Yiddish language, promotion of secular education and secular sciences, promotion of local languages along with Hebrew, encouraging productive occupations, moving towards assimilation of the Jews in non-Jewish societies of Europe and trying to involve them in social and political issues of their country.

Reason is recognized as the main principle of the ENLIGHTENMENT and that is why the eighteenth century is called the golden age of rational-religious thinking. In this period, we witness not only a change in the position of science but also a rational (in contrast to metaphysical) attitude toward nature. Neoclassic literature of England under the influence of the ENLIGHTENMENT is a humanistic and moral literature as it concentrates on the social identity of individuals. Eighteenth century is also the great age of satire, humour, essay and treatise since these genres unlike poetry study man with reason rather than emotions. The novel as the product of this age like poetry and satire follows the moral attitude of the ENLIGHTENMENT; it attempts to establish some ideal models in the context of social oppositions and conflicts.

In An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm, Ibsen forms the structure, characters and figural aspects of each play with an emphasis on the discourse of the ENLIGHTENMENT. This article analyses Rosmersholm in the light of subjectivism, historicism and hero- worshipping/ epoch- making- three tenets of the discourse of the ENLIGHTENMENT- and argues that the play casts doubts on these strategies employed in social contexts. The article further suggests that the emergence of the grotesque in this play targets both the illuminati and Ibsen himself as a thinker and a dramatist.

The echo of the ENLIGHTENMENT and liberalism has spread all over the world, so that deliberately or non-deliberately they have gained influence on the opinions and activities of thinkers and the masses. To recognize their results and the proper reaction against them, the present article introduces one of the main pillars of the ENLIGHTENMENT and liberalism, i.e. rationalism, which is in close relationship with the principle of individualism; it also displays the invalidity of pure rationality, which is independent of everything non-rational as well as separated from Tradition. The best evidence for such invalidity is the frustration of its advocates in presenting some rational principles which can be common between all human beings; moreover, in the process of taking hold of rationality and being delivered from Tradition, liberalism itself not only changed into a tradition but also took on the form of an ideology which has caused modern man a lot of perplexity and distress.

There are various and sometimes contradictory ideas about Rousseau's thoughts. Some classify him in the group of ENLIGHTENMENT thinkers and some acknowledge him as an anti-ENLIGHTENMENT philosopher. There is no doubt that Rousseau's thought was affected by some elements of ENLIGHTENMENT, however, he criticized most of its characteristics as well, and challenged rationalism in the age of mastery of reason. The significance of humanity and the freedom of human beings is one of the central concepts in Rousseau's thought, but he considered reason and rationality as a tool for decreasing the very freedom. In Rousseau's view the culture of modernity not only has been constituted due to absence of morality, but also the development of science and art has not improved human's life at all. He believed that only the natural state of human's essence can release him.This paper will explain the ENLIGHTENMENT principles in Rousseau's thought, and compare the affinities and dissimilarities of his beliefs with the other thinkers of the age of ENLIGHTENMENT.

The main focus of this article is a review of Critique and Crisis, ENLIGHTENMENT and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society by Reinhart Koselleck. Critique and Crisis was first published in German in 1959 and published in English in 1988 by The MIT Press. Koselleck’ s book attempts to explain the Utopian ideas of the twentieth century by looking at their origins in the eighteenth. The main idea of Critique and Crisis is that the ENLIGHTENMENT itself became Utopian and even hypocritical because-as far as continental Europe was concerned-it saw itself excluded from political power-sharing. The structure of Absolutism, which was rooted in the dichotomy between sovereign and subject, between public policy and private morality, prevented the ENLIGHTENMENT and the emancipation movement produced by it from seeing itself as a political phenomenon. Instead the ENLIGHTENMENT developed patterns of thought and behaviour which, at the latest from 1789 onwards, foundered on the rocks of the concrete political challenges that arose. The ENLIGHTENMENT succumbed to a Utopian image which, while deceptively propelling it, helped to produce contradictions that could not be resolved in practice and prepared the way for the Terror and for dictatorship. The main idea of Koselleck’ s book seems to be based on the idea of Carl Schmitt in The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, which he explains and expand in this book. Koselleck’ s critique and its historical entwinement with twentieth-century totalitarianism is a biased or willfully selective picture.