The Republic Party offers the Syrian people its intellectual vision which was written by a number of Syrian intellectuals, subjected to wide debate and developed continuously over a whole year. The party publishes it today, after its founding congress, which was held between 17 and 19 April, 2014. the party hopes it will be a topic for discussion and dialogue between the Syrians to criticize it and correct it.
The party has paid a great deal of attention to this intellectual document because the party is convinced of the importance of the intellectual role in political action, and that there is no actual political exercise without a vision behind it; a vision that establishes and explains the practice. The misery found in most of the current practices is not but a manifestation of more misery in vision and culture. Here comes the importance of establishing an intellectual vision that stems from the political realities, the needs and challenges of the time, hoping to produce advanced and civilized forms of work and political practice.
The intellectual document of the party says the most important issues that need serious intellectual debate are those related to modern concepts: the modern national state, the nation, the people and civil society, secularism, human rights and democracy in our society. These concepts are still hazy and ambiguous despite being circulated and well-known.
These concepts are the essential threshold by which to establish a genuine political culture we consider necessary for the present and the future of Syria and the Syrians. But it cannot be seen as a new ideology, it is rather a project to be completed, in a continuous state of development and renewal, as closed ideologies produced nothing but political disasters, because these ideologies were separated from reality and alien to the human spirit and happiness.
The whole Syrian political discourse is contradictory and a confused about prevailing thought and visions on human life, politics, history, reality and world. For that reason, this document is of great importance in terms of trying to build a coherent floor for a modern talk in which politics and its logos and mechanisms present strongly. The document builds a scientific method and modern mechanisms to exercise politics correctly and creatively.
The intellectual document of the party addresses nine important topics that identify the key trends of the party towards the issues that are continuously discussed among intellectuals and politicians, and Syrians in general. These issues are the basic attitudes and different and varied political practices, under each theme, there is a number of detailed and relevant titles:
1. Modernity and the methodology of scientific thinking.
2. The modern national state
3. Civil society
4. Towards the re-establishment of modern political concepts: the people, the nation and nationalism
5. Secularism and the relationship between religion and politics
6. Democracy
7. The culture of human rights
8. Ethnic and national identity
9. Women's Freedom
The Republic Party does not consider its intellectual document final or complete, and is aware of the shortcomings and errors as an inherent part of the human thought and action. The party believes that the thought of both individuals and groups evolves with the passage of time and changes according to the continuous changes in reality, and the party realizes that one of its tasks is to return constantly to approach its intellectual vision with regard to the reality, the needs and goals.
Therefore, the party hopes that the topics in its document will raise a lot of discussion, and here the party and its members will deal with respect, appreciation and gratitude, anyone who offers criticism, correction or addition, as this will be necessarily in the interest of Syria and Syrians.
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
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