LECTURE ONE: POLITICAL CONCEPTS
PROGRAMMED READING (read this before attending the lecture and blog your thoughts on the reading, combining it with your daily reading of the newspapers):John Kingdom: Government and Politics in Britain Introduction, plus Chapters 01, 20 and 21
The state – why obey the state?
Classical theories
Aristotle – human nature, doctrine of natural slavery, constitutional evolution in ancient Greece – barbarism, anarchism, democracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, monarchy and the rule of enlightened men.
Plato – The Republic – rule by Guardians, enlightened and philanthropic philosophers. Who Guards the Guardians?
Pre-classical older barbarian ideas – the God-Warror King (Assyria Babylon – Emperor worship, Shinto etc) Metaphysical power, sacred texts, ancestor worship, prophets, oracles, patriarchy, magicians, taboos.
Late classical period. Rome and Christianity – theological basis of power and authority. Thomas Aquinas – The City of God. Moral authority of rulers, anointed and divinely guided – able to converse with God/gods – god’s law, ten commandments, later – Caliphate, Shari’ah law, etc.
The dark ages
The enlightenment – Italy, city states, the renaissance – Florence and Macchiavelli – Humanism and Politics – power as good in its own right, derived from usefulness (order above all) and not from metaphysical sources, or from morality or God. Amorality and the rule of law, reason.
The crisis of the state and constant war in renaissance Europe, declining influence of Christian church after the reformation. New concepts of human nature, the concept of the national state vs non-national Catholic Church – national churches, Protestantism, congregationalism, dissent, printing press, the Gutenberg University – the origin of the idea in intrinsic rights (Humanism) derived from the state of being (not extrinsic). Extreme Protestantism and communalism (Geneva – Rousseau). Godless morality, rational and legal secular basis of the state – culmination in the French and American Revolution – Neo-classical ideas of natural rights (Aristotle and Plato) enlightened citizenship vs barbarism (non-Europeans as unenlightened savages) – Liberal Imperialism, Missionaries, Colonialism. Slavery, War, etc.
THE MODERNS
Hobbes vs Rousseau on human nature and the state.
Hobbes – context of the English revolution. Hobbes Monarchist, but supported Cromwell. Might is right – The Leviathan – famous quote, nature red in tooth and claw. Order more important than rights. A trend in Conservative political philosophy – the folly of grand social projects. A pessimistic view of human nature. Post facto justification of authoritarian rule. The English Tudor monarchy and the Nation State.
Hobbes and the Nation State – tribal allegience writ large, a reactionary idea – counter-reformation. A cynical view of the value of religious authority. Order is everything. Justice only significant as a buttress of Order. It is better to be a slave or a subject than to be in the ‘state of nature’.
Nation state – two ideas (digression) in modern times (at least).
Racial Homeland – Germany, Heimat, ‘Fatherland’. France – ‘natural’ boundaries, communities of shared history, common religion, language, food, customs. But german racial nationalism a product of §19th romanticism and reaction to indiustrialisation, reality of diversity of German state system (microstates, opricess of evolution – see also Italy – “unity from diversity” problematic – non-organic, forced from above, unstable, warlike tends to persecute ‘non-national’ elements.
Vs
Legal Entity or Juristiction – USA, Switzerland, USSR (as was), South Africa, India, non-national Dar Al Islam; Christendom, etc. Legal and not tribal/ethnic basis. Problem of ethnic allegiance in non-national states or federated states– Yugoslavia, Rwanada, Nigeria, etc.
Dangers of ‘pseudo-nationalism’ in non-national states – Indo/Pak, ‘The American Nation’ – ‘The United European Nation’ – New Soviet Man – New Indonesian Man. Intolerance
Modern non-racial allegience is matter of ‘Contract Theory’ – English revolution and empiricist philosiophical tradition is the home of contract theory. It is there in Hobbes and more explicit with a greater role for the ruled in Locke, Hume, Mill and in contemporary UK constiotutional theory and constitutional law. (More on contract theory below). Contract theory is especially important because it is the philosophical and ‘moral’.
England somewhere between the two – partly UK homeland for “the English nation, Scottish nation, etc” (Shakespeare, etc and common language, Christianity).
Rousseau - The Social Contract – “man is born free but everywhere is in chains” –
LECTURE ONE: THE STATE
A rapid over-view of political philosophy, so we are aware of some of the terms. See programmed reading. Also a good quick read is Brian Redhead (famous dead BBC journalism – From Plato to Nation: BBC Studies in Politics. That’s pretty good overview for he general reader. You can get it second hand of Amazon for like £6 second hand.
A trend – enlightenment speculation on human nature, anthropology – prehistoric (stateless) man – long human prehistory. 19th century natural history, Darwin, atheism, communism – John Lennon – “Imagine” – communism, romanticism- man vs society, social order as an evil (opposite of English conservatism – opp Hobbes and Burke – “All good things result from order” (The speaker – Order! Order!). Vs Anarchism.
AN optimistic, but also naturalistic view of human nature. But value laden – men ought to be free, slavery is an absolute bad. Morals based on natural science. Eventually – Nietzche, social Darwinism, utilitarianism, liberalism, communism, socialism, nationalism.
Completely new ideas about human nature and ‘natural’ order of social organization. Psychology, ideas of intrinsic rights.A
American Revolution – “we hold these things to be self evident”. Tom Paine – he Rights of Man. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the United Nations – rule by consent – social contract
Rousseau Discourses on inequality – property/”good fortune” results in inequality and not the other way round. The inequality was not present at the dawn of man, it arose from property. Property is theft Proudhon. Property is Alienation – Karl Marx – Communism. Freedom as abolition of property – return to prehistoric ‘free’ relations – Rousseau.
The English Revolution, 17th century. The covenant. Royal tyranny. English Empiricism, pragmatism, materialism. The sceptical scientific mind.
Pragmatic - I obey the state/ the state protects me (as opposed to) 'it is morally right to obey' the king. Tehran traffic lights - "In the name of God do not go through a red light"
Rejection of the monarchical or theological
I obey the state because it protects my natural rights. It is rational to obey the state. My rights are intrinsic (natural) and can not reasonably be denied by the rule of state. 19th/20th century democracy. I obey the state because I am part of it. Liberal democracy. LEGITIMACY (eg Northern Ireland problem).
Liberal pluaralism - deeps roots for institutions - STATE and CIVIL SOCIETY - the state imposed from above (eg 'revolution fom above') vs 'evolution of institutions from complex civil society (eg, perhaps, England). How the state obtains legitimacy from civil society; gets contract duty to protect and nrich civil society.
Key role of the press in poltical pluralism. Constitutional position of the free press - legislated in the US constitution, in the International Declaration of Human Rights, etc.
Post-modern state - socialism, social democracy, christian democracy - welfare state as a contract. Vs TOTALITARIANISM - weak civil society.
Max Weber and the idea of the modern bureaucratic industrial estate - bureaucratic systems grow with their own agenda, enslave people,conduct war. People as servants of the state. Germany and the 'cradle to grave' welfare state. Fascism, Nazi'ism, Communism, Stalinism, etc. The state organised for total war - GEORGE ORWELL - 1984. Psychology, linguistics, mind control, totalitarianism.
Post modern ideas about human nature - therefore 'natural' political order.
Darwin and social Darwinism - the survial of the fitest - atheism, 'social evolution' via social improvement (partic. mass education and mass healthcare) vs social evolution via natural selection of human types ('scientific racism'). Marxism - social metaphor for species evolution - sudden evolutionary breaks and leaps forward - revolution - Russian revolution, New Soviet Man (atheistic, socially determined, materialist - elements of Rousseu - marxism as Rousseau plus Darwin. Marx great fan of Darwin - "materialist conception of history". Social development explained without reference to metaphysics, God or morality.
Frederick Neitzche - God is Dead and we have killed him. Morality as 'slave mentality'. The urge to power. Violence as healthy. New ideas is anthropolog. New ideas in Zoology - Homo Erectus, Homo Sapiens - 'Huimanity is a thing that must be overcome'. Social evolution vs genetic engineering, racism, ethnic cleansing. Blood and cuture, genetics and intelligence, genetics and culture. Anti-democratic, anti-legalistic, anti-modern, anti-christian. Democracy under attack. Democracy as a constrain on human development. H.L. Mencken and the American right.
Psychology, gender and identity politics. Politics of subjectivity. The impact of Freud. The rise of 'individualism', the 'me generation' consumer society, capitalism, advertising, consumer sovereignty. The credit crunch, the war/s post colonialism, the rise of China and the relative decline of the west. The de-politicisation of social life and the decline of the public sphere (The Fall of Public Man - Richard Senete) .
Modern American acedmic 'political science' - sociologically base. Logical Postitivism - the scientific method. Exploration of complexity, dissulution of grand narratives into political study at the mirco level. "Who Governs?" etc. And also institutionalism and comparative political systems.
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Classical ideas about human behaviour : Aristotle's categories - "man is a political animal"
Human nature - biology, power, domination, violence - a post-Darwinian, Nietzchean view
Order begets rights: Thomas Hobbes and the rightness of submission of state authority
Rights determine order: Rousseau and the necessity of freedom
Rousseau and Rousseau-like Man-Against-The-World romanticism in popular culture (it is everywhere)
Hobbesian pessimism in dystopic popular culture
Machiavelli (Yale University lecture)
Empiricist philosophy, rationality, secularity - Locke, Hume, Smith and Bishop Berkley (a decent seminar workout)
The idealist and teleological conception of the state in History: Hegel and German Romanticism
The materialist conception of the state in History: Karl Marx