No, Call Me "Jay"



Introduction to Political Theory – Review Notes (does not include Marx)

POT2002

September 10, 2008

Aristotle (continued…)

- Believed that there was no just reason why there should be slaves. To have order, it is okay to have slaves.

- Aristotle’s idea of slavery is not the Uncle Tom-type of slavery, but rather a mutual relationship where the slave not only takes care of their master, but the master takes care of their slave.

- Who gets chosen to be a slave? Not necessarily based on ethnicity; based more on intelligence and what someone was capable of. Slaves could have been something along the lines of indentured servants or prisoners of war.

- However, Aristotle’s idea of a slave still did not have political rights.

- Athenian view: if someone is conquered, let the conquered be, and peace will follow.

- Most slaves were sold – used financially, could be considered as an “investment”. If you took care of your slaves, they were worth more.

Aristotle’s the Politics

- Claims that man is a political beast by nature. If you seek to live alone, you are then either a god or a barbarian.

- Man is a community being. You wouldn’t be happy if you lived a solitary life, if you existed alone.

- Aristotle viewed the world as we see it.

- Life should be a Telos (Greek for “goal”, “moving forward”); life is goal-oriented. Life does not reflect the abstract forms Plato believed in, however Aristotle believed that reason does initiate the motivation to reach a goal.

- To reach a telos, one will finally live life happily. Happiness is the ultimate goal.

- Opposed to a “good pen” which is only a form, a “good pen” has to write well. Good is also relative – you can be a good assassin. To be “good” is to fulfill your function. To be a good person – live life well, to reach happiness.

- Eudaimonia – Greek for happiness. Not bliss, but happiness with a sense of content. The feeling one should get when they realize they’ve traveled telos of doing something.

- Aristotle disagrees with most of Plato’s philosophy, however incorporates Plato’s feelings on reason into his telos idea. Whereas Plato just thinks about reason, Aristotle applies it. To Aristotle, reason alone is a tool not being used. Without that desire to use the tool, the tool is just an object taking up space. Without that longing for a telos, eudaimonia will not be reached.

o Can be equated with an unplugged computer (can process ideas, but no outcomes are desired), or a musician with a lot of instruments. You need to play well to be a good musician, you’re not a good musician just because you own many instruments.

- Plato’s reason is a good thought, but to Aristotle, living well is more important, and fulfilling.

- Aristotle and virtue

o Moral virtue: ability to not be selfish, but not to the point where you’re foolish.

o Intellectual virtues

▪ Sophia: Greek for “wisdom”; contemplating truth, living in ideas. Pleasant, but only a select few can do this constantly. Plato values this virtue; Aristotle is more realistic and realizes that people can only contemplate the forms of existence for so long.

▪ Phronesis: Probably Aristotle’s most important virtue; the virtue of action and living in the world by participation. Trade, work, love, cheat, talk. The key is to do this well! There is no formula or algorithm by which we do this, but the main thought is to keep doing what you’re doing until you do it well. Reflect later.

• To be able to do something well is through habit. Through habit comes eudaimonia.

• Don’t think, just do it. You can tell if it was a cowardly or foolhardy decision later.

- In the Politics, Aristotle claims that man is a political being. Only happiness/eudaimonia will be reached if they participate in society, if they interact with other people. Through other people you can tell if your decisions were good or bad.

o Fighting for your country, the people you love, for yourself – foolhardy maybe, cowardly maybe. Sometimes you get what you want if you can accomplish what you intended – did you receive the reaction you were expecting? Through others, you can lean how to be a good person.

o But, what’s moral? Grey areas!

o Keep trying in society. Without society, you don’t get feedback on what’s “good”. Moment of glory can be found in social communion with other people.

- Polis is crown. State is prior to man.

- Friends are important – bond by which anything happens. Better to be with friends than to obey the law. We are just an extension of the state. State defines your function. A person wouldn’t mean the same outside of the polis.

- Person proceeds the state, state wouldn’t exist without the people

- St. Paul and Aristotle had similar thoughts – where Paul found eudaimonia in Christ, Aristotle found eudaimonia in the polis.

- Individuals all contribute to the government – individual happiness comes from the group.

- Democracy needs to be checked by other people. One government of the one (president), the few (Supreme Court), and the many (people).

POT2002

September 12, 2008

- What does it mean to be a citizen to Aristotle?

o Vote, property, ancestry, holding public office, involvement in public life

o Some people (slaves) cannot realize themselves fully as citizens

- Plato believed women could be Philosopher Kings, Guardians, but Aristotle didn’t agree.

o Aristotle believed hysteria to be a women’s trait, and prevented women from reacting to a situation as a man would with reason.

- America’s notion of a citizen? Vote, pay taxes. However Aristotle’s view of citizenship included much more than that.

- Aristotle was a big advocate for civic involvement. Participate in society!

o Modern involvement: church, PTA, clubs, associations

- But how do we get people more involved in the public sector?

o Tax people, community service

- In Book III, a problem with kings were they reaped more than they could sow.

o Kings are greedy.

o Aristotle believed – to rule with law is good, but do not blindly apply law. If the facts don’t support the law, justice will not be fulfilled.

POT2002

September 15, 2008

- Democracy: “rule of the mob”; rule of man

- Which do you think Aristotle preferred? Rule of the law or rule of man/the king?

o Laws are more consistent; kings are whimsical and may establish laws more for their own benefit than their society.

- When an explicit law violates the notion of justice, what triumphs? Aristotle believes justice will triumph – we all have an innate opinion of what is just and what is not

o Bad facts lead to bad precedents

- Aristotle’s three goods

o Soul: virtue; what you know to be true and right

o Body

o External: desires

- Aristotle’s recurring philosophy of individual happiness is linked to happiness of the polis

- To keep people moving and opportunity to citizens – Aristotle has some thoughts that lean toward negative liberty. What about positive liberty?

- Aristotle’s view of society is set up for success – a citizen will find happiness because the society was made for happiness

o But there is not only one road to phronesis.

- Education: Aristotle keeps virtue in schools, crafting the young individual to have good judgment and to find their telos, unlike Plato who places people explicitly into his three-tiered hierarchy of philosopher kings, guardians, and artisans.

- Aristotle was never a big fan of Sparta – their whole society was a preparation for war, therefore no virtue was present in their citizens. They couldn’t self-actualize themselves for society.

- To Aristotle, women and slaves lacked motivation to succeed, as well as reason.

- Aristotle speaks a lot about human nature and what is innate – even if one was put in a servant’s position but was destined to be a ruler, that person would eventually become a ruler and leave his position as a servant. Thus telos will be fulfilled.

- Are farmers and artisans considered as citizens to Aristotle? They are not eligible to become priests since only citizens can properly honor God; however it is ambiguous because Aristotle isn’t as rigid as other philosophers in creating a rigid level of classes. He didn’t have a precise view of where one citizen could be placed – class wasn’t very important to him.

- The break of forms – Plato tried to mimic the ideal for of justice. By reflecting the innate justice of the soul to society, a city can be just. But this is only an ideal concept.

- Plato’s support of reason and reflection is also ideal, but difficult for every citizen to do.

o In the end, who has the time to reflect?

o It would be unfair to ask someone of lower mental ability or someone without the opportunity to exercise their thoughts as often to reflect all of the time, i.e. slaves, lower class citizens

o Schools should cultivate desire in people who have the capability to participate in reason, it would be cruel to force someone to reason when they do not understand the concept

o Thus, can one be happy without the choice to know about reason? Is this fulfilling their virtue by only with what they can comprehend?

o All three goods have to be equal for you to achieve the good life. To be a slave for a long time, your desire to philosophize disappears.

o Something in the growing process must have happened to skew the notion of perception to create reality. If you have that notion, you’ll revolt and get what you want – sometimes people are wrongly placed.

- The nature of man is to progress. In every class, there is something that one would want to achieve.

- Middle class, to Aristotle, is the best society.

- People who can be better will be better if that’s their telos.

- Aristotle and human emotion

o Emotions are important to him when cultivating desire for reason and telos to reach eudaimonia, however it seems to be ignored in the resentment between classes (slaves and philosophizing reason)

o Would slaves who actually do question always be slaves, or would they rise up and merge into a higher class with other citizens at the same intellectual level?

- Ultimately, Aristotle’s views are fluid and dynamic, he is not like Plato where everything is black and white.

POT2002

September 19, 2008

The March to Modernity

- Athens was a democracy, prey to naturalism.

- They had a knack for getting into wars of rhetoric and with other countries.

- Athens fell to Sparta, who didn’t value the intellectual virtues of Aristotle. Thus, much of old Athens was lost.

- However, Epicurus and Hellenistic age did save some philosophy until Rome, who conquers most of the known world.

- When Christianity was introduced to the Romans, monks re-discovered Plato.

o Christianity and Plato fit well together – Saint Augustine agreed with Plato’s philosophy of forms, and the idea that we are a reflection of forms. The form of good, however, he felt it to be God, the one truth we are searching for. Thus neo-Platoism became the false philosophy of the Catholic Church.

- Society in Europe doesn’t flourish under feudal society during the Middle Ages.

o Hierarchy follows: King ( Lord ( Fiefdom

o During the Middle Ages, there was the notion that everyone had their place in society, had to fit into one of the class levels.

- The Muslims eventually conquered places that read Aristotle during the Crusades, and then Saint Thomas Aquinas discovered Aristotle and believed that it could reconcile Christianity

o Saint Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle’s notion of logic, habit, and rules, but he felt that good judgment and reason was given from God.

o At this point, the State was still the whole, and was given higher priority than the individual. However when St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, and trade was introduced to the feudal society, thus comes the Renaissance.

- The Renaissance introduced a massive increase of science

o Descartes – justifying the world outside of the Bible

o Newton – “discovered” gravity

o This was the era where logic, science, and reason were used to predict the world

o Thomas Hobbes was inspired by Newton

▪ Introduced the notion of a science of politics

▪ Humans are supposed to be self-actualizing creatures, but Locke thought that was untrue. Locke believed that humans are just organisms with appetites – we just want to consume other things.

▪ Each individual is just an accumulation of desires – live “nasty, brutish, short” lives

▪ No desire has any qualitative difference to Hobbes, thus the most important thing was to learn how to control appetite

▪ To have a sovereign, or Leviathan, to take care of the people will control appetite

▪ The Leviathan would be chosen by the people, not God or inherit the position through bloodlines

▪ However having a sovereign is synonymous to signing a social contract – the people are surrendering their rights to the Leviathan, but the Leviathan lives to protect them.

• Contract in the sense that the individual will obey the Leviathan (unless he/she comes to kill you) in exchange for the Leviathan’s protection; one doesn’t mind being oppressed or giving up their political rights as long as they are safe and their appetites met.

▪ In Feudalism, the individual lived for the state. However for Hobbes, the state lives for the individual.

▪ Hobbes believed a totalitarian government was best for protecting the individual

▪ Later on influences John Locke – both philosophers had similar foundations in epistemology, but resulting philosophies ended up on opposite spectrums

- French Revolution – attempt at creating a society out of reason alone.

o Showed the pros (democracy) and cons (terrorism, Napoleon) of the gathering of all of these philosophical ideas together

o An actualization of politics

POT2002

September 22, 2008

John Locke was greatly influenced by Hobbes – but his version of the state of nature was significantly different.

- John Lock believed in the natural law of preservation

o Religious, and came from a line of radical Protestantism.

o God gave Earth to man, intended for man to create a kind environment. Although people will steal, crimes will be committed, havoc may be wreaked, but man was created, born as free and rational beings.

o To not be in a state of war was ideal.

o Natural law – to be born free.

o Locke’s notion of capitalism – section 40 & 26

▪ Argues that our key to ownership is ownership of our body. We own our body, our thoughts, and our body parts.

▪ Section 28: This thought ignited capitalism – what one does/makes with their body through work and labor is now their property. Mixing labor with natural things in the world allow you to own the things you’ve made.

▪ Section 31: People can collect fruit, but if you collect too much and allow some to rot, unused, creating spoilage, you’ve done a disservice to God. You can’t have more than you’d use.

▪ This justified trade and capitalism, and the invention of money. You can collect as much money as possible, but money doesn’t spoil. Money is only a symbolic value

o But how to get to a government that protects property rights? Locke borrows from Hobbes’ social contract – elect a legislative branch, and we have to learn to trust each other.

o Legislative branches may include the Administration (basic services are met, i.e. bridges, roads), Judges (enforce contracts), Federal (at the local level)

o Are we born into social contracts?

▪ The moment you use the services of society, you have entered the contract.

o John Locke represents classical liberalism – the government does as little as possible, and supports a free market.

o Also believes that in times of war, if we conquer another country, we are obligated to give them a world of substinence.

▪ You can take their spoils but you can’t leave them be. Must provide stability before you leave.

o Locke’s three basic requirements for a stable government:

▪ Government has to act in accordance of law; government must be limited. If not, legal redress for people to challenge.

▪ Government has to act with accordance to general good.

▪ Government has to act with the consent of the people.

▪ If these three requirements are not followed, a revolution will occur.

- Hobbes believed we lived in a God-less universe

o “Nasty, brutish and short”

o We don’t own our body – we are only a collection of appetites

POT2002

September 29, 2008

John Rawls was a philosopher who grew up during the 1930-1940’s. Fought in the war, eventually received a Ph.D.

- Theory of Justice was his famous book written later in his life, which summarized his philosophy in general, and included responses to his critics.

o Favored a fair democracy, and had a welfare state capitalist philosophy

- 2 principles of Justice

o Equal Liberty Principle: everyone has their basic/fundamental rights. More associated with negative liberty – can’t mess with these! (i.e. Bill of Rights)

▪ Veil of ignorance: led to the first principle

o Difference Principle: It is okay to have inequalities in a society, but only if:

▪ Fair equality of opportunity

• Public education, “regardless of family income”, free market

▪ Inequality benefits the least advantaged

- But is the difference principle feasible? Ultimately there is always an innate social network inherited from you family – despite equal education for all, some are more advantaged in having “good” connections.

POT2002

October 1, 2008

The Difference Principle states that inequality is allowed as long as it benefits the least advantaged.

- Key: address both sides of the spectrum

- Rawls’ veil of ignorance (also called the original position) is similar to the old notion of the state of nature.

- If we were going to democratically decide what the best society should be like, if we didn’t know what class we would be in, our personal attributes, didn’t know your culture, that society’s lowest class would never fall to the point where they couldn’t support themselves – welfare capitalism.

o Based of the moral decision-making of society itself

o Socioeconomic stance, mental/physical attributes wouldn’t be known

o If you turned out to be in the lowest possible class, you would still have enough to survive

o Not laissez-faire, but not the forced equality of socialism either

o This was his argument for the American style safety net of capitalism.

- Why is inequality okay to Rawls?

o Fairness is about the distribution of wealth, and you need inequality to create wealth

o Material incentives to make people work harder – motivational affect of capitalism

o In modern standards, this is a left-wing point of view. However at the time, this was a centrist point of view

o Capitalism motivates people to create wealth, and this benefits the poor in two ways:

▪ Jobs – this boosts the economy

▪ Taxes – the government taxes the wealth

o Capitalism with high progressive tax encourages wealth creation as long as that helps the lowest class

- Dependency isn’t a moral issue for Rawls. He acknowledges and tolerates the lazy people on rich and poor side – he is okay with the abuse present on the margins of society

- To Rawls, the New Deal era was the pinnacle of modern state craft.

- Equality leads to solidarity.

POT2002

October 3, 2008

Rawls continued…

- All aspects of society must be open

- Reminder: The Difference Principle states that inequality is allowable as long as it benefits the least off.

o Two ways:

▪ People can make more money to create wealth (businesses, inventions)

▪ Those same people are taxed, and the money is redistributed to create a safety net to take care of the lower class

- Do we still have self respect when we’re in the safety net?

o If there is a vast inequality, does it hurt the lower class psychologically?

o Rawls wants middle ground – probably hurt but it gives the lower class an incentive/motivation to work harder to rise up

o Nevertheless, it is a capitalist society

o However, it can psychologically hurt the lower and higher class – equal materially

o Safety net provides more of a protection than the psychological problem – helps one get back up on their feet or “do better” than they currently are instead of fighting for their own survival

o Equal education that is well funded for everyone will allow those exceptional students to rise to the top

o Rawls is writing to justify the status quo

o By not putting in your own personal state will lead to a fair society – leave out your economical, social, and genetic stance as much as possible

- Rawls was set on

o Finding theoretical foundation for status quo

o Not trying to break away from past, but more focused on how to make those societies fair

o Essentially trying to create a mixed society of socialism and capitalism

- If we were to gather a large group of people and ask them: what kind of society would be considered fair?

o There will be a group of people who strongly believe in a socialist society, and another group of gamblers that would want to take their chances – they would advocate a capitalist society. However they are minorities compared to the vast group of people who would prefer a balance between those two societies. The majority would come to a middle ground conclusion.

- A critic of Rawls stated that Rawls is essentially trying to get rid of the grotesque – getting rid of the grotesquely rich and the grotesquely poor, those who make people uneasy.

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