Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 27

For episode 26, see here

The Theory of the Nation State: The Moderns

XXVII. Convention and Tradition -- Hume and Burke
 A. Natural Law hung on in France as revolutionary solvent of an antiquated
      system.
 B. In defense of revolution in England, natural law had no immediate 
     practical utility.
       1. Idea of deductive ethics and philosophy slowly rejected.
       2. Empirical philosophy stressing natural history of ideas and their
           derivation from the senses developed (as Locke suggested).
 C. David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, 1739-40)  
       1. Presented analysis that exposed pretensions of natural law to
           scientific validity.
       2. Use of reason had uncritically combined and confused three factors.
           i. Had effect of describing as necessary truths propositions that can
              make no such claim.
           ii. Can be things rightly called reasonable in the sense of being
               necessary and inevitable, e.g., formal implications where a
               conclusion follows if a premise is taken for granted--> deduction. (1)
           iii. No "comparison of ideas" can prove a matter of fact, and 
               relationships between matters of fact are never necessary in a strict
               sense but simply empirically correlated.(2)
           iv. Reason cannot dictate ways of acting, good or bad but can only
               guide us to know how to achieve desired ends and how to avoid 
               undesired ones.(3)

 Hume: "reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can
 never pretend to any other office than to save and obey them."

       3. The attacked the three branches of natural law system.
           i. Natural or rational religion -- a rational metaphysics showing the
              necessary existence of anything -- is impossible.
           ii. Rational ethics also since values depend on human propensity
               to action and reason cannot itself create any obligation. 
               Virtue is just a quality of mind that is generally approved. 
           iii. Contractual, consensual theories of politics also as government
                doesn't really ask subjects to consent. Loyalty towards
                government is as common as feeling that agreements should
                be kept; purposes of political allegiance is to keep order and
                preserve peace and security while contract creates mutual trust
                between private persons.  Both are binding because stable
                society is not possible without them.
       4. Hume didn't find man to be as calculating of his self interest as
           did Bentham and the French utilitarians.
       5. Common interest exists as body of conventions shown by experience
           to serve human needs in a general way.  Rules provide stability as
           men need to know what they can rely on:
           i. Conventions regulating property --> justice
           ii. Those that legitimate political authority 
           iii. Utility includes self interest and social stability
 D. Hume's conclusions largely accepted but branded as merely negative.
       1. Logical result was empirical positivism.
       2. Metaphysics, religion and ethics went on, however, in more or less
           traditional forms.
           i. Kant and Hegel attempted to reunite reason, fact and value
           ii. tendency to either depreciate logic as compared to sentiment or
               to hope to combine the two (Carlyle)
           iii. respect for sentiment led to new estimate of custom and tradition,
               as unfolding of reason rather than its antithesis (Burke)
           iv. view of history as gradual unfolding of the absolute 
 E. Edmund Burke accepted Hume and saw a society's standards as
      conventions based on propensities.
       1. Saw conventions as repository of achievements of the species.
       2. Saw society and propensities as human nature.
       3. Consequently, traditions of a nation's life have utility above their
           contribution to individual utility.
       4. Therefore, tradition of constitution, and of society at large, ought to be
           object of almost religious reverence.
       5. The species is wiser that the individual or any movement.
       6. Supported Whigs because the particular outcome of the English
           revolution they represented was by that time tradition. 
           i. Consequently, his theory of representation looked back to the
              17th Century
           ii. Denied representation being of individuals or territories
           iii. Parliament was meeting place of dominant interests where they
               could be held accountable
           iv. did, however, see positive benefits of parties as groups of men
               pursuing their natural interests upon some shared principle.
       7. A people was a "true politic personality" -- a community held together
           by sense of membership and duty and not calculated self interest.
       8. Man could not live on private stock of reason.
       9. Statesman consulted spirit of the constitution to gain clues for its
           development; statesmanship is an art. 
       10. Rejected French Revolution as destruction of society through
             destruction of government.
           i. For Sabine, Burke confused state, government and society by
              interchanging them.
           ii. Resulted in transferring reverence toward society to reverence
               to the state.
           iii. Practically made politics religion and saw unfolding immanence
               of God.
       11. Rousseau and Burke shared reverence for community.
       12. Hegel systematized Burke, though no direct link.

Next week: Hegel -- Dialectic and Nationalism




   
  

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 26

For episode 25, see here

The Theory of the Nation State: The Moderns

XXVI. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Rediscovery of Community
 A. Great gap between Rousseau and his contemporaries.
 B. Was a deeply divided personality, noble vs base, ideal vs real.

     "More than most men, Rousseau projected the contradictions and maladjustments of his own nature upon the society about him and sought an anodyne for his own painful sensitivity. (Sabine, 577)"

 C. Used contrast between the natural and the actual not as appeal to reason 
      but to attack reason.
 D. Against intelligence, growth of knowledge and Enlightenment progress,
      he set amiable and benevolent sentiments, good will and reverence.

     "What gives value to life is the common emotions, perhaps one may say instincts, in respect to which men differ hardly at all and which he imagined to exist in a purer and less perverted form in the simple uneducated man than in the enlightened and sophisticated."

 E. Based his values on "realities" of everyday life.
 F. Intelligence and science are dangerous because they undermine 
     reverence and faith.
 G. Pulled philosophy away from union with science and implanted 
      distrust of intelligence.
 H. Rejected systematic individualism and self-interest as virtue.
 I.  Took from Plato a general outlook.
       1. Political subjection is essentially ethical and only secondarily a
           matter of law and power.
       2. Community itself is chief moralizing agent and represents the
           highest moral value.
       3. Therefore fundamental moral category is citizen not man.
 J. Saw rights not as against community but within it.
       1. Natural egoist is fiction, some kind of community is inevitable,
           society is purely instinctive.
       2. Community has corporate personality, a general will.
       3. Government is agent for this will (could be radical or conservative).
       4. General will is the source of law and morals.
 K. The General Will
       1. Saw city-state as the best example of venue for the general will.
       2. Contract useful device even though government has no
           independent power; citizens exist as members of society,
           individuals have no rights except as members of the community.
       3. General will is the collective good of the community which is not
           the same as the private interest of its members.
       4. Men become equal within a society not because (per Hobbes)
           their physical power is substantially equal.
       5. Absolute authority of general will vis-a-vis indefeasible individual
           rights.
       6. When one is forced to obey general will, one is being forced to
           be free because one doesn't know his own good.
 L. Rousseau originated romantic cult of the group contrary to rationalist's
      cult of the individual.  
 M. In adapting the model of citizenship within the city-state to modern
      modern nation-state, Rousseau helped to recast it in such a form
      that national sentiment could appropriate it.
 N. Rousseau's impact
       1. Idealizing moral feeling of the common man led to Kant
       2. Full significance of idealizing collective will and participation in the
           common led to the idealism of Hegel.
       3. Descartes split reason from custom, Rousseau tacitly set it aside,
           Hegel tried to reunite them.
       4. Burke supplied missing content to "general will" by giving
           corporate life of England (custom and tradition) a conscious reality.

Next week:  Convention and Tradition -- Hume and Burke










 
 


 
 




 

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 25

For episode 24, see here

The Theory of the Nation State

XXV. France: The Decadence of Natural Law
 A. English consolidated their revolution and political theory
      shifted to France.
 B. French concern for political and social theory resulted from
      decadence of royal absolute rule.
 C. Discussion typically popularized rather than created.
 D. Tendencies
       1. Mixture of logically incompatible ethical and political
           utilitarianism with natural right theories.
       2. Growth of philosophical romanticism hostile to
           empiricism and rationalism.
 E. Rousseau untypical of 18th Century French thought.
 F. Through Voltaire and Montesquieu philosophy of Locke
      became foundation of French Enlightenment. 
       1. Reason, tied to tradition in English thought, was placed
           in opposition to custom and fact in France.
       2. No fundamental law or gradual transition of ideas or
           institutions in absolutist France. 
       3. French political thought thus radical and often little
           more than propaganda.
 G. Urban middle class was conscious of itself and saw clergy
       nobility as social parasites.
 H. Characteristic of social thought of 18th Century was belief
      in possibility of happiness and progress guided by reason.
 I. Montesquieu (Spirit of the Laws, 1748) 
       1. Undertook sociological theory of government and law
           by showing they depended upon circumstances in
           which a people lives.
       2. Also analyzed constitutional conditions of freedom.
       3. Saw "reason" as manifesting itself through different
           institutions in different environments.
       4. Saw separation of powers (in England) as prime 
           guarantee of liberty.
       5. Made separation one of the legal checks and balances
           between parts of the constitution.
           i. Didn't specify the parts
           ii. But did assume some form of legislative supremacy
 J. Voltaire
       1. Sought to popularize Newton's physics and Locke's
           philosophy.
       2. Especially admired England's freedom of discussion 
           and publication.
       3. Pressed struggle for civil liberties but did not connect 
           that to a basis in political liberty.
 K. Helvetius
       1. Presented an elaboration of Locke's psychological of
           association (Pain and pleasure as basic motives).
       2. Made it basis for the reforming legislator and conveyed
           greatest happiness principle to Beccaria and Bentham.
       3. Legislator must make general interest consonant with
           individual interest and spread knowledge of how public
           welfare includes that of the indivudual.
       4. Notion that everyone's happiness could be maximized
           at once was nothing but old belief in harmony of nature. 
       5. Belief that one man's happiness ought to be counted as
           the same as that of another based on natural equality.
       6. Using pleasure and pain could in fact lead to harmonizing 
           interests through focus on utility.
 L. Physiocrats (economists)
       1. Regarded pleasure and pain as two springs of human action
           and enlightened self-interest as rule for a well-ordered
           society.  
       2. Assumed harmony would result if man was let alone.
       3. No legislator should regulate, must instead not interfere 
           with natural operation of economic laws. 
 M. Holbach
       1. Made atheist, or materialist, attack on religion.
       2. Also attacked government as representative of parasitic
           classes excluding the middle class whose special interest
           defined the general interest as well.
       3. Man was not born bad but made bad by bad government.
       4. Remedy was to give free scope to the "general will" arising
           from the harmony between self-interest and natural good.
       5. Education would reform man because men are rational and 
           need only to see their own true interest.
 N. Enlightenment thought did not necessarily lead to democratic 
      doctrine; power still based on property. 
 O. Turgot and Condorcet turned idea of progress into a
       philosophy of history.
       1. Saw history as series of progressive stages.
       2. Condorcet saw progress following three lines:
           i. growing equality between nations
           ii. elimination of class differences
           iii. a resultant general moral and mental improvement

Next week:  Rousseau and the rediscovery of community
          
           
      
           
 
 

  
         

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 24

For episode 23, see here

The Theory of the Nation State

XXIV. Halifax and Locke
 A. The Glorious Revolution indicated monarchy was to stay,
      albeit limited by Parliament. 
 B. Halifax was an empiric skeptic.
       1. Saw so-called "fundamentals" and "general principles"
           as pretense cloaking pursuit of partisan advantage.
       2. Laws based on such are attempts to bind the future.
       3. Government depends on (unspecifiable) inherent power
           of self-development of the people which may or may not
           be expressed through representatives and may be expressed
           through leadership in crucial cases.
       4. Argued for constitutional monarchy. 
 C. Locke was an empiricist, rationalist philosopher.
       1. Tapped medieval tradition (of moral restraints on power,
           responsibility of rulers to community and government 
           under law) through Hooker (Episode 20) and passed it 
           on to the 18th Century. 
       2. Relying on common sense, fails to get to first principles.
       3. His community based theory conflicts with Hobbes analysis
           of community as a result of individual cooperation.
       4. However, Locke used both conceptions:
           i. Accepted first as result of seeing England as a community
             existing through time despite change in government.
           ii. Had to describe society in terms of individual interests.
           iii. Made over natural law into claim of innate, indefeasible
             rights with government existing to preserve these.
       5. Saw state of nature as one of peaceful mutual assistance
           lacking only organization to give effect to these rights.
       6. Saw positive law adding no moral force to pre-exisiting
           moral laws which are broader.
       7. Private property results from mixing labor with land,
           extending ones personality to it.
       8. Right to private property is anterior to society.
       9. Life and liberty are also natural rights.  
 D. Both Locke and Hobbes helped fasten on social theory the
      presumption that individual self-interest is clear and 
      compelling while social interest is thin and unsubstantial.
       1. Locke assumed that common good equaled protection of
           individual rights.
       2. For Hobbes' calculation of security, Locke substituted
           the calculation of pleasure.
 E. Contract
       1. Civil power rests on the individual right to protect 
           himself and his property.
       2. Legislative and executive power of government is only
           what is resigned to it by individuals.
       3. By an original compact do men incorporate into society.
       4. Implicit are two separate compacts, one for society and 
           one for government. 
       5. Individuals must unanimously consent to form body
           politic and are therefore obligated to submit to it.
       6. As decision rule of that body is by majority, government
           depends on what that majority does with the power
           deriving from the original compact. 
 F. Grant of power to government divests people of power
      as long as government is faithful to its duties.
 G. Revolution is justified when the government seriously
      jeopardizes social interests because the moral order is
      permanent and not dependent on force.
 H. Four levels of Locke's theory (often confused)
       1. Basis in the individual and his rights
       2. Men are also members of a community acting as trustee
           of these individual rights.
       3. Government is the trustee for the community.
       4. Executive less authoritative than the legislature. 

Next week: France and The Decadence of Natural Law