For episode 21, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XXII. Radicals and Communists
A. Radical individualism also arose in left wing popular democracy during
civil wars.
1. Dissolution of traditional institutions and resulting economic
pressures were facts not theories.
2. Individualism grounded in these facts.
B. English civil wars mark first appearance of public opinion as important
political factor.
C. Levellers: radical middle-class democrats.
D. Diggers: beginning of utopian communism, considered political reform
superficial unless it included redress of economic inequalities.
E. Levellers
1. Movement started by radical soldiers of Cromwell's army concerned
that the reforms of the revolution would be lost.
2. Sought political equality and the end of priviledge.
3. Connected to religious Independents.
4. Argued that unnust law was no law at all, even if traditional or
common.
5. Saw innate and unalienable rights for which legal and political
institutions exist only to protect.
6. Was party of men of small property facing officers who sought
only moderate reform leaving power in the hands of landed
gentry.
7. Saw Parliament as stand in for the sovereign people.
8. Every man had right to consent to law through his representative.
9. Argued for representation of individuals not interests, paralleled view
of community as a permanent reality vs. conception of nation as
simply a mass.
10. Levellers made natural law into a doctrine of individual rights
(with property right as primary) .
F. Diggers
1. Saw natural law as a communal right to means of subsistence.
2. Individual had only the right to share in the product of common
land and common effort.
3. Private property the root of evil and social abuse.
4. Gerrard Winstanley's Law of Freedom saw in human nature two
opposed tendencies toward:
i. Common preservation -- the basis of commwealth
ii. Individual preservation -- the basis of kingly government or
government by buying and selling.
Next week: The Republicans: Harrington, Milton and Sidney
For episode 20, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XXI. Thomas Hobbes
A. Hobbes' political writings occasioned by civil war and were intended to
support the King.
B. Sought to account on scientific grounds for all facts of nature including
society and individuals (an approach now defined as materialism).
1. Derived complex appearances from underlying simple motions.
2. Used a geometry and physics to account for individual physiology
and psychology and those to build a philosophy of the most complex
"artificial" bodies, society and the state.
C. That which was natural for Hobbes was not an end (e.g. natural law) but a
cause (the psychological mechanism of the human animal).
1. Resulting in societies made up of mutual actions and reactions of
individuals upon each other.
2. Not moral ideals but causes that will evoke generally cooperative
behavior are conditions of a stable union.
D. All emotions and desires derive from primitive attractions or retractions
from stimulus.
E. Rule behind all behavior is that a living body is set instinctively to preserve
or heighten its vitality.
1. Leads to restless pursuit of means to continue existence.
2. Means that security is always precarious with result that there is no
limit on the desire for security and power ("the present means of
obtaining apparent future goods").
3. This plus a rough equality in capabilities leads to a war of all against
all -- with no "right" or "wrong" -- and thus making civilization
impossible.
F. Reason is second principle of human nature.
1. Makes pursuit of security more effective.
2. Ruthless pursuit of individual advantage cannot be basis of society.
3. Calculating selfishness brings man into society.
G. Laws of nature state what ideally rational beings would do to achieve
security.
1. This forms postulates upon which rational construction of society
takes place.
2. Laws amount to this:
i. peace and economy have greater utility for self-preservation than
violence and general competition
ii. peace requires mutual confidence in the surrender of the "right to
everything"
H. Society is simply the means to an end.
1. Based on utilitarianism and individualism.
2. Such a notion of individualism was a clean break with customary
ideas about economic and social institutions.
3. The defense of monarchy superficial next to this.
I. To safeguard covenant by which all surrendered rights, a coercive
power, i.e. government, was required.
1. Men do what they dislike on pain of suffering what they dislike even
more.
2. Cooperation is formed by union of individuals -- not consent from
"citizens" -- which acts as, and through, one sovereign individual.
J. Law and morals are the same, simply the will of the sovereign.
K. All necessary powers belong to the sovereign and are individual and
unalienable.
1. There is no justification for resistance.
2. Yet if resistance is successful and the sovereign unable to govern
(provide security), he is sovereign no longer.
3. Monarchy not essential to the theory.
4. Church is the only other corporation existing as an act of sovereign will.
L. Advantages of government are tangible and must accrue to individuals.
M. Rests on no general or public good or will, only self-interested individuals.
Next week: Radicals and Communists
For episode 19, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XX. England: Preparation for Civil War
A. Lines between rival political ideas not clearly drawn in early 17th Century
England.
1. No need to support royal absolutism with the theory of divine right.
2. None had to seek theoretical defense for right to resist.
B. Thomas Moore's Utopia (1516) was political satire expressing dislike of
growing acquisitive society.
1. Harked back to Platonic conception of community of cooperative
classes.
2. Illustrated "looking back" from coming economic age.
C. Richard Hooker argued that Puritan refusal of obedience to establish church
was denying all political obligation.
1. Reason was accepted universally as soon as it was understood.
2. Law of reason was manifestly binding on all men.
3. Man cannot satisfy all their needs in isolation and therefore form society.
4. Ground of political obligation is common consent by which men agreed
to be ordered by someone.
5. Society could never withdraw its consent to authority it has set up after
the fact.
6. Ecclesiastical law of England not contrary to Christian faith and therefore
binding -- as was all law -- upon all Englishmen.
D. Calvinists and Catholics objected to royal supremacy in the Church as an
invasion of it's spiritual independence.
E. Independents split church from state, seeing the former as a voluntary
association.
F. Erastianism of John Seldon saw the relationship between religion and the
king in utilitarian, secularist and rational terms not common or typical
for times.
G. King, courts and Parliament each seen as having inherent powers, none
claimed supremacy until the civil war.
H. First conflict between king and courts over royal prerogative.
1. Francis Bacon defended the right of the King to overrule the courts.
2. Chief Justice Edward Coke argued for supremacy of common law over
the King and Parliament.
3. Coke saw law as indigenous growth within the realm that defined all
rights and obligations.
Next week: Thomas Hobbes
For episode 18, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XIX The Modernized Theory of Natural Law
A. Political philosophy released from association with theology in early 17th
Century.
1. Possible because gradual recession of religious conflict,
2. Gradual secularization of issues of political theory,
3. Secularization of intellectual interests bought on by the spread of
scholarship to antiquity,
4. Progress in mathematics and physical sciences.
B. Althusius -- Calvinist, anti-royalist
1. Separated jurisprudence and politics in reaction to Bodin
2. Based natural society on contract
i. contract explained relations between ruler and ruled (contract of
government)
ii. also explained existence of any group whatever (social contract)
3. State is built up from series of contracts of lesser social groups
down to the individual level
4. Sovereignty resided in the people as corporate body and could not
be alien to it
5. Government holds power for the sovereign
C. Grotius -- Natural Law
1. On the state, less clear than Althusius
2. Importance was on conception of law regulating relations between
states
3. Sought to base common (natural) law in pre-Christian thought
4. Argued against view of natural justice as motivated by
self-interest and therefore merely a social convention
i. appeal to utility is ambiguous since man is inherently social
ii. maintenance of society is a major utility
iii. peaceful social order is intrinsic good and conditions required
for it just as binding as those which serve private ends
iv. certain conditions or values must obtain if society is to persist
and are thus necessary to man's nature
v. these natural conditions are the basis of positive law of states
vi. natural law no more arbitrary than arithmetic
5. His attempt to rigorously ground reason part of move toward
"demonstrative" systems of philosophy
6. Natural law seen as basis for social and philosophical geometries
Descartes' method (427): "resolve every problem into its simplest elements; proceed by the smallest steps so that each advance may be apparent and compelling; take nothing for granted that is not perfectly clear and distinct."
D. Natural Law was introduction of normative element into law and politics.
E. Contained possible ambiguities not immediately apparent.
1. Differences between factual truth and logical implication
2. Ambiguity between logical and moral necessity
3. Critical analysis of these awaited Hume
F. Unity of system based on some general agreement on what was
important to insist on:
1. Obligation to consent
i. meant there were two parts to political theory -- contract and state
of nature
ii. this implied two contract, one as basis of the community and one
between the community and governing officials
2. Human well-being required enlightened intelligence
3. Middle class notion of individual human nature
4. Society seen as mode for man not the other way around
5. Relations in society less real than the individuals in themselves
Next week: England: Preparation for Civil War
For episode 17, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XVIII. Jean Bodin
A. His work Republic took the idea of sovereign power out of the shadow of
theology.
B. Sought to put the king above religious conflict, as a center of national
unity.
C. Mix of old and new philosophy
D. Took method and form, such as it was, from Aristotle.
E. Saw basis of society in pater familias who acted with others outside the
family as citizens.
1. Property was natural right of the family
2. State could not alienate property because it was not the proprietor
F. Mark of sovereign power is distinguishing characteristic of the state.
1. Citizens are such only by their subjection to the rule of a common
sovereign
2. Sovereign is the source of law
3. Sovereign is undivided, no mixed state but only forms of government
4. State consists in the possession of sovereign power
5. Government is apparatus through which power is exercised
6. All lesser bodies were subordinate to the state and any authority they
might have is delegated by the state
7. Sovereignty is perpetual, humanly unlimited and with unconditional
right to make, interpret and execute the law
G. Sovereign limited by will of God and natural right
H. F7 and G (above) lead to possible conflict
I. Confusion arose from:
1. View that sovereign was bound by God
2. Fidelity to the constitutional law of France
3. View of inviolability of private property
Next week: The Modernized Theory of Natural Law
