An Introduction to Political Theory and
Political Philosophy
“It is remarkable how many arguments that might
be thought to be ethical or political, and so to deal with purely practical matters,
depend in fact on much deeper philosophical issues. This is none the less true
because the men of action who put them into practice may not always be aware of
it; and often the connexion is in fact a
fully conscious one. Politics and morals, general theories of human
nature, metaphysics and epistemology cannot be separated.” W. K. C.
Guthrie, The Sophists (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1971), 4-5.
“The heavy books of Grotius, Pufendorf, Hooker and the others, standing on [John]
Locke’s shelves and dominating intellectual activity in this field, were all
presentations of a single, synthetic system, a view of the world which
proceeded from an account of reality to an account of knowledge, and so on to
an ethic and politics.” Peter Laslett, “Introduction,”
in John Locke: Two Treatises of Government, rev.ed. (New York: The New American Library, 1960, 1965),
100.
“For neither the classic nor Christian ethics
and politics contain ‘value judgments’ but [classic and Christian ethics and
politics] elaborate, empirically and critically, the problems of order that
derive from philosophical anthropology as part of a general ontology. Only when
ontology as a science was lost, and when consequently ethics and politics could
no longer be understood as sciences of the order in which human nature reaches
its maximal actualization, was it possible for this realm of knowledge to
become suspect as a field of subjective, uncritical opinion.” Eric Voegelin, “Introduction,” to The New Science of
Politics, in Modernity Without Restraint (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 2000), 96.
The Fundamental
Conceptions
When
we talk politics, we are liable to cover a broad range of philosophical topics,
whether we realize it or not. Of course, sometimes people simply want answers
to factual questions such as “What happened in the committee meeting” or “How
does a president make an executive agreement” or “Why did she lose the
election,” but a lot of times, political discussions are debates or arguments that
attack and defend government policies, laws, court decisions, and politicians.
These arguments lay out views about government and politics that rest on
philosophical assumptions or conceptions—“concepts”
are definable ideas—that are not always clearly understood by the speakers
themselves. This course examines some of the principal assumptions that are
reflected in political discussion and shows how one’s views on one topic might
follow from, or might contradict, one’s views on another political topic. The
goal of the course is to help students acquire a coherent, self-consistent
philosophy of politics.
For
example, someone might say, “I believe that the government should provide free
health care to everyone, regardless of the people’s income level.” Someone
responds, “I disagree. Government has no business providing free goodies to
people. Individuals have a responsibility to provide—to buy—medical insurance
for themselves and their families, if they wish. Government is supposed to
provide for the national security and law and order, and that’s it!” The
disagreement here is about the proper role and function of government: is
providing medical care a proper function of government? This question is
closely related to the question of authority.
“I think the government should ban tobacco smoking!” or “The
government should require all motorcyclists to wear helmets!” A familiar reply?
“Where does the government get off telling people what to do with their lives?
That’s none of the government’s business.” This question of the business of
government—of political authority—again boils down to the proper function of
government. Presumably, governments should have the authority to do what is
necessary to perform their proper functions. But the authority to regulate
individual behavior also points to the relationship between political—or
legal—authority and moral (ethical) authority. For example, what is the source
of the government’s authority to prohibit abortions? To permit abortions? To
require abortions? To punish racial discrimination? To permit racial
discrimination? To require racial discrimination?
Questions like these which relate to the function of government
and the basis of governmental authority are treated in this course as
“politics.” Under the heading of “politics” are other inquiries such as
which form of government is best—democracy, aristocracy,
monarchy as well as factual questions such as those mentioned at the beginning
of our first paragraph. Such questions of institutional design and governmental
forms assume, and must assume, the more fundamental ideas that
we cover in the course, however.
Politics is closely related to ethics, and ethics is likewise
closely related to anthropology; that is, to human nature. Aristotle posed the
classic question, “when is the good man also the good citizen?” Politics is
“the art of the possible.” The material that government must work with is human
material—people. If government’s primary function is to secure law and order,
then presumably people are animals in need of a social order that is to some
extent imposed upon them. If people are not consistently causing conflict with
others and in need of law and order, then the government may pursue goals other
than domestic peace. The responses to the statements above about health care,
smoking, and motorcycle helmets point to similar issues of individual behavior:
is it the responsibility—the duty, perhaps—of individuals to provide for their
own health care and perhaps even for the health care of others? Is this duty
a moral duty? Do people have a duty to avoid risky behaviors?
Does everyone have such responsibility or only people who are depended upon by
others? Is anyone totally independent of others? These questions raise the bar
from simply preventing people from harming others to preventing people from
harming themselves.
“Oh,
I agree that people should buy their own health insurance, but too many people
who can afford the insurance do not buy it and many people in this greatest
nation on earth simply cannot afford adequate health insurance and still have
enough money for food, clothing, shelter, and the other necessities. In either
case, when these uninsureds—or the uninsureds’ innocent children!—get
real sick or seriously injured, they either go without needed care or it falls
on other people or the government to take care of them anyway.” For
“uninsured,” substitute “smokers” or “cyclists,” whose risky behavior not only
affects themselves but others. When regulating these behaviors, is government
enforcing moral standards or is it addressing a financial and social problem
that might have significant consequences for the national economy? Is the function
of government the enforcement of moral behavior? And if government
is enforcing moral standards, how do we know what these moral standards are?
What is moral authority based upon? In this discussion, we again follow
Aristotle’s distinction between ethics, what is right and wrong for an
individual, and politics, what is right and wrong for a state.
The
common reference to human rights—formerly known as natural rights—assumes that
such rights truly exist, whether people willfully acknowledge them or not.
These rights are part of the “natural moral order” or simply the natural order.
The world, the cosmos in which we live, is assumed to be orderly not only in
the physical sense but also in a purposeful or teleological sense: the world, that
is, nature, operates purposefully, and the purposeful nature includes a role
for human beings in its grand scheme. Or, perhaps, the rights are the necessary
benefits that we receive from divinely imposed duties and obligations. Either
way, their existence is not based upon mere human desire. But how do we know
this? How can we know that a natural moral order exists? Many philosophers
argue that such an order does not in fact exist, and that individual moral
rules as well as the proper functions of government rest ultimately on mere
human will and desire. If anything, they say, political authority ultimately
rests on the universal desire to survive, and in this day and age, individual
survival depends upon group or social survival. Who is right?
This
short introduction contains assertions relating to all five of the fundamental
conceptions of political philosophy that we will study in this course: (1)
politics (what are the proper functions of government and what is the source of
political authority?); (2) ethics (do individuals have a moral responsibilities
that government might enforce or might violate?); (3) anthropology (do people—some of
them or most of them—avoid their real needs and moral
responsibilities in favor of satisfying their passing desires?); (4)
epistemology (how do we really know any of this, or is it all
purely a matter of opinion?); and (5) ontology-cosmology (do people have
“natural” rights or duties by simply being born into the world? do people have
a natural purpose or function? does government have a natural purpose or
function?).
If
you think about it, we talk about these ideas all the time in political
discussions when we question whether government should really be doing this or
that (politics), whether this or
that is truly “right” or “good” (ethics),
whether people are basically honest or dishonest, timid sheep or selfish wolves
(anthropology), whether we can
actually know the answers to the questions just asked or whether it is all just
a matter of personal opinion (epistemology),
and, depending on how late into the night the discussion continues, whether
there is meaning in life or “Is this all there is?” (ontology and cosmology).
This
class assumes that you are interested in politics. If you want to think
seriously about politics and not simply follow one political leader or
political party or political ideology blindly in whatever direction that
leader, party, or ideology herds you, then your thinking
and questioning will soon take you into these five areas of discussion and thus
into political theory.
Theory and Philosophy—and Ideology
Theory
and philosophy began with the ancient Greeks, and many of the terms necessary
to understand philosophical arguments are Greek terms. There is no better place
to begin than with a review of these terms and their most common meanings.
“Theory” is from a
Greek word (theoreo) meaning “a looking at, a
viewing; contemplation, speculation.” Theory is a type of human action:
inspecting or examining something. Political theory or political science
is the examination of political (from the Greek word for
city-state, polis) things.[1] In this
classical sense, theory is part of any scientific undertaking, for “science”
generally refers to a comprehensive effort to understand something by examining
it thoroughly. Political philosopher Eric Voegelin credits
Plato with the founding of political science, the pursuit of “a theoretical
problem to the point where the principles of politics meet with the principles
of a philosophy of history.”[2]
Today, because of the influence of modern physical science, the
word “theory” is often used in the plural—theories— to refer to the articulated
results of theoretical efforts. A modern scientific theory is an
extended hypothetical argument, which is an argument in the
form of if-then statements: “If the stated assumptions are
true, then this should be the observed result because it was
caused by the assumed conditions.” A modern scientific theory proposes an
explanation of a “phenomenon”—an observable event (incidentally, it’s another
word derived from Greek).[3] A
scientific theory ties a particular phenomenon to other phenomena in
predictable, causal ways. The term “theory” is also popularly used to indicate
a hunch—a proposed explanation of something (“my theory is that the explosion
resulted from a gas leak”). In the following introduction, we shall primarily
use “theory” in the classical sense of the act of comprehensive examination
rather than in the modern senses of hypothetical arguments or explanations of
observable events.
“Philosophy,” another Greek word (philosophia, from philo,
love, and sophia, wisdom) also carries
the fundamental meaning of thorough examination.[4] Political
philosopher Leo Strauss highlighted this connection when he said, “In the
expression ‘political philosophy,’ ‘philosophy’ indicates the manner of
treatment: a treatment which both goes to the roots and is comprehensive.”[5] Philosophy
is distinguished from other studies by both its breadth and its focus on
wisdom. In ancient times, philosophy was primarily understood not as an
academic subject but as a way of living, a life devoted to the pursuit of
wisdom and truth: thus, both philosophy and theory were originally understood
to be types of human action, not intellectual “things,” like theories and
philosophies.
"Wisdom" or sophia in
turn was understood to be knowledge of the most important things in life, the
permanent things—the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the ultimate
standards of right and wrong. Strauss said that “philosophy’s quest for wisdom
is a quest for universal knowledge, for knowledge of the whole.”[6] In the
words of Cicero:
Those who pursue
wisdom have earned the title “philosophers,” and philosophy is nothing more or
less, if you translate the word, than the “devotion to wisdom.” This is how
some older philosophers define wisdom: it is the knowledge of everything about
both gods and men and what causes underlie nature.[7]
Socrates
made a similar point in Plato’s Republic: "For you know, [this]
consideration is about the greatest thing, a good life and a bad one."[8]
Philosophy, originally meaning a life-long pursuit of wisdom, is
now often understood as a subject of academic study focuses on the writings of
individuals who have engaged in that pursuit. Even the writings of Plato that
argue for philosophy as a way of life that cannot be reduced to writing are now
studied as part of the material that makes up the academic subject.[9] In this
introduction, we will use “philosophy” (and in like manner, “theory”) as both
(1) the comprehensive examination of a subject with the purpose of obtaining
wisdom and (2) as particular works reflecting that examination.[10] Because
of the closeness between the classical meanings of philosophy and theory, we
will use the two terms synonymously throughout this basic introduction.
We must also make reference here to “ideology,” which is not solely derived from Greek
roots and which is often loosely substituted in place of the terms “philosophy”
and “theory” in contemporary discussions. There is no single, agreed-upon
definition or concept of ideology today. In fact, there are many—some might say
too many—conceptions of ideology in order for it to be a useful tool for
analysis. There is some consensus that ideology is a comprehensive system of
thought the purpose of which is to gain political power. The breadth or
comprehensiveness of some ideologies give them the appearance of philosophy,
but whereas the aim of philosophy is generally understood to be the truth about
the deepest questions facing man, the aim of ideology is power. A second
definition or conception of ideology, more common in the United States than in
Europe, is a derogatory one applied notably to the political movements of
Marxist communism, Nazism, and Fascism, movements that gave birth to terrorism,
revolution, and totalitarianism. The study of either aspect of ideology is
unfortunately outside the bounds of this semester-long course.
The purpose of this introductory essay is to explain that though
philosophy is the love of wisdom, students need not be in love with philosophy
to be able to analyze the philosophic or theoretical writings that will be
assigned in this course, to acquire a basic understanding of the different
writers that we will study, and to form coherent opinions about their ideas and
about political things. After all, as Socrates said in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias,
"The argument is not about just any question, but about the way one should
live," and there is no subject that should be of more interest to intelligent
people, especially today.
The Components of Philosophy: the
Fundamental Conceptions
Philosophers, in pursuit of knowledge of the whole, break the
whole down into several intellectually distinguishable subjects or questions.
(1) Ontology is the study of the nature of reality, of what
really and truly exists and how it exists; within ontology, cosmology is
the narrower study of the nature of the observable universe—the cosmos—in
which we live. Together with epistemology, the two studies are often described
as the subject matter of metaphysics (from the Greek meta,
after or beyond, phusis, nature).
(2) Epistemology refers to questions about what we can know
and how we can know it. (3) Anthropology (from the Greek word
for man, anthropos) is the study of man,
his essential nature and how people behave. The suffix “-logy” of these terms
may be translated as “the science of” or “the study of”; it is from the Greek
word logos, which originally meant “word” or “speech” but came to
signify more broadly what we generally refer to as “reason.” Philosophical
anthropology is the study of man’s relationship to or place in the
cosmos. Empirical anthropology is the study of observable
human behavior; or perhaps we should say the studies of
human behavior, for empirical anthropology includes the contemporary social
sciences of psychology, sociology, economics, and even “political science.”
(4) Ethics is the study of what is right and wrong, good and
evil, for individual human beings. And (5) politics is the
study of the right order and government of an organized community. There are
other objects of philosophic study (such as logic and aesthetics), and the
bumper-sticker definitions given here do not even scratch the surface in
explaining the studies just listed, but this list of terms—all of which are
derived from Greek words—gives us an idea of the content that a course in
political philosophy might contain. Wisdom as “knowledge of the whole,” as
knowledge of all things, is understood to comprehend these particular studies
in an effort to see their relationships to each other.
We should also note that the Great Religions also address each of
these subjects. They provide us with an understanding of the origins and the
nature of the universe, a theory of knowledge that places revelation and faith
beside reason as ways of knowing, an understanding of the nature of man and of
what is morally right and wrong, and, in some but not all of the religions, a
prescription for good government. In our studies this semester, we will make
frequent references to religions and religious ideas. You might be interested
to know that the very term “theology” was invented by Plato to describe the
rational discussion of God and the divine.
Very
few written philosophical works include every one of these studies. Most
philosophical works focus on one subject or another. A thorough discussion of
human nature, or of right and wrong, or of political order, however, must lead
to considerations of ontology and epistemology, and it must be internally
consistent (logical) as well as accurate in its description of the subject
matter.
Political
philosophy, in particular, depends on considerations of the other four subjects
just mentioned—ontology, epistemology, anthropology, and ethics—leading some
philosophers to call it the highest or most comprehensive philosophic study.
Aristotle made this claim when, in his most famous work on ethics,
not on politics, he called politics, not ethics, the “master
science”:
Will not then a
knowledge of this Supreme Good be also of
great practical importance for the conduct of life? Will it not better enable
us to attain what is fitting, like archers having a target to aim at? If this
be so, we ought to make an attempt to determine at all events in outline what
exactly this Supreme Good is, and of which of the theoretical or practical
sciences it is the object. Now it would be agreed that it must be the object of
the most authoritative of the sciences—some science which is pre-eminently a
master-craft. But such is manifestly the science of Politics.[11]
Plato,
speaking through Socrates, suggested much the same thing in the passages we
cited above from the Republic and the Gorgias.
Statements about the importance of political theory are not
confined to the thinkers of ancient Greece. Eric Voegelin generally
referred to the comprehensive study of politics as “political science” rather
than as political philosophy. In criticizing what he called the
"degradation of political science to a handmaid of the powers that
be," Voegelin called for the
restoration of political science "to its full grandeur as the science of
human existence in society and history, as well as of the principles of order
in general."[12] Leo
Strauss expressed a similar point: “Originally political philosophy was
identical with political science, and it was the all-embracing study of human
affairs.” As part of the larger enterprise of philosophy in general, which
Strauss says is “the humanizing quest for the eternal order," “the theme
of political philosophy is mankind’s great objectives, freedom and government
of empire—objectives which are capable of lifting all men beyond their poor
selves.”[13]
Philosophical writings come to us in many different forms—Plato’s
dramatic dialogues, Aristotle's lecture notes, Lucretius’s poetry, Gnostic
"gospels," St. Augustine's letters and essays, St. Thomas's
scholastic demonstrations, and Hobbes's, Locke’s, and Rousseau’s treatises or
book-length analyses of politics and related subjects. Regardless of the form,
the content of these writings is ideas—“speculative
thought" as Henri Frankfort calls it—that attempt to make sense of a
complex and multi-faceted part of life by placing it within the context of the
whole of reality. For most students, getting a handle on ideas and abstract
thought takes practice and requires some getting used to. It is important to
remember when reading the assigned works that the writers were intelligent
individuals who had definite things to say and that each said what he had to
say in an orderly way that has withstood the test of time. This is why these
works are called "classics." The writers did not compose
stream-of-consciousness monologues or "first-thing-that-pops-into-my-mind"
mixtures of hot air and other gases. The writings are purposefully
structured and can be systematically analyzed. Using a dictionary and the tools
provided in this essay, you should read the assigned works sympathetically
first, trying to understand their structure and detail before turning to
criticism. Make sure that you have a basic grasp of the writings before you
attempt to evaluate them.
But even more important to remember is that these writers are not
necessarily correct in what they say; indeed, since most of the assigned
writers contradict at least one other writer that you will read, they cannot all
be correct. What follows from this is that you, Lowly Student, after analyzing
the readings must then evaluate them and make your own judgment about them. You
must develop a critical distance between your own mind and judgment and the
ideas and arguments you are considering. You must do this, or
else you will be simply swept downstream by arguments that may not be sound or
by leaders who make or follow unsound arguments themselves. If these arguments
and leaders use your willing support to achieve bad ends, you are complicit,
and complicity itself is blameworthy.[14] If you
can come to terms with the writers that are assigned in this course, you will
be well positioned to evaluate the arguments of the legion of lesser writers
who, although they are intelligent and may have sound ideas, are not of the
same high caliber as the "greats" that we will read.
All
of the writers we study this semester wrote comprehensively on politics; in
fact, we will read material from most of the great contributors to Western
political philosophy who lived during the two millennia from the fifth century
B.C. to the seventeenth century A.D.: Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St.
Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, as well as reading the great
poem of Lucretius and excerpts from the writings of Epicurus, Cicero,
Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. These writings must be analyzed in terms of the
ideas they reflect regarding metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, ethics,
and politics.
Philosophic Traditions
Finally,
we will find that there seem to be only so many distinct philosophical
alternatives regarding each of the fundamental conceptions and that certain
ontological positions mesh neatly with certain epistemological,
anthropological, ethical, and political positions. Certainly, there are
infinite gradations and variations within each alternative, but the fundamental
positions on the nature of the universe, of knowledge, of human nature, of the
ultimate standard of right and wrong, and of the function of government begin
to settle into a few familiar groups that enable you to rationally compare and
contrast one writer to another. The course is a study of the
five fundamental conceptions as they are defined in several
broad patterns or traditions: (1) the Epicurean or Epicurean-modern
tradition, (2) the Classical tradition, (3) the Classical-Religious tradition,
and (4) the gnostic or esoteric tradition, which includes Gnostic and Hermeticist thought. We shall also begin the study of
several of these fundamental conceptions by looking back into ancient or
pre-philosophic times to see how men thought and expressed themselves in
concrete narratives, rather than abstract ideas. You may want to label this as
a separate Ancient or Mytho-poeic “tradition.”
The Epicurean tradition, beginning with the Greek philosophers
Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, strongly influenced modern political
philosophy, especially English political philosophy after the sixteenth
century, so we also use the term “modern” to refer to the English Epicureans
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The Classical philosophic tradition refers not to
all of the philosophers of Classical Greece, but primarily to Plato and
Aristotle, and later the Stoics. In the Middle Ages, Plato and Aristotle
strongly influenced the theology and philosophic outlooks of many, but
certainly not all, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and philosophers.
Each of these religions had a strong current of Classical thought running
through it for at least part of its history. Writings from St. Augustine and
St. Thomas Aquinas will serve as representative of this Classical religious
thought, though we could also use writings from the medieval Muslims
Averroes, Al-farabi, and Avicenna, as well as the
medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. The fourth tradition, which we may
generally call the esoteric tradition or gnostic (with a small “g”) tradition,
includes materials by ancient Gnostic and Hermeticist writers.
The Gnostics were an ancient religion that had a distinctive cosmology that
colored their anthropology, ethics, and politics. The Hermetic or Hermeticist tradition, also referred to by itself as
the “esoteric” tradition, has been found in recent times to have been an
influential source of ideas throughout Western history. Though it differed
significantly from Gnostic thought in several regards, Hermeticism
shared with Gnosticism a central focus on certain knowledge, or “gnosis”
(Greek) that holds the key to understanding and salvation.
Mytho-poeic, or myth-making, thought, understanding things
and expressing that understanding in stories or myths—the fundamental meaning,
and origin, of the Greek word mythos is story—is still a
fundamental way of coping with the world and will be til the
end of time. Myths, or “narratives” as myths are often described today are not
falsehoods, as many commercials and many people would have you believe.
Rather, mytho-poeic thought seeks to
understand and explain human and other events in terms of plots, motives, and
other factors that are fit to explain individual human action but less fit to
explain other events. Many if not most people look for the plot or the image or
the screenplay behind any phenomenon, human or not. The ancient ways of
thinking have not disappeared; they are still a very real way of looking at the
world today.
As we go through the semester, you might want to make up a grid
with rows or columns representing the fundamental conceptions and with four or
five intersecting rows or columns representing the four (five, if you decide to
treat Ancient thought as a fifth tradition) traditions we will be
studying.[15]
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Ancient |
Epicurean |
Classical |
Classical-Religious |
Esoteric: Gnostic-Hermetic |
|
Cosmology |
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Ontology |
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Epistemology |
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Philosophical Anthropology |
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Empirical Anthropology |
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Ethics |
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Politics |
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Fundamental Concepts: Ontology and Cosmology
The following notes will help you to recognize the different
fundamental conceptions and will get you started on your way.
Ontology (Greek on, gen. ontos,
“of that which exists”) is the study of the nature of reality, of what
truly is, or, simply, the study of being—what it means
to be. Ontology poses a cluster of questions about reality, about
what really exists: does reality have a structure? If so, what is its
structure, or, to ask the same thing, what is the order of being? How is being
or reality constituted? Cosmology is the narrower study of the cosmos (yes,
it’s another Greek word: this one means good order, good behavior; or, from its
perfect order, the world or the universe). Cosmogony is the study of the origin
of the universe (Greek again: cosmos-genesis). Often, if a writer
discusses one of these studies, he discusses the other, but not always.
Ontology and cosmology are closely related inquiries. Cosmology
focuses on the world in which we live, the world that we experience—including
outer space, the galaxies, the universe—and cosmogony asks where all of this
came from. Ontology includes these studies of the cosmos, but also pursues the
broader and often puzzling questions of appearance and reality such as “What is
real?” “Is only matter real?” “Is only what we can observe with our senses
real?” “Are relationships between things real?” “What is the true nature of
this?” “What is the essence of that?” “Are there ‘natures’ and ‘essences’?”
Together, the three subjects make up the greater study of metaphysics
(Greek: meta, after or beyond, and physics, the study
of observable or empirical phenomena).
Eric Voegelin has said that
reality consists of (1) the natural, (2) and (3) the human (with (2) the
individual distinguished from (3) the social), and (4) the divine: a “quaternarian” division of reality. If we refer
to “nature” as that which is not man-made, might it not also include gods? Or
might it have been made by God? For most of man’s recorded history, it went
without saying that reality included both divine and non-divine, sacred and
profane: recall Cicero’s definition of “wisdom” quoted above: “it is knowledge
of everything about both gods and men and what causes underlie nature.” The
tradition of natural theology reflects this essential bond between the natural
and the divine. But these two dimensions of reality are distinct. In describing
early man’s fundamental experiences of the sacred in the midst of the profane,
every-day world, Mircea Eliade says, “The sacred always manifests itself as a reality
of a wholly different order from ‘natural’ realities.”[16] Primitive
man experienced the sacred as more real than the natural order, as “the
only real and real-ly existing
space” and time.[17] Voegelin’s and Eliade’s
remarks reflect ontological observations.
And what about human creations or “artifacts”? Just as mountains,
trees, and stars, so also man is a part of nature, but human creations are
fundamentally different from what nature creates and are often of more interest
to us and especially to students of politics. One of man’s principal creations
is ideas: are ideas—the very ideas that we have about the natural and the
supernatural—real? What is their nature? Plato, the founder of
political science, argued that ideas of things are more real than the substance
of those ideas that we grasp through perception; Karl Marx, to name just one of
many thinkers, argued that they were less real.
These questions, primary in the sense that they all simply ask
about the reality of things, are followed by questions about the
structure of what is real. What are the relationships between various parts of
being? What is the relationship between ideas and the fundamental experiences
that the ideas articulate? Why do we call certain articles of furniture, though
of multiple shapes and sizes, all “chairs”? Is this general idea or universal
“chair” real and independent of man’s thought, or is it merely a construct, a
mentally created tool, less real than the objects we perceive? Is the world in
which we live imbued with divine purpose and intention? Are some parts of
nature intended to be the means for achieving further natural ends? And if so,
who intended them? Do aspects of the structure of reality serve as clues or
standards for proper human action: is there a natural moral order?
Different writers have answered these questions in fundamentally
different ways. What kinds of arguments and ideas have they offered? What clues
to their positions should you look for? One question you might ask is whether
the philosopher says or whether he implicitly assumes that the world is an
orderly place or that the world has no apparent order. If there is a natural order—an
order not imposed on nature by man, remember, but one that exists independently
of human will—what kind of an order is it?
Aristotle,
for example, said that there was a natural order to the world based on the
purposes or functions that characterized each natural thing, including as
natural things man and the polis in which he lived. God, the source of these
purposes, was part of nature itself. The Epicureans, by contrast, said that
there is no discoverable natural order in the world or in man or society
(though Epicurus said that gods were part of nature while Hobbes maintained
that God was outside of nature). The only order we can find in the world
according to Hobbes is that which is imposed upon it by us human animals. As we
shall see, different conclusions about anthropology, ethics, and politics
follow reasonably from these different positions.
Cosmogonically, we cannot draw any hard and fast inferences
from particular cosmologies to particular arguments about the origins of the
universe. Hobbes, for example, affirmed the existence of the Christian God as
Creator and denied that he was himself an atheist or that his cosmology was
consistent only with an atheistic position, but he also denied the existence of
a discernible cosmic order. The Navajo understand some stars to have been
divinely placed in the sky as constellations and other stars to have been
randomly blown into space by the Coyote. Orthodox Christian, Jewish, and Muslim
thinkers, on the other hand, understand the world as an orderly place because
it was coherently created by God the Creator of Heaven and Earth. God exists
beyond his creation: he transcends nature and is therefore super-natural.
Aristotle's Supreme Being was not a creator that created the universe and thus
made it an orderly structure; indeed, Aristotle's god was not a supernatural
being at all—the Prime Mover was part of the natural universe. The Gnostics
viewed the world as governed by a natural order created by a supernatural god;
indeed, the Gnostics conceived of this order as more rigorous and systematic
than either the classical or the Christian thinkers. For Gnostics, the world
order was “systematic,” but systematically bad because it was created by a bad
god, an inferior god: the “true” God was beyond the creator god: he was super-supernatural.
For Hermeticist thinkers, man stands as a
co-creator of a continually developing cosmos, a god-in-waiting—a magus.
Clearly, these writers present a broad range of cosmological alternatives, and
just as clearly questions of the origins and the nature of the world are as
religious as they are philosophic.
Speculations
about what is real and what reality consists of are ontological speculations.
They can be tied closely to cosmological speculation about the universe, but
they can also be understood independently from their cosmological foundations.
In the political writings that we shall be reading, there will be explicit and
implicit references to both ontology and cosmology: if the discussions are
explicit, note them; if the writings do not make any explicit references to
ontology or cosmology, try to infer what positions the author takes on these
issues from what he says about other matters. Of all the fundamental concepts
we need to know, ontology is probably the most difficult to master because it
is the most abstract subject, yet we confront questions about reality and
appearance in our lives every day. Like all of the fundamental conceptions, the
concepts of ontology and cosmology are familiar to us in very common sense
ways; what we must do in this course is get a handle not on concrete examples
of reality and appearance, but on the very concepts of “reality” and
“appearance.”
Epistemology
Ontology
is inextricably tied to epistemology (Greek, episteme, knowledge,
science). To assert that something exists is to claim that we can know that
it exists. If reality consists of natural, supernatural, and human elements,
how can we know or understand the natural, the divine, and the human? Through
reason, revelation, faith, and self-knowledge, perhaps; at least these modes of
understanding have often been suggested as the ways that we know these three
modes of being.
When we said above that Hobbes argued that there was no
discernible natural order, our statement was a bit misleading. Though we made
the statement in the discussion of ontology, Hobbes’s statement is more
correctly an epistemological, not an ontological, statement: “There is no discernible order,”
not “there is no order.” Hobbes’s statement is about what we can know, not
about what there is. Even if there is a natural, divine, psychic, or social
order—and there may well be—we might not be able to discover it, says Hobbes.
Epistemology
asks what we can know and how we can know it. It is sometimes referred to as
the theory of knowledge. Psychologists study it in terms of “modes of
cognition.” Like ontology, this subject is perhaps new to you, but it is
surprisingly important for political philosophy because it concerns what we can
know about the world and about standards of behavior. Hobbes, for example,
began his major work on politics with a dozen chapters on epistemology, and the
core of the greatest work of political theory, Plato’s Republic, is
a discussion of epistemology and ontology, for these two studies are opposite
sides of the same coin.
The
assigned readings will expose us to a range of epistemological positions. For
some writers, human beings possess an intellectual ability to discern—to intuit—the
structure of reality, both natural and man-made, through careful examination
and thinking. This ability is generally called rationality or reason,
but because these two terms are used widely and are associated with
significantly different concepts, the intuitive ability in particular is often
referred to as noetic apprehension, from the Greek word nous.
This conception of reason is the basis for the classical concepts of philosophy
and theory, as we have defined them. Classical philosophers thought that reason
allowed man to plug into the world, so to speak, and discern order in an
immediate, intuitive way. These fundamental experiences of order had to be
pondered and figured out, but the logical reasoning needed for this
articulation was based on such fundamental human experiences, and the human
mind was our connection with the order of being. This view is sometimes
identified as the correspondence theory of truth: our true
ideas correspond with reality—reality is truth.
Other writers focus on the logic component of reason and identify
reason exclusively with the ability to think logically: “reason in this sense
is nothing but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences
of general names agreed upon for marking and signifying our thoughts.”[18] The connection
of our thoughts with reality—our ability to intuit or discern the order of
reality through perception—is missing here. The correspondence of our thoughts
with reality and hence the correspondence theory of truth is not possible. As
Hobbes said, “For true and false are attributes of speech, not of things. And
where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood.” We must hypothesize
and experiment in order to gain a working or pragmatic understanding of the
world in which we live, but we can never truly know the order
to reality. This is the conception of reason that underlies positivism and much
modern science, but it was present in the ancient world as well. This view is
sometimes identified with the pragmatic theory or with
the consistency theory of truth, or both.
For some writers, our intellect allows us to discern only part of
the order of being; revelation is necessary to enlarge or complete the picture.
That which is known by revelation is and must be revealed to us by others
because we cannot reason it out on our own. Faith usually means the acceptance
or commitment to truth that cannot be reasoned out on our own—especially the
truth revealed to someone else by revelation. The relationship between reason
and revelation poses a whole battery of difficult questions. If reason and
revelation are fundamentally incompatible ways of obtaining wisdom, then the
two, unless carefully kept within their appropriate respective bounds, are
antithetical. Depending on the breadth of possible knowledge that one
attributes to revelation, for instance, the breadth of rationality is expanded
or constricted. Thus the view that reason is identical with logic, which we
outlined above, is as consistent with the deeply religious outlook of a
Tertullian as it is with the more obscure religious attitude of a Hobbes. An
atheist’s conception of reason and wisdom might leave little room for faith and
divine revelation.
Alternatively, reason and revelation may be understood to
complement one another—not “either-or” but “both-and”—and again Cicero’s
statement is relevant: philosophy is devotion to wisdom, and wisdom is the
knowledge of everything about gods and men and what causes underlie nature. St.
Augustine’s oft repeated statement is also an example: “For God will aid us and
will make us understand what we believe. This is the course prescribed by the
prophet who says, ‘Unless you believe, you shall not understand.’” The
knowledge of gods might be within the scope of reason, classically understood,
but the knowledge might require revelation. If reason is understood to include
the intuitive or immediate discernment of reality, as it was by the Classical
philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and if revelation is also a form of immediate
knowledge—knowledge that does not have to be figured out or verified by
observation and testing—the intuitive reason and revelation are very close in
nature. In Plato’s mystical experience of the Good, for example, reason and
revelation merge to the point of indistinguishability. In St. Augustine’s
undeniably reasonable discussions of man, society, and God, the essentially
rational disciplines of philosophy and theology similarly merge. Both writers
experience a direct connection with a transcendent divinity and make their
experiences the basis of their subsequent reasoning and their claims to wisdom.
Therefore,
it is particularly important to focus on the writers’ conceptions of reason in
the assigned readings. Look for the writers’ discussions of what rationality is
and whether it enables us to obtain ontological and ethical knowledge or
whether the nature of the universe and the nature of right and wrong are
unknowable and matters for human convention or divine revelation.
Philosophical and Empirical
Anthropology: the Nature of Man v. Human Nature
Politics
is preeminently an enterprise of human beings, and almost everything about
people is relevant to political theory. Because the subject is so broad,
anthropology, the study of man in general, is broken down into two areas of
study, philosophical anthropology and empirical anthropology, and
the second area is broken down even further. Philosophical anthropology is
actually an ontological study: what is the nature of man? Does man fit into a
larger natural order, and if so how? What makes a human being
essentially human? Empirical anthropology is the study of observable human
behavior. How do people usually behave? Clearly, psychology, sociology, and the
other social sciences are types of empirical anthropology that study different
areas of human behavior, but political theory is more precisely interested in
those aspects of human behavior or human nature that are
significant for politics.
All of us from a very early age have given some thought to these
questions, typically to those of empirical anthropology first: Are people
basically honest or dishonest? Selfish or sympathetic? Strong-willed or
weak-willed? What is the normal human response to this or that
situation? What is the natural response? What’s the difference,
if any? All of us must formulate some responses to these basic questions in
order to survive and prosper.
Politics, on the other hand, looks at man from the perspective of
ordering his individual behavior as one among many people living together: if
there is no human society, there is no need for government and politics is
irrelevant. Are people naturally peaceful or naturally warlike? Is group living
naturally peaceful or is it full of conflict? Can people be trained or educated
to adopt peaceful—or violent—approaches to life? Are people basically
independent-minded leaders or followers? Can people learn these behaviors? Are
human beings essentially rational or irrational? None of the above? The answer
to these questions might be based on observations of human behavior; thus we
call this empirical anthropology. The social sciences and most
American political science courses—international relations, political parties
and interest groups, voting behavior, and the like—focus on this aspect of
anthropology. We will find significantly different views of human nature
expressed all across the four traditions that we study, within and without the
traditions. No tradition is tied to one particular understanding of human
nature.
There
is another aspect of man, however, that cannot be discovered by mere
observation, and here the different traditions do take distinctively different
positions. If a philosopher maintains that there is an order to reality, and if
man is part of reality, then the norms appropriate to man are basically like
the norms applying to other parts of reality, and man can be understood
fundamentally as having a natural order—a nature, an essential function or
purpose—himself. If no natural order exists, then man obviously cannot be part of
it, and human nature—man’s essence or being—is radically independent of the
world in which he lives. This independence may also be true if the natural
order in which man lives is understood to be fundamentally bad or if man’s true
nature is to participate in the creation of the cosmos. When the focus of the
discussion is on the nature of man and his place in reality, we call the
discussion philosophical anthropology.
Politics
is a human inquiry, and the writers that we will study are some of the greatest
students in history of the way people think and behave, but novelists,
playwrights, and people in the most unlikely walks of life may also be keen
students of human nature. All of them will have something to say about human
nature even if they say little about cosmology or epistemology in the writings
that we will study. But all of us have our own ideas about human
nature, too. This is one area in which our own ideas can serve as standards for
our evaluation of the “great” philosophers that we will read.
Ethics
As
understood by Aristotle, ethics is the study of what conduct is right and wrong
for individuals. In this sense, ethics is synonymous with morals or morality,
though recent academic usage of the term “moral” has extended its meaning to
the general question of the very nature of goodness itself. As an analytical
tool for political philosophy, we shall use “ethics” in its original, more
limited, Aristotelian meaning.
Despite
the many opinions on the question of right and wrong conduct, there seem to be
a few general approaches into which the different opinions and theories fit.
For one thing, the ultimate standards or principles of right and wrong may be
traced back to nature, or back to God, or merely back to man. The Greek
sophists first made this distinction in their discussions of physis and nomos—of nature versus
“convention,” which means the product of human agreement or custom or
tradition. If the ultimate principles are by physis,
by nature, then their truth and authority is independent of human will and
opinion. All of us might be wrong on what is truly right or wrong in a
particular instance—or even wrong all the time. Because God or the divine is
also independent of human will, we may provisionally include divine sources
under the category of physis here.
If the ultimate principles are conventional, then their “truth” depends on
decisions and opinions of human beings, and opinions may change over time.
Thus, moral principles might be authoritatively determined by a majority of the
people, or by an elected leader, or by a wise man, or by a bully. This
distinction also gives rise to the popular opposition of “absolute” standards
to “relative” standards. In this sense, natural standards are absolute—they are
independent of human opinion and always the same everywhere; conventional
standards are relative—they depend on different cultures and societies. But we
shall see that the distinction is not that simple.
Ethical
theories are thus tied closely to ontological and epistemological concepts. If
the world in which we live has no discernible order, we say that it has no
“natural order,” and the whole basis for accepting ethical norms because they
are “by nature” is destroyed. Certainly, some have inferred a natural “survival
of the fittest” or “kill or be killed” principle of ethics; in fact, this was
essentially the idea first identified with the term “natural law” by Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias. But the idea that
the natural order provides authoritative norms for human action is usually
identified with the belief that nature is good, that nature provides man with
purposes and goals appropriate to being human, and that man’s duty in life is
to fulfill these natural purposes as best he can. If nature is bad, then the
true source of norms (assuming here that the very meaning of ethical norm
is good norm) must be man via convention or God by revelation.
The
idea that all norms are conventional is usually, but not always, identified
with the ontological position that reality—nature—does not provide man with
norms to live by and that man must devise his own norms. Often these norms are
deontological: laws, customs, rules of etiquette and propriety. Sometimes they are
teleological: anything that furthers the revolution or advances us toward
some Summum Bonum is
right and good, anything that hampers such progress is bad. Divine commands or
rules may also be the highest authority, whether or not there is a discernible
order of being. Indeed, the order of nature might be bad and only the commands
of God can provide sound standards of action.
And
with the word “discernible” we are brought to the equally relevant
consideration of epistemology: is a natural moral order discernible? By
“discernible” we mean discoverable or cognizable by reason. Can we rationally
figure out what is right and wrong? If the sole source of ethical norms is
conventional or divine, and thus probably articulated in the form of rules and
customs, then how can we discern them and determine what they are? Usually, we
must be told what they are either by the human legislator or by God; and if by
God, then we usually learn them by His revealing them: that is, we learn by
revelation, not by reason. The norms will be essentially arbitrary, not subject
to rational inquiry, and the source of the norms may be something powerful,
revered, or good, or some combination of these three. Both reason and
revelation or reason and faith together may be the means of discernment if we
hold that ethical truth can be determined by human wisdom or practical
wisdom.
Ethical
questions also pose the question of “authority,” sometimes redundantly referred
to as the question of “legitimate authority.” Here it is useful to distinguish
relationships of “authority and obligation” from those of “coercion and
obedience.”[19] Authority
is usually said to create obligation or duty: we are obligated to act in
accordance with authority; moral duties define good acts. Coercion or force,
while it can certainly stimulate obedience, cannot create obligation or duty.
Some of the things we are forced to do are bad or wrong: we cannot be said to
have a duty to do them, and we should not be held morally responsible for them.
Thus, participating at gunpoint in a robbery or participating in a crime
because our loved ones are held threatened with death is understandable and not
in itself morally bad: we plead duress and hope that we are not adjudged
morally responsible for our actions.
Behind the questions of authority and obligation, and intertwined
with the problem of ethical norms in a world devoid of a natural order, is the
question of the moral value of human life, the importance or goodness of
survival: when we are “forced” to do something bad, we usually have a chance to
resist, but perhaps at the cost of considerable pain or even death. If the world
holds no natural purpose or norms for us, is it not good by default to do those
things that preserve our life and avoid those that threaten it? Or is the
choice morally indifferent?
The physis-nomos or
“nature-nurture” distinction is also closely related to today’s “fact-value”
distinction, the notion that all ethical norms are purely conventional values
or “value judgments” because their truth cannot be discerned using our prized
method of discovering the order of nature: the scientific method. Though the
fact-value distinction is historically a product of the nineteenth century, its
roots can be clearly seen in the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, and before
them, Lucretius and the Epicureans.
Politics
Finally we arrive at the subject matter of this course:
politics. What are the questions and issues peculiar to political inquiry or
theory? Generally, we want to know the source of political or governmental or
legal authority and the proper functions of government.
It is useful again to begin by referring to Aristotle’s view:
politics is the study of the political or social unit and of the order that is
appropriate to it. The Greeks at the time of Plato and Aristotle—that is, at
the time political science originated—lived in communities called poleis (singular, polis).
Greek society in the sense of a nation or organized community
of all Greeks did not exist. Thus the polis was at once the “political” and the
“social” unit of order, as we would understand these terms
today. Following Aristotle’s division, politics is the study of what
is right and wrong for the organized community, ethics studies what is right
and wrong for the individual. Politics necessarily focuses on political and
social order, on the relationships between the individuals that make up the
political and social unit. For Plato and Aristotle, ethics also studied
order—the right and wrong order of the various parts of the individual’s soul.
Modern political theorists often do not posit an ordered soul, and some do not
even posit the existence of a human soul, but the general meaning of politics
as the study of order continues to be quite useful.
One’s
view of the order appropriate to the political unit is closely related to one’s
view of the purpose or proper function of the political unit. If we reject the
notion of a natural order and the idea that behavioral norms can and should be
grounded in either nature or God, then the purpose of political government is
pretty much up to us. It does appear, however, that some functions of
government are reasonably consistent with human nature and human capabilities.
It would be folly, perhaps, to give to government a function that is
objectively impossible to achieve, and since politics and government are
basically spheres of human action, it would be equally folly to attempt to
require or expect people to live a life or to have them order their actions in
a manner that is not consistent with their nature. If human beings are
basically self-interested, aggressively desirous animals, then any social goal
would probably require some order imposed on men from without: part, and
perhaps the main part, of government’s function would be to provide law and
order. If only a small minority of the population is so aggressively self-interested,
and most human beings are capable of spontaneously peaceful, cooperative
action, then perhaps government can aim at more ambitious ends: the securing of
a comfortable life, the development of human virtue, perhaps, or even a
religiously salvific life on earth.
If
we accept the ontological idea that an order of being or reality exists and
that it provides norms to men, who are part of that structure of reality, then
the proper purpose of government can perhaps be discerned by rational inquiry.
If man has a natural end or purpose, then politics may be part of the means to
achieve that purpose.
A
related question of particular importance to politics—and to law, the
instrument of government—is the question of authority: what is the source or
basis of political and legal authority? It is customary today to subject
political and legal norms to a moral standard. Thus, we condemn some policies
and laws as “immoral” and thus without obligatory force. But as we saw,
classical philosophers such as Aristotle made politics, not ethics, the master
science or ultimate standard. From this perspective, whether governmental
policies and laws are truly authoritative and creative of obligation and duty
depends not on their consistency with true ethical norms, but their consistency
with true political norms, a way of looking at the problem that is not common
in today’s world where “politics” more often than not is a dirty word, not a
word standing on truth and virtue.
Thus,
our inquiry into politics and government must be informed by our inquiries into
the other subjects: ontology and cosmology, epistemology, anthropology, and
ethics. It is the purpose of this course to help you find your way through
these subjects in order to arrive at some coherent, if only temporary, outlook
relating to politics. You will find, I believe, that once you begin to see the
connections between these subjects, you will not be content to look at
politics—domestic or international relations—in the same way again. As you
inquire into political philosophy, you will find, as Herakleitos said
2500 years ago, “I searched out myself.”
[1] “Politics” or “the science of politics” is
derived from politike (ἡ πολιτικἡ),
the study of the polis and what pertains thereto..
[2] New Science of Politics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1952, 1987), 1. “[A] theory of politics, if it
penetrates to principles, must at the same time be a theory of history.”
[3] “Phenomenon” is derived from phainomenon (φαίνομένων), which
means “to appear.”
[4] "Philosophy" —from yet another
Greek word: philosophia (φιλοσοφέω)
which means "to love knowledge or wisdom, to pursue it."
[5] “What is Political Philosophy,” in Political
Philosophy, ed. H. Gildin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 4.
[6] Ibid.
[7] On Duties, II.5. The connection
between philosophy and the causes that underlie nature is still evident in the
term “natural philosophy,” meaning generally natural science, that survives
here and there on old buildings. The same meaning is carried in the old
expression “natural history,” which recalls the original Greek
meaning of the term “history” (Greek, ίστορέω;
Latin, historia): to inquire into or
about something. Discussion about the gods is literally “theology”: θεός λόγος.
[8] Republic, 578c. See similar
statements at Republic 344e, 352d, 358d, and Gorgias,
458c, 500c.
[9] The term “philosophy” is also popularly
used to mean “policy” or a characteristic approach or rationale for particular
actions.
[10] In the “Seventh Letter,” which is generally
acknowledged by scholars to be the work of Plato, Plato said that his
philosophy “does not at all admit of verbal expression like other studies, but,
as a result of continued application to the subject itself and communion
therewith, it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as
light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.”
341c-d.
[11] Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a20-1094b4.
[12] New Science of Politics, supra, 2.
[13] Political Philosophy, supra,
12, 4; see also Natural Right and History (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1953), 34 ("Originally, philosophy had been the
humanizing quest for the eternal order, and hence it had been a pure source of
humane inspiration and aspiration."). This conception of philosophy should
be contrasted with the model put forward by John Locke and accepted by many today who see the philosopher’s proper vocation as “an
under-labourer [employed] in clearing the ground a
little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.”
“Epistle to the Reader,” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding ( New York: Dover Publications, 1959), Volume I, p. 14.
[14] See, for example, Hitler and the
Germans by Eric Voegelin or The
Rebel by Albert Camus.
[15] To make it even more complicated, an extra
box or two labeled “Ancient” or “Pre-philosophical” would be helpful because we
will study writings by Henri and H.A. Frankfort and Mircea Eliade that explore
the worldview and thought processes of ancient man prior to the development of
philosophy and formal religion.
[16] The Sacred and the Profane, trans.
Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), 10.
[17] Ibid., 20, 28.
[18] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan,
chapter 5.
[19] Rousseau’s classic statement in Book One, chapter 3, of the Social Contract is worth reading.