Germs of Ideology Flashcards
1
Q
Who were the germs of ideology?
A
- Immanuel Kant
- Edmund Burke
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Karl Marx
2
Q
Who was Immanuel Kant?
A
- 1724-1804 in Prussia, Konigsberg
- Early proponent of the enlightenment
“the maxim of always thinking for
oneself” - His political essays champion reason
and the freedom it requires and
condones - Optimist - believed in the strength
of reason, and envisioned a world in
which all thought for themselves
through it and lead to republics - Freedom
- The Social Contract
- ## Domestic Policy of Liberalism
3
Q
What was Kant’s view of Freedom?
A
“There is only one innate right, Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with universal law”
4
Q
What was the Domestic policy of Liberalism from Kant’s perspective?
A
- Any government that represents the united will of the people - not necessarily democracy - An elected representative is fraught with problems - Might does not make right
5
Q
What does Kant question about IR?
A
- Kant asks how republics would act in IR - Reason suggests giving up the realist/Machiavellian logic of war and forming a league of states that privileges unanimity over strength - And bestowing a universal right of hospitality (not to be treated as an enemy)
6
Q
What is the reaction to Kant?
A
- Kant is not the only pioneering liberal (Hobbes, Locke & Adam Smith) - His work, however, provoked the philosophical reactions that lead to the consolation of the three main ideologies of the 20th Century
7
Q
Who was Edmund Burke?
A
- 1729-1791 (Born in Ireland; British politician) - Viewed the French Revolution as catastrophic - Reflections on the Revolution of France (1790) - Burke's Conservatism
8
Q
What was Burke’s Conservatism?
A
- Contrary to Kant, the French Revolution was a rupture of the social contract - Property, tradition and community > civil freedoms - Thought without the social fabric (religion), people would become immoral - We are social animals and our identity depends upon our community and the communal ties of society - Not our reason - A civil constitution designed by our limited reason should not supplant the moral, economic and political systems that have evolved over time - The loss we suffer from upheavals of society is inestimable since society is so complex
9
Q
Who Was Hegel?
A
- 1770-1831, German
- The French Revolution was a “glorious
dawn” and Napoleon a “world soul”,
which could prove to be a new epoch
of freedom - Pioneer of Marxism
- History is always moving forward
- Epochs of History
10
Q
What were Hegel’s Epoch’s of History?
A
- Thesis - Antithesis - Fusion - New
Epoch
11
Q
What were Hegels views on formal and substantive freedom?
A
- The French Revolution misjudged the zeitgeist - people were not ready for it (therefore was bloody) - Being free to make choices does not constitute real freedom if we have limited option to choose between e.g. addiction, povery - The free geist exists in an organic community where private and communal interest are in harmony
12
Q
Who was Karl Marx?
A
- 1818-1883, German
- A down-to-earth Hegelian
- The dialectic does not occur with the
‘spirit’ of the age, but in classes
distinguished by their economic
relation to the means of production - Is this historical materialism
reductive? - Communism
- The abolition of private property
- Equal distribution of the means
of production - Freedom is the ideal of
self-sufficiency and the true
expression of human nature