History Flashcards
What is the main line of argumentation in Hobbes Leviathan?
The best form of government is a monarchy, since in any other form of government the sovereign power is not strong enough to protect the subjects from outside invaders and from themselves. Acting otherwise is only hurting oneself, since the commonwealth is established for the self-preservation of its subjects.
How does Hobbes define the ‘state of nature’? Why is it a source of conflict?
In the state of nature, security is impossible for anyone, and the fear of death dominates every aspect of life. Being rational, humans will naturally seek to be rid of fear. Reason teaches us that there are certain natural laws that dictate how a society may guarantee peace. One of these laws is the Right of Nature. Natural law includes our right to self-preservation and forbids humans from taking actions destructive to their own lives. Although war may be necessary for self-preservation—and often is, in the state of nature—reason dictates that the first of all natural laws must be that humans seek peace to fulfill their right and obligation to preserve their own lives.
State of Nature is used to illustrate why a social contract and government are preferable to the State of Nature. The State of Nature is a hypothetical illustration of how man would function without a state
Why are ideas on natural rights frequently related to democratic forms of government?
The fact that individuals possess natural rights does not mean that the only way their rights can be protected is through political participation. Nevertheless there is an important tradition in the history of political thought that relates natural right to democratic forms of government.
Democratic government is compatible with the protection of natural rights, since its base on the fundamental rights of human beings. Natural rights are entitlements that individuals can claim against individuals and governments. The feature of democratic governments is preserving natural rights and giving democratic rights to his people by following rule of laws.
John Locke, Natural rights belong to all human beings, and the interest specified by them have important implication for the ways in which political authority is structured and exercised. Ideas of natural rights played a role about the regulation of political power!
Example natural rights theory was in use to justify revolution is Britain colonies
Thomas Paine justified democracy by appealing to natural rights, and argued that contemporary forms of monarchial government were incompatible with the protection of these rights. The suitable way to protecting these rights, is through a democracy.
Jeremy Bethman argued that democracy was necessary to good government, because the political authority promotes the interest to all members of the community.
John Locke argued that all humans are given natural rights and from this statement, he argued that all forms of government therefore should develop around this idea. Also, the thought of natural rights were placed in a religious context, where it was argued, ex that resistance was justified against an unjust ruler on the grounds that natural rights were to be followed by all humans for these rights were derived from God
In what sense does Rousseau represent a “distinctly social conception of freedom”?
Rousseau argued that the primary issue in politics is to identify and maintain a form of order that would allow humans to enjoy the benefits of social living, avoiding domination and manipulation. He believed that order was necessary in order for a fruitful society to exist and to work towards common interests. However, for this to happen, free beings were required to make an agreement (contract) renouncing their natural, prepolitical freedom.
He defends that by being part of this contract that defend and protect its members and their properties, people are free within this agreement to remain free as before. Further, the writer discussed that this contract creates a moral and collective body that regulates this freedom. Finally, it can be argued that Rousseau has a distinctive conception of freedom, since he asks one to give up on it to be able to regain it once again after “signing” the contract.
Outline Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony and counter-hegemony
Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony refers to the ability of the ruling bloc to exercise leadership using the combination of both consent and force. It is needed to be bear in mind that force should not excessively dominate consent. Therefore, at times when forced is required, hegemonic actor will always be in an attempt to make force appear on the basis of consent. Consent is deemed as necessary because only by the existence of consent, people will voluntarily participate in the particular hegemonic project.
Another keypoint would be common sense. Gramsci believes that to be hegemon is to work on the common sense of the people. It is essential because hegemonic project requires people to not to question the project anymore so that they will participate in the hegemonic project in their daily lives.
Gramsci believes that revolution is a process, instead of an event. In addition, Gramsci rejects a deterministic explanation thus counter hegemony is regarded important. Counter hegemony itself refers to the break of subaltern (people whom hegemonic project is being exercised upon) from certain hegemonic project. However, no matter revolutionary subaltern can be, subaltern has to acknowledge their ideological limitation as existing hegemonic project cannot be challenged dramatically. In order for subaltern to be able to counter act the hegemonic project, they require the leadership of intellectuals.
Case study which may exemplify Gramsci’s revolutionary political thought would be develop mentalism as an ideology, manifested in capitalism as modes of production. Capitalism may be challenged by environmentalism as environmentalists believe that in order to keep business on the run, it has always been at the expense of environment. An example would be an act of tree-sitting in Australia as a means of defending forest from being cut-down, which may be regarded as counter-hegemony project.
What role does the concept of ‘virtue’ play in political thought?
Virtue is a collective word with several aspects to it, such as freedom, happiness, goodness, and it represents courage, discipline and wisdom, and could almost be describes as an idea of beauty. Virtue is something a state or a government should strive for, through politics or a form of community, we can strive for virtue. This is relative for the ancient period.
Aquinas’s took Aristotle’s ideas of virtue and politics, however he put it through a Christian framework. He stated that the political life is natural; therefore, politics can make a significant and positive contribution to the realization of ultimate values. By linking the “good life” to humanity’s infinite end, he stated that the status of politics is closely related to the practice of virtue and the pursuit of perfection.
Machiavelli’s concept of virtue for politicians involved wisdom, strategy, strength, bravery and if necessary ruthlessness. The necessary ability of leaders should be cruel in the name of the state and yet still good as leaders - Criminal virtue. He suggested that the criminal virtue should be necessary for the security of the state. He argued that being a good Christian kept the sovereign from being a good leader.
Kant argued that the government may make an important contribution to human perfection (his idea of perfection is that humans should be good, not for the purpose of themselves, but for the common good). This should be provided through a political system that is based on the consent of the subjects and directed towards their common interests, this creates conditions that encourage moral action. If the state were to be too strict, it can hinder people from rational freedom, which inhibits virtue and the pursuit of perfection.
Why, according to Locke, is ‘consent’ one of the main features of political order?
Locke argued that God endows human beings with natural liberty so that they can take responsibility for themselves and thus act in conformity with God’s wishes. Thus, any curtailment of their liberty must involve consent. For Locke, no one could be put out of this “freedom” state and subjected to the political power of another, without agreeing to it. He argues that individuals merely by being satisfied are consenting (tacit- consent) to the political order. Therefore, Locke’s view on freedom forces every individual to adhere to the laws of nature and make a decision if they consent or not to the social arrangements they are subjected to.
By consenting to obey legitimate political authorities individuals are, in fact, voluntarily assuming responsibility to uphold the laws of nature and to live by them (according to God’s whishes). In case arrangements do not fulfill the ends for which God created individuals, it is then the individual duty not to tolerate them. If individuals believe that God’s will is being supported, order will emerge. If the contrary is perceived, political order would not be achieve. Thus, one can conclude that in the eyes of the author, consent make the basis for political order to exist because individuals have the responsibility to decide (and obey if decided) to whether or not the political decisions go according to God’s will.
Necessary to explain how free individuals can legitimately come under control of other human beings because it must seen as voluntary act
Why was Tocqueville skeptical about American democracy? Why can ‘public opinion’ be detrimental to political life?
Tocqueville had serious doubts about the quality of popular opinion in a political system based on the principle of majority rule. He argued that the benefits of democracy are offset to some degree by undesirable features. For instance he cites that system of popular election provide no guarantee that capable people will attain public office. Yet, he suggests that the pressure upon government exerted by the relatively poor members of society, who form the majority, result in marked increases in public expenditure.
The author is skeptical about The United States, for example. He explains that in such an egalitarian society, people have given priority to individual reason of ordinary members of the population, and rejected ideas of intellectual authority or leadership by enlightened elites. Social egalitarianism had reinforced these fragmentary tendencies by producing a strident individualism that had isolated people from one another. Tocqueville suggests that this absence of social and intellectual authorities creates a vacuum that is filled by generally ill-informed public opinion.
Further, the author discuses that behind the apparently anarchic impulses of modern democracy are social forces for conformity and dependence that encourage the growth of a centralized and paternalist state. Therefore, democracy in The United States seems like a state of deprived political rights that has been imposed by the majority to the rest of the population
What is the difference between negative and positive liberty? How do they relate to the position the state occupies in political life?
Negative liberty means freedom from, negative liberty is about the absence of external limits. You are free to do what you want, if nobody is actively preventing you to do so. You can do what you want, if you have the funds to do so. But if you don’t have the funds, you lack the capacity to fulfill your desire and from a positive liberty standpoint, that means you are unfree. Negative freedom is usually attributed to individualism and a small state that isn’t involved in the private person’s daily life, such as liberalism.
Positive liberty means capacity to, its about the absence of internal limits. Positive liberty is often attributed to collectivities and a big state that believes in involvement for everyone to have capacity the access the same things.
Positive liberty
Meanwhile, positive liberty involves an idea that freedom may be constrained by a broader range of impediments than those embraced by negative liberty. Positive liberty refers to an individual’s capacity to act freely which is purely formal rather than substantive. In short, positive liberty highlights the idea of “freedom to” act, which may be interpreted to the presence of power. Impediments herein include the inadequate material and education resources. Deriving from these, positive liberty is often affiliated with active states.
States in everyday life does not have a big role in society where the idea of negative liberty lives. Therefore, if we want to project the negative freedom in Lock and Paine thinking, then we notice that freedom from authoritarian, unaccepted political exercise is essential.
What are ultimate values? How do they potentially cause conflict? (Gasparini)
Ultimate values are the understanding within a society or at a personal level of how much a “subject” is worth. Honor, family, homeland and freedom and how we perceive them are examples of these values.
Ultimate values can only cause conflict when it is being encountered with another ultimate values, it is not a conflict in itself. When it is being encountered with another ultimate values, it may causes strong emotional reaction due to the perceived threat.
The author says that conflicts can be traced to the values underlying the objectives which players set themselves in connection with opposing interests. In other words, conflict happens because people have different perceptions of how valuable things are. By pursuing these values, societies and individuals disagree among themselves, creating conflict.
1) How has the nature of warfare shifted in contemporary Africa following the end of the Cold War? What are the primary reasons for this, as described in Straus’s article?
He argued that the geographic-political changes are the reason for the changing frequency and character of warfare. The end of the cold war dried up the sources of funding for the states to fight proxy wars. In short term, this created windows of opportunities for old conflicts and new conflicts to arise. The end of the Cold War also created new opportunities for the election arena for the opposition leaders to fight for power through non-military means, causing their ambitions and resources from strategies that are based in the bush. Two other, related changes reinforced these dynamics. The first is the growing presence of China on the continent, which at least to date is not apparently providing support to insurgencies. The second is a strengthening of international and regional mechanisms of conflict prevention and mediation.
What is the relationship between “surplus populations” and the contemporary workings of global capitalism?
Capitalism is an economic and political system where the country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. The working labor is exploited within the states borders, however, when capitalism reached a global level, it needed more people.
Surplus population is a result of globalization. The production of too many workers that are no longer needed, is a direct consequence of globalization. The characteristic of the globalized version of overpopulation is the main reason to fast rising inequality, excluding the excess workers from the area of social communication. As long as large parts of the world remains wholly or partly unaffected by modernization, the excess of population can be absorb by the ‘developed countries
Why is “security” a political concept?
Two prevalent philosophies of security:
The first philosophy sees security as synonymous with the accumulation of power. Herein, security is regarded as a commodity, ex: to be secure, actors have to possess certain things such as money, weaponry, troops). In particular, power is ought to be the route to security. The more power an actor can accumulate, the more secure we will be.
Another philosophy deriving from a different starting point tried to challenge the previous idea. It argued that security does not flow from power. Security is based on emancipation, instead. Emancipation here refers to a concern with justice, and provision of human rights. In this perspective, security is regarded as a relationship between different actors rather than a mere commodity.
Emancipation in philosophical term: to free your mind, going to enlightenment.
Scott writes that “modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization”. Discuss what Scott means by this statement.
Scott is referring to the many examples he makes where the state is actively simplifying and categorizing, for example, through scientific forestry. But concerning the claim that this contributes to internal colonization, he is referring to the fact that this system is also transferred to the own population. This might take the form of categorizing humans through their workplace, religious beliefs, or politic views.
Scott argues that the modern statecraft strive to shape a people and landscape that will fit their techniques of observation, a similar approach to what colonialism aims for. He sees that for a modern state, reducing chaos, disorder and constant social change is of its prime interest since it creates an easier to manage state and centralizes its power. States generally work to homogenize their population and break down their segmentation by imposing common languages, religions, currencies, legal systems as well as promoting the construction of connected systems of trade, transportation, and communication, says Scott. Thus, one may conclude that by creating systems of homogenization to centralize power and facilitate governance, the state is imposing it’s on reality and believes to its citizens. Colonialism played exactly the same role at an external level, colonial power transferring knowledge to colony. Within the modern state context, the same happens internally, the state is the colonial power and the society is the colony.
Scott identifies a key conflict between the state and people as being between state knowledge and local knowledge. Why is local knowledge such a “problem” for the state?
In order to explain the conflict between state and local knowledge, Scott writes about city planning. He explains that cities that have grown organically without much planning are harder to navigate because its streets do not necessarily follow a logic set. In case of urban revolts in these cities, authorities may need local help to navigate and to identify precise locations to contain or suppress rebellions. Scott argues that the local knowledge necessary to arrive at a certain point in that city makes the state weaker because it cannot impose order if locals are not willing to help.
The author suggests that in order for a state to be sovereign it has to have control of knowledge (state knowledge). In a strong state, city planning follows military logic for example. Cities in these states have the same urban structure, with similar squares and roads that able military action to be quick and effective in case of revolt. Trained soldiers would be able to locate streets and areas much quicker if they have knowledge of how the city is organized.
