Lectures 1-2 Flashcards
Polis
City State, the root word of politics.
Plato
A greek philosopher who wrote The Republic. Taught politics as an art and how they ought to be (not necessarily how they are). He believed that the purpose of politics was to create justice. He taught this in the story of the Allegory of the Cave, where the enlightened philosopher-king rules over the people because he knows what is the greatest good.
Machiavelli
A medieval politician/author who wrote The Prince, which taught politics as the art of and struggle for power. He believed he analyzed politics as it actually was, not how it should be. To him, the purpose of politics is to ensure the power of the prince and maintain order.this is done through the virtu of the prince, which is the ability to prepare for and adapt to fortuna, which is the unpredictable nature of the world.
Virtu
The ability to prepare for and adapt (Machiavelli).
Fortuna
The unpredictable nature of the world (Machiavelli).
The Modern Age
A time period that introduced a new way of political thinking involving the individual, reason, and skepticism of knowledge. The modern age involved belief in universal knowledge, the idea of progress, and the development of the market (contract and private property). Unlike Plato and Machavelli’s views, the modern understanding of politics set it as a science rather than an art.
Thomas Hobbes
A philosopher who wrote the Leviathan in 1651. He believed that all people had the right to life, but that right was best protected by an absolute monarch who had control over everything, including property. He used a “scientific” method to show that self-preservation was a natural law, and that the best way to protect that was through a state (made up of component individuals but controlled by a singular king).
John Locke
Thinker who wrote Two Treatises of Government in 1689. He used Empirical Analysis to create a theory of natural rights, which involved self preservation (like Hobbes) and right to liberty and property (unlike Hobbes). Therefore he believed that the role of the state was to protect (and not violate) the rights of individuals. This build the ideas of classical liberal democracy.
Karl Marx
Created the idea of Scientific Socialism in the 19th century. This used the deductive scientific method to discover the laws governing economics and politics. He believed that, because of these laws, capitalism was going to collapse and be replaced
by communism.
Behaviouralism
An approach to political science that believes in an objective and quantified approach to understanding politics.
Inductive Method
A bottom-up approach: see what is going on, then develop theories.
Deductive Method
A top-down approach: think about theories, then see how they play out in real life
Empirical Analysis
Identifying observable phenomena with a view to establishing what it is instead of what it ought to be
Semantic Analysis
Analysis concerned with the meaning of terms we use, where they come from, and why and how we use them. In political science, it is used to study how language influences politics.
