Political Philosophy

Question 1

Republicanism has nothing to do with the American publican party. “Republic” is the society in which the political authority of the government flows from the people instead of king or queen. It believed the people are sovereign. the sovereign people are citizens. the government is just a small group that exercise the authority.

Answer 1

Britain is not a republic but an institutional monarchy. but its prime minister and parliament exercise the authority just like in republic country.

Question 2

Republican is a broader term for a system of rule by the people. Democracy means rule by people but since people can disagree, democracy actually means majority rules. Republican may include non-democratic structures.

Answer 2

Republican limits on democracy: 1. representative rather than direct democracy (referendum, people directly vote on certain things). 2. constitutional limits on power, meaning there are laws limit the power of government 3. guarantee of certain individual rights

Question 3

Liberal republic: a contemporary concept, meaning a republic with a high degree of individual liberties and a free-market economy. i.e. the time during US presidency of Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.
classical liberal: limits on government power and on the majority’s ability to restrict the individual’s freedom.

Answer 3

liberalism and democracy are actually in tension. democracy wants to give all power to people, while liberalism wants to limit the amount of power that anyone can have.

Question 4

natural rights/entitlements are perceived differently by political philosophers. 
Thomas Jefferson believed it's endowed by the god. 
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), utilitarian philosopher and social reformer, believed natural rights are non-sense. 
John Stuart Mill, who wrote and defended individual liberty, did not believed in natural rights at all.

Answer 4

Equality: by modern republican societies, who are historically egalitarian, they eliminated legal distinctions between commoners, nobles and the clergy and give all adults equal voting rights.

Question 5

Types of equalities: equal political power, equality before the law, equal opportunity, equal holdings or equal wealth.

Answer 5

The conflict between ideals of equality and liberty exists at which type of equality is compatible with/necessary for liberty. all these leads to one of the most contentious issues in political theory: the problem of distributive justice, namely, what distribution of wealth among citizens is just.

Question 6

Politics has a complicated relation to ethics. most political philosophers based their political philosophy on some kind of ethics what is right and wrong politically would seem to be a subset of right or wrong ethically for a human being to do.

Answer 6

Some people believed that politics are intrinsically immoral or amoral, that it is sometimes right to do in politics what is morally wrong and you cannot use ethics as a guide.
Some people doubt that there are objectively universally right or moral political principles at all, because the validity is relative to society and culture.

This is moral realism vs moral relativism (realists vs relativists).

Question 7

Moral realism believes the morality or immorality of acts has an objective status we can know. when you talk about something right to wrong, you are talking about something objectively true or false.

Answer 7

Moral relativism: good and evil are relative to who is judging them or the society of the judge. an act or event can be a good for x can be an evil for y.

Question 8

Philosophical relativism: the truth, moral goodness or political rightness of a statement or act is relative to something other than what it’s about. some people believe value statement like morality and politics are relative since it doesn’t have an objectively right answer. But it can have subjectively right or wrong answers against social convention/agreement.

Answer 8

Modern western political philosophy can be best viewed as the tale of rise of liberal republicanism and its competitors.

Question 9

History of liberal republicanism 1)formation 1570-1900 2) greatest challenge (1900-1950) 3) triumph and growing pains (1950-present)

Answer 9

Machiavelli: arguably the first modern political theorist.
Hobbs and Locke: social contract period of time in English
18th century French revolutions influenced political philosophy.
19th as liberal republicanism matures, there arose nationalism, socialism like Marx, change of capitalism leads to progressivism
After two world wars: there came communism and fascism
Cold war: international communist movement
Ongoing problems as economy grows: welfare-state liberalism, communitarian and conservative against progressivism
there come groups of disenfranchised citizens lead to politics of identity based on gender, race, sexual identity like feminism vs old view of only about class.
Re-emergence of nationalism: Islamic fundamentalism

Question 10

Values of model republicanism: popular self-governance, individual liberties and rights, social equality, communal or national preservation, economic and material modernization. these value conflicts. if you consistently emphasize/value one over others, you develop an exclusive political view of one kind or another.

Answer 10

Focus on self-governance–> civic republican, populist or participatory democrat.
Focus on individual liberties and rights –> libertarian, neoliberal, or natural rights theorist
Focus on social equality –> progressive, social democrat, or socialist
Focus on material progress –> Utilitarian
Focus on preservation of community life–> conservative

Question 11

Plato recognized the problematic relation between philosophy and politics.
Aristotle gave us the earliest republican theory.
Early Rome was the modern’s model for a republic.
the decentralized feudal system with non-absolute monarchs and an empowered aristocracy along with Christian ethics is the background for the development of modern politics.

Answer 11

Politics is about societies. different societies of course have different politics.

Question 12

In traditional society, since there have been agriculture and writing, the society has been deeply inegalitarian. there is caste system, diving people into who work (farmers), who fight (warrior and landowners) , who pray who can read ancient texts. for warriors and landowners, the authority came from their own aristocratic nature inherited from the ancestors or the god. the key political question in these society is how centralized political power would be, whether the total community of landed aristocrats would have power, or a special oligarchy group among them, or a single king. in Egypt, kind is the god. people don’t believe the equality. human inherit their natural from their parents, they inherit their social roles from their ancestors.

Answer 12

By back to the age of Plato, Athenian democracy is a form of democracy of privileged, under which the male landowners can vote at assembly, while woman, barbarian and slaves cannot. the question for Plato was what would a just society look like and what virtues must the people and the rulers have to make it just.

Question 13

Plato distinguished five types of regimes: 1. aristocracy or monarchy: ruled by the seekers of wisdom, driven by their rational and calculative part of their soul - this is the doctrine of the philosopher ruler. 2. timocracy is tulles by the honor-seeking guardians or warrior civil servant, driven by the spirited part of their should, which called thumbs. 3. oligarchy- used by the wealthy, driven by the necessary or stable appetites. 4. democracy - ruled by the many or the poor, driven by unnecessary or unstable appetites. 5. tyranny, ruled by an evil monarch, driven by bestial appetites. he believed the 1st type is the best and the society should be ruled by philosophers. each unit in the society are like organic parts and they are independent.

Answer 13

Aristotle, a student of Plato, disagreed with Plato. his levels of human association: family (for daily needs), village (for non-daily needs), civil society (self-sufficient social political unit). Human are natural political animal and rational, discursive. with laws and polis, human can be best animals, without them, they can be worst. he believed that political society is self-rule among equals. people are living together as a better form of living.

Question 14

Aristotle distinguished five types of government: good government is when the rule put the good of community ahead. Monarchy: rule by one. Aristocracy: rule by the few. Polity: rule by many. the source of power of government is separate from and more fundamental than the type of government. in republic, people all have powers and they can choose monarchy to be their form of government. the political system and the government is not the same thing. government is only part of the system.

Answer 14

Aristotle’s vicious alternatives: tyranny, oligarchy, democracy. democracy where majority rules in its own interests are bad. he believed parts are not free.

Question 15

Both Plato and Aristotle approached the political theory in a similar way - by looking for virtuous polis, virtue, courage. it would only happen when there is someone virtuous in the polis, the rule for Plato and all the citizens for Aristotle. this leads to a question from that time to modern period : how can the whole be good or just if the most important parts are not good or just?

Answer 15

Rome had been a republic for hundreds of years.

Question 16

Medieval feudalism are decentralized. all power belonged to the land-owning warrior-aristocrats or nobility. the highest nobility if the kind. then knight, lower class. they are no public lands or education. each estate have different set of laws. the clergy who are in charge of people’s souls are the first state, the noble are second, the commoners are third. The king is just the first among equals, the first or most powerful of the aristocrats who preserved the powers among them. nobody’s power is absolute. its’ highly unified by one religion, roman catholicism.

Answer 16

Scholasticism: merger of Aristotelian thought and Christianity, which dominated all medieval universities.

Judaism and Islamism have more legalistic traditions and actually give the laws of the community.

Churches and noble interact but until Henry Eight, he became the head of English church.

Question 17

Natural law is between the god’s eternal revealed law in the scriptures and the society made-up laws. It can be known and figured out without revelation.

Answer 17

Just war theory - one part of medieval political theory. the decision to go to the war must be with proportionality - more good than evil will come from war. the acts of war the war must satisfy. just war theory is to moralize war, to limit it but not to eliminate it, so Pacifist are against it.

Question 18

there are 4 philosophical positions on the rightness or wrongness of warfare in the western tradition. one is largely defunct - holy war tradition, the idea that war is justified by a duty to God or church like crusades or the contemporary muslim notion Jihad. other 3 main streams of ethics of warfare: 1. Pacifism, which is almost always based in the new testament. violence is immoral. 2. Political realism: warfare is a reality in relations among political communities, ethical standards to morality cannot be applied to warfare. warfare is amoral. 3. just war (can be moral)

Answer 18

Since 1517, Protestantism was invented and Christianity was fractured. Most of the new political theories of the 17th century would be protestants. the war of religions had impact on political thoughts.

Question 19

Machiavelli (1469-1527): the first modern political scientist, a political realist, but he admired civic republicanism. he raised the question - can the political leadership be moral at all? his 2 famous book: the Prince and the Discourses. he dedicated the books to different people, the Prince to a Medici family while to two friends with the Discourses. He was a real political actor hedging his bets in a dangerous time of shifting powers. he held that governments are either municipalities, monarchies or republic.

Answer 19

The Prince are his advice to the princes. His writing is a break from ancient and medieval political theory whose aim was to discuss the virtues that the just society and just ruler must foster. he abandoned this task. he is practical and secular and drew his conclusion by discussing cases and he gave practical advices to princes on gaining and maintaining the power. he said “ends justify the means” - the prince has to learn how not to be good and has to know how to best use the beast in man. He emphasized the important of “excellence”, not necessarily moral virtue. he thinks virtue in a non-virtuous world is suicide.

Question 20

The Discourses: more comprehensive than the Prince. his model of a republic is clear: Rome. He condemned Christianity. in this book, he took a broader view: human nature is good or bad. the political cannot be determined by ideal virtue. the populaces are more likely to govern better than the prince.

Answer 20

Machiavelli’s legacy for us: his realism, in which we do not assume the rightness of use of civic moral norms in the political realm, that is, in the realm of power. also, he raised the question of “dirty hands”: is politics such that one inevitably acts immorally? his flexible allegiances is amoral.

Question 21

Moral consequentialism: an act is good when its good results outweigh its bad results.
Utilitarianism: Morally right acts are those that provides the greater benefits to the greatest number.

Answer 21

Aristotle believes ethics is part of politics. Machiavelli believed that politics can live without ethics and find a way to be stable. From Machiavelli, social contract theorists pushed further and believed the social contracts are built in political system to serve self-interests.

Question 22

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), english philosopher, the fruit to attempt a comprehensive theory of modern society. his mater piece is Leviathan. Hobees bases his view on moral relativism and pessimistic view of politics. he formulates the concept of the political authority as based on a social contract of rational and self-interested individuals for the sake of personal security. there is no power limit on sovereignty by Hobbes.

Answer 22

in 16th and 17th century, the centralized and hierarchical sovereignty or republican took place, replacing decentralized feudalism, with an eye to doing business. at that time, there was warfare between Catholics and Protestant. As a Protestant, Hobbes etc., wants to establish a non-Catholic government that can build direct relation between individual believers to the God with intermediary (catholic church). They went back to the only non-Catholic and non-Medieval model - Rome Republic.

Question 23

Leviathan is just about the first system of modern social science, the first attempt at an account of society that can be compared with natural sciences that are produced by Galileo and Newton. it present the first social contract theory that was later seen in Locke and Rousseau. The Leviathan begins with materialism. Hobbes is a mechanist, believing that all worldly including human bings is matter in motion. i.e. a heart is a pump. human are rational machines. the sole sources of actions are our rational decision. religion has no place in determining this.

Answer 23

Social contract theory: A just regime would be chosen by rational, self-interested individuals in a pre-social state of equality, a state that is governed only by human nature, not human power. it ignored all tradition, history and political thoughts. Social contract is a naturalistic answer to the question of justice.

Question 24

According to Hobbs, we, free individuals, out of rational self-interests for the sake of security, give all the rights to Sovereign., which enforce the covenant. without Sovereign, there is no political community. there are three forms of Sovereign: monarchy, aristocracy, democracy. Hobbes prefers monarchy since he believes the fewer person in power, the greater the power the government has. more people dilutes the power. but each individual is an organic part of the Sovereign. there is no covenant between the Sovereign and the people since the Sovereign is legitimized by the law already. Sovereign power cannot be divided. the freedom of individual is the free to do anything that the Sovereign doesn’t prohibit individuals to do.

Answer 24

According to Hobbs, civil war is the worst in the world. it’s better to fear one Sovereign than civil war.

Hobbes is justifying the essence of political Sovereignty. this is the basic justification of modern political community and one chosen by all citizens.

The justice of a Hobbesian society comes from the structure that selfish citizens freely impose on themselves.

Question 25

John Locke: second treatise of the civil government. he conceived property in terms of labor. the government is made a servant of the political community. the political century (1689-1789) is the times that brought modern republicanism into being. in that century, absolute monarchy arose. aristocracy declined.

Answer 25

Robert Filmer’s theory justified the divine right of the king by God.

Question 26

In 17th century of England, the Tories supported James and the Charles (Catholics) and the Whigs wanted hames excluded from possible ascension to the throne. later the Tories joined the Whigs and the parliament invited Protestant William from Netherlands to be their king.

Answer 26

John Locke’s works established the heart of Anglo-American Modern version of modern republicanism. his works differentiated the relationships of a government official (magistrate) / King to a person vs the father to son, religious leader to believers. This is a lesson to be learned in many society as the investment in a political leaders with extravagant hopes and personal meanings is ever with us.

Question 27

vs Hobbes who gave all the powers to the government, Locke is the classic modern theorist of limited government. like Hobbes, Locke’s the state of nature, everyone is equal and free. While the law binds everyone, when it is broken, everyone has the obligation to punish or execute the perpetrator. the violation of the law leads to a state of war. there is inevitable injustice in the state of nature in one part of executing. when individuals have to be their own judges for reparations, that’s unjust. to remedy the injustice, all rational individuals choose to join social contract out of their own interests. the contract is not with government, but with each other. people give up the right to community where they are part of it, not the sovereignty.

Answer 27

huh