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Authority and the State. The Ground for Political Philosophy. Political Philosophy. Aristotle famously observed that man is a ‘political animal’ – our nature is to live in a polis , or state.
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Authority and the State The Ground for Political Philosophy
Political Philosophy • Aristotle famously observed that man is a ‘political animal’ – our nature is to live in a polis, or state. • Association and cooperation with others: ‘the state came into being as a means to secure life; it continues in existence in order to secure a good life.’ – Aristotle, Politics (1253a2).
Political Philosophy • Political philosophy examines those problems surrounding our relationship to the state,representatives, and other figures of social power. • Sacrifices, conformity, and obedience.
Political Philosophy • What is the basis of our obligation to the state? • Are state institutions merely a matter of convenience – more or less effiecient mechanisms for individuals to secure what they want in life? • Or does the state have some higher moral status which entitles it to command our allegiance?
Our Obligation to Respect the Laws of the State: Plato, Crito • The Athenian assembly accused Socrates of impiety and corrupting the young, later sentencing Socrates to death. • To present this dialogue, Socrates has a conversation with the laws of Athens. • The state is described in its most honorific terms – ‘holier far than mother or father or any ancestor’ .
Crito As the Law speaks to Socrates: “Answer, Socrates, instead of opening your eyes – you are in the habit f asking answering questions. Tell us, - What complaint have you to make against us which justified you in attempting to destroy us and the state? In the first place did we not bring you into existence? Your father married your mother by our aid and beget you. Say whether you have any objection to urge against those of us who regulate marriage?” page 624.
Crito • The state is revered and obeyed without question. • Laws depend on the benefits the city provides – upbringing, education, and other public institutions • Freedom to leave – ‘anyone may go where he likes, retaining his property’.
Crito As the Laws speak to Socrates: “Or against those of us who after birth regulate the nurture and education of children, in which you also were trained? Were not the laws, which have the charge of education, right in commanding your father to train you in music and gymnastic? Well then since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you? And if this is true you are not on equal terms with us; nor can you think that you have a right to do to us what we are doing to you.” page 624.
Crito • The state also expresses an implied agreement or contract between citizens. • Plato’s dialogue has a great impact to the rest of the political theories observes in the entire course of Western philosophy.
Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679)
Sovereignty and Security: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan • Theory of government: a need to avoid the horrors of war. • State of Nature: ‘Natural condition of mankind’ prior to the setting up of any government, when men have ‘no common power to them all in awe’ there is an ever present danger of violent quarrelling due to competition for scarce resources.
Leviathan • Of the natural condition of mankind: Nature has made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind, that though there be found one man sometime manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he…” page 631.
Leviathan • Life for Hobbes: ‘continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. • Life without security. • Think of the movie 28 Day Later – where people eat each other for survival.
Leviathan • Hobbes states that in order to save humanity, we need to develop a hypothetical contract, whereby people voluntarily act in according to a social contract, laws, and policies. • People then would have to give up their natural freedom to do anything they want, in exchange for personal security.
Leviathan • The social contract: “I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men [on condition you do likewise]’. • Quid pro quo: one gives up something (absolute liberty in exchange for something one wants (safety).
Leviathan • Leviathan: ‘common power’ • We give up our individual authority into the hands of a supreme ruler or enforcement agency to keep peace internally. • Hobbes was a monarchist – to govern so long as he provides the security which is the aim of the original contract.
Leviathan • The monarch has ‘sweeping powers in order to provide freedom from continual fear.’ • The general structure of his contract theory as a justification for political authority was to influence subsequent thinking for a long time to come.
