Political Theory: Normative Questions and the Western Canon

• Strauss distinguishes non-philosophical political science from non-scientific political philosophy.
• Political science (descriptive) focuses on facts.
• Political philosophy (normative) centers on values.
• Political theory, unlike descriptive political science, engages with normative questions.
• Political theory is concerned with how society ought to behave and organize itself politically.
• Political theory seeks to understand the nature of political things and the "right" political order.
• Political theory involves accurately portraying social and political reality(description), discerning how and why things are the way they are(analysis), vision, and strategy.
• The Western canon is a collection of books scholars traditionally recognize as important and influential in shaping Western political societies.
• Democratic and methodological critiques exist against the western canon

Benjamin Constant

• Born in Switzerland in 1767.
• Spent time moving around Europe
• He influenced politics.
• He advocated for "negative liberty" and personal privacy.

Historical Context

• During the French Revolution, Constant blamed Rousseau for imposing ancient freedom on the French in a modern context.
• The rise of Napoleon and the police state
• The emergence of commerce and capitalism led Constant to believe that commerce could prevent war.

Main Argument

• The size and complexity of modern states prevent the civic engagement required by the republican model.
• The ancient people lived by strict rules created by the people.

Republicanism

• Republicanism is commitment to the idea that a nation should be ruled as a republic.
• Selection of the state's highest public officials should occur through general election rather than hereditary claims.
• Classical republicans held a perfectionist political philosophy where a specific conception of the “good life” consists of “active citizenship" and “healthy civic virtue”.

Ancient Republican Citizenship

• Constant viewed citizenship as a profoundly assumed office and responsibility.
• Citizens possess freedom to the extent that they actively participate in collective sovereignty
• They are free to the extent that they "actively participate in collective sovereignty".
• Citizenship is central to one's sense of self and that humans are essentially political beings.
• The citizen is the primary political actor and that law-making and administration is his everyday business.
• The community is a close-knit gathering of citizens.

Liberalism

• Classical liberalism prioritizes individual liberty and argues restrictions on liberty should be justified.
• Classical liberalism is guided by the belief that humans possess natural rights and that government authority should be derived from the will and consent of the governed instead of being absolute.

Modern Liberal Citizenship

• Constant suggests modern citizenship is passively enjoyed, with citizens possessing rights and entitlements.
• Citizens are free to the extent that they can "securely enjoy their private pleasures".
• Citizenship is not central, humans are assumed to have little interest in politics, and the political community has loosely connected members mostly committed elsewhere.

Ideal Ancient

• Republican: virtuous, wise, active, politically-oriented, collectively participate in public speech and debate, and think of participation in political life as the "good life".

Ideal Modern

• Liberal: independent, self-sufficient, rationally self-interested, enjoys rights, entitlements, and protections, follows laws, fulfills basic duties and thinks of the ideal political system as one that allows him to freely pursue his own private satisfaction.

• Constant recognizes drawbacks for both ancient and modern ideals.

• Being absorbed in our own lives could lead to our rights being taken without awareness.

• Constant's argument suggests the two models may be complementary instead of opposing..

• Active political participation is the necessary guarantee of individual liberty.

• Government officials must be held accountable to an informed and active populace.

Isaiah Berlin: Negative and Positive Liberty (1/21)

• Isaiah Berlin was a British philosopher at Oxford, who served in British information services in WWII, and was known for “two concepts of liberty" (1958).
• Isaiah Berlin had a legacy as a classical liberal.
• He developed his theories in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (1917) and The Cold War (1947-1991).
• Berlin argued that the "delivering of freedom" was misleading.

Negative vs. Positive Liberty

• Competing conceptions of freedom include negative (absence) and positive (presence).
• Negative: absence (freedom from).
• Positive: presence (freedom to).

Negative Liberty

• "The wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom".
• Negative liberty is marked by the absence of something.
• Obstacles, barriers, and constraints are usually seen as external impediments caused by political agents or the law. Coercion and interference is not a personal inability but an external inference on a choice.

Positive Liberty

• Based on Self-governing
• "I am free if and only if I plan my life in accordance with my own will".
• It is "positive" because it requires presence (rationality, self-control, material preconditions).
• Freedom requires self-governance and autonomy
• Positive liberty allows one to take control and realize a fundamental purpose (self-mastery, self-realization).
• Coercion or enslavement can arise from heteronomy (brainwashing, deception, pressuring, and manipulation)
• Obstacles, barriers, and constraints can be internal (ignorance, irrational desires, and illusions) or indirect (poverty).

Berlin's Critique on Positive Liberty

• Self-control and self-realization: Positive liberty centers on self-mastery.
• The divided-self idea has a higher (rational) self that does the mastering, and a lower-self (base desires and passions)
• (Threat of) Paternalism: a lower self is unduly in control.
• Help from the outside is necessary and you can be "forced to be free" to realize your potential.
• Berlin argues this opens the door to paternalism and even authoritarianism.

Political Implications

• The type of freedom one values has consequences for political and moral philosophy.
• Negative freedom leads to minimal state intervention/limited governance like classical liberals and libertarians.
• Positive freedom leads to the state taking responsibility for ensuring conditions for decision making.

Civil vs. Social Rights

• Civil rights protect individual liberty, such as freedom of speech and thought.
• Social rights provide “the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security" like healthcare and a living wage.
• Civil rights mean the government refrains from interfering in citizens' lives ("keep the government off our backs").
• Social Rights mean a government provides certain goods and services to its citizens (healthcare, housing, education).

A Charter of Negative Liberty

• The Constitution limits the federal government's power by enumerating what it can not do.
• The Constitution does not expressly assure that the federal government will do anything or provide social rights
• The Constitution and Bill of Rights are in place to protect citizens from the government and to not provide freedoms.
• A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."
• "We still suffer from not having a Constitution that guarantees its citizens economic rights".

Comparative Perspective

• A few countries have incorporated social rights directly into their constitutions.
• Examples constitutions: South Africa(ex. providing housing) and Brazill(ex. healthcare)

Feminist Criticisms

• Negative liberty diverts attention from social justice and overshadows concerns with social rights.

Reproductive Justice Movement

• Exceeds civil rights and roe to champion social rights.
• The movement advocates for affordable contraception, abortion services, adequate wages to support families, and reliable childcare programs

Berlin's Personal Politics

• Berlin was a big fan of negative liberty, a liberal proponent of value pluralism, and defended negative liberty and a limited government..
• "No society is free unless it is governed by at any rate two interrelated principles: first, that no power, but only rights, can be regarded as absolute, so that all men whatever power governs them have an absolute right to refuse to behave inhumanely...."
• Even berlin says "We cannot remain absolutely free and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the rest".
• Freedom is not always the only important political ideal and tradeoffs must be made between goods.

Locke

• Classical liberal.
• He sees a role for the government but it's not a "big" role.

Life (1632-1704)

• Born in England in 1632 to a wealthy Puritan family.
• Educated at Westminster school and christ church.
• One of the first to right that ordinary people had the right to revolt
• Fled to the Netherlands.
• Was friends with leader of the Whig movement: Earl of Shaftesbury.
• Shaftesbury later became chancellor and was suspected of conspiring against the King
• On the Board of Trade in England and invested in Royal Africa Company (slave trade)

Historical Context

• The English Civil War (1642-49) featured royalists against a parliamentary army.
• The Restoration (1660-88) occurred.
• The Glorious Revolution (1689) overthrew the Catholic King James II and replaced him with the protestant William and Mary.

Second Treatise

• Locke's primary aim in the second treatise is to provide an alternative to filmers "divine right of kings".
• Filmer argued that the authority/right to rule his subjects derives from the right a father has to command obedience from his children
• Filmer argued that this right is unlimited.
• Filmer argued that the king has the life and property of his subjects as a father has unlimited right over his children.
• Filmer believed that the government does not require the consent of those subjects to restrict liberty/seize property.
• Filmer argued there is no right to revolution to replace the king.

The State of Nature

• The State of Nature (SON) explores what human beings would be like without government or society.
• The state or nature lays the Foundation for social contract theory
• People relinquish their natural rights in the state of nature and enter a social contract to receive protections from the government.
• People are independent and equal, living according to the laws of nature, such as reason.
• People have natural rights to life, health, liberty, property, and punishment.
• The right to punishment makes it impossible to live in a state of anarchy.
• People have moral duties to self-preservation and the preservation of others.
• Some natural rights may lead to inconvenience and require government intervention.

Why the State of Nature is Problematic

• We are self-biased.
• We are bad judges of ourselves.
• Reactions are rarely proportional.
• Overreactions and harsh punishment occurs when wronged.

State of War

• "Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person makes a state of war, both where there is and is not a common judge"
• "To avoid this state of war... is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society and quitting the state of nature”

Slavery

• Natural freedom is freedom from absolute arbitrary power, the exerciser has no need to justify their actions (his def. of tyranny).
• The "perfect condition" of slavery is the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and the captive.
• Functions as the opposite of freedom.
• Refers to both enslaved individuals and tyrannical government

Themes

• Property
• Public (political) vs. private (paternal) power.

Property

• Main question: how do we get from “god gave the earth to man in common” to “government must respect individuals' natural property rights"?
• Fundamental right

Step 1. God-given Common Ownership

• O "God who hath given the world to men in common has also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience"

Step 2. Labor Mixing → Private Ownership

• Labor mixing says if You do things with your body(labor) and this makes these things yours then the common stock becomes private domain and then the property of your property becomes yours

Step 3. Lockean Proviso

• "While individuals have a right to accumulate private property from nature by laboring on it they can do so if there is “... still enough and as good left".
• We can accumulate property "as much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labor fix a property in; whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by god for man to spoil or destroy"

Step 4. Money

• "... thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling"

Step 5. Government protects private property to protect against conflict

• Overcoming spoilage allows individuals to accumulate wealth, leading to conflict
• Government’s main end is to maintain wealth
• "The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into common-wealths, and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. To which is the state of nature there are many things wanting" Government prevents money conflict

Public/Private Divide

• Locke's theories on limited government depend on public (political)/private(paternal) division Locke said ""I think it may not be amiss to set down what I take to be political power; that power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord to his slave"

Paternal Power

• Political power is used over public citizens

• Paternal power is exercised over people who cannot reason such as children

• the freedom of man and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason"

• "Where there is no law, there is no freedom"

Social Contract

• Government’s purpose is to protect natural rights.
• Locke implies a social contract that protects our natural rights is a condition of obeying.
• The trade-off of the contract is the surrender of the right to be a judge for upright judges.
• Majority rule is required

Legitimacy and Consent

• Government has the right to use coercion if legitimate
• A legitimate government is a form to which an individual would consent and must enjoy the consent of its citizens
• "What shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration of a man's consent?"
• There is explicit agreement or inferred from doing

The Ends of Government

• "The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into common-wealths and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property"
• Locke claims the ideal government has a very limited role and should adjudicate fairly and protect private property.

The Divisions of Power

• Legislative = creates supreme laws
• Executive = enforces laws
• Federative = foreign policy
• ""Powers” and “institutions” are different" Legislative
• Legislature is the supreme power that functions to create laws. Should not be constantly time consuming
• Represents the people.

Executive/ Federative

• Have subordinate powers in domestic law enforcement and foreign relations.

Executive Prerogative

• Prerogative is the power to act at ones own decision for the benefit of the public during emergency powers.
• Means the executive can also break if he needs to.

Conquest and Usurpation

• Does conquest through an unjust mean there’s an obligation.
• Does just conquest mean obligation? Yes
• Usurpation is domestic conquest and the conquers are tyrant, and Locke likes to defend.

Tyranny

"The exercise of power beyond right"

• "Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins"
• Locke believes that Just is a ruler that is below the law and his second Treatise is a critique of tyranny Revolution
• Locke wants revolution when no justice, failed property or foriegn

Revolution

• The government does “bring back again the state of war” and expulsion by force.
• Revolution should be a last resort

Rousseau

• Born in 1712.
• Lived in Geneva.
• An unlikely philosopher
• He received recognition in 1749

Historical Context

• The Enlightenment was occurring during the 18th century.
• The French Revolution took place.

Major Works

-Rousseau wrote works on the origin of inequality, among other works.

The Social Contract

• It's a treatise over themes which includes sovereignty.

Rousseau's Goal

Seek an association which protects and defends with equal shared forces.

The Social Compact

• People preserved with freedom.

The General Will

Everyone must agree Rousseau dislikes special interests like political parties.

Voting and Elections

• Enhance unity
• Matters must be unanimous

Comitia and Tribune

Institutionally nurture and preserve

Censorship

Shape and corrupt opinion and morals.

Civil Religion

• nationalism is the religion.

Explore the distinction between political science and political philosophy, focusing on facts versus values. Delve into political theory's engagement with normative questions and its pursuit of the 'right' political order. Examine the significance and critiques of the Western canon.