Political philosophy:
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Ancient Political Philosophy
And into that
from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is proper; for they make
reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice (adikía)
according to the ordering (táxis) of time.
Anaximander,
DK 12 A 29 B 1
Being and becoming, oneness and multiplicity, eternal and ephemeral
existence: the early Greek philosophers sought the undivided meaning of
the whole reality by arguing about the relationships between such terms.
This debate continues in the field of political philosophy: there is an
ongoing question of the articulation between nature and justice.
-
Presocratics (end of 8th century - 6th century BCE): Justice is conceived
as an attribute of the whole cosmic order as a whole.
-
Sophists (5th century BCE): The justice
of the polis is conceived as a by-product of human convention, or
of human deceit.
-
Socrates: The quest for a paradigm which is rational,
not conventional.
-
Plato
(4th century BCE): Above conventions and
nature apprehended by the senses, there are paradigms, the Forms, which
are endowed with a stronger reality, and a supreme principle, the
Good, which gives an undivided, dynamic meaning to the whole construction.
Justice, as a Form, is a model of harmony both for the soul and the
city.
-
Aristotle:
Nature is a substratum which has an inherent potentiality. This develops
in accordance with the Forms distributed in itself. From a natural point
of view, justice is distributed and developed in a different way in each
city and each creature, according to an order which is
teleological and hierarchical.
-
The
twilight of the polis(3rd
century BCE): Ethical theories, trying to relocate humanity in a
much wider, ecumenical world.
Christianity and Middle
AgesRemota itaque
iustitia, quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?
From the new-fangled Christian point of view, even the political
questions are to be located within a perspective which is eschatological
and messianic. But this perspective has to come to terms with Greek intellectual
naturalism.
-
Augustine (4th-5th century CE): The first
major philosophy of history, which foresees the eschatological end of history
and the final achievement of justice in the City of God, because
God only can remove the flaw of original sin from humankind.
-
Thomas
Aquinas (13th century CE): The reconciler between Christianity
and Aristotle, whose work was rediscovered by means of the Arabian translations.
In spite of original sin, it is possible to achieve a natural justice,
because the whole Creation is made in accordance with God's rational project.
-
Marsiglio
of Padua and William
of Ockham
(14th century CE): After Aquinas' harmonization, a progressive separation
between reason and faith serves as a prelude to the modern idea of the
autonomy of politics.
...[s]ince it
is my object to write what shall be useful to whosoever understands it, it seems to
me better to follow the real truth of things
than an imaginary view of them.
The breakdown of the mediaeval respublica Christiana as
a political and religious unity urges people to deal with politics without
taking theology into account . The rationality of politics is earthly and
agreed upon..
-
Nicolo'
Machiavelli (16th century CE): The breakdown of mediaeval
hierarchy, for the sake of an autonomous political science.
-
Thomas
More: The father of modern utopian genre, who wrote in a mix of
irony and social criticism.
-
Natural rights theory and contractarianism (17th century CE): An attempt to legitimize a political community
in the form of the modern State, on the basis of reason and consent.
-
Giambattista
Vico (18th century CE): verum et factum convertuntur. History
is the root of human political existence.
It is evident,
that suppose Mankind, in some primitive unconnected State, should be some
Means come to the Knowledge of the Nature of those Things which we call
Contracts and Promises; that this Knowledge would have laid them under
no such actual Obligation, if not placed in such Circumstances
as give rise to these Contracts.
Against contractarianism, a foundation
of civil society that operates without consent.
Enlightenment
is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is
the inability to use one's understanding without guidance
Kant, Answer to the Question:
What is Enlightenment?, A 481
Enlightenment and natural rights theory were the foundations for the
great revolutions of 18th century. The dispute about the legitimacy of
the French Revolution was, at the same time, a debate on the legitimacy
of Enlightenment.
-
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (18th century): Democracy and social contract are
not viewed as ways out of the state of nature. Rather, they establish a
second nature, which regains the freedom of the first one.
-
Immanuel
Kant: Sees law as the cornerstone of liberty, from a point of view
which is cosmopolitan and potentially democratic.
-
Paine, Jefferson, Madison: Natural
rights theory becomes the background of the American
revolution.
-
Edmund
Burke: History, not reason, is the foundation of the legitimacy
of all the civil institutions.
...since philosophy
is the exploration of the rational, it is for this very reason the apprehension
of the present and the actual, not the erection of a beyond,
supposed to
exists God knows where.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right
-
G.W.F.
Hegel (19th century CE): The State is understood as the reality
of the ethical idea within the first major philosophy of history in the
19th century.
-
Søren
Kierkegaard: the Single, against the System.
-
Young
Hegelians: Offer a progressive interpretation of Hegel's
reconciliation between rationality and reality.
-
Karl
Marx: Hegel's dialectics turned off its head and placed upon its
feet. From the contradiction of the material conditions of civil society,
which is the realm of alienation, we will be brought to a society without
classes.
Protection,
therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs
protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing
opinion and feeling.
Whereas British culture carried on its empiricist
tradition, continental positivism regarded natural scientific methods as
an unqualified way to the perfect social life.
-
Jeremy
Bentham: Following the tracks of empiricism,
he formulates a radical project for social and legal reforms, based on
the principle of the greatest happiness.
-
John
Stuart Mill: He rethought utilitarianism in
a problematical liberalism.
-
Auguste
Comte: The father of Sociology. On the basis of an unqualified
assumption of induction, he projected a social Utopia, as the
final destination of a peculiar philosophy of history..
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