The Modern Political Tradition: Hobbes to Habermas 13-20
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 00:37
Liberal republican and civic republican: competing blueprints
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 00:44
Benjamin Constant (1767-1830); civic republicanism is inapplicable in modern society
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831); tried to locate the individual and communitarian networks of ordered communities
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859); called attention to the non-state voluntary associations in his analysis of the conflict of equality and liberty in America
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 01:48
?Liberal republicanism: Modern form of republicanism that substitutes property and ? ?trading for martial virtues and active political participation
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 02:22
?Civic republicanism: freedom to participate in politics; self-rule; carried with it a reference to the citizen-landowner-warrior
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 02:48
?J.G.A. Pocock (1924-)
The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (1975)
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 03:44
?Benjamin Constant (1767-1830)
"The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns" (1819)
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 06:14
?Isaiah Berlin; "Two Concepts of Liberty"
Liberal Republican: Modern private Liberty (Constant); Negative: "freedom From" (Berlin) → "Liberalism"
Civic Republican: Ancient Political Liberty (Constant); Positive:"freedom To" (Berlin) → "Republicanism"
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 08:19
?Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
"Absolute freedom and Terror"; The enlightenment freedom is faulty. It leads to a self without limits, that seeks to negate or destroy the other.
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 17:19
"Elements of the philosophy of right" (1821)
Moralitat: "abstract duty" (Kant's notion of abstract rules of duty applying equally to all)
Sittlichkeit: "customary morality" (actual persons holding distinct rules in community, more complete than moralitat, more communitarian)
The Family
Civic Society (Hegel's notion of civic society is the society of commerce)
The state (highest ethical entity, actuality of ethical ideas or mind objectified on earth; Hegel approved Constitutional monarchy, or the conservative state and moral community, which is the embodiment of Reason. The individual rationality of enlightenment is incomplete, for democracy lacks shape formal organization)
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 22:08
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
"The democracy in American"
"Tyranny of the majority"; egalitarianism or democracy threatens to create a new despotism, a gentle paternal state and immense protective power for which citizens quit their state of independence just long enough to choose their masters (ie. voting).
"Art of association"; lacking hereditary institutions, they join clubs and meetings, especially churches; pluralistic voluntary associations of social life from clubs to political parties to mitigate individual isolation resulting form the lack of feudalist or aristocratic institutions.
13 Civil Society—Constant, Hegel, Tocqueville P13 - 30:26
Competing Structures:
Liberal commitment to minimal government, maximum individual private liberty, especially economic liberty, the background of laisser faire economy (seems to be the definitive structure and becomes the norm of modern society, but it is under constant attack)
Civic republican and direct democratic commitment to funding the community with political power to enhance political participation (Machiavelli, Ferguson and Rousseau)
Conservative state and moral community, communitarian state which locates the individual inside the series of moral structures (Hegel)
Pluralistic, mostly voluntary associations of civil society (Tocqueville)
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 00:18
?John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Utilitarianism and individual liberty (harm principle)
On Liberty (1859)
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 01:50
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832); rejected natural law, promoted a scientific and rational law instead of English common law precedents
James Mill (1773-1836)
General utility: Actual anticipated social benefit
?14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 03:31
Reason devoid of observations cannot determine the moral good
Immanuel Kant's approach is an example of intuitionalism, regarding one's intuitions as a priori law
?14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 04:40
Principle of utility: act so as to maximize general happiness
John Stuart Mill's principle of utility, different from Bentham and his father's, includes qualitative and qualitative differences between pleasures, and these pleasures are arranged in hierarchy.
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 07:51
"Secondary principle": Moral rules taught by society; e.g., don't cheat, steal, or kill
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 08:42
External sanctions: approbation and disapprobation
Internal sanction: sympathy
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 10:19
Act utility: Whatever particular act maximizes happiness is right
Rule utility: Whatever rule of action maximizes happiness is right
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 11:53
?Lifeboat ethics
J.J.C. Smart (1920-2012)
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 14:42
?"Harm Principle"; to solve the tyranny of majority
Principle of liberty: Society may only interfere with the liberty of a member for self-protection; self-regarding actions cannot be sanctioned; if my action only affects myself, no one may interfere with it.
Paternalism: Limiting an agent's liberty for their own sake (prohibited by the harm principle)
Diversity of opinions
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 20:34
?The growth and development of individuality
"Romantic liberalism"; organic notion of individualism, critique of cultural industry or mass culture, the despotism of custom
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)
The Sphere and Duties of Government (The Limits of State Action) (1792)
The point of liberty is not to satisfy rights but to develop the unique power of individual.
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 22:22
Society can interfere with individual liberty only when it threatens direct harm to definite others. (harm must be a violation of moral norms not merely constructive.)
14 Mill on Liberty and Utility P14 - 28:09
"Chapters on socialism" (1879)
Chimera; "illusion" rejected centralized government dictating production but favored some sort of socialist programs, revolutionary socialism is a disaster.
"industrial democracy"
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 00:39
?Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Friedrich Engels (1820-1893)
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
David Ricardo (1772-1823)
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 04:40
?Historical materialism
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 05:24
?Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The German Ideology
The Communist Manifesto
Capital
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 05:51
?Capitalism: Ownership of the means of production by a class that employs industrial workers
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 06:17
?Entfremdung: "alienation"
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 11:29
?A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 19:07
Capital is concentrated in fewer hands
Wages are suppressed to the lowest subsistence wage
Each business cycle becomes more extreme
Workers become violent
Intellectuals direct the violence
revolution spreads around the globe
The proletariat ends all class differences in a communist utopia
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 21:38
?Friedrich Engels (1820-1893)
socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
primitive communism?
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 24:19
?Marx's Communist Utopia
The new society will be classless
The utopia represents the final period of human history
The division of labor will cease
The distributive principle will be: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"
There will be no government
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 26:33
"Dictatorship of the proletariat"
15 Marx’s Critique of Capitalism P15 - 27:04
?Marxism is a cosmopolitan and enlightenment- scientific theory, which has nothing to do with environmentalism, anti-industrialism, multiculturalism, or nationalism.
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 00:36
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Max Weber (1864-1920)
Henry Sumner Maine (1822-1888)
Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 04:05
?Henry Sumner Maine (1822-1888)
Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861)
"from status to contract"
?16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 04:58
?Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936)
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887)
Gesellschaft: "society"
Gemeinschaft: "tradtional community "
Wesenwille: "essential will"
Kiirwille: "arbitrary will"
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 06:22
?Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
In traditional society:
Mechanical solidarity (through resemblance)
Collective consciousness
In modern society:
Organic society (through different roles)
Functional independence
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 08:59
?Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
Philosophy of Money (1900)
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 10:51
?Max Weber (1864-1920)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)
Innerweltliche Askese: "This-worldly asceticism"
Zweckrationalitat: "Instrumental rationality", such as law and bureaucracy
"Science as a Vocation" (1918) rationalization leads to value-pluralism.
"Politics as a Vocation" (1919) Ethics of ultimate ideals (focus on the goal and neglect the consequences and the steps to get to the final goal) vs. ethics of responsibility
"Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved."—Weber
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 20:39
?Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
slave morality
Nihilism: The belief in nothing or the rejection of all values (According to Nietzsche, Judeo-Christianity is nihilism)
Will to power
"God is dead", "the last man"
Ubermensch: "overman, superman"
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885)
16 Modern vs. Traditional Society P16 - 25:26
?Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
On the Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
Id, ego, superego
Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 00:40
?"New Liberalism"
American "progressive": Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 01:26
?Dismantle of Laissez-faire
because of the need to regulate massive corporations, monopoly etc., and socialist became more moderate.
Social democracy
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 03:09
?Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864-1929)
Liberalism (1911), viewed 19th century Laissez-faire liberalism as mechanical and negative, and criticized Marxism as mechanical, economistic, and determinist, advocated for organic liberalism within an egalitarian and equality society.
"Social conception of property"
"socialist liberalism"
Individualism is only possible on a socialist basis.
Those benefit from the market should contribute their fair share to the society.
He is communitarian and interactionist rather than collectivist.
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 08:19
?Populist Party movement; Populism
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924); "The New Nationalism"
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919);The New freedom, evolutionary and organic concept of politics and Constitution, enhance power to the executive branch.
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 17:45
?John Dewey (1859-1952)
Jane Addams (1860-1935)
Individuals and society are interactive and symbiotic.
Individualism: Unique contribution the individual makes to society
Society: The result of the interactions of masses of individuals
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 22:30
Progressive Reforms: Legislation and government agencies for anti-monopolistic
Creation of the income tax (Sixteenth Amendment)
Direct election of senators (Seventeenth Amendment)
Eight-hour workday, minimum wage, worker's compensation, and social insurance for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed
Votes for women (Nineteenth Amendment)
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 24:60
?Gosta Esping-Andersen (b. 1947)
The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990)
Forms of the Welfare State
Liberal model: provides to those in need on an individual basis
Corporatist model: provides via civil service or work status to heads of households
Social democratic model: provides universal, cradle-to-grave services equally to all individuals
17 Progressivism and New Liberalism P17 - 28:07
?Christopher Lasch (1932-1994)
The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (1991)
Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970)
The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965)
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 00:24
Leninism
"Social democracy"
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 02:46
?Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932)
The Preconditions of socialism (1899)
Improvements in the working class are the aim of socialism. Capitalism is moving towards the society ruled by proletariats. socialism is becoming reality, therefore evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.
Democratic socialism without abolishing the commercial society and private property
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 08:23
Bolsheviks: membership requires full-time organizing activities under the central command; socialist intellectuals must make socialism happen instead of waiting for a deterministic history period becoming reality. Absolute party discipline was necessary.
Mensheviks:
Vladimir Llyich Lenin (1870-1924)
Georgi Plekhanov (1856-1918)
John A. Hobson (1858-1940); Imperialism, a Study (1902)
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 17:38
Leo Trotsky (1879-1940); anarchist socialism, to the left of Lenin.
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 18:57
?Western Marxists
Gyorgy Lukacs
Antonio Gramsci
Theodor Adorno
Max Horkheimer
Walter Benjamin
Ernst Block
Gyorgy Lukacs (1885-1971)
History and Class Consciousness (1923)
Capitalist mass culture prevents workers from accepting Marxism. They live in a reified culture and have a reified consciousness.
Reified: made into an object or thing
Frankfurt School, French Marxists, liberal democratic form of Marxism
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 24:41
?Capitalism:
Private ownership and control
Private contracts (with minimally constrained property rights) in a free market
Individual liberty
socialism:
Public ownership and control
Collective decision (with highly constrained property rights)
Material equality
18 Fleeing Liberalism—Varieties of socialism P18 - 26:03?
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 04:07
?Georges Sorel (1847-1922)
Reflection on Violence (1908)
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 05:07
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
The Doctrine of Fascism (1932)
Totalitarianism: Total commitment to the state
state Capitalism
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 07:56
Weimar Republic
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 09:17
?"New Deal"
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 10:32
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)
Parliamentary system is not seeking Truth but negotiation between interest groups. And it limits power as opposed to the direct democracy that gives power.
Plebiscite: Referendum
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 12:51
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938)
Liberal republicanism/Parliamentarism was bankrupt and being replaced by either Marxism in Russia or Fascism in Italy/Germany.
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 14:42
?"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception."
Prerogative: Power to suspend the laws if necessary for the good of the policy
Rational are based on presuppositions. The first presupposition must be irrational.
Rechtsstaat: Constitutional legal state
Political Theology (1922)
The Concept of the Political (1927); the relation to the public enemy as opposed to the private enemy
Hostis: Hostiel community
The fight is for one's existence and the decision to fight is pre-rational self assertion.
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 23:23
?Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Being and Time (1927)
19 Fleeing Liberalism—Fascism and Carl Schmitt P19 - 27:08
?Edward Shils (1910-1995)
Peter Drucker (1909-2005)
The End of Economic Man: The Origin of Totalitarianism (1939)
Wehrwirtschaft: "War organization of the business of society"
realism and idealism of Fascism
Gunter Grass, The Tine Drum (1959)
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 03:28
?Losif Vissarionovich Stalin (1879-1953)
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 05:29
?Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
Origins of Totalitarianism (1951); Everything is possible for the sake of the state; the total organization and mobilization of society in service of the state/government; all political powers in a centralized single party; not allowed to remain passively on the sidelines; economics, religion, culture and societies all become political; nothing is left to what we call civil society; the state embodies and rules all.
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 07:09
Totalitarianism does not regard itself as another parliamentary party and shows contempt for all other parties.
The totalitarian state aims for a direct relation to each citizen and atomize them, transcending or replacing all relations and loyalties that citizens may have to families, locale, church, profession.
Citizens Atomized: Not involved in political parties or active in politics.
Truth, including empirical Truth and concept of facts, is completely relativized to the needs of the party state. Nothing is too ridiculous and nothing is too far fetched to be believed.
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 08:17
?Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
The Gulag Archipelago
The usage of power is not utilitarian. The believe of totalitarianism is not immoral or nihilistic, but rather everything is possible.
There has to be place of total terror and domination. The aim of labor camps or Gulag is not to kill or house human beings, but to establish a novel form of non-existence between life and death, where human are not being treated as humans at all, and to eliminate all tradition limits on how humans can be treated.
By themselves, they are only cargo. Only participation in the party state and its role in history makes something more than that. Nazism and Stalinism are in a continual process of change rushing toward the ideal. The essence of the government has become motion, bureaucracy hierarchy has become more fluid, purging their earlier elites. The logic of ideology is the most important.
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 11:45
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report of the banality of Evil (1963)
Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)
Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942)
Eichmann claimed that he was not antiseptic and tried to live by Kant's definition of duty, and regarded himself as a bureaucratic functionary.
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 17:57
Total war
Guilio Douhet (1869-1930)
He predicted that the next war will involve aerobombing of civilians. Modern warfare is industrial and civilians at home are participating by working in factories that produce the armaments.
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 23:11
?Theodor Adorno (1903-1969)
Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)
The ego that can do anything but believe in nothing, viewing human beings as objects for any kind of exploitation or pleasure.
20 Totalitarianism and Total War P20 - 26:54
?Eroding foundations thesis: The notion that the system (liberal republican) itself undermines it as it progresses; self-negating/dialectic
