The Modern Political Tradition: Hobbes to Habermas 21-29
21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 01:33
Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990); a conservative civil society theorist; Burkian conservatism
On Human Conduct (1975)
"Rationalism in Politics" (1947); argued against rationalism, politics cannot be engineered, it is a practical knowledge. Rationalist claims should be understood as abridgment of practical knowledge.
Rationalism: The attitude which believes political behavior can be deduced from abstract universal principles discoverable by unaided reason
"Political power derives from the consent of the governed."
Morality is like a language and history is context of human affairs. Political actions are historical and intelligibility that human events have is contingency, unlike the object of nature science.
The rules of conduct are adverbial, regulating how citizens relate to each other as they pursue their goals, not what their goals ought to be.
Politics: The practice of "attending to the arrangements of a given society" (without no goal or principle)
Totalitarianism is the extreme case of rationalism.
Progressive state is dangerous as it claims that executive power should be increased to remake the society.
the rejection to rationalism or the attempt to reform or remake society on the basis of principles derived from theoretical reason as opposed to maintain a historical society as it is in the face of novel circumstances and problems. The latter is right task for politics.
21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 07:29
?Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992); economical conservatism
The Road to Serfdom (1944)
The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
"Why I Am Not a Conservative"
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973); socialism is not possible
Liberalism is a political order which aims "to make best use of the spontaneous forces of a free society".
21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 11:36
?Vienna School
Peter Drucker (1908-2005)
Karl Polanyi (1886-1964)
The Great Transformation (1944)
Spontaneous or polycentric order vs. Rational Planning
The justification of free markets is social and consequentialist (justified by the improvement of life), not the theory of natural rights. Totalitarianism could lead to centralization, which he opposed.
The market takes time and most societies fail to be patient.
?21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 17:04
?Freedom is the liberty to pursue one's aims or purposes, based in responsibility and resourcefulness.
Economics is the means of achieving values in life. Egalitarianism and progressivism is wrong since they try to affirm liberty in politics and personal life while claiming that the economy should be controlled by the government.
Equality before the law is incompatible with outcome equality.
?21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 20:33
?Liberal capitalist society is not a meritocracy. The principle of distribution in a free society is value, not merit.
Government must enforce the law. State Enterprise is inevitable in some fields, and some regulation of production (utilities).
21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 23:11
?"Conservative" Positions:
Free-market liberals (classic liberals, libertarians) or neoliberals (Hayek)
Traditionalist conservatives, or "paleoconservatives" (Oakeshott)
Religious and evangelical conservatives
"Why I Am Not a Conservative"
21 Conservative or Neoliberal—Oakeshott, Hayek P21 - 25:33
?Milton Friedman (1912-2006)
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Negative income tax
Against licensing, featherbedding
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 00:17
?Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
Economic man: The notion of human beings primarily concerning themselves with their material welfare
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
The Human Condition (1958)
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 04:14
?Arendt's Forms of Active Life
Labor: Repetitive activities required by life
Work: Creation of durable objects
Action (political): Deeds and Speeches of individuals in the public domain/forum/realm; politics
She tried to mobilize Aristotelian notion of politics as opposed to Platonic one.
Oikos: "Household" → economics (not in public but private, as opposed to the politics which is public )
Homo faber: "Man the maker"
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 10:27
?What gives life meaning?
Free action of human agents in the polis
Construction of durable cultural objects that provide us with a meaningful artifactual environment
Marxism and liberal republicanism have both made politics into a servant of economics, an instrument for preserving and adding to the private realm. Modernity devalues action and work, making them means to enhance the private.
Arendt's "society": "public household," the polis as an economic household to be publicly managed
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 13:40
?"A mass society of laborers, such as Marx had in mind when he spoke of 'socializing mankind,' consists of wordless specimens of the species mankind, whether they are household slaves, driven into their predicament by the violence of others, or free, performing their functions willingly."
World alienable: the alienation of the meaningful environment of objects that gives the self meaning
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 17:04
Instrumental rationality: Treating some things as means to produce something else as efficiently as possible
"The danger of instrumental rationality is the generalization of the fabrication experience in which usefulness and utility are established as the ultimate standards."
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 20:24
?Auctoritas: "Authority", authority don't use force or persuasion; it is outside political domain, inspiring free obedience; it is an adjunct to the founding of a state; political domain/power is all about persuasion.
We flee from politics and Freedom because it is unpredictable, an existentialist view.
Poiesis: "Making"
22 Reviving the Public Realm—Hannah Arendt P22 - 24:30
"The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure"
endorsed civic republicanism: widespread political engagement in public political activity with fellow citizens as equals
Process is "De-worlding", subjectivizing
Deeds and speeches (political value)remains intrinsic values for the participants, not a mere instrumentality for the provision of economic needs. ? ?It is not what we make deeds and speeches about, but why we make deeds and speeches and the worth we give them.
23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 00:51
?Theory of "esotericism"
"Neo-conservatism"
Leo Strauss (1899-1973)
Natural Right and History (1950)
23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 07:18
?Ends of the Modern Tradition
Positivism: denies the possible truth or falsity of value claims
Historicism: make values relative to historical period
Nihilism: claims that all is power
23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 09:17
?Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)
Exoteric meaning vs. esoteric meaning
Philosophy is inherently inclusive, therefore known foundations for our necessary political activities, like Platonic.
Aporia: An undecidable situation
23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 14:19
?Athens: philosophy
Jerusalem: faith or revelation
Real vs. ideal, Better than modernity trying to merge these tow and solve the gap
Plato has the problem of virtues and Aristotle doesn't have this problem. Their arguments and dialects are much Better than modern view of natural rights that undermine itself.
Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990); rejected reformist theories as political rationalism
23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 20:34
?Strauss corresponded with Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) because of his recognition of deep underlying problem of political philosophy, that legal norms and natural laws/rights which founded the modern liberal republicanism is not adequate.
Strauss became friends with Alexandre Kojeve (1902-1968); Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1969). They agreed on the grounding of Constitutional states.
?23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 24:30
?Choices for Grounding the Constitutional State
Strauss's esoteric, religion-friendly skepticism
Modern historicism, relativism, and nihilism
Kojeve's new that history has a definitive, objectively true direction and internal goal (not external one, no transcendent but imminent law of human history which has nothing to do with natural world)
23 Philosophy vs. Politics—Strauss and Friends P23 - 26:53
Allan Bloom (1930-1992)
The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
"Liberals who had been mugged by reality"
Bush administration
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 00:47
?Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
Daniel Bell (1919-2011)
The End of Ideology (1960)
The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973)
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 07:49
?Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Modern Social Theory (1941)
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955)
oppressed human instinctual nature; Fruedianized the concept of alienation and suppression, making them personal and psychological rather than solely economical.
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 08:53
?Friedrich Schiller
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)
"Play and display, as principles of civilization, imply not the transformation of labor but its complete subordination to the freely evolving potentialities of man and nature."—Marcuse
Merging Marx and Freud
A total ministered system of life: Mass culture, welfare state, military industrial complex and Capitalism.
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 15:02
?Scientistic: Scientific in a bad sense; devoid of means for social criticism (value-free)
One-Dimensional Man (1964)
Gyorgy Lukacs (1885-1971)
History and Class Consciousness (1923); culture and mass culture serves the economy as opposed to the old criticism of Capitalism; flatting society, reducing ideal to the real and destroy the capacity to imagine a different and transcendental society; advanced Capitalism is totalitarianism
"Democracy would apPear to be the most efficient system of domination."—Marcuse
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 20:42
?"Repressive desublimation":
Allowance of a more direct, less refined satisfaction of the instincts than that found in Freud.
make money out of pleasure principle
(Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) Brave New World
Gorge Orwell (1903-1950) 1984)
Work is pleasure. Reason converges with art and all opposition will be healed.
The Bible of the new left
"Port Huron Statement" (1962); American version of socialism, the new left
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 26:20
?Events of 1968
Tet Offensive
Assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rioting in American cities
Attempts in Prague to gain some independence from Moscow
Ongoing Cultural Rev.o.l.u.t.ion in China
General strike and student revolts of Mai Soixante-buit
24 Marcuse and the New Left P24 - 28:30
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Marxist Freudian existentialism in France; Germanic notion of the alienation of the self caused by Capitalism and government bureaucracy
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
25 Rawls’s A Theory of Justice P25 - 00:21
?John Rawls (1921-2002)
A Theory of Justice (1971)
Political Liberalism (1993)
25 Rawls’s A Theory of Justice P25 - 01:33
?Distributive justice
The sheer disparity of wealth is unjust
Whether the disparity is unjust depends on history
Outcome or end-state apProach (progressives and socialists)
Procedural or historical apProach (neoliberals and libertarians)
From Kant to welfare instead of the Mill welfare route
25 Rawls’s A Theory of Justice P25 - 04:34
?Neutralism: Government neutrality with respect to private notions of "the Good"
new theory of social contract: those principles of justice are right which would be chosen by free self-interested agents in the condition of equality
Original position (Rawls's version of the state of nature)
Two principles of justice in the original position
Reasoning for the two principles of justice
25 Rawls’s A Theory of Justice P25 - 06:44
?Constraints on the Principle of Justice
A one-time only decision
No principles that no one else would accept
Certain things good for everyone (income, rights, opportunities)
Instrumentally rational
Mutually disinterested, or selfish
Operate under a veil of ignorance
25 Rawls’s A Theory of Justice P25 - 10:59
Justice requires maximum equal political liberty
Socio-economic inequalities are just if they attach to positions "open to all" and "benefit all"
Rawls's difference principle:
Remove inequalities to the point where more removal would harm the least advantaged
Vilfredo Pareto's efficiency principle:
Life all boats harming no one up the point where Bettering someone would harm someone else
Maximum rule: Choose the option whose worst case is Better than the other options' worst?cases
H.L.A. Hart's principle of fairness:
Those who voluntarily benefit from a cooperative scheme owe a similar obligation
25 Rawls’s A Theory of Justice P25 - 26:46
?Comprehensive doctrine: Foundation for political views; has some ultimate notion of human nature and purpose and the meaning of life
Reasonableness: The attitude of those who propose as a basis for cooperation in society only principles that others might share
OverlapPing consensus: People with different comprehensive doctrines all affirm the purely political liberalism of Constitutional rights, political institutions, and laws.
Burton Dreben (1927-1999)
Public reason
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 00:22
?Libertarianism
Utopia: Minimal state
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 01:30
?Economist libertarians: argue for maximum individual liberty and minimal government interference through a utilitarian, economic argument
Philosophical libertarians: Ethical, natural rights theories; claim that Capitalism is morally required, independent of its consequences
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 02:15
?Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
The Fountainhead (1943)
Atlas Shrugged (1957)
objectivism, objective value, theory of natural lights, rights to one's own self and own life which yields rights to pursue interests and purposes; she hated altruism
"Rational egoism"
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 05:22
?Rand's standard of morality: Rational selfishness
The rational interest of man don't clash. There is no conflict of interest among man who don't desire the unearned, who don't make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with each other as traders, accepting value for value.
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 09:29
Howard Roark (The Fountainhead)
John Galt (Atlas Shrugged)
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 10:44
?Robert Nozick (1938-2002)
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995)
Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974); a direct critic of Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971)
Why Anarchy or the state of nature is inadequate
Why any more than minimal state is unjust
Why his minimal state is the ideal polity; "utopia"??
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 12:10
"Invisible hand explanation"
Nozick's central moral side constraints: No one may be harmed without their consent
voluntary protective associations
Nozick's minimal state: A dominate protective association in a region that also extends services to all residents, even if they are unable to pay
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 25:08
?Nozick's Theory of Justice as Entitlement:
Acquiring something that no one owned, if that doesn't disadvantage others.
Transferring ownership, whenever voluntary
Rectifying violations, whether in acquisition or transfer, to remedy past injustices
Only unpatterned distribution is just. Patterned distribution is enforced by coercion.
Principle of entitlement: just when they entitled to their holdings
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 27:13
?Externality: The unchosen effect of a transaction on a third party
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 30:20
?"Lockean Proviso": apPropriations of unowned property are valid as long as there is "enough and as good left in common for others"
26 Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Libertarianism P26 - 31:37
?The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (1989)
27 What about Community P27 - 00:40
?New Group of Political Theorists
"Non-neutralist" or "perfectionist" liberals
Civic republicans
"Communitarians"
critic from the perspective of psychology and anthropology
27 What about Community P27 - 02:14
?Neutralist: Rawls and Nozick; law, politics, and government are to be neutral with respect to theories of the good
Communitarianism: Free individual is a product of, and dependent on, a community; individual liberty sometimes limited to protect the community on which individuality depends
Amitai Etzioni (b. 1929)
Richard Sennett (b. 1943); The Fall of Public Man (1979)
Christopher Lasch (1932-1994); The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)
27 What about Community P27 - 06:02
?Michael Sandel (b. 1953)
Deontological Liberalism: Justice is the primary virtue; liberal self is prior to its ends, completely free to choose its ends, values, goals, and theory of the Good
The notion of a self independent of all its ends is impossible.
27 What about Community P27 - 12:57
?Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929)
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981)
"Inquiry-bearing tradition"
Nietzsche or Aristotle; value textualization
27 What about Community P27 - 19:26
?Robert Putnam
Bowling Alone: American's Declining Social Capital (1995)
Judith Shklar (1928-1992)
Ordinary Vices (1984)
Brian Barry (1936-2009)
Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947)
27 What about Community P27 - 23:57
?William Galston (b. 1946)
Liberty is going to be conceived in a positive way
There is not one ultimate good
LIberalism's Ultimate Values
Existence
Fulfillment of purpose
Practical rationality
Galston's Seven Liberal Goods
Life
Development of capacities
Fulfillment of interests
Freedom
Rationality
Society or relation
Subjective satisfaction
27 What about Community P27 - 30:18
?Families in the Communitarian "Clan"
Civic republicanism: political activity
Civil society: nonpolitical associations
Communitarianism: moral limits to individual self-interest; identification with a community
Non-neutral liberalism: the priority of the Right but no special concern for moral community
Perfectionist liberalism: posits a theory of the Good or Goods
28 Walzer on Everything Money Shouldn't Buy - 00:25
Michael Walzer (b.1935)
Just and Unjust Wars (1977)
Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (1983)
28 Walzer on Everything Money Shouldn't Buy - 05:47
Walzer's distributive principle of justice:
No social good X should be distributed based on some other good Y, without regard to the meaning of X
28 Walzer on Everything Money Shouldn't Buy - 07:28
Is commutation just?
Spheres of Justice
Membership
Needs (security and welfare)
Money and commodities: the market is the zone of the city, not the whole of the city; commodities, things rightly purchased in the market without restrictions
Political power; George Pullman (1831-1897)
28 Walzer on Everything Money Shouldn't Buy - 22:10
Walzer's "complex equality":
A pluralistic conception of equality, as opposed to strict equality
"Justice is rooted in the distinct understandings of places, honors, jobs... that constitute a shared way of life. To override those understandings is always to act unjustly."
28 Walzer on Everything Money Shouldn't Buy - 25:14
Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (1994)
Thin moral argument: Use of moral terms across multiple cultures, where the terms are independent of particularities of the speakers' cultures. (inherently vague)
Thick moral argument: Level of discourse that presumes the full cultural particularity of a term
29 Identity Politics—Feminism P28 - 01:04
Simone De Beauvoir (1908-1986)
Waves of Feminism
First wave: Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) though Simone De Beauvoir (1949)
Second wave: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Third wave: Diversity (1990s)
Feminist Viewpoints
Liberal feminists: Women treated unequally, unjustly
Feminist standpoint theories: Women's distinctive perspective
Essentialism
Postmodern feminists: The production of Sex/gender
29 Identity Politics—Feminism P28 - 05:06
Susan Moller Okin (1946-2004)
Justice, Gender, and the Family (1989)
Carol Hanisch
"The Personal is Political" (1969)
Jean Elshtain (1941-2013)
Public Man, Private Women: Women in Social and Political Thought (1981)
Dorothy Dinnerstein (1923-1992)
Nancy Chodorow (b. 1944)
29 Identity Politics—Feminism P28 - 13:02
?Carol Gilligan (b. 1936)
In a Different Voice (1982)
29 Identity Politics—Feminism P28 - 16:57
?Susan Bordo (1947)
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993)
Iris Marion Young (1949-2006)
Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990)
29 Identity Politics—Feminism P28 - 22:04
?Sex: biological designation "male" and "female"
Gender: social and cultural designation "man" and "women" or "masculine" and "feminine"
Judith Butler (b. 1956)
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)
29 Identity Politics—Feminism P28 - 24:57
?Feminist Movement Impact on Political Theory:
Identifying patriarchy, inequality, denial of opportunities; affirmative action
Changing the boundary Between private and public
Politicizing culture
Identifying the ethics of care, with a push toward communitarianism
Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005)
