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Lectures 1 - 6 Midterm exam Political Philosophy
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Notes from lectures 1 - 6 for the midterm exam, includes examples. I got a 7.3 on my exam through these notes.
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Lecture 1 – Why organize?- Workgroups 1 and 3 is about making multiple choice questions
- Workgroups 2 and 4 is about debates
What do political philosophers do?
1. Political philosophy: “all activities associated with determining the governance of a particular group
of people”.
politics vs political system (“All activities”, so it’s more than just the political system)
consensus and conflict (can people create 1 solution or is it about organizing conflicts of interests)
organization is political (make political decisions, i.e. putting people into positions of power)
2. Political philosophy: radical and critical reflection on the fundamentals of reality and human
existence (use this definition)
- radical radix (roots), if you do something radical you dive into the roots of things
- critical krinein (make distinctions), i.e. when someone is ill the krinein/critical moment is the
moment when someone lived or died (final judgements), philosophers make judgements on the base of
distinctions
- reflection reflectio (bend back/look back), we look back on things
Looking for a productive form of not-knowing
you know the limits of your own opinions, i.e. you know what you don’t know - Socrates
unproductive way vs. productive way (i.e. unproductive ‘which mountain is 3000 m high’) –
Newton, looking at productive way
Major divide: normative vs critical theory
1. Normative theory – John Rawls
- political philosophy as a branch of moral theory (What are the norms at what humans actions should
be governed?/How should we act? And give a list of these norms)
- philosopher as legislator and judge (after we have the blueprint of norms then compare whether
humans behave according to the norms role of judge, reform if humans do not behave according to
norms)
2. Critical theory – Michel Foucault
- political philosophy as a branch of social philosophy (as a philosopher you cannot decide what
justice is since you are part of society yourself, your judgement will be influenced)
- philosopher as cartographer (conflict of interest, cannot imagine themselves excluded from society,
map out all societal problems and then see how the problems can be changed, instead of imposing
norms, describing the problems and see opportunities for change)
Why do people organize?
- Carl Schmitt: what are peoples’ motivations to organize? Are these motivations good or bad? If
they’re good, people organize for efficiency. If they’re bad, you need to make sure that people do not
sabotage each other, do not get into too much conflict.
“Man is evil” – Thomas Hobbes
- 17th century English philosopher
- state of nature: war of all against all (in state of nature we would murder one another without state)
- need for a strong State (we construct social contract to suppress all conflicts)
- an absolutist State to withhold the slippage into civil war
organization as the outcome of humankind’s inability to cooperate
, Illustrations
1. Pandemic and toilet paper
2. Terrorism prison in Guantanamo, suspects of organizing terrorist attacks are put into this prison
do not get a trial and get tortured (absolutist state)
“Man is good” – Benedictus Spinoza
- 17th century Dutch philosopher
- state of nature: spontaneous cooperation
- no need for a strong State (it is more efficient/beneficial to cooperate than to sabotage one another)
- the ‘multitude’ spontaneously and directly governs itself (small communities cooperating and
becoming bigger, eventually the State emerges)
organization as the outcome of individuals’ spontaneous cooperation
Illustrations
1. The pandemic and mutual aid (people helped people out who had Covid, i.e. grocery shopping)
2. Social movements (e.g. Occupy Wall Street, climate protests)
Which of the two is correct, good or bad? we don’t know, but we now found a productive way of
not knowing. We’ve been critical, gotten to the roots of things. We got a better understanding of the
situation, even though we do not have an answer.
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