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Summary Hopt exam 1
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This summary can be use for the first exam of Hopt or the resit. Everything is in English (this is only the lectures and not the readings)
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History of Political Thought SummaryThe Republic.
Ship of State
The attitudes of cities towards real philosophers is drawn by a comparison with a ship. According to the
one that makes the comparison, philosophers are not treated with respect in cities. People considered
philosophers to be useless, according to the one speaking you cannot blame the philosophers for their
useless, but you have to blame those who make no use of them.
The Ship of State is a famous and oft-cited metaphor put forth by Plato in Book VI of the Republic (488a–
489d). It links the governance of a city-state to the command of a naval vessel and ultimately argues that
the only men fit to be captain of this ship are philosopher kings, benevolent men with absolute power
who have access to the Form of the Good. (they have the knowledge about the state so you trust them)
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The Cave (Book 7 514a-520a)
The cave theory is based on how Plato perceives how people educated themselves and others. The
prisoners are the people, they see the shadows on the wall cast by the fire. The people take the shadows
of manufactured objects as truth. When you leave the cave, you have to acclimatize and get used to the
lights. However, when you get back to the cave, you have to get used to the darkness again.
Mass direct Enlightenment is deadly (preaching the truth is risky). But indirect enlightenment is possible--
through education understood as an orientation or preparation toward the good.
‘Anyone with any sense, would remember that people’s eyesight can be impaired in two different ways,
and for two quite different reasons’:
1. change from light to darkness.
2. change from darkness to light.
Conclusion we cannot avoid:
-> Education is not what some people proclaim it to be. What they say, is that they are able to put
knowledge into souls where none was before. Like putting sight into eyes which were blind.
Mass direct Enlightenment is deadly (preaching the truth is risky. But indirect enlightenment is possible--
through education understood as an orientation or preparation toward the good.
Rational thought is a special and important virtue.
According to Plato, philosophers are the only ones that can stay out of the cave and are therefore most
suited to steer the city. This law aims for a collective good.
Plato, as Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives,
facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire
,behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality. Socrates explains
how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to the understanding that
the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the
manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners. The inmates of this place do not even
desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. The prisoners manage to break their bonds one
day, and discover that their reality was not what they thought it was. They discovered the sun, which
Plato uses as an analogy for the fire that man cannot see behind. Like the fire that cast light on the walls
of the cave, the human condition is forever bound to the impressions that are received through
the senses. Even if these interpretations (or intuitions) are an absurd misrepresentation of reality, we
cannot somehow break free from the bonds of our human condition—we cannot free ourselves from
phenomenal state just as the prisoners could not free themselves from their chains. If, however, we were
to miraculously escape our bondage, we would find a world that we could not understand—the sun is
incomprehensible for someone who has never seen it. In other words, we would encounter another
"realm", a place incomprehensible because, theoretically, it is the source of a higher reality than the one
we have always known; it is the realm of pure Form, pure fact.
Socrates remarks that this allegory can be paired with previous writings, namely the analogy of the sun
and the analogy of the divided line.
Justice (Book 4 433b-435a).
In order to observe justice in the individual, one started with some large object which had justice in it.
This large object is a city.
‘In case of the city, we decided it was just because each of the three types of nature in it was performing
its own function. The city is held together by three classes:
• Commercial: the largest class of society: producers.
• Auxiliary: the warriors, responsible for defending the city from invaders, and for keeping peace.
• Guardian (decision-making): responsible for ruling the city (philospher-kings).
And we decided it was self-disciplined, brave and wise as a result of other conditions and states of the
same three types.’ So the just individual also has to have these characteristics. There are thus three
elements in our soul. These three elements are:
1. One element for learning. > Rational Element
2. One element for feeling spirited. > Spiritual Element
3. One element for desires. > Desiring Element
Plato in his philosophy gives very important place to the idea of justice. He used the Greek word
"Dikaisyne" for justice which comes very near to the word 'morality' or 'righteousness', it properly
includes within it the whole duty of man. It also covers the whole field of the individual's conduct in so far
as it affects others. Plato contended that justice is the quality of soul, in virtue of which men set aside the
irrational desire to taste every pleasure and to get a selfish satisfaction out of every object and
accommodated themselves to the discharge of a single function for the general benefit.
According to Plato, the interference of the three classes with one another does great harm to the city and
can rightly be called the worst crime against it. Injustice is some sort of civil war between the three
elements of the soul.
Justice is the commercial, auxiliary and guardian classes to mind their own business, with each of them
performing its own function in the city and this will make the city just.
, The part of the soul with which we think rationally we can call the rational element. The part with which
we feel sexual desire, hunger, thirst and the turmoil (verwarring) of the other seders can be called the
irrational and desiring element. These two elements are present in the soul.
The four cardinal virtues of the soul, according to Plato, are:
1. Wisdom.
2. Bravery.
3. Justice.
4. Temperance.
-> All these virtues can only arise, when the three elements perform within their proper tasks.
Ibn Rush Platonic feminism
Human nature is given from birth, education makes it work properly we have particular nature that is
inherited this reflects a hierarchy of skills and intellectual capacity, this is present in both sexes
Article. The Political Writings. By, Alfarabi.
The principles that constitute bodies and their accidents; there are six principles and six rankings:
1. First cause in the ranking. The first cause is what ought to be believed to be the deity. It is the
proximate cause for the existence of the secondary causes and the active intellect.
2. Secondary cause. The causes for the existence of the heavenly bodies.
3. Active intellect in third ranking. The active intellect gives the human being a faculty and a principle by
which to strive, or by which the human being is able to strive on his own for the rest of the
perfections that remain for him.
4. The soul in fourth ranking.
5. Form in fifth ranking.
6. Material in sixth ranking.
There are six kinds of bodies:
1. Heavenly body.
2. Rational animal.
3. Nonrational animal.
4. Plants.
5. Minerals.
6. four elements.
-> The whole brought together from these six kinds of bodies is the world.
Human beings are one of the species that cannot complete their necessary affairs nor gain their most
excellent state, except by coming together. This coming together happens in associations, the greatest
example of an association is the city.
One nation is distinguished from another by two natural things and by a third conventional thing.
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