Full Summary History of Political Thought Lectures & Readings 2022/2023
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Course
History of political thought (73210026FY)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
This is a comprehensive summary of all readings and lectures of the course History of Political Thought. It also includes some questions regarding the lectures and readings. This summary was made in the 2022.
REPUBLIC //
PLATO
How do we (21st We think of justice in economic terms and think that a state committed to social justice
century) see is aiming to achieve some form of economic fairness.
justice?
What was Plato He was looking for the rule of the righteous, who can ensure that the polity as a whole
looking for in the practices justice and displays in its organization and behavior the qualities that the
definition of soul of the just individual displays.
justice?
How does Plato It is easier to what justice is in the large rather than the small, so we should look for it
present the in the polis before we seek it in the individual.
argument? - “To give every man his due”.
- It is never good to injure anyone, so it can never be right to make someone
worse than he is.
- Plato sees “doing justice” as a skill. What expertise does justice imply?
- It seems that justice is no use at all. It does not achieve anything, while all
the various arts bring about particular useful results.
- “Sticking to one’s last”
- His aim is to undermine the claim that justice means doing good to friends
and harm to enemies. Harming someone means making him worse, and the
point of justice cannot be to make someone worse.
- If justice is a quality in rulers, they should be concerned with the welfare of
their subjects rather than themselves; justice promotes the interest of the
weaker, not the stronger.
- Justice as the familiar value that leads men to keep promises, to tell the truth,
do their duty and obey the laws.
- Justice must be in the interest of both individuals and the community.
How does Plato He assumes as a premise that we are naturally suited to different sorts of social roles,
think about social and that one of many things wrong with democratic Athens is that the wrong people
roles? end up occupying positions of power. We can be happy and fulfilled when we occupy a
social position that reflects the position that our innate character fits us to occupy.
What are the 4 Temperance, courage, reason and justice
cardinal virtues? - Temperance: workers, the stomach of society, keeping it in operation as a physical
enterprise. Virtue is self-control.
- Courage: the auxiliaries, the heart of society, must have brave hearts.
- Wisdom: guardians, the society’s mind (the virtue of the mind is wisdom).
- Justice: the overarching virtue that governs the whole.
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, When all are in their proper place and each person and each class does its proper job
and no other, there is justice.
What did Plato
think to be the
ultimate criterion That our souls are in order, that we are acting as our nature requires, contributing as
of ‘rightness’? we should to the order of the universe or society.
How do Plato’s Plato’s guardians have no property. Plato argues that in the absence of money or
ruling elite live? private property they will see the whole polis as ‘theirs’ and will only think in collective
terms.
What are the two - A major reason for the existence of government is to ensure that individuals are
crucial thoughts treated justly: that they are not assaulted, that their property is secure and that their
about justice that lives are regulated by rules rather than the whims of the powerful. Law vanishes. Once
Plato refuses to philosopher-kings rule, the conflicts that la regulates vanishes.
entertain? - Fair allocation of power; philosophers must rule, and nobody can have any interest in
having his affairs run by the ignorant and ill informed. The task of the rulers is to know
what the correct allocation of tasks and rewards is, and to institute it.
Why is the rule of Since it is a philosophical skill to discern the divine order, the polis can be perfected
the philosopher only when put under the aegis of philosophy.
required?
If eutopia can be Plato says no. Something will go wrong. First, honor supersedes wisdom as the basis
created, it would of authority; the wise elite will become a timocracy, or an aristocracy based on honor;
endure forever? this in turn will degenerate into an oligarchy where rich men oppress their inferiors.
Ship of State // file:///Users/myhrenetheron/Downloads/Plato%20Republic%20488e-
489d%20(ship%20of%20state).pdf
PLATO
488a-490b
Ship analogy Comparison of Athenian state to a ship. The captain of the ship is big and strong, and
hard of hearing and not much of a navigator. The ship’s crew are constantly
disagreeing on who should be the captain (despite not having experience nor
training). Being the captain, the sailors maintain, requires no special skill.
The citizen population of Athens are the owner of the ship. They are politically powerful
but lacking in governmental awareness and intellectual ability. With them in charge, the
Athenian ship is not going to cut a clear, sensible or efficient path.
The crew of the ship. Meanwhile, are the disputatious demagogues and politicians who
hold sway in Athens assembly, each vying for influence and power over their fellow
citizens.
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, Plato wants his fellow Athenians to undertake a thorough revaluation. Rather than
looking at the ship owner, or themselves, the sailors on board should look to a
marginal currently powerless figure: the true navigator. A person of great learning,
wisdom and morality: a philosopher.
The Cave //
PLATO file:///Users/myhrenetheron/Downloads/Plato%20Republic%20514a-
514a-520a 520a%20(the%20cave).pdf
Cave analogy Group of people, who have live all their lives chained to the wall of a cave. There are
others in the cave carrying objects, but the prisoners can only see their shadows and
only hear their echoes.
Once one of them is freed, this person might have trouble adjusting to this new world,
where he gets blinded by the light. But once he grows accustomed to this new life, he
will start pitying the prisoners, and he will start feeling like he has a better
understanding of the world, and understand his former view of reality was wrong. But
it is a painful process.
He goes back into the cave and tries to tell his fellow prisoners the truth about reality,
but the prisoners think he has gone crazy. The prisoners do not want to be free,
because they are comfortable in their own ignorance.
The ascent out of the cave is the journey of the soul into the region of the intelligible.
Plato believes the purpose of education is to help people see absolute truths and
values and to save them from living their lives in the world of falsehood and prejudice.
The cave dwellers are philosophers before enlightenment.
Plato believed that the truth was worth seeking out, even if the path to enlightenment
wasn’t an easy one to take.
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, Plato and
Antipolitics// On
Politics, Ryan
Antipolitical Plato
Plato’s political thought is antipolitical. In the polis of Plato’s imagination, there is no
politics.
Critique on Plato:
- Plato does not take seriously the inescapability of politics in some form.
Many commentators have thought of Republic as a treatise on education; its political
message is the need to enlighten us so that we may become fit to live in Kallipolis, the
ideal city.
Comparison Marx
Like Plato, Marx looked forward to a future which the state, law, coercion and
and Plato
competition for power had vanished and politics had been replaced by rational
organization.
Lecture 1
Who should rule? - The people
> They constitute the state (perhaps they are even a sovereign?), nobody is
left out, everybody has a say, nobody needs to revolt, fair.
- The Elderly
> Experienced, safeguard tradition, risk-averse, don’t panic.
- The King/Queen
> Constitutes the state (sovereign), simple mechanism, decisive, birthright,
sanctified by God/tradition
- The elect(ed) president/cabinet
> excludes the incompetent/unpopular, gives a choice to the people or
religious, minimizes coordination costs
- The party
> on the side of history, decisive, organized around common aim,
understand the will of the people
Another option - Expert-rule or
Epistemocracy (Nicholas Taleb used it in 2007 to designate a utopian type of
society where the leadership possesses epistemic humility. à epistemic
humility is an intellectual virtue. Epistemic essentially means anything dealing
with knowledge. Epistemic humility, then, is being humble with your
assumptions about understanding. Recognizing that you may not know
something)
> Presupposes that ruling is a craft/skill or requires knowledge (or
competence)
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