Summary of History of Political Thought University of Amsterdam Political Science 1st year. I have received many recommendations to upload my summaries and my friends have passed their resit thanks to this summary. Hope you do as well.
The Arthasastra
- gives advice on rulership to kings
- not just political strategy but also physical, emotional, spiritual, and ethical being
- demonstrates in its teachings a concern for the well-being and personal development
of the king himself
- kingdom: small, regional polity
- intimate relationship between king and kingdom (does not distinguish between king’s rule and
kingdom)
- personal character equates to the quality of his governance, king’s rule constitutes the state
- successful king is marked by the cultivation of self control through training
Education
● reasoned inquiry, religious authority, economics and gvernment
● science of government is emphasized→ political interests must be satisfied before intellectual,
spiritual, ethical or economic concerns can be addressed
● political necessity always trumps philosophical, economic or religious objections
● dandaniti=king’s coercive authority, practice of government nin general
● punishment is the foundation of critical inquiry, the Triple, and economics
Training of character
- success of kingdom relies on the cultivation of prince’s virtue through education and the
quality of each prince as a student
- self-control
Taking Counsel
- he should exterminate anyone who divulges councel
- officers should be kept under surveillance until the time when the undertaking is completed
- five components: strategy for initiating the undertakings, men and material of exemplary
quality, allocation of place and time, precautions against failure, and bringing of the
undertaking to a successful conclusion
Daily Routine
- when people find it difficult to see the king, those surrounding him make him do what ought
not to be done and not do what ought to be done
- as a result, people will revolt against him
The Kingdom
- the king and his rule is the eptiome of the constituent elements
- fortified cities
- security of royal families
- city managers: oversees public safety, laws and tax
- king and his officers existed as an overarching authority but one that did not seek to
govern every aspect of daily life
Foreign policy
- my enemy’s enemy is my ally
, - prosperity of the kingdom was not understood to result from finding peaceful relations with
all neighboring states
- ultimate goal of a king: political domination and all strategic decisions were made with this in
mind
- king must dispatch secret agents to foreign lands to identify seducible elements and turn them
to the king’s interests
War
- peace is preferable to war
- king’s marched their armies on expeditions to gain prestige, wealth, and a dominance
Mozi
- before government:
- each person followed their own norm for deciding what was right and wrong
- as many people as there were that was how many norms were recognized
- people began t condemn the norms of others
- for this reason, within families there was resentment and hatred which caused them to
separate
- people began to harm each other to the point→ refuse to help each other
- those who understood the nature of this chaos saw that it arose from a lack of rulers
so they chose the best person among the most worthy and capable in the world and
installed the best as the three imperial ministers
- The son of heaven and the three imperial ministers were established but because the
world is so vast it was impossible for them to know and judge in each case what is
right or wrong→ so they divided up the states and established feudal lords
- trickle down theory: if your superior condemns something as wrong then you too
must condemn
- the leader of each village will be the most benevolent
- how good order was maintained in the world: the Son of Heaven was able to unify the
norms followed within the world
- the business of a benevolent person is to promote what is beneficial to the world and eliminate
what is harmful
- harm: wars against states/families, robbing, violence, tricking, power abuse
- origin of harm: hating and stealing from people
- condemn partiality: those who are partial in their dealings with others who are the real
cause of all the great harms in the world
- replace partiality with impartiality: if people regarded other people in the same way
they regard their own→ mutual trust and respect (beneficial)
- impartiality must be taken as the correct standard
- people would want to follow the impartiality king
- anyone who cares for others will receive care from them while anyone who dislikes
others will in turn be disliked
- impartially caring for and benefitting one another, such things are easy to practice but
the problem is that there are no superiors who take delight in them
, Mengzi
- humans have a nature which they should follow
- bad environment can almost destory one’s original nature
- our compassion for others and disdain to do what is wrong are innate but only incipient
- task of moral cultivation is to extend or fill out the reactions from the paradigmatic cases
where we already have them to the relevantly similar cases where we do not yet have them
but ought to
- most people will be unable to develop their nature without having their basic needs
- while everyone has the capability to become a sage, not everyone will realize that ability
- there is a natural order of development of human compassion and that humans must learn to
love members of their family before learning to love strangers
- given the way which our compassion develops out of love of kin, any effor to love everyone
equally violates our naturally greater compassion for family members
- effort to base one’s actions on benefit will be self-defeating
- people have four sprouts: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom
- benevolence is internal and righteousness is external
- those who follow their greater part becomes greater humans
- if one first takes one’s stand on what is greater then what is lesser will not be able to snatch it
away: this is how to become a great human
Black (Chinese political thought)
- 453-221 BC(warring states period): start of Chinese philosophy
- Confucius, Mozi, Shang yang
- Mandate of heaven
- Zhou took the title of the Son of Heaven→ start of distinctinve theory of sacred
monarchy
- power was based on the unique person of the ruler
- kings came to rely on government officials who were chosen for their skill and mental
agility
- shi: memebers of intellectual community connecting them to their master regardless
of time and place→ legitimate member of the elite; overwhelmingly opted for a
political career as a main avenue of self-realization
The Mandate and the people
- monarch ruled trough the mandate of heaven
- not unconditional: heaven is impartial and decides the fate of people
- the mandate depended upon the ruler’s possessing virtue
- this was used to explain the rise and fall of dynasties in the past
- heaven commands the removal of an unjust ruler and it then transfers the mandate to a new
dynasty
- if rulers deviate from the way of virtue and behave oppressively, they will lose Heaven’s
mandate and it may turn out they are overthrown
- king’s role is aid to be to provide spiritual and material benefits
- no independent prophets→ no dividing line between sacred and political
- key component of the ruler’s virtue and claim to be mandate: treat the people well
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