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History of political thought Part 1: Lectures 1-7
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This a transcribed version of lectures 1-7 for the course History of political thought. This was very useful when studying, hope it helps you as well! :)
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Concepts HOPTLecture 1:
Plato
- 488-347 B.C, Athens
- Student of Socrates + Teacher of the ruler Seracuse
- Wrote the Republic & founded the academy
Popular democracy of Athens
- Limited to free male citizens (30 000 people)
- Ekklēsia (regular assembly) + everyone could participate by raising
their hands
- Boulē (council) for important/urgent matters : 500 citizens chosen by
lottery (sortition) and serve one year ---- set agend for ekklēsia,
oversaw athenian bureaucracy, and main judges in trials
- Magistrates were also mostly chosen by lottery
Platonic criticisms of democracy
1. Reign of false
- Self-rule generates overconfidence
- Citizens lack expertise
- people are susceptible to flattery & demagogues
- masses call demagogues (political agitators) “skilled”
- masses deny existence of political expertise
2. Disorder
- Dissensus (difference of opinions)
- threaten/kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority
- Everybody wants to rule which generates murderous conflict
- Masses incite revolutions and steal property
3. Explains the psychological commitments in the republic
4. Presupposes some important normative commitments: political
desirability of order, unity and truthful politics
Epistemocracy
- on what grounds/authority does someone have to lead
- who makes decisions and monitor admission?
, - how to know ruling experts will receive legitimacy from its people
- will the experts rule fairly?
Aristotle
- student of Plato and mentor of Alexander the great
- most important European thinker of middle ages on the subject of
politics
Challenges of Sortition (lottery democracy)
- inexperienced individuals chosen to rule (legislators, Magistrates,
judges)
- vulnerable to bureaucratic control of the boulē
- statistical problem because not truly representative
- nowadays juries are chosen random
Political theory
- abstract account of the means, conditions of, and constraints on what
power is or could be exercised for
- Uses:
normative guidance: aims to guide behavior/how to improve
our situation locally or ideally
explanation: causes, statistical regularities, process training,
functional explanation, sympathetic interpretation or rational
reconstruction
tool in empirical research: theory tells you what data and
phenomena to pay attention to generate testable hypotheses
unmasks status quo: tries to question ruling views by showing
that they are masks for power
conceptual clarification to confused concepts: fixes the
meaning of concepts by offering sufficient conditions, canonical
exemplaries and distinguishes between different versions a
concept since many concepts can be ambiguous or contested
Lecture 2:
Plato’s duality of the city
- makes visible justice in the individual and forms the basis for
methodological individualism
, - assumes the macro and micro are similar even identical in some
sense: macro is composed of micro
- hence, qualities of the state must be rooted in qualities of the
individual
- privileges an anti-individual approach to promote harmony of the
whole
City of pigs/ ‘True City’
- specialization based on Plato’s definition of human nature
- open to internal/external trade which generate surplus of goods and
leisure, and famine free
- surplus generates population growth
- A monetized economy (property owning) and it’s broadly egalitarian
(no slaves and pacific)
- Minimal state structure
- No philosophy and a joyful religion that is non-organized form of
religion
- No luxury/arts
Kallipolis/The lovely city
- Natural hierarchy ordered rationally from the top : Guardians (rulers),
auxiliaries (soldiers), workers (economy)
- Division/ specialization of labor is done in order to serve the whole
and produce good (functional)
- Has a tripart soul: rational, spirited and desiring part
Human nature (according to Plato)
- Uses the same definition in both models
- People are characterized by innate differences which are heritable,
and reflects specialization and natural hierarchy
- Relies on some kind of identification of nature & goodness
- Hierarchy is present in both sexes but relatively symmetrical (best
women almost as good as best man and vice versa)
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