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Summary political philosophy - David Miller
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MillerChapter 1 – Why do we need political philosophy?
We can define political philosophy as an investigation into the nature, causes, and effects of good
and bad government. (Ambrogio Lorenzetti)
Three ideas that stand at the very heart of the subject
1. The first is that good and bad government profoundly affect the quality of human lives: it
really makes a difference to our lives whether we are governed well or badly.
2. The second idea is that the form our government takes is not predetermined: we have a
choice to make.
3. The third idea is that we can know what distinguishes good government from bad: we can
trace the effects of different forms of government, and we can learn what qualities go to
make up the best form of government.
There is such a thing as political knowledge.
When talking about government, it means much more than ‘government of the day’. It is broader
than the state; it is the whole body of rules, practices and institutions under whose guidance we live
together in societies.
That human beings need to cooperate with one another, to know who can do what with whom etc.
When Lorenzetti painted his murals, he presented good and bad government primarily in terms of
the human qualities of the two kinds of rulers, and the effects those qualities had on the lives of their
subjects.
Good government was as much about the character of those who governed as about the system of
government itself.
Today the emphasis has changed: In political philosophy, we think more about the institutions of
good government, and less about the person qualities of the people who make them work.
The easiest idea to defend is the idea that government profoundly affects the quality of our lives.
Think about the Nazi regime or Mao’s China: millions were killed. The fatalistic view that we do not
have any influence on political choices was especially prevalent a few centuries ago. History moved in
cycles: good government could not endure, but would inevitably become corrupted with the passage
of time, collapse into tyranny, and only through slow stages be brought back to its best form.
In the 19 century the belief was historical progress: history moved in a straight line from primitive
th
barbarism to the higher states of civilization. But once again, this implied that the way societies were
governed depended on social causes that were not amenable to human control.
The most influential version of this was Marxism, which held that the development of society
depended ultimately on the way in which people produced material goods. Politics became
part of the “superstructure”: it was geared to the needs of the prevailing form of
production. Clearly, the ideology failed to make the right predictions.
Politics, it turns out, was to a considerable extent independent of economics, or of social
development more generally, as became clear in the 20 century.
th
A new kind of fatalism has appeared in the 21st century. The growth of a new global economy and
the idea that states have little space to maneuver because of it. ‘End-of-history’ thesis : All societies
would be propelled by economic forces is governing themselves in the same way.
There is already a backlash against globalization and the appearance of environmentalism. These
movements challenge the idea that economic growth is the supreme goal.
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