History of Political Thought class notes and summary 2022
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Course
History of political thought (73210026FY)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Hello, this is an extensive summary and class notes from the lecture of history of political thought taken in the first year at University of Amsterdam. Includes notes from class
- ‘The people’ They constitute the state (sovereign), nobody needs to revolt, fair etc.
- ‘The elderly’ Experienced, safe-guard tradition, risk averse
- ‘The King/ Queen’ Constitutes the state (sovereign), decisive, birth-right, luck
sanctified by God/tradition, simple mechanism
- ‘The Elected’ (president/cabinet) Excludes the incompetent/impopulair, gives a
choice to the people or religious, minimizes coordination costs
- ‘The Party’ On the side of history, decisive, organized around common aim,
Another option:
Experts-rule or Epistemocracy
- Presupposes that ruling is a craft/ skill pr requires knowledge (or competence)
PLATO:
- 428?-347 BC, Athens
- Mostly wrote dialogues
- Most of which feature his teacher, Socrates, as lead character
- Socrates was put to death by Athenian jury
- Founded the Academy
- Lasted 300 years
- Would be teacher of the ruler/tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysus II
BRIEF INTERLUDE TO ATHENS:
- It was so-called direct or popular democracy
- Excluding women, children, slaves, and resident foreigners
- Met in regular assembly (ekklesia)
- All men could participate, vote (by raising hand), and speak freely (isegoria)
- For important matters (e.g. war) there was the boule or council, which was composed
of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot (sortition) and who served for one year.
- Many magistrates were also chosen by lot
- The council set the agenda for the assembly and oversaw the Athenian bureaucracy; it
was the main jury/judges in trial unitary state
- cf. Separation of Powers (Polybius; Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois)
- The poor were subsidized to do so.
FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURY ATHENS
- 492-449: leading part of coalition (with Sparta) in the wars that defeated Persians
, - 478ff: Athens became leader of Delian league (Perikles)
- Voluntary, but it became a de facto Athenian empire
- Athens controlled the navy
- The junior partners paid tribute to Athens
- 431-404: Peloponnesian War
- Plague and defeat
- 404/3: Thirty Tyrants
- Led by Critias (student of Socrates)
- 399: Socrates convicted to death after return of democracy
- 338: Athens defeated by Philip I
SOME INTERPRETIVE DECISIONS
- In a democracy the ship-owner= the people
- So, the unruly sailors are ambitious politicians (generally drawn from upper classes)
AT LEAST THEN PLATONIC CRITICISMS OF POPULAR DEMOCRACY
1. Democracy dissensus
2. Self-rule generates overconfidence
3. Most ambitious would-be-rulers lack expertise
4. And deny the very existence of political expertise
5. They threaten or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority
6. The desire of the ambitious to rule murderous conflict
7. The elites incite (oligarchic9 revolutions and steal property
8. With demagogues in control there is much rudderless pleasure
9. The people are susceptible to flattery and demagogues
10. The masses call demagogues ‘skilled’
SOME EAVALUATIVE COMMENTS
- On 1.: direct democracy generates dissensus because everybody can have a say (1 and
6) the ambitious, who hope to rule, will use flattery of the people in order to enrich
themselves
- That everyone wants to be in control is implausible
- Even so, all Socrates needs for the analogy to work is that rich people want to be in
control (seems plausible)
- As an aside: Plato seems to have thought that the practice of direct democracy
revealed the (undesirable) fact of value-pluralism
- Value pluralism = existence of conflicting and incompatible values
- Consequence of (i) the product of the diversity and inconstancy of human desires/
appetites (see 8); and (ii) the lack of regulation of these in a commercial democracy
such as Athens
- Cf. Max Weber (1864-1920), by contrast, thinks value-pluralism is a product of
modernity, especially advanced division of labour
, - On (2) that self-rule always generates overconfidence in all the would be rulers, is
probably too strong. There are risk averse people.
- But that rich and successful people when ruling, without external constraint (other
states’ power etc) are overconfident is not altogether implausible. Plato would have
been able to see the point to disastrous expeditions of Athenians to Syracuse as
evidence.
- On (5) ‘They threaten/kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority. Plato could
point to the trial and execution of his mentor, Socrates.
- Friends of direct democracy might argue that the case of Socrates was the exception
rather than the rule
- On (6 and 7) much of the history of Greece, as relayed by Herodotus and Thucydides,
suggests an eternal return of local civil wars among the rich and poor
- Athens seems to have been the relatively stable exception (because the poor
subsidized by income from imperial tributes)
ON DEMAGOGUES AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY
- 4: The rich who shape public opinion deny the very existence of political expertise (see
also 3)
- 10: the masses call demagogues ‘skilled’
- A demagogue can persuade the masses that his ersatz/fake political craft is, in fact, the
real thing
- The rejection of political expertise (3-4) is bad enough, but the embrace of the
demagogue’s fake-skill as the real thing corrupts in overturning pre-existing opinion
- The demagogue’s true danger: he undermines the habits of thought and reasonable
expectations (by making everybody complicit in a reign of falsity)
NOTICE SOMETHING ABOUT THIS LIST
1. Democracy dissensus (disorder)
2. It generates overconfidence (reign of false)
3. Lack of expertise (reign of false)
4. Deny that very existence of political expertise (reign of false)
5. They threaten or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority (disorder/anarchy)
6. Competition for power (disorder) conflict (disunity)
7. Would be powerful incite revolutions and steal property (disorder)
8. There is much rudderless pleasure (disorder)
9. The masses are susceptible to flattery and demagogues (reign of false)
10. The masses call demagogues ‘skilled’ (reign of false)
Disorder/disunity: 1, 5 and 8
Reign of False: 2-4 and 9-10
In Plato: the true/ truth is harmonious
, So if we abstract away from details, Plato’s critique of popular democracy
- Relies on some empirical facts and predictions about how direct democracy behaves
(or would behave)
- He explains these psychological commitments in Republic
- He explains these political consequences in rest of Republic and can rely on his
reader’s knowledge of Athenian history
- Presupposes some important normative commitments:
- A. Political desirability of order/unity
- B. Political desirability of truthful politics
- In politics we should pursue the good (that is order/ unity and truth), which can be
known by those with expertise. Defends this in Republic
- Experts should rule ( philosopher kings)
- Terminological note: normative claims are value judgements (living up to a standard).
Often signalled by use of words like ‘should’ / ‘should not’, ‘better’ or ‘worse’
FOUR THEORETICAL PROBLEMS IF EPISTOMOCACY
1. On what (objective) grounds is somebody thought to qualified to lead ?
- What skills/competencies/ knowledge are required ?
- Much of the Republic devoted to explaining education of philosphers-kings
2. A) who gets to decide (1) a d b)who monitors the admission ?
- In the Republic, the experts self-select
- This requires a strong public ethos and ability to select (and breed) for competence
3. Even if 1-2 can be met, why think the ruling experts will be accepted by the rest ?
4. Will the experts rule fairly ?
ARISTOTLE 348-322 BC
- Student of Plato (and critic)
- Mentor of Alexander the Great
- Founded the Lyceum
- Lasted about 275 years
- Became the most important European thinker in the Middle Ages (thanks to
scholastics)
- The phrase ‘politics’ as in ‘political theory is derived historically from the book title of
Aristotle’s Politics which can be translated as “affairs of the cities”
SORTITION/LOTTERY
- Aristotle, Politics, Books IV-V
- Associate elections with olicharchies/aristocracies (who have limited franchise based
on property/wealth)
- Only much later are elections thought democratic
- Basic democratic idea: (since when it comes to politics) nobody is better than anybody
else Everybody has equal right to participate and rule politically
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