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POL 1004F Comprehensive Notes
- Course
- POL1004F
- Institution
- University Of Cape Town (UCT)
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POL1004F - Intro To PoliticsLecture Notes
Doctor Lushaba - Lecturer
Week 1: The Emergence of the Modern Meaning Totality
- How do students from the world over all cover the same concepts and basis - link to the theme of
globalisation potentially?
- Meaning totality suggests there is a certain way in which meaning is produced, the world over.
- The modern meaning totality was developed during the process of shifting to modernity
- Eg of holidays becoming integral/natural to link to individualism and modernity
- Critical analysis of how western/mainstream political science fails using its own concepts
- European birthplace → foundation of serving the west (leads to ignorance towards non-western issues)
- Failure of meaning when this foundation is applied to non-western societies
- Looking from the perspective of the black colonised
Attitude when looking into the history of politics = What was the nature of the interaction been between these
systems and the impact made on the black colonised
Dr Lushaba brief overview of topics:
Racism = the condition of possibilities that allow the behaviour to occur - “The condition of acceptability”
Structural position of disadvantage to black people, therefore racism is not just an issue of attitude, but an issue
of structure & systems
Theory of social contract - belief that people act in harmony bcs they there would be inevitable war of all
against all - question whether this human nature is true
Romantic Naturalism - tradition of writing prevalent in Europe during the Victorian age - Enacting stories of
non-western societies, often not fully accurate.
-Think how this could lead to a mislabeling of non-western culture
Week 5 - Comparative politics - “Master sub-field of polsci”
- It makes political science “scientific” due to ability to reach conclusions that are true across time and
space
Racism travelled the world on the back of capital, reason & rationality
The Modern Meaning-Totality
- Changed perspective of everything - complete new meaning to life
- Modern Disciplinary Knowledge = Order of Knowledge = Universally Understandable/Comprehensible
(how it’s phrased/largely believed)
- Modern Consciousness is a more accurate phrase as it’s a universal mindset/consciousness that has been
moulded by those in power
- This consciousness allows you to take things as a “given” rather than critically thinking about
decisions/beliefs
“Modern Consciousness” was developed organically in Europe, whereas the non-western countries had it forced
on them through colonisation
, Europe
Ancient → Medieval → Modern
Theocratic Ruling (Divine Right Monarchy)
- Divine rulers = kinds/queens with the backing of god
- Great chain of being - Any category above can use the category below at will
- Hierarchical society based on theology:
1. Men (religious men at top)
Man (all people, including women)
2. Animals/plants
3. Objects/matter
- Due to the unquestioning nature of the leadership and “god’s word”, there was no space for existential
questioning
- Would be punished for sacrilege if questioned
- Those in power were the only ones with the ability to gain and interpret knowledge → this is where the
“Great chain of being” originated
- How did Theocracy lose its hegemony?
- What shifts in the minds of those in Europe took place for this modern consciousness to be made
possible?
- Process started in 1500s
- Triggered by 3 historical occurrences (which all allowed each other to happen):
- Cartesian revolution
- Copernican/scientific revolution
- Religious reformation
- Lutheranism reformation
- Luther → German reformist
- Priesthood of all → believed that any person could interpret scripture
- Copernican revolution
- Copernicus believed that we could explain everything in the world with mathematical precision
- Large part of this = taxonomists
- They had to name + categorise all plants & animals
- Linneaus (prominent taxonomist)
Cartesian Revolution
- Rene Descartes
- Meditations on first philosophy
- Discourse on method
- Concern is to establish the basis of thinking/man
- Radical doubt (scepticism)
- Process starts by doubting everything conceivable and works from a foundation only of concepts
that you can no longer doubt
Copernican/Scientific Revolution
- Introduced existential questions into public discourse with the emphasis placed on scientific answers
being sought out
Lutheranism
- Catholic protestant reformation
- Allowance for existential questions to be asked
, Cartesian revolution
- Most necessary in modern thinking due to rationality
- Establish the basis of knowledge/human thinking
- Radical scepticism
- Doubt everything until something you find something certain
Descartes continued:
- His presence/ability to think was the core belief as the first “certainty”
- Led to the saying “I think therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum)
- The basis for his existence was that he was a thinking human being
- Substitutes “God” with “Man” as the new top of the hierarchy → the source of all knowledge →
“death of God”
- Thought is what makes someone a human being
- Archimedean point of knowledge (or apodictic point of knowledge)
- The base point of pure truth - leads to believing that there is universal
knowledge/consciousness
- The above says that reason is universal - leads to judgement of different cultures as
reason is a modern (western/european) idea
- Reason is “unencumbered” (no contextual limitations)
- Believes that his existence is completely determined by his consciousness/thoughts. The
full being is referred to the “Res Cogitans” and the body is seen as a carrier for the mind
(res extensa)
- Seems insignificant, but impacts organising life, for eg law (difference between charging
for bodily harm or harm of a person)
European Enlightenment - led by philosophers during the same time period which pushed this
change of consciousness
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pg 86 - descartes reading interpreted in lecture
- Man = thinking thing
- Man = rational animal
- Man = reason
- Man = consciousness (thought)
- Body is a vessel for the consciousness to pilot = Cartesian duality
- Implies that the body (incl emotions) is not him, but an extension (res extensa)
- Real essence is the mind (res cogitans)
- Splits humans into a subject and an object component
Pg 132 → cartesian duality → almost all disciplines rely on/are impacted by this concept
- Eg arts and culture developed to “nourish the soul”
- Law distinguishing between crimes against the body vs the “person”*
Europe moving into the modern-industrial period during this time
- It’s impossible to understand the modern consciousness without modern industry
- Modern meaning totality defining characteristic = backed by power/current power relies on it → goal is to
continue its perpetuation
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Modernity focuses on percentages/averages as it looks at the macro scale success
- Makes people statistics and overlooks minorities (Think structural functionalism in sociology)
- If the majority of people cease to conform to modern capitalism, it will collapse
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