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History of Political Thought: Summary of assigned readings (hopt)
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A summary of all the assigned readings from the hopt course. I had an end-grade of 7.7. Good luck studying!
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Guro van Marion, 2022History of Political Thought - Assigned reading notes
Week 1:
Plato: ship of state
● The ship os state is used to show ten criticisms of direct democracy.
1. Democracy generates dissensus
2. Self-rule generates overconfidence in each of us
3. The members of the demos lack political expertise
4. The people deny the very existence of distinctive political expertise
5. The masses threated to kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority
6. Everybody is encouraged to want to rule → generate murderous conflict
7. The lower classes foment revolutions and steal property of others
8. With the people in control there is much rudderless pleasure
9. The majority are susceptible to flattery and demagogues
10. The masses call demagogue
Plato: the allegory of the cave
● This metaphor is meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul
● Education moved the philosopher through the stages on the divided line, and
ultimately brings him to the form of the good.
● Socrates describes a dark scene → a group of people have lived in a deep cave since
birth and never seen the light of day. These people are bound so they cannot look to
either side or behind, only straight ahead. Behind them is a fire, and behind the fire a
partial wall. On top of the wall are various statues, which is manipulated by another
group of people, lying out of sight behind the partial wall. → because of the fire the
status cast shadows across the wall that the prisoners are facing, they watch stories
that these shadows play out, and because these shadows are all they ever see they
believe it to be the real world.
● The people in the gave represent the lowest stage on the line - imagination
● A prisoner is freed from his bonds and is forced to look at the fire and the statues
themselves. After the initial period of pain and confusion because of direct exposure
of his eyes to the light of the fire, the prisoner realizes that hat he sees are reality. He
accepts the statues and fire as the most real things in the world → this stage in the
cave represents belief
● He has made contact with real things—the statues—but he is not aware that there are
things of greater reality—a world beyond his cave.
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,Guro van Marion, 2022
● this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world above. At first, he is so dazzled
by the light up there that he can only look at shadows, then at reflections, then finally
at the real objects—real trees, flowers, houses and so on. He sees that these are even
more real than the statues were, and that those were only copies of these. He has now
reached the cognitive stage of thought.
● When the prisoner’s eyes have fully adjusted to the brightness, he lifts his sight
toward the heavens and looks at the sun. He understands that the sun is the cause of
everything he sees around him—the light, his capacity for sight, the existence of
flowers, trees, and other objects.
● he goal of education is to drag every man as far out of the cave as possible. Education
should not aim at putting knowledge into the soul, but at turning the soul toward right
desires.
● The overarching goal of the city is to educate those with the right natures, so that they
can turn their minds sharply toward the Form of the Good. Once they have done this,
they cannot remain contemplating the Form of the Good forever. They must return
periodically into the cave and rule there.
● Because the Form of the Good illuminates all understanding once it is grasped,
knowledge is holistic. You need to understand everything to understand anything, and
once you understanding anything you can proceed to an understanding of everything.
●
Plato: justice
● Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger.
● Justice is the advantage of the stronger because when stupid, weak people behave in
accordance with justice, they are disadvantaged, and the strong (those who behave
unjustly) are advantaged.
● he claims further that these mores and norms are conventions that were put in place
by the rulers (the “stronger”) for the purpose of promoting their own interests.
● Justice is thus a sort of specialization. It is simply the will to fulfill the duties of one's
station and not to meddle with the duties of another station, and its habitation is,
therefore, in the mind of every citizen who does his duties in his appointed place. It is
the original principle, laid down at the foundation of the State, "that one man should
practice one thing only and that the thing to which his nature was best adopted". True
justice to Plato, therefore, consists in the principle of non-interference.
● Justice, therefore, is the citizen sense of duties.
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● Whenever appetite functions the under reason, it will be moderate or temporary.
When reason works under the control of its own breath, it will attain its virtue, which
is called wisdom. And when all these parts of mind, thus, function under the
supremacy of reason, the virtue of mind as a whole is born and that virtue is called
justice. Thus, Plato suggests that justice is the virtue or quality of mind. It is neither
might nor selfishness and it cannot be equated with success.
● Plato defined ‘justice’ as having and doing what is one’s own. In other words,
everybody does their own work.
Plato: city of pigs
Week 2:
Alfarabi - The Political Writings
● Human associations
- Large associations is an association of many nations coming together and
helping one another
- The medium is the nation
- And the small are those the city embraces
● The city is first in the rankings of perfections, while the household is the most
defective association.
How nations are distinguished from one another
● Nations are distinguished from each other by language and the positions of the
inclined spheres from parts of the earth and what occurs in those parts because of the
spheres proximity or distance (sun?)
● The soil of the country is distinct → water, plants, animals, food
● Temperaments and natural states of character differ
The virtuous city - the active intellect and human happiness
● The active intellect gives proceeds to what the heavenly body does for humans. It
gives humans a faculty and a principle by which to strive on his own towards the
perfection that remains for him
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● sense -perspective and the appetitive parts of the soul → creates will
● By attaining the imaginative part of the soul and the longing that follows upon it after
that→ after these two are attained, it is possible to attain the rational part the primary
cognitions from the active intellect. → the third will is generated = the longing from
reason/ “choice” —> this is what sets humans apart from animals → enables humans
to strive towards happiness
● Happiness is unqualified good. → it is in the substance of the heavenly bodies to give
whatever is in the nature of material to receive without their caring about what is
useful/harmful
● Voluntary good is generated only in one way:That is because the faculties of the
human soul are five. → happiness can only be cognized by means of the
theoretical-rational faculty - not the others. When he is cognizant of it he longs for it
by means of the appetitive faculty. He then deliberates by means of the
practical-rational way to gain it. By means of the appetitive instruments of appetitive,
he does the actions by means of deliberation. The imaginative and sense-perspective
contribute to arousing the human to the actions by which he gains happiness.
1. Theoretical -rationale
2. Practical rational
3. The appetitive
4. The imaginative
5. The sense-perceptive
● The rational faculty is only conscious of happiness when it strives to apprehend it
● Voluntary evil is generated in this way: when a human being slackens in perfecting
the theoretical-rational part, he is not conscious of happiness so as to have an appetite
for it. He sets up goals about what is useful, what is pleasant, domination, or honour.
He longs for it with appetitive faculty. By means of the practical rational faculty, he
deliberates so as to infer what will gain that end. By means of the instruments of the
appetitive faculty, he does those things he has inferred. And the imaginative and the
sense-perspectives contribute to that. = then everything that he generates is evil
● Voluntary evil is generated if man is cognizant of his happiness but does not set it
down as his aim and end. He longs for another life other than happiness = generates
evil
● Happiness = ultimate perfection → only possible by the active intellect having first
given the primary intelligibles, which are the primary cognitions.
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