An Introduction to Political Philosophy Rationalist and Empiricist Theories, and that this division reflects, and depends upon, the division betweenrationalistand empiricist theories of logic and knowledge. If this is so, nofinalanswer can be given to the questions of political philosophy without a decision on these broader issues, but a necessary and important task will have been accomplished if the problems of political philosophy are reduced to their ultimate and logical form.

An Introduction to Political Philosophy An Introduction to Political Philosophy

An Introduction to Political Philosophy On the other hand, so long as the issue between Rationalism and Empiricism is left open, there is no reason why Rationalism should not be combined with a Naturalistic Theory of Morality. For then, even if moral conceptions can be defined in terms of non-moral conceptions, they may be necessarily related to the subject of the propositions in which they occur if it is possible for a proposition to be at once synthetic and a priori It is, indeed, quite consistent to combine either a Moral or a Naturalistic Theory of Morality with either a Rationalist or Empiricist Theory since the latter represent the alternative views which may be held about the logical status of moral propositions, while the former represent alternative views which may be held about the meaning of moral concepts. On the other hand, if Empiricists are right in holding that the basic premise of Rationalism—that synthetic propositions may be a priori—is self-contradictory., the rationalist form of both Moral and Naturalistic Theories is automatically ruled out, and the issue narrowed to a choice between the empiricist forms of the Moral and Naturalistic Theories. Political theories may therefore be broadly classified as follows: Rationalist Moral But a regime is more than simply a set of formal structures and institutions, okay? It consists of the entire way of life, the moral and religious practices, the habits, customs, and sentiments that make a people what they are. The regime constitutes an ethos, that is to say a distinctive character, that nurtures distinctive human types. Every regime shapes a common character, a common character type with distinctive traits and qualities. So the study of regime politics is in part a study of the distinctive national character types that constitutes a citizen body. To take an example of what I mean, when Tocqueville studied the American regime or the democratic regime, properly speaking, in Democracy in America, he started first with our formal political institutions as enumerated in the Constitution, such things as the separation of powers, the division between state and federal government and so on, but then went on to look at such informal practices as American manners and morals, our tendency to form small civic associations, our peculiar moralism and religious life, our defensiveness about democracy and so on. All of these intellectual and moral customs and habits helped to constitute the democratic regime. And this regime–in this sense the regime describes the character or tone of a society. What a society finds most praiseworthy, what it looks up to, okay? You can’t understand a regime unless you understand, so to speak, what it stands for, what a people stand for, what they look up to as well as its, again, its structure of institutions and rights and privileges. Widely recognised to be a 'classic' text written by a leading scholar, active in contemporary research. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-08-02 02:01:43 Boxid IA40200007 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Republic, 1,337 (translation by F.M.Comford). ibid., 1,346. A modern illustration of this principle is the fate of Hitler after his refusal to accept the settlement reached at the Munich Conference in October, 1938, and in ultimately losing all his power by placing no limit to his ambitions. Republic, I, 352.In more recent times various attempts have, of course, been made to introduce the 'rule of law* into international relations. Exploring the institutions, operations, and techniques of totalitarian movements, Arendt’s 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism focuses on two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our recent history — Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia — which she shrewdly establishes as two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. While Wollstonecraft and others sowed the seeds for the ‘first wave’ of feminist philosophy and activism, French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 The Second Sex marks the starting point of second-wave feminism, whereby the aim is to achieve gender equality beyond voting rights. Callicles A theory which closely resembles that of Antiphon is attributed by Plato to Callicles in the dialogue Gorgias, According to Plato, Callicles held that Nature is governed by the law of force, while civil and moral laws are normally the result of contracts made by the weak to defraud the strong of what their strength would otherwise secure for them. In a state of nature the survival of thefitwould be the effective rule of life, whereas the laws of society frequently reverse this principle and compel the strong to assist the weak. Callicles thought that his theory was supported by the considerations that in both the animal kingdom and the sphere of international relations,1 in neither of which there are restrictive laws, the rule of force is the operative principle. Hence, Callicles concludes, the rule of force is natural, and should not be opposed by the laws of society. It is not clear from what Plato tells us about Callicles* theory whether (to put the point in modern terms) he was defending a naturalistic theory of morality by defining 'right' in terms of 'might', or whether he was merely arguing that, as a matter of fact, it is morally desirable that the strong should get their way. The fact that he tried to deduce what ought to happen in human society from what does happen in the animal kingdom suggests that the The Nature and Scope of Political Philosophy 13 Classification of Political Theories Political philosophies may, therefore, be provisionally divided into Moral and Naturalistic Theories of the State. Moral Theories are those which claim to justify government on moral grounds, while Naturalistic Theories are those which claim to justify it on scientific grounds. The justification provided by Moral Theories claims to be categorical and unconditional, whereas that provided by Naturalistic Theories is necessarily hypothetical, since it is necessarily conditional upon the desire for a certain end. In Moral Theories the ends of government are defined as the ends which ought to be pursued. In Naturalistic Theories these ends are defined as the ends which are desired Moral Theories tell us what we ought to do, while Naturalistic Theories tell us what we must do if we wish to achieve certain ends. But if different people desire different ends there is no way by which a Naturalistic Theory can determine which end ought to be preferred, since such discrimination would involve a moral judgment Moral Theories have fallen under two main heads according as the good of the state or the good of the individual has been regarded as primary. On the one hand it has been held that the good of the state defines the standard to which the individual ought to conform, and, on the other hand, it has been held that the good of the individual defines the purpose which the state ought to serve. Thefirsttype of theory has been variously known as the Organic or Collectivist Theory and the second as the Machine or Individualist Theory, and the division corresponds roughly to the popular distinction between 'totalitarian' and 'democratic' theories of government. When the Individualist Theory defines the moral ideal as pleasure it is commonly known as Utilitarianism, since the methods and aims of government are then judged to be good in so far as they are useful in promoting people's pleasure, or, as it is often said, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number*. But although political theories can be readily divided into Moral and Naturalistic Theories, there is another, and equally fundamental, division. Whether or not moral concepts are, as the Moral Theory asserts, specific and indefinable in terms of non-moral concepts, there remains the question whether the propositions in which these terms appear are a priori or empirical.1 If, for the reasons set forth above,2 it is agreed that moral propositions are in any case synthetic, it will follow that they must be empirical unless, as Rationalism asserts, synthetic propositions can be a priori. Thus, whether or not moral terms can be defined in naturalistic terms, moral propositions must be empirical unless the fundamental premise of Rationalism is true. The historical examples of the Moral Theory have in nearly every case been based on the premises of Rationalism, for almost all have assumed that the propositions of morality are a priori and possess a categorical necessity. Hume's moral theory is a notable exception to this generalization, for he maintained both that moral experience is a specific and irreducible type of experience and that moral propositions are none the less wholly empirical. But most historical examples of Empiricist Theories have also been Naturalistic Theories, like the theories of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Bentham. 1

Conceptualizing Politics | An Introduction to Political Conceptualizing Politics | An Introduction to Political

Revised and updated to diversify the text throughout, in terms of the thinkers considered, the examples used, and the further reading recommended. An Introduction to Political Philosophy The difference between analytic and synthetic propositions was defined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as follows: Analytic propositions, he said, 'add nothing through the predicate to the concept of the subject, but merely break it up into those constituent concepts that have all along been thought in it, although confusedly', while synthetic judgments 'add to the concept of the subject a predicate which has not been in any wise thought in it, and which no analysis could possibly extract from it'.1 The difference is, in short, that the predicate in an analytic proposition is contained within the meaning of the subject, while in a synthetic proposition the predicate is not contained within the meaning of the subject but adds something related to it. Kant illustrated the difference by the two propositions 'All bodies are extended' and 'All bodies are heavy'. The former, he thought, is analytic, because the concept of 'extension' is part of the meaning of 'body', while the latter is synthetic because the concept of 'heaviness' is not part of the meaning of 'body', but only a quality which it acquires when it is placed in a gravitational field. Kant's definition drew attention to an important difference between analytic and synthetic propositions, although not all analytic propositions naturally fall into the simple subject-predicate form which his examples illustrate. The essential characteristic of an analytic proposition is that it defines the meaning, or part of the meaning, of its subject and does not describe unessential features which may, or may not, belong to it A cube of iron has a certain weight at sea level, a smaller weight at the top of a high mountain, and no weight at all at a certain point between the earth and the moon; but these differences are not essential elements in the meaning of the description 'cube of iron'. It is clear, on the other hand, that if the cube of iron had no extension it would not be a cube of iron, since extension is an essential part of the meaning of the phrase 'cube of iron'. In other words, to deny an analytic proposition is self-contradictory since that is simultaneously asserting and denying the same thing. It is, to borrow Bertrand Russell's example, like saying 'A bald man is not bald'.1 Modern philosophers have devoted much attention to the study of analytic propositions, and many would agree with Professor Ayer that 'a proposition is analytic when its validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains',2 and that this is so because analytic propositions 'do not make any assertion about the empirical world They simply record our determination to use words in a certain fashion.'3 They are, in other words, tautologies; and the reason why we think it worth while to assert them and sometimes, as in mathematics, to draw elaborate deductions from them, is that our reason is too limited to recognize their full significance without going through these complex verbal processes. These considerations may appear to be extremely abstract and their connection with what is commonly understood as 'political philosophy' far from obvious; but in fact this connection is both simple and fundamental. For philosophy is the 'quest for certainty', and if certainty is a characteristic of propositions, then an inquiry into the nature and scope of The works listed so far have all been written by — and mostly for — men. In the development of modern Western societies, women were largely excluded from the political arena in both literal and theoretical terms — until great thinkers like English philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft began making waves with powerful works like her 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she challenged the dominant narrative that women shouldn’t receive a rational education. After the disastrous ideological experiments of the 20th century, German-born American political philosopher Hannah Arendt diagnoses where it all went wrong. An Introduction to Political Philosophy is a concise, lucid, and thought-provoking introduction to the most important questions of political philosophy, organised around the major issues. Wolff provides the structure that beginners need, whilst also introducing some distinctive ideas of his own.

The best introductory text about political philosophy currently available. The contents are easy for the newcomer to the subject of political philosophy to assimilate. The narrative is clear and thought provoking." - Professor Ian Godfrey Finlayson, European School of Economics, UK Whatever form the best regime takes, however, it will always favor a certain kind of human being with a certain set of character traits. Is that type the common man, is it found in democracies; those of acquired taste and money, as in aristocracies; the warrior; or even the priest, as in theocracies? No, no question that I can think of can be more fundamental. And this finally raises the question of the relation between the best regime or the good regime, and what we could say are actually existing regimes, regimes that we are all familiar with. What function does the best regime play in political science? How does it guide our actions here and now? This issue received a kind of classic formulation in Aristotle’s distinction of what he called the good human being and the good citizen. For the good citizen–we’ll read this chapter later on in the Politics–for the good citizen you could say patriotism is enough, to uphold and defend the laws of your own country simply because they are your own is both necessary and sufficient. Such a view of citizen virtue runs into the obvious objection that the good citizen of one regime will be at odds with the good citizen of another: a good citizen of contemporary Iran will not be the same as the good citizen of contemporary America. Manifesto of the Communist Party, p. 150 (Allen and Unwin, 1948). E.g. laws forbidding cruelty to animals.