Poli 64

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Poli 64 Modern Political Thought
TURN YOUR PHONE OFF!
PARLIAMENT ENACTS THE STAMP ACTNovember 1,
1765 In the face of widespread opposition in the
American colonies, Parliament enacts the Stamp
Act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenue
for British military operations in America.
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Modern thought Jeopardy!
The answer The tendency of society to impose
its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct
on thosewho dissent from them
The question? What is MAJORITY RULE or FORCING
PEOPLE TO BE FREE?
OR IS IT THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY?
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The Classical and the Modern Political Ideals  
We can no longer enjoy the liberty of the
ancients, which consisted in an active and
constant participation in collective power. Our
freedom must consist of peaceful enjoyment and
private independence. The share which in
antiquity everyone held in national sovereignty
was by no means an abstract presumption as it is
in our own day. The will of each individual had
real influence the exercise of this will was a
vivid and repeated pleasure. Consequently the
ancients were ready to make many a sacrifice to
preserve their political rights and their share
in the administration of the state. Everybody,
feeling with pride all that his suffrage was
worth, found in this awareness of his personal
importance a great compensation. This
compensation no longer exists for us today. Lost
in the multitude, the individual can almost never
perceive the influence he exercises. Never does
his will impress itself upon the whole nothing
confirms in his eyes his own cooperation. The
exercise of political rights, therefore, offers
us but a part of the pleasures that the ancients
found in it, while at the same time the progress
of civilization, the commercial tendency of the
age, the communication amongst peoples, have
infinitely multiplied and varied the means of
personal happiness. It follows that we must be
far more attached than the ancients to our
individual independence. For the ancients when
they sacrificed that independence to their
political rights, sacrificed less to obtain more
while in making the same sacrifice we would give
more to obtain less. The aim of the ancients was
the sharing of social power among the citizens of
the same fatherland this is what they called
liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment
of security in private pleasures and they call
liberty the guarantees accorded by institutions
to these pleasures.
Benjamin Constant, 1816
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The eclipse of republicanismand the liberty of
the ancients, and the triumph of LIBERALISM
Revision of historiography Stadial accounts of
development, critique of the classical
ideal (e.g. Athens over Sparta),
emergence of Whig history Ascendancy of
rights discourse Ascendancy of political
economy Development of capitalist and socialist
economic theory Popular government as means of
individual satisficing (and the decline of
collective greatness)
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Classical liberty becomes the purview of
romantics and cranks, a justification for a
Dictatorship of Virtue, the basis of
Totalitarian Democracy, the original form of
Terrorism
Benjamin Constant on Rousseaus political
philosophy I shall perhaps at some point
examine the system of the most illustrious of
these philosophers, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and
I shall show that, by transposing into our modern
age an extent of social power, of collective
sovereignty, which belonged to other centuries,
this sublime genius, animated by the purest love
of liberty, has nevertheless furnished deadly
pretexts for more than one kind of
tyranny.   Rousseau should be regarded as the
representative of the system which, according to
the maxims of ancient liberty, demands that the
citizens should be entirely subjected in order
for the nation to be sovereign, and that the
individual should be enslaved for the people to
be free.   Sparta, which combined republican
forms with the same enslavement of individuals,
aroused in the spirit of that philosopher an even
more vivid enthusiasm. That vast monastic
barracks to him seemed the ideal of a perfect
republic. He had a profound contempt for Athens,
and would gladly have said of this nation, the
first of Greece, what an academician and great
nobleman said of the French Academy What an
appalling despotism! Everyone does what he likes
there.
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John Stuart Mill b. 1806 d. 1873
1809-1820 Education begins at age 3, with Aesop
and Xenophon By age 14, has completed study of
most of the Greek and Latin classics in
their original languages 1821 Completes reading
of Bentham becomes advocate of
Utilitarianism 1823 Arrested for distributing
birth control literature 1826 Mental breakdown
begins rethinking principles of
Utilitarianism 1830 Meets Harriet Taylor 1832
Bentham dies 1836 James Mill dies 1851 Marries
Harriet Taylor 1835 Reviews and endorses
Tocquevilles Democracy in America 1859 Publishes
On Liberty 1861 Publishes Utilitarianism and
Considerations on Representative Government 1869
Publishes (with Harriet Taylor) Subjection of
Women
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Liberalism as a political tradition
Liberalism is the dominant ideology in English
speaking nations
Liberty is individual freedom to act without
interference from others a modern
form of liberty
-- Originally an argument against monarchical and
aristocratic privilege and authority
Some notable achievements of liberalism Freedom
of religion Political and civil rights (for
propertied individuals) Economic freedom
(capitalism)
-- Today an argument for individual opportunity
for self-realization
The problem for liberalism What is required for
individual self-realization?
Liberalisms two schools
Protective liberalism
Developmental liberalism
John Locke
John Stuart Mill
conservatives in liberal polities (economic
liberals, moral conservatives)
liberals in liberal polities (moral liberals,
economic conservatives)
Libertarianism
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Something of a child prodigy, he learned to read
as a toddler and began the study of Latin at age
three. At 12 he was sent to Oxford, and was
admitted to the bar at age 16. A prolific
linguist, he eventually became fluent in 7
different languages English, French, Spanish,
German, Russian, Latin, and Greek, and was
familiar with a half dozen more. He became
disillusioned with the law, and when he was made
financially independent after the death of his
father, he dedicated himself to progressive
political movements, including prison reform,
poor relief, the codification of international
law, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and
animal welfare. One of the most influential
founders of University College in London, which
was one of the first colleges open to all races,
sexes, and classes. A bit of an eccentric, for
ten years before his death he carried around the
glass eyes he planned to have inserted in his
body after death. He fancied himself an amateur
scientist, and when he died, he was embalmed with
a fluid of his own invention. He gave all of his
estate to UCL, on the condition that his body be
kept on display at the College, and was present
at all meetings of the College governing board.
Unfortunately, his scientific skills left
something to be desired. In a short time, the
body shriveled up, and the head fell off.
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A wax effigy replaced the decomposed body, and
the head was placed at the foot of the effigy.
Undergraduates being what they are, the head
frequently went missing. Once it was found in a
storage locker at Aberdeen Station, and it
occasional served as a ball for impromptu soccer
matches on the college lawn. Eventually the head
was boxed and stored away from the scheming plans
of pranksters. The effigy, called the
"auto-icon" can still be viewed at UCL. The
minutes of the College governing board most often
read "Mister X present but not voting," although
it is said he does occasionally vote, always for
the motion on the floor, whenever there is a
tie. HINTS
(3) Designer of the innovative prison called the
Panopticon
(2) He coined a number of neologisms that have
become part of common idiom. "Maximize" and
"Minimize" being the most familiar
(1) Founder of the movement known as
Utilitarianism
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Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
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Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
The goals of society and government
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
The question for reformers
How can society and government be fitted to human
nature?
Human nature
Maximize pleasure, minimize pain
The problem for reformers
Variety of preferences and standards
Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as
good as poetry
Solution Measurement of pleasure and pain
The felicific calculus
Preferences measured by market mechanisms.
Money is the instrument of measuring the
quantity of pain and pleasureEach portion of
wealth has a corresponding portion of happiness
1. Provide subsistence
Do nothing fear of starvation will work
Government goals
2. Produce abundance
Do nothing individuals will always want more
3. Favor equality
Equality must yield, or incentives disappear
4. Maintain security
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John Stuart Mill and the Problem of Human
Felicity
The Goal of human life individual happiness
The Means of individual happiness individual
liberty
The Political Principle of liberty individual
self-sovereignty
The Questions We Must Ask
What constitutes Individual Happiness?
Are there limits to Liberty?
What is required for Self-sovereignty?
The only useful answers to these questions must
be given in terms that bear on the problems of
self-development in social relations
Utilitarianism is the social theory of human
felicity
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Utilitarianism (the social theory of human
felicity)
The purpose of social theory What is useful for
human happiness
The goal of society and government (the principle
of utilitarianism) The
Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number of
Individuals
The first and fundamental question What is
happiness?
Definitional basis
Conditions
Internal (intellectual)
External (material)
Low
Hedonism vs. Excellence
High
High
High
Considerations
What is the relationship of internal and external
conditions?
What are the individual and social implications
of these ideals of happiness?
Mills conclusion Utility (the greatest
happiness) requires progress, and progress
requires Competence
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On Liberty
Utility requires progress, and progress requires
competence
Liberty is the means of self-development for
happiness liberty both protects and develops
competence
Obstacles to competence
External
Internal
Developing
Ignorance
Deprivation
Tyranny
Infirmity
Protecting
Historical limits of competence Intellectual and
material wealth
The principle of liberty freedom in all
self-regarding acts social/governmental
regulation of other-regarding acts ONLY
Greatest danger to competence and individuality
in appropriate conditions
Tyranny of the Majority
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Liberty protects competence by preventing
majority tyranny liberty develops competence by
encouraging individual self-development
Spheres of liberty
Thought and expression (for truth)
Tastes and pursuits (for individuality and
diversity)
Association (institutional forms for thought,
expression, tastes and pursuits)
Further considerations on development (or, why
government should be limited)
Overactive government is inefficient and
undermines self-reliance
Governments have limited capacity individuals
know their own interests
Paternalism stunts development individual
initiative encourages self-development
Monopolization stunts innovation individual
independence encourages creativity
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Mill on Representative Government
Review The prerequisites of progress
Material
Capacity
Intellectual
requires
requires
Development
and Protection
Productive societies
requires
requires
requires
Democracy
Meritocracy
Bureaucracy w/ expertise
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
insubordination, passivity, localism
Limitations
Conditions of success
Acceptance, action, and capacity
Threats to success
Insufficient power
Negative
Underdevelopment
Positive
Particularity
Incompetence
Remedies
Political participation and effective bureaucracy
Means education by example, experience, and
public schooling
Further considerations enfranchisement and
electoral influence