PLATO’S ​

REPUBLIC
Plato is trying to do a large number of things in the ​Republic​. His overall concern is with the ways in
which human beings can best live – what is the good life? Plainly, he wants to defend the idea that
the good life involves virtue; he also believes that it involves living in community. There are
interesting questions about whether you can live the right sort of life in the wrong sort of community.

The ​Republic​ is an encyclopedic text, one that wants to make claims in ethics, political theory, social
theory, educational theory, in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of art. Plato starts with
ethics, specifically with questions about the right ways for an individual to live. His ostensible
purpose in introducing the ideal state is to reveal some features of the well-ordered soul (individual)
more clearly. But, on the encyclopedic interpretation, he takes the ideal seriously as a proposal in
political theory. Derivatively, he has to explore the character of genuine knowledge (epistemology),
the nature of reality (metaphysics), the proper ways of training people (educational theory), social
arrangements within the ideal society, and the role of the arts.

Summary

The official focus is on justice, although there are plenty of passages in which Plato seems interested
in all the components of living well.

1)​​Justice as paying what’s owed (Cephalus)

“Wealth can do a lot to save us from having to cheat or deceive someone against our will and from
having to depart for that other place in fear because we owe sacrifice to a god or money to a person.”

2)​​
Justice as helping friends and harming enemies (Polemarchus)

3)​​Justice as the will of the stronger (Thrasymachus)

“Listen, then. I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger. Well, why don’t
you praise me? But then you’d avoid anything to do that.”

4)​​ By Book 4: Justice as “having and doing one’s own” - Justice as that which establishes the reign of
reason
“Therefore, from this point of view also, the having and doing of one’s own would be accepted as
justice.”

“That’s right.”

“Consider, then, and see whether you agree with me about this. If a carpenter attempts to do the
work of a cobbler, or a cobbler that of a carpenter, or they exchange their tools and honors with one
another, or is the same person tries to do both jobs, and all other such exchanges are made, do you
think that does any great harm to the city?”
1 
…
“Meddling and exchange between these three classes, then, is the greatest harm that can happen to
the city and would rightly be called the worst thing someone could do to it.”

“Exactly.”

“And wouldn’t you say that the worst thing that someone could do to his city is injustice?”

“Of course.”

“Then, that exchange and meddling is injustice. Or to put it the other way around: For money-making,
auxiliary, and guardian classes each to do its own work in the city, is the opposite. That’s justice, isn’t
it, and makes the city just?”

“I agree. Justice is that and nothing else.”

One feature of Plato’s approach deserves mention because it’s so obviously different from that of
many later writers and from our own. Justice is thought of as a quality of individuals and only
secondarily of actions. We tend to view things the other way round: there are just acts, and people
are just because they tend to perform those acts. One way to be very critical of Plato is to accuse him
of changing the subject. Thrasymachus and Glaucon wonder about whether people who tend to do
just things undercut their own happiness; Plato responds by introducing a notion of justice that takes
the just individual to be one who has a harmonious soul; is it so surprising that he can then make a
connection between “justice” and happiness?

Plato presents a hierarchy of types, descending from most to least just:

1)​​Philosopher-King
2)​​Timocrat
3)​​Oligarch
4)​​Democrat
5)​​Tyrant

Political Theory

Plato offers a description of a number of different kinds of states. Before we arrive at the kallipolis,
we’re offered (in Book II) two other possibilities. One involves uncorrupted people living a rather
rudimentary life (it gets dismissed as a “city for pigs”), and the other adds some higher activities at the
cost of corruption. In the ideal state, we’re presumably supposed to be able to take over the good
features and eliminate the bad ones.

What’s the point of the ideal city? Socrates tells Adeimantus in Book IV that “we aren’t aiming to
make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible”. What

2 
exactly does this mean? There are several possibilities:

1.​ ​ To bring it about that the happiness (the genuine happiness) of the lives of the citizens always
exceeds a minimum level that is set as high as possible; (nobody lives a life that is too bad).
2.​ ​ To maximize the average genuine happiness of the citizens’ lives.
3.​ ​ To create a community that, considered as a whole, is genuinely happy.

Modern political theory tends to start from the idea of an individual with certain rights that ought to
be respected, or with projects that he/she has formulated and chosen, and then to evaluate forms of
government by taking their functions to be either 1 or 2. Plato doesn’t seem to do anything like that.
In many passages, the community comes first, and he suggests that living in the right kind of
(harmonious) community is a component of genuine individual happiness.

Plato has a quite different conception of human freedom than we have today. He can be viewed as
opposing the notion of separated individuals pursuing their projects without interference from others,
by denying that those projects can amount to anything significant in the absence of the right sort of
community structure. Freedom isn’t a matter of getting other people out of your way, but of getting
you to participate in a wider community so that your life is genuinely enhanced.

The Self

Republic​
The ​ provides an original and influential view of the self. Plato’s theory of the soul can be
interpreted as a first attempt to do psychology. In distinguishing the parts of the self, Plato is trying to
understand the roles they play in human thought and action, and especially how they work in the
good life.

His theory of the self stands on the tripartite division of the soul:
1)​​philosopher
2)​​honor-lover
3)​​money-lover

Plato also suggests a conception of the relation between mind and body. The Myth of Er (Book X)
seems to support an immaterialist view: the psychological subject is not part of the material world,
but becomes attached to it at birth. The Myth of Er complicates the account of human happiness, in
that we’re no longer confined to the secular perspective that dominates Books II to IX.

Plato is clearly committed to the view that, by nature, people are better suited to certain kinds of
tasks and positions. Considered in today’s context, this raises questions about biological
determinism. Do contemporary ideas about the causes of human character traits and behavior
support or subvert this kind of position?
Knowledge and Reality

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 Republic​
Plato uses the discussion of the education of the guardians in the middle books of the ​ to put
forward his views about the nature of reality and of human knowledge.

The big challenge here is to understand what Plato thinks the Form of the Good might be. Is it
genuinely knowable? Is it susceptible to description? Does knowledge of it guarantee virtue?

Social Theory

Unlike many other authors in CC, Plato faces the question squarely and argues for giving women a
public place and a serious education. He says quite explicitly that women cannot be expected to do
things as well as their male counterparts. So he’s sometimes been chided for sexism and sometimes
hailed as an early voice for women.

Plato, however, approaches these questions differently from the way we tend to do so. He’s not in
the business of defending women’s ​ rights​
to a public role – he’s not in the business of defending
anyone’s​ rights. What moves him is the thought that, under the social system he knew, a lot of talent
in each community is being wasted. He wants women to participate because he thinks their
contributions, while inferior to those of men, will be good for the community.

He also doesn’t blink issues that many later feminists would like to downplay (or ignore). Something
has to be done about the private roles women have traditionally played, and Plato falls back on his
strong commitment to division of labor. He thinks you don’t need a nuclear family, and that
specialists can do an excellent job at rearing the children. Considering the population as a whole, do
we really do any better by our children than the kallipolis would?

Consider also Plato’s theory regarding who is qualified to rule. Is the training he envisages capable of
producing people who could be trusted to make wise decisions? Could that sort of government
proceed without any constitutional constraints? The philosophers make a real sacrifice in
administering the city, when they have to give up the contemplation of the Forms for mundane work;
they do that only because they recognize that they have a duty to do so. This indicates a tension in
Plato’s thinking about the good life. On the one hand, he tends to suggest that the good life is one
lived in community; on the other, he thinks of philosophical contemplation as the highest type of
existence of which we are capable. If you take the second idea seriously, it’s easy to think that a
solitary sage could lead the best kind of life.

Education

Plato presents a single prescribed system for a particular class of students – for the guardians. They
need “Philosophy, spirit, speed and strength”. They also need education in music and poetry. This,
however, must be carefully censored, as all of Plato’s theory jumps from the assumption that lives
imitates art. Do you accept this?

4 
They must, for example, must only be exposed to true stories. “For these reasons, then, we should
probably take the utmost care to insure that the first stories they hear about virtue are the best ones
for them to hear.”

“We’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we delete these passages and all similar ones.
It isn’t that they aren’t poetic and pleasing to the majority of hearers but that, the more poetic they
are, the less they should be heard by children or by men who are supposed to be free to fear slavery
more than death.”

“Aren’t these the reasons, Glaucon, that education in music and poetry is most important? First,
because rhythm and harmony permeate the inner part of the soul more than anything else, affecting
it most strongly and brining it to grace, so that if someone is properly educated in music and poetry, it
makes him graceful, but if not, then the opposite. Second because anyone who has been properly
educated in music and poetry will sense it acutely when something has been omitted from a thin and
when it hasn’t been finely crafted or finely made by nature. And since he has the right distastes, he’ll
praise fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and being, nurtured by them,
become fine and good.”

What, in sum, do you need to know to be a philosopher? It’s not a slate of information, it’s epistemic:
you need to grasp Plato’s metaphysics to understand his point. You need to be able to grasp the
good. Which means you need to know that the good exists - that there is sun outside of the cave.

The Arts

Plato’s attacks on the poets in Book III and on the arts in general in Book X has often proved
controversial. Is he right to suppose that the arts ought to perform a socially valuable educational
function if they are to exist? If not, what is the source of their value? Are societies ever right in
banning (or suppressing) some forms of artistic expression? On what grounds?

Can survival of the magical quality of the arts – the triumph of reason over emotion – be considered
the true test of a ideal guardian? Could this be one of the purposes of the Myth of Er?

“Then we must also set up a competition for the third way in which people are deprived of their
convictions, namely magic. Like those who lead clots into noise and tumult to see if they’re afraid, we
must expose out young people to fears and pleasures, testing them more thoroughly than gold is
tested by fire. If someone is hard to put under a spell, is apparently gracious in everything, is a good
guardian of himself and the music and poetry he has learned, and if he always shows himself to be
rhythmical and harmonious, then he is the nest person for both himself and for the city. Anyone who
is tested in this way as a child, youth, and adult, and always comes out of it untainted, is to be made a
ruler as well as a guardian…”

5 
ARISTOTLE

6 
 Nicomachean Ethics​
and ​
Politics
The Ethics begins with a fundamental question, taking its cue from Plato’s Republic: what is the good
life? Aristotle agrees that it’s happiness, but unlike Plato he see s multiple routes to the good life – to
the ultimate end, ​ eudaimonia, ​ translated as happiness in English but best conceived as “contentment”
or “fulfillment.” The good life consists of reaching the proper ​ mean​, no matter the field. Some fields
are still superior to others, however: thus the highest level of virtue is realized through the exercise of
reason. Aristotle reaches this conclusion through an argument based around ​ functionality​
that takes
its cue from Plato’s notion of ideal ​forms​: human beings’ ideal function involves the exercise for
reason because it’s the one thing that distinguishes them from all other beings.

teleology​
Aristotle’s ​ differs from Plato’s. Where Plato begins with the Good and plots the precise way
to achieve this in politics, Aristotle starts with the variety of polities surrounding him, carefully
analyses them, and then evaluates which best leads back to the good. Plato might therefore be
considered an ​ idealist​
, and Aristotle more of a ​ materialist​
.

Once Aristotle establishes the outlines of the good life in the ​ Ethics​
, he goes about determining how
Politics​
best to produce the good life in reality, in the city-state – the subject of the ​ . Because Aristotle
begins his analysis embedded in the world he lives in, he recognizes that many different types of
polities (instead of one ideal republic) can exist, in different combinations. He does, however, think
that some systems work better than others, and it’s the analysis of their relative merits that the
Politics​investigates.

The “Good Life”

“The good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” (NE)

Pleasure is an important part of happiness for Aristotle, but pleasure isn’t necessarily what think it is.
There is a hierarchy of pleasures, and theoretical contemplation comes out at the top. The happy life,
moreover, involves activity (and contemplation counts as an activity) – simply being fed pleasurable
sensations won’t do. Self-sufficiency, moreoever, is part of happiness – dependency on others (or on
factors external to ourselves) detracts from the quality of a life.

The good life must involve virtue. Aristotle’s conception of virtue, however, diverges from our
standard usage (which tends to list those traits of character that conduce us to acting well). He likes
to think of people, insofar as they are able to live well, as having enough independence and autonomy
to direct their own conduct, and their virtues as exemplified in their ​decisions​ actions​
and ​ . Virtue is
not necessarily innate, but can be learned.

There are three KINDS of life, which map on to Plato’s separation of

appetitive/honor-loving/knowledge-loving functions:
- pleasure
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- political
- contemplative

The good life involves acting virtuously. Virtue is achieved by finding the mean is all fields.

“Therefore virtue is a kind of mean.” (NE)

“Again, it is possible to fail in many ways… while to succeed is possible only in one way… for these
reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue… virtue, then,
is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean.” (NE)

The good life is impossible outside of communities.

Natural hierarchy

Aristotle has views about nature, human nature, and society that implicitly assume the existence of
natural hierarchies. The mind is superior to the body. Activity stands above relaxation. Complete
virtue (employment of all the intellectual and moral virtues) is better, quantitatively and qualitatively,
than employment of only some. Men rule over women. Women stand above children and slaves.
Humans are superior to beasts. Among the beasts there are also gradations. All of his assumptions
about natural hierarchy hang together and relate to each other. The superiority of the mind over the
body mirrors the superiority of the human over the animal. Thus the inferiority of the (natural) slave
reflects the fact that his human (non-animal) mental part is less developed.

Property

Aristotle sketches the kind of story about the origins of property that we’ll encounter in much later
texts. Primitive socio-economic arrangements simply consist in households combining so that you
can reap the benefits of division of labor. From this, he thinks, a more extensive trade will flow and,
eventually, because of the difficulty of hauling around (or dividing) certain kinds of necessary goods,
you’ll introduce a conventional medium for exchange (money). Then people can start amassing this
medium through producing and exchanging efficiently. Aristotle advocates this; property is a
necessary precondition for living the good life. You need leisure to live the good life;

fixed for different kinds of people – even whether there are some people for whom some of
Aristotle’s good components aren’t necessary at all.

Responsibility

In Book III of NE, Aristotle approaches the issue of the conditions under which people are responsible
for their actions. Note that Aristotle is laying the foundations for the treatment of people by the law,
in ways that continue to this day. Given his assumptions about the biological basis of some of our
8 
traits, to what extent are our practices of punishment justified? To what extent do social failures to
develop the characters of individuals absolve those individuals of responsibility?

Aristotle believes that praise and blame can only attach to voluntary actions, i.e. actions done (1) not
by force, and (2) with knowledge of the circumstances. The terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ must
be used with reference to the moment of action.

“Acting by reason of ignorance seems also to be different from acting IN ignorance; for the man who
is drunk or in a rage is though to act as a result not of ignorance but of one of the causes mentioned,
yet not knowingly but in ignorance.” (NE)

In addition, an act is not judged good just by its product, but by its intentions.

“The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them… he must choose the acts and
choose them for their own sakes.” (NE)

“Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or temperate man would
do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does then
AS just and temperate men do then.” (NE)

“But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers.”
(NE)

Friendship

Friendship is central to both the good life and the city-state because of two assumptions: first, human
beings are social animals, and thus cannot live the good life without relationships; second, virtue is
learned through practice, and friendships help us practice virtue.

Perfect friendship: “the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike
to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends
for their sakes are most truly friends.” (NE)

Imperfect people can also be friends, but this is a different sort of friendship, not the ideal:

“Because of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be friends of each other, or good men of
bad.” (NE)

Bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or utility, whereas good men will be friends b/c of
themselves, in virtue of their goodness.

The good life is impossible outside of communities:

9 
 “It is evident from these considerations, then, that a city-state is among the things that exist by
nature, that a human being is by nature a political animals, and that anyone who is without a
city-state… by nature, is either a poor specimen or else superhuman.” (P)

“Anyone who cannot form a community with others, or who does not need to because he is
self-sufficient, is no part of a city-state – he is either a beast or a god.” (P)

Slavery

Aristotle believes that some people are naturally suited to the menial work of slaves, and others have
natures that equip them to pursue higher ends.

“Someone who can belong to someone else is a natural slave.” (P)

Therefore “some… are naturally free, others naturally slaves, for whom slavery is just and beneficial.”
(P)

But there are also two TYPES of slavery: by law (as when people are captured in battle) and by nature.
Condemnations of slavery are actually only of the former category: when people not made to be
slaves by nature become so by law.

The definition of the citizen

Consonant with his emphasis on the value of activity, Aristotle takes the citizens to be those who
participate in the “offices” of the state.

“It is evident from this who the citizen is. For we can now say that someone who is eligible to
participate in deliberative and judicial office is a citizen in this city-state, and that a city-state, simply
speaking, is a multitude of such people, adequate for life’s self-sufficiency.” (P)

Aristotle’s political categories

Aristotle thinks that some people are better able to make political judgments than others – and that
birth and wealth are reasonably good criteria for identifying the appropriate people. But he also
believes that the cumulative judgment of a large number of people can outweigh the opposite
opinion of a few “betters”.

Aristotle believes there are THREE correct types of constitution, each with their corresponding
deviation:

10 
-Kingship
deviation: tyranny
- aristocracy
deviation: oligarchy
- polity
deviation: democracy

When it functions properly kingship is the best, form, but if there are deviations, then democracy is
the best.
“When all these constitutions are good (for example, when an oligarchy is good and also the others),
democracy is the worst of them, but that when they are bad, it is the best.” (P)

There are also several KINDS of democracy:

Democracy 1 – based on EQUALITY

Democracy 2 – based on PROPERTY
Democracy 3 – based on LAW
Democracy 4 – based on CITIZENSHIP
Democracy 5 – based on MULTITUDE (popular leaders)

Equality

Aristotle believes that equality is a relative notion. The important issue, therefore, is always “Equality
of what?” One might read Aristotle as providing a sophisticated version of Polemarchus’ approach to
Republic​
justice at the beginning of the ​ : justice is a matter of treating equally those who are equal in
the pertinent respects, and of treating unequally those who are unequal in the pertinent respects.

Roman and Hellenistic Philosophy

Epicurus, Epictetus (Stoicism)
Context: Timeline of what we’ve studied to date, and will study next

11 
Hellenistic philosophy: period between death of Alexander and rise of Christianity

Shift from Athens to Rome; most of knowledge of later Greek world comes from Roman sources; very
heterogeneous group of thinkers; central to political life

Comparison Table

Epicureanism Stoicism

No one surviving text, letters are abridged, but Very little surviving, surviving texts are Roman
largely faithful

Static philosophy, quasi-religion Very fluid, changed, became kinder, removed

physics

Ascetic, also needed to be practiced Ascetic, to get rid of dependence upon material,
needed to be practiced, effort and intention i.e.
choice, according to nature

Epicureanism and Physics Stoicism and Physics

Understanding is essential to a happy life, Understanding is essential to a happy life,

12 
because it frees us of the fear of supernatural
powers
Infinite universe, consisting of matter and void
Infinite worlds
Inanimate matter, with no origin, no end, no
purpose
This is one world among many, neither good nor
bad, but simply there. Each world is mortal and
finite, although the universe is immortal and
infinite
The gods, being perfect, are not troubled by
anything, and therefore have no interest in
human affairs. They do not interfere; they do
not help or hinder humans; they simply are
Epicureanism and Life
The goal of life is living in accordance with
nature i.e. the material world
You do this through seeking pleasure, which is
defined as the absence of pain
You should not be unhappy even when being
tortured through memory of past happiness
Happiness consists in the satisfaction of limited
desires. You can be happy by seeking only
pleasures that are both necessary and good
13
because it assures us of the rationality and
goodness of the world
Spherical universe, surrounded by void
One world
Animate (divine) universe, controlled by and
identified with purposeful god; subject to
destruction and recreation
This is the best of all possible worlds
The universe is and is governed by the logos
(=divine fine), the main characteristic of which is
right reason, in which all rational beings
participate. Being divine and rational, the
universe is harmonious and predictable through
reason
Stoicism and Life
The goal of life is living in accordance with
nature i.e. the universe
By participation in the rationality of the divine
logos, we will be virtuous, and virtue alone is
sufficient for perfect happiness
You should be happy even when being tortured,
because you are still virtuous and rational
Whatever happens by definition happens for
the good of the universe of which you are a part
 
Epicureanism
-​
human beings troubled, bodily pain can be assuaged by diversion, thoughts of pleasure, friendship
​

-​
unpleasantness of life comes from socially constructed desires (immortality, control of one you love,
​

exotic foods)
-​
major assault on religion
​

-​
engagement with nature of universe
​

-​
anti-political (yet another cause of anxiety)
​

-​
detached, simple life
​

-​
difficult for Romans to accept, therefore changed to good citizenship
​

S​
toicism
-​life dedicated to virtue
​

-​highly active conception

​

-​rationalist, living in accordance with reason

​

-​opposed to Epicureanism
​

-​divine purpose at heart of universe

​

-​free will compatible with determinism

​

-​how to learn not to have deforming emotions (anger, jealousy, grief, fear)
​

-​much wider influence, much more compatible with Roman society

​

-​active rather than detached

​

-​ideal of conduct, enormously influential

​

-​necessary not optional

​

Epicurean Ethics

Major figures: Epicurus (341-271 BCE), Lucretius (mid-first century BCE, author of didactic poem on
Epicurean physics)

Nature

According to Epicurus, it is natural for human beings to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Insofar as
human beings pursue pleasure ​ naturally​, pleasure is the starting-point of human action. But it is also
telos​
the end (​ ): A human life is a good life if the agent pursues pleasure rationally.

Pleasure

According to Epicurus, pleasure is the good. The end (​ telos​

) is defined as freedom from bodily pain
aponia​
(​ ) and mental perturbation (​ataraxia​). Epicurus’ ethics is ‘optimistic’: the good life is attainable.
Epicurus’ theory of pleasure and pain is in part designed so as to explain that pleasure is not difficult
to attain:

(i) pleasure is the absence of pain (rather than: the absence of pain is a middle, neutral state, and

14 
pleasure is something over and above the absence of pain);
(ii) it does not make a difference in which way a pain is alleviated, e.g., whether thirst is alleviated by
drinking water or by drinking a more luxurious drink;
(iii) the fact that pleasure is the good does not mean that one should habituate oneself so as to
acquire ever larger desires, which then presumably allow for more pleasure – rather, it is rational to
train oneself to take pleasure in very simple things;
(iv) bodily pain is either short, leading to death (which is ‘nothing to us’: language misleads us into
thinking that there is a state of ‘being dead’ – but, when death occurs, there is no sentient being
whose state this would be), or light, so that we can distract ourselves by anticipating future pleasures;
(v) mental perturbation (especially fear) is particularly painful and can be avoided by eradicating
‘empty beliefs,’ such as that the gods punish human beings, send thunder and other natural events as
omens, respond to favors, or that death is a bad thing;
(vi) what we should be doing is to pursue pleasure ​ rationally​
, i.e., to calculate correctly with respect to
different pleasures and pains;
(vii) ultimately, the pleasurable life it that of the philosopher, who spends his/her life considering the
nature of things, thus eradicating ‘empty beliefs,’ having simple desires, and living with like-minded
friends.

Stoic ethics

[Early Stoics: Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BCE, ‘founder’ of Stoicism), Cleanthes (c. 331-232 BCE),
Chrysippus (c. 280-206 BCE); so-called middle Stoa: e.g., Panaetius and Posidonius; later Stoa: e.g.,
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca.

Nature

Like Epicurus, the Stoics hold that nature guides human beings, ‘sets them on the right track.’ Human
beings naturally love their closest relatives and try to sustain themselves (their bodies and their
cognitive capabilities). This is the basis of what has, for human beings, value and disvalue (e.g., health,
wealth, strength, life, etc., have value; their opposites have disvalue).

Human beings need to understand nature in order to be able to make the appropriate choices with
respect to valuable and disvaluable things. The end (​ telos​
), according to the Stoics, is to ‘live in
agreement,’ or ‘live in agreement with nature.’ Being virtuous is the final stage of a process in which
one tries, and gradually succeeds in gaining a better understanding of nature, so that one can act
accordingly, and live a life that is in accordance with nature.

The Stoics are famous for the thesis that virtue is the only good. This thesis is subject to much ancient
debate, and scholars disagree on its interpretation. Some scholars have held views which see the
Stoics of ancestors of a (broadly speaking) Kantian picture, according to which considerations of virtue
‘trump’ other considerations. However, this view has recently attracted much criticism. Recent studies
point out that virtue consists in consistently deciding for actions which take things of value and

15 
disvalue adequately into consideration. That only virtue is good arguably means that, in the end, what
matters is that we become perfect deliberators who understand what is by nature conducive to the
well-functioning of human beings, and come to act accordingly. This might also be what ‘consistency’
or ‘agreement’ (terms which the Stoics use to describe the state of the virtuous soul) are: to possess
knowledge of nature (a consistent ‘body of knowledge’), and thus to be able to act in each particular
situation on the basis of this knowledge.

The good life is, for the Stoics, much more difficult to attain than for Epicurus. The sage – that is, the
wise and happy human being – is as rare as a phoenix, a mythical creature which comes into being
every 500 years. Happiness is attainable, but, in fact, we all (apart from the occasional sage) are fools
and miserable. Epictetus’ ​ Handbook ​ addresses readers who strive for virtue, so-called ‘progressors’.
Epictetus develops techniques which are designed to help us fully appreciate the truth of
philosophical insights, making them vivid for ourselves –
more vivid than the (presumably) superficial lifestyle which surrounds us, and keeps telling us that
success, wealth, etc., bring happiness. In the midst of such distraction, we need philosophical
exercises to help us hold on to philosophical insights.

opinions ​
It is central to Stoic thought that ​ make us unhappy. For the Stoics, this (roughly speaking)
follows from (i) the Socratic tenet that virtue is knowledge and (ii) the strict dichotomy of wisdom and
foolishness (virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance). The virtuous person has knowledge, and is
wise; anyone who is not virtuous, in possession of knowledge, and wise, is vicious, ignorant, and a
fool. This means: Opinions fall on the side of ignorance, vice, and foolishness. Anyone who does not
have knowledge is ignorant, and thus miserable (rather than
happy).

Happiness

Stoic epistemology and theory of action is based on the idea that human beings assent to impressions
phantasiai​
(​ ). Among the different kinds of impressions which the Stoics discuss are:
sensory ​
(i) ​ non-sensory ​
impressions, (ii) ​ impressions, (iii) impressions which present a course of action
as to be done (practical or “​ hormetic​
” impressions). Sensory and non-sensory impressions can be
either ​cognitive ​ non-cognitive​
or ​ . Cognitive impressions ‘arise from what is’ and are impressed [into
the soul] exactly in accordance with what is. It is a matter of scholarly controversy whether practical
impressions, which present courses of action as to be done, can be classified as cognitive and
non-cognitive.

Assent to an impression which presents a course of action as to be done (as ‘appropriate’) is identified
with impulse (​ hormê​ ). Impulse generates (if there is no external impediment) action.
This is of crucial importance for Stoic thought about whether happiness is attainable: Our actions are
‘up to us,’ as is the disposition of our soul, which is largely3 a result of assents (if one assents only to
cognitive impressions, which show things precisely as they are, and if one assents in a firm and
unchangeable way, all the things one holds to be true make up one consistent system of knowledge –
this is the disposition of virtue/wisdom/knowledge). This is relevant to the beginning of Epictetus’
16 
Handbook​ : Epictetus begins with the distinction
between what is up to us and what is not up to us. We can attain a good life because our actions and
our assents depend on us, and thus we can shape the condition of our soul and become virtuous and
happy.

Epicurus on Society

Both Epicurean and Stoic political philosophy return to the early Greek debate about nature (​ phusis​ )
and custom/law/convention (​ nomos/thesis​ ). According to Epicurus, justice ​is ​
a contract.
His theory of justice is based on an account of the gradual development of human culture. Justice
cannot be in a traditional sense ‘by nature’: it is a historical product. But Epicurus does not side with
the view that justice is ‘by law/convention’, ​rather than ​ being natural. While claiming that justice is a
contract, he talks of ‘nature’s justice’: nature’s justice is a contract to the effect of not harming each
other. The avoidance of harm is what we seek naturally, and the setting up of the contract is in this
sense ‘natural.’ (However, the details of how to interpret this position are controversial.)

If justice is established by a contract, does this mean that our notions of justice are somehow not fully
valid, that they are ‘merely’ by convention in a way which discredits their normative force? No. Even if
a law is merely right in a given historical situation, it has, in this given situation, full normative force.

Epicurus attributes great importance to fear: fear is a key motivator in setting up contracts in human
society. Epicurus’ discussion of how a wrongdoer can never have peace of mind, for fear of being
eventually detected, engages with the kinds of questions raised by Plato’s discussion of the ring of
Gyges. Epicurus’ answer to the question whether it ‘pays’ to be unjust is not the Platonic answer.
Rather, it is a more straight forward response to those who suggest that undetected wrong-doing is
an ideal. One can never be sure to remain undetected, and thus it is impossible to do wrong and be at
peace.

Stoic Political Philosophy

The Cosmic City

The Stoics famously propose some kind of cosmopolitanism: all human beings, or rather, all rational
beings, belong to one city – the world. This kind of cosmopolitanism is an ancestor of
modern cosmopolitan theories, but also quite different. E.g., the gods count as citizens of the cosmic
comparison​
city. The term ‘cosmic city’ goes back to a ​ like a city​
: The world is ​ .

Some scholars hold that Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, conceives of a city of sages, whereas later
Stoicism is concerned with a city of all human beings. Another view is that there are two
elements in Zeno’s theory, as well as in later theory:

(a) In order to be a full citizen (or: a citizen in the technical sense of the term), one needs to be a sage,
17 
or a god (gods are wise). To be a citizen means to be able to live according to
the law (and that means: to live according to nature).

(b) At the same time, all human beings are inhabitants of the world, and belong together as
fellow-inhabitants of it.

Three Stoic claims:

(i) Only the sages are citizens.

(ii) All human-beings are fellow-citizens and inhabitants of the world.
(iii) Gods and human beings live in the world as their home.

Possibly, (i) is Zeno’s view, and (ii) a view taken by his successors. According to the second reading, (i),
(ii), and (iii) are consistent, and (even though the individual Stoics disagree in detail) part of the theory
that Zeno and his successors hold.

Common Law

The Stoics are equally famous as ancestors of the natural law tradition. The Stoic epithet for the law is
‘common’, not ‘natural.’ Their law is nevertheless by nature. The law is identified with reason, or Zeus,
who pervades the world. Reason, Zeus, or the law, ​ regulates ​
the world. The Stoics thus, like Epicurus,
do not accept the traditional antithesis of law and nature; the only true law is nature’s law. Several
aspects of the Stoic conception of the common law are foreign to the natural law tradition. Zeus (or:
corporeal​
god) is the first principle of Stoic physics, and is ​ . The law is thus identified with a corporeal
god. The natural law tradition arguably conceives of the law as consisting of ​ laws ​
(however, this would
need to be discussed with respect to individual theorists). But it is a much debated question whether
Stoic ethics has any room for laws (or rules).

Quotations: Epicurean thought

Epicurus, ​
Letter to Herodotus

‘we must use our sensations as the foundation of all our investigations’

‘there is nothing that we can grasp in the mind, either through concepts or though analogy with
concepts, that has real existence’

‘Men imagine that the celestial bodies are divine yet ascribe to them purposes inconsistent with
divinity; and they anticipate eternal suffering after death. Peace of mind follows freedom from such
fears and will be gained if we trust to our immediate feelings and sensations’

‘In addition to these general matters, we must observe this also, that there are three things that

18 
account for the major disturbances in men’s minds. First, they assume that the celestial bodies are
blessed and eternal yet have impulses, actions, and purposes quite inconsistent with divinity. Next,
they anticipate and foresee eternal suffering as depicted in the mythos, or even fear the very lack of
consciousness that comes with death as if this could be of concern to them. Finally, they suffer all
this, not as a result of reasonable conjecture, but through time of the some sort of unreasoning
imagination; and since in imagination they set no limit to suffering, they are beset by turmoil as great
as if there were a reasonable basis for their dread, or even greater. But it is peace of mind to have
been freed from all this and to have constantly in memory the essential principles of the whole
system of belief. We must therefore turn our minds to immediate feelings and sensations – in
matters of general concern to the common feelings and sensations of mankind, in personal matters,
to our own – and to every immediate evidence from each the means of judgment. If we heed these,
we shall rightly track down the sources of disturbance and fear, and when we have learned the causes
of celestial phenomena and of the other occasional happenings, we shall be free from what other
men most dread.’

Quotations: Stoic Thought

Epictetus,​
Handbook

‘Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses,
desires, aversions.’

‘If you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is, just as it is, not your
own, then no one will ever coerce you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, you will not
accuse anyone, you will not do a single thing unwillingly, you will have no enemies, and no one will
harm you, because you will not be harmed at all’

‘You … must let some things go completely’

‘eliminate desire completely, since if you desire something that is not up to us, you are bound to be
unfortunate’

‘what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things’

‘do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do
happen, and your life will go well’

‘at each thing that happens to you, remember to turn to yourself and ask what capacity you have for
dealing with it’

“this is the price of tranquility; this is the price of not being upset”

19 
‘whoever wants to be free, therefore let him not want or avoid anything that is up to others’

“what weighs down on this man is not what has happened but his judgment about it”

‘you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed’

‘detach the good and the bad from what is not up to us and attach it exclusively to what is up to us’

‘there is therefore no way for a person who thinks he is being harmed to enjoy what he thinks is
harming him’

‘everything that turns out is indifferent’

‘turn your whole attention toward your faculty of judgment’

‘remember that the contest is now and the Olympic games are now and you cannot put things off any
more and that your progress is made or destroyed by a single day and a single action’

Marcus Aurelius, ​
Meditations

“Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands,
like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against
nature: and anger or rejection is opposition.”

“Consider too what breath is: wind – and not even a constant, but all the time being disgorged and
sucked in again. That leaves the thing part, the directing mind. Quit your books – no more hankering:
this is not your gift.”

“It is high time now for you to understand the universe of which you are a part, and the governor of
that universe of whom you constitute an emanation.”

“You may leave this life at any moment: have this possibility in your mind in all that you do or think.
Now departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve
you in any harm.”

“Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nevertheless
remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he
loses. It follows that the longest and the shortest lives are brought to the same state… So always
remember these two things. First, that all things have been of the same kind from everlasting, coming
round and round again, and it makes no difference whether one will see the same things for a
hundred years, or two hundred years, or for an infinity of time. Second, that both the longest-lived
and the earliest to die suffer from the same loss.”

20 
“In man’s life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole bodily
composition rotting, his mind a whirligig, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it
shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion:
life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.”

“What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consists in
keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing
nothing without aim, truth, or integrity, and independent of others’ action of failure to act.”

“We should also sttend to things like these, observing that even the incidental effects of the processes
of Nature have their own charm and attraction. Take the baking of bread. The loaf splits open here
and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker’s profession, somehow catch the
eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives
ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit.”

“Not all can share in this conviction – only one who has developed a genuine affinity for Nature and
her works.”

“What of it, then? You embarked, you set sail, you made port. Go ashore now. If it is to another life,
nothing is empty of the gods, even on that shore: and if to insensibility, you will cease to suffer pains
and pleasures, no longer in thrall to a bodily vessel which is a master as far inferior as its servant is
superior.”

“Do not waste the remaining part of your life in thoughts about other people, when you are not
thinking with reference to some aspect of the common good. Why deprive yourself of the time for
some other task?”

“If you set yourself to your present task along the path of true reason, with all determination, vigour,
and good will: if you admit no distraction, but keep your own divinity pure and standing strong, as if
you had to surrender it right now; if you grapple with this to you, expecting nothing, shirking nothing,
but self-content with each present action taken in accordance with nature and a heroic truthfulness in
all that you say and mean – then you will lead a good life. And nobody is able to stop you.”

“No action in the human context will succeed without reference to the divine, nor vice versa.”

“At break of day, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready to mind: ‘I am getting up
for a man’s work. Do I still then resent it, if I am going out to do what I was born for… ‘But this is
more pleasant.’ Were you then born for pleasure – all for feeing, not for action?”

“The point is that you do not love yourself – otherwise you would love both your own nature and her
purpose for you.”

21 
22 
 The Bible
The first five books (​Torah​ Pentateuch​
,​ ) are traditionally linked together, although many scholars think
of Deuteronomy (literally “second law”) as belonging to a different cluster. Tradition holds that these
five books were written by Moses; there are lots of reasons why this has been abandoned, including
linguistic and critical analysis.

Next comes a history. This is initially centered on the conquest of the promised land and struggles
with indigenous inhabitants (Philistines etc.). The Israelites are led by religious figures, but eventually
they acquire a king (Saul). There are continuing troubles with the Philistines, and an Israelite hero –
David – emerges. He eventually becomes king, and brings the two parts of the kingdom (Israel and
Judea) together. After his death, the unified kingdom is ruled by his son, Solomon, who builds
the temple. When Solomon dies the unity collapses, and, after a sequence of relatively weak rulers,
the Northern kingdom (Israel) falls to the Assyrians. The Assyrians are overthrown by the
Babylonians, who eventually subdue the Southern kingdom (Judea), and the Israelites go into exile.
They return to Jerusalem after Babylon has been overthrown by the Persians. A second temple is
built.

There’s a big theme running through this history (and also through parts of the first five books): the
chosen people are constantly disobeying their god, and this leads them into extensive suffering;
typically, they are chastised for their disobedience by the prophets, religious figures who remain
faithful.

The Hebrew Bible contains a book of religious poetry (Psalms). Many, but not all, of the psalms are
attributed to David. There’s also a “wisdom literature” (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job), and an
apocalyptic book (Daniel).

Sources

From the middle ages on, readers of the Bible have considered the possibility that it is pieced together
from various sources. Since the nineteenth century, almost everyone has agreed that there are
several different sources and traditions that have been synthesized. In a very simple summary (refer
also the handout I gave you in class): there were two older traditions, J and E, that present variants on
a narrative line; J is written from the perspective of the Southern kingdom (Judea), E from that of the
Northern kingdom (Israel). J versions and E versions of various stories sometimes lie side by side in
the Torah, and sometimes are intertwined. They are also accompanied by another source, P, that
introduces different material, often focused on the identity and duties of priests, and with the details
of ritual. With Deuteronomy there begins a different perspective, one that carries through one
version of the history (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings), and that is very enthusiastic about the Judean
king, Josiah (one of the successors of Solomon). Unfortunately, Josiah was killed, and, after his death,
Judea was conquered by the Babylonians. After the return, the material of J, E, P, and D was
integrated and smoothed out by one or more religious leaders; Ezra is often taken to be the person
23 
who fashioned the Torah as we have it, editing the older sources, and introducing some material of
his own (R – for “priestly redaction”).

The prophetic books can have multiple sources. Isaiah contains at least three voices. One, dominant
in Chapters 1-39, seems to have been written before the conquest of Judea, and is typically full of
denunciations against the waywardness of the people. Chapters 40-55 are marked by a very different
tone, anticipating a return from captivity and exile; these are often ascribed to “Deutero-Isaiah”,
writing at least a century after the author of the first chapters. The end of the book is different again.
Much of the evidence for these attributions is highly complex, turning on the particular words that
occur in particular passages.

Exodus

The deliverance from Egypt is a central event in Judaism. In this event, God displays his choice of a
people​ individuals​
. Genesis is all about ​ , and the promises God makes, both to Noah and to Abraham,
concern them and their families. At the beginning of Exodus, we have a group of Abraham’s
descendants, living in Egypt. They don’t yet count as a ​ people​
. But, for no obvious reason, God
chooses them as ​his​people, and their identity is forged through the activity of Moses.

Why does God choose these people? What does he want from them? Why does he want it? What
is it for them to follow him? Why does God proceed in the ways he does, such as hardening
Pharaoh’s heart? Is there a difference between the identity with which the people start (descendants
of Jacob), and that with which they end up (exiles? servants of God?).

In the end, none of the adult exiles – not even Moses – will get to enter the promised land. The
people have to wander in the wilderness for forty years because they renege on the covenant. But
what is the promise of the covenant itself? Apparently, the reward comes in terms of the ​ earthly
prosperity of the chosen people, either those who are faithful or their descendants. They aren’t
promised a wonderful life in the hereafter. Moreover, the direct expression of the promise, the land
itself, is already occupied (a fact that is going to cause all sorts of trouble throughout the coming
books). How can we make sense of a divine promise to choose one group of people at tremendous
cost to others? God seems quite willing to have the Israelites slaughter large numbers of the native
inhabitants of the promised land. Are the Israelites somehow superior? How?

God
​

What are God’s principal attributes? Which of the Greek virtues does he embody? Can we hope to
understand any sort of transcendent being? Is it appropriate for us to subordinate ourselves and our
wills to a being we can’t understand? Is it just for any such being to demand obedience of us in the
absence of understanding?

Exodus 3 “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with
24 
Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel and God knew their condition.”

Exodus 3 “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘THE
LORD’, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent
me to you: this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

Exodus 4 “Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under
the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an
outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.”

Exodus 15 “Who is like thee, O Lord, among the Gods?

Who is like thee, majestic in holiness,
Terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
Thou didst stretch out thy right hand,
The earth swallowed them.”

Judges 6 “When the people of Israel cried to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a
prophet to the people of Israel; and he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you
up from Egypt, and brought you out of the house of bondage; and I delivered you from the hand of
the Egyptians, and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave
you their land; and I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not pay reverence to the gods of
the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not given heed to my voice.”

Ethics

What exactly are the Ten Commandments? (Note that there are three versions: Exodus 20: 3-17;
Exodus 34: 11-27; Deuteronomy 5: 7-21. The two Exodus versions differ radically; the first Exodus
version is close to that of Deuteronomy.)

Should God be seen as the ​source​of the principles? Or is he simply a conduit, conveying to the
people, via Moses, his recognition of what is objectively good, independent of his decisions? Do the
events of Exodus provide us with any reason to think that God is especially perceptive about what is
actually good?

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

p. 65-66

1)​​
I am the Lord your God
2)​​
You shall have no other Gods before me
3)​​
Not take the Lord’s name in vain
4)​​
Remember the Sabbath day

25 
5)​​
Honor your father and mother
6)​​
You shall not kill
7)​​
You shall not commit adultery
8)​​
You shall not steal
9)​​
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
10)​
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife
​

11)​
You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.
​

Law

The precepts outlined in Exodus are often variations on articles that appear in the law codes of Near
Eastern societies. Exodus emphasizes religious ritual enormously. Why is this so important? Should
a deity really be so concerned with the proper construction of the tent of meeting or with the creation
of idols?

Exodus 21-23 – LAWS

-​ ​
when you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go free.
-​ ​
Children belong to the master
-​ ​
Male slaves and female to be treated differently
-​ ​
Whoever strikes father or mother should be put to death
-​ ​
P. 67) “If a thief is found breaking in, and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for
him; but if the sun has risen upon him, there shall be bloodguilt for him.”
-​ ​
“you shall not permit a sorceress to live.”
-​ ​
“Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed.”

Politics and Identity

How is national identity forged? Do we have to define ourselves by reference to others who are seen
as hostile? Is religion simply a way of supplying cohesion that secular states have achieved by
different means?

What kind of community gets formed in the Bible? Is it restricted to people with a certain kind of
biological relationship? Can one join it by following certain social norms? How does this compare to
the Greeks we’ve read? What kinds of entry criteria are good at fashioning stable cohesive
communities?

Exodus 1 “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with his household: Reuben,
Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the
offspring of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his
brothers, and all that generation. But the descendents of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly;

26 
they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong; so that the land was full of them.”

Exodus 6 “Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under
the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an
outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.”

Exodus 7 “Thus said the Lord, ‘Let my people go, that they may serve me.’”

Exodus 7 “But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no
swarms of flies shall be there; that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. Thus I
will put a division between my people and your people.”

The New Testament

The Christian Message

A core set of tenets:

A.​ ​ Jesus, a Jew, born roughly 2000 years ago, was (is) the Son of God.
B.​ ​ He came to bring a fundamental message to human beings.
C.​ ​ He was crucified, but later rose from the dead.
D.​ ​ Through his death he expiated human sin, making it possible for those who followed him to
have eternal life with God.

Even here, superficial agreement can hide divergence. The history of Christianity is marked by strong
disagreements about doctrine, vehement insistence that only one reading can be right, and
consequent warfare and bloodshed. Some Christians would view this history as a horrible
perversion of the fundamental message, which is centered on the ideas of love and forgiveness.
Others contend that, when the outcome is the salvation or damnation of human souls, violent
defense of the right way is required.

The Structure of NT

NT begins with four books, the Gospels. An old tradition supposes that Matthew was written by the
tax-collector-turned-apostle who is sometimes given that name, that Mark was written by a young
man mentioned in ​ Acts​
, that Luke was written by a physician who accompanied Paul on his journeys,

27 
and that John was written by the apostle “whom Jesus loved”, probably in his old age. Scholarly
analysis supports none of these attributions.

The next book, the ​Acts of the Apostles​, is an account of some episodes in the early history of the
movement that began after Jesus’ death. It seems to be a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, and
was probably written by the same author. There follow a number of letters, purporting to have been
written by Paul to various groups of Jesus followers in Mediterranean cities. Some of these were
authored by Paul (​Romans​ Galatians​
, and ​ Ephesians​
, for example), some are doubtful (e.g. ​ ), and some
are probably not by Paul (e.g. ​1 Timothy​ 2 Timothy​
,​ ). Other letters have been attributed to
prominent figures in the early Jesus movement (Peter, the apostle, and James, the brother of Jesus);
these attributions are almost certainly wrong. NT ends with an apocalyptic book (​ Revelation​).

For centuries, scholars have known of the existence of other pieces of early Christian literature, and,
since the 1940s, it’s been plain that there were gospels and letters that circulated in the Jesus
movement and that offered a very different picture of Jesus’ life and teaching.

The NT as we have it was put together in the late second century, probably in the midst of a turbulent
controversy within the Jesus movement. There was surely political pressure to include things that
didn’t always fit well together, so that important alliances be maintained. From my own reading, I
conjecture that the gospels that made it into the canon were those cherished by the local groups
whose support was most important.

The Sources of NT

The scholarly consensus is that the oldest parts of NT are the Pauline letters, and that the very earliest
of these come from the late 40s. Paul died in the early 60s (probably in Nero’s persecution).
The earliest of the gospels is Mark, which was written just after the destruction of the Temple by the
Romans in 70. Matthew and Luke were written about a decade later, with Matthew probably being
the earlier. John is later still, and dates range from 90 to 110.

synoptic​
Matthew, Mark, and Luke collectively rank as the ​ gospels. John is different from them in
important ways, and scholars debate the relation of John to the synoptic threesome.

Mark develops the narrative structure followed by the other gospels. The priority of Mark is
suggested by the rough character of the Greek and the compression of many incidents. It seems
highly implausible that anyone would have written Mark after reading either Matthew or Luke. Both
Matthew and Luke borrow material from Mark, although they deploy it in different ways. There’s a
second body of common material, distributed differently through both Matthew and Luke.
Nineteenth century scholars concluded that this comes from a “sayings source”, Q (German: ​ Quelle​
),
used by both. The Q material (also found in some of the non-canonical gospels) is much concerned
with the teachings of Jesus and with exhortations to action in the context of an immediate return of
Jesus and the end of the world.

28 
Jesus’ Teachings

Matthew 4:12-13 “Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee; and
leaving Nazareth he went and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and
Naphtali, that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
…
‘the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
light has dawned.’
“From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

6:7-13 “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will
be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you
ask him. Pray then like this:
‘Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.”

6:31-33 “Therefore do not be anxious, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the
Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first
his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”

7:7 “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For
everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction,
and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and
those who find it are few.”

10:31 “But even the hair of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value
than many sparrows. So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before
my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father
who is in heaven.”

29 
10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law…. He who loves father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me.”

18:1-3 “At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven?’ And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, Truly, I say to you,
unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

20:16 “So the last will be first, and the first last.”

The Role of Paul

It’s fairly clear that Christianity would be very different (if it existed at all) but for the activities of Paul.
If anything seems firm about the early history of the movement, it’s that Paul was prominent in
advocating the extension of the movement to cities around the Mediterranean, and that others
(including James, Jesus’ brother) thought of Jerusalem and Judaism as the movement’s centers. I
think Paul won for contingent reasons: James was stoned around 62, and the Jesus followers didn’t
win allies by their behavior during the Roman-Jewish war (they sat on the fence). Effectively, by 70 or
so, the Jesus movement had no chance as a movement within Judaism, and Paul’s fragile colonies
were the only available spots for growth.

Scholars have suggested that some people who lived in cities in the Greco-Roman empire were drawn
to the more serious religion practiced by diaspora Jews. Some of them visited synagogues, where
there were special places set aside for them to listen. Paul may well have siphoned off a few of these
“religious seekers” and enrolled them in small groups of Jesus followers. His letters were obviously
intended to respond to their questions and advise them at times of difficulty.

Pauline Theology

Romans 1:16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone
who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed
through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’”

2:25 “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law; but if you break the law, your circumcision
becomes uncircumcision.”

6:14 “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”

7:9 “But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you. Anyone
who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your

30 
bodies are dead because of sin your spirits are alive because of righteousness.”

1 Corinthians 13:4 “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but
rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

13:8-13 “Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I though like a child, I reasoned
like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways… Now I know in part; then I shall
understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but
the greatest of these is love.”

Christian Ethics

Matthew 5:1-16 “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples
came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely
on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the
prophets who were before you.
‘You are the salt of the earth…
‘You are the light of the world. A city sent on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it
under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light shine so before
men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.’

The Spread of Christianity

In the early second century, the Jesus movement was sufficiently obscure that Pliny, who had been
sent to run some province in the near east, wrote back to Rome for advice about how to handle
complaints against local Christians. There’s no evidence of consistent persecution of Christian
groups, although some emperors (Nero, Domitian) were quite fierce.

There’s some interesting socio-historical scholarship on how Christianity attracted adherents. Here
are three provocative theses: (i) it wasn’t actually a lower-class movement; (ii) it was especially
attractive to married women (upper class matrons) who saw Christianity as providing moral guidance

31 
for wayward husbands; (iii) it spread in the aftermath of plague, because Christians tended to stay
with victims and administer some nursing, thereby having somewhat higher survival rates. It does
seem fairly clear that the rate of growth of the movement was a bit less than that of Mormonism over
the past century and a half.

By the beginning of the fourth century, maybe between a tenth and a fifth of the population of the
Greco-Roman Empire were Christians (or fellow-travelers). In the 320s, Constantine made
Christianity the official religion of the Empire. (His own religious convictions remain uncertain;
legend has it that he converted on his deathbed – but this may be because of the popular belief that
late conversion enables you to die in a state of grace.) Constantine tried to settle the controversy
over Arianism, by calling the Council of Nicea. He participated, introducing the compromise between
saying that the son is the father and saying that the son is subordinate to the father – the son is “of
the same substance as the father” (this formula is part of the Nicene Creed, and those of your
students who have recited it many times may be interested to know that its vagueness results from
the mediation of an emperor in a theological dispute)

​ ​​
Spread of Christianity to AD 325​ ​
Spread of Christianity to​
AD 600

32 
 Augustine Handout
Life

354 Augustine born in Roman North Africa. Family is pretty rural gentry. Probably half
Berber. Important influence of his mother (Monica), who was Christian. Early signs of intelligence.
372 Begins relationship with a concubine (to whom he was faithful). They have a son
(Adeodatus), who dies in his teens.
370s Study and later teaching in Carthage. Augustine is influenced by Greek and Roman
thought (Plato, Cicero), Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Porphyry), and Manichaeanism.
384 Moves to Milan as Professor of Rhetoric. Encounters Ambrose.
386 Conversion to Christianity. (Baptized in 387). Dedicates himself to celibacy.
388 Return to North Africa. Founds small community of friends for study of theological
and philosophical issues.
391 On a visit to Hippo, he is forcibly ordained presbyter of the Catholic congregation. Sets
up monastery/nunnery.
396 Becomes Bishop of Hippo. Starts to write ​ Confessions​.
410 Sack of Rome. Starts to write CG.
430 Dies. Vandal invasion of North Africa.

Context

33 
1.​ ​ First century AD Pliny celebrated Emperor Trajan, as Jupiter’s co-ruler and a god in his own
right. Human rulers could be divine à inconceivable within Christianity
2.​ ​ Empire split between Eastern and Western; 320 Constantine, converted to Christianity.
Emperor could no longer be regarded as a god, as a human Jupiter, he must behave as the servant
and instrument of the one God
3.​ ​ Augustine had to explain why God’s enemies had been successful; period of deep crisis
4.​ ​ Influence of Manicheeism – dualism; two powers in the universe, two first principles, good
and evil, eternally at war; mistrust of the body and material world, prone to asceticism
5.​ ​ CG was written at the end of Augustine’s life, after the sack of Rome in 410. The official
project of the beginning is to respond to objections that the fall of the empire was brought on by the
desertion of the traditional Roman religion and the installation of Christianity as the official religion.
6.​ ​ With the advantage of hindsight, we can read CG as the great founding document of
subsequent Christian theology; develops theological solutions to a vast number of questions left
dangling in post-Pauline theology.
7.​ ​ Augustine wrote it for distribution among his friends and intellectual interlocutors in North
Africa – maybe for a readership of about 30. It was only after the collapse of the Latin West that it
was taken by Pope Gregory the Great (about two centuries later) to be one of the central texts of the
Church. Augustine couldn’t foresee that – he was responding to worries that arose for his friends and
contemporaries, and, probably primarily, for himself.

Teachings

As Augustine proceeds, he becomes interested in a large number of issues that grow out of his answer
to the initial critique. In effect, he sets himself the task of making sense of large parts of human
history in Christian terms, and of demonstrating that Christianity can’t be accused of the same kinds
of deficiencies he finds in the pagan religions. To carry that out, he has to develop theological
solutions to a vast number of questions left dangling in post-Pauline theology. A central part of this
story is Augustine’s struggles with his own sexual desires. How does this kind of struggle leave its
mark on the doctrines of CG?

The Two Cities

What exactly are the two cities? How are they supposed to relate to one another?

His fundamental conception seems to be that membership is defined, not by social position, but by
psychological attitude. You belong to the city of God if your will is directed in the right way.

The Attack on Paganism

As noted earlier, Augustine’s initial purpose is to respond to criticisms about the role of Christianity in
the fall of Rome, and he develops a distinctive style of argument. Effectively, this is full-contact
religious wrestling. Augustine is quite prepared to take up any episode from history, any detail of
34 
pagan thought, and try to use them to display the absurdity of paganism. So he starts by
demonstrating that history is full of occasions on which the pagan gods failed to protect their
worshippers. This leads him into a very interesting general problem.

The general problem concerns the possibility of seeing divine providence in human history. Why
does God let the good suffer and the evil triumph?

Augustine has a variety of answers to this question. He thinks that the transient sufferings of the
blessed are insignificant in comparison to their eventual bliss, that the trials are a necessary part of
the divine test, that human freedom makes sin inevitable, and that the overall scheme of the world is
perfect in ways beyond human understanding. How can we account for the existence of evil in a
world run by an allegedly perfect God?

Augustine is prepared to take a no-holds-barred approach when it comes to the critique of pagan
religions. The works of poets and other classical authors are fair game for his attempts to
demonstrate just how unpleasant and/or absurd the religious doctrines are. But that lays him open
to counter-charges that there are facts of human history quite at odds with the Christian conception
of God, that there are parts of Christian doctrine (and of scripture) that are equally repugnant or
absurd. To his great credit, Augustine doesn’t flinch from any of this.

Platonism and Christianity

Part of Augustine’s strategy is to distinguish different strains in pagan objections to Christianity. After
dealing with what he takes to be relatively crude critiques, he turns to more subtle philosophical
worries. He genuinely admires Plato and tries to explain both the achievements and the
shortcomings of Platonic thought. Is Augustine’s account of the insights and flaws in Plato’s moral
philosophy correct? Or is he straining in trying to connect Plato with the Bible?

Evil

Augustine is very worried by the existence of evil angels (Satan and company). He feels the need to
provide an account of how they could have made a choice contrary to God, without compromising
God’s knowledge or admitting that God is, in some sense, the source of evil. His solution (or at least
his attempt at a solution) is to display the evil acts of will as a kind of deficiency. Certainly one of the
advantages of Manicheanism – to which Augustine was attracted in his youth – is that it provides a
ready answer to this problem.

He’s also worried about God’s creation of the world in time. There are plenty of arguments in Greek
texts (e.g. Aristotle) that argue for the eternity of the world on the grounds that, if the world were not
eternal, there would be no reason for it to come into being just when it does. Augustine supposes
that time inevitably involves change (no change, no time), and he uses this idea to maintain that time
begins with the creation of the universe. To talk about a time before the creation is thus to lapse into

35 
straightforward folly. This is another good example of Augustine’s general problem of finding a
conception of God that fits with scripture, and with his knowledge of the world and its history.

The Good Life Revisited

Augustine offers an alternative take on the Greek issue of the good life, explicitly contrasting his view
with that of various ancient schools. How convincing is his conception of peace as an end for the
universe? What justice is there to be found in the idea that finite creatures receive either eternal bliss
or eternal torment? What is his conception of eternal bliss that we’re offered? Do we really
want to join the “eternal Sabbath”? Why is this an appropriate goal for the entire universe? Why
are human lapses punished so severely?

Conclusion

It would be hard to exaggerate Augustine’s influence on subsequent Christian doctrine. After Paul,
he’s the principal shaper of what Christians believe. He undoubtedly was an extraordinary
intellectual who brought to the questions Paul had left a large number of resources from ancient
secular thought. He was also clearly within political and personal struggles. It is Augustine who
makes the scholastic theology of the middle ages possible, and he is also an important inspiration for
Luther, who was an Augustinian monk.

Quotations:

‘to make some answer to those who ascribe to our religion the responsibility for the calamities of the
Roman republic’

‘The Platonists realized that God is the creator from whom all other beings derive, while he is himself
uncreated and underivative.’

‘There must be some being in which the original form resides, unchangeable and therefore
incomparable … it is there that the origin of all things is to be found’

‘those who looked to find man’s good in his mind, or in his body, or in both together, did not believe
that it should be looked for anywhere but in man himself … they did not go outside of man’

‘the seeker after wisdom (which is the meaning of ‘philo-soph-er’) will only attain happiness when he
has begun to enjoy God’

‘Now this Sovereign Good, according to Plato, is God’

‘Plato had a conception of God which they recognize as agreeing in many respects with the truth of
our religion’
36 
Truth vs falsehood, faith vs reason

‘The point is that the falsehood is ours, but the truth is God’s.’

‘When man lives by the standard of truth, he lives not by his own standard, but by God’s’

‘Falsehood consists in not living in the way for which he was created’

Sin and evil vs faith?

‘it is to man’s advantage to be in subjection to God and it is calamitous for him to act according to his
own will and not to obey the will of his Creator’

Adam and Eve and the original sin: the Fall

‘this race would not have been destined for death … had not the two first human beings incurred
death as the reward of disobedience: and so heinous was their sin that man’s nature suffered a
change for the worse; and bondage to sin and inevitable death was the legacy handed on to their
posterity’

‘they would all be driven headlong in that second death, which has no ending as their well deserved
punishment, if some were not rescued from it by the undeserved grace of God’

‘they would not have arrived at the evil act if an evil will had not preceded it … the evil act, the
transgression of eating the forbidden fruit, was committed only when those who did it were already
evil’

‘the original evil: man regards himself as his own light, and turns away from that light which would
make man himself a light if he would set his heart on it’

Way of the Flesh

‘It is obvious what the works of the flesh are: … fornication, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, enmity,
quarrelsomeness, jealousy, animosity, dissension, party intrigue, envy, drunkenness, drunken orgies,
and so on. I warned you before, and I warn you again, that those who behave in such ways will never
have a place in God’s kingdom’ (Paul to Galatians)

‘faults of mind, not of the body’

‘Flesh to be taken as meaning ‘man’.’

‘And so we are weighed down by the corruptible body; and yet we know that the cause of our being
37 
weighed down is not the true nature and substance of our body but its corruption’
‘The corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its
punishment. And it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful; it was the sinful soul that
made the flesh corruptible’

‘we must not attribute to the flesh all the faults of a wicked life’

‘the so-called pains of the flesh are really pains of the soul, experienced in the flesh and from the
flesh. The flesh can surely feel no desire or pain by itself, apart from the soul.’

The Devil

‘The Devil … he is the hidden persuader and instigator of such sins’

‘It is not by the possession of flesh, that man has become like the Devil: it is by living by the rule of
self, that is by the rule of man’

‘When man lives ‘by the standard of man’ and not ‘by the standard of God’ he is like the Devil’

Free-will vs Divine foreknowledge?

‘Well-being can only come to man from God, not from himself. And he forsakes God by sinning and
he sins by living by his own standard’

‘God … could not have been unaware that man would sin’ (given God’s foreknowledge and his
providential design)

‘The choice of the will, then is genuinely free only when it is not subservient to faults and sins. God
gave it that true freedom, and now that it has been lost, through its own fault, it can be restored only
by him who had the power to give it at the beginning.’

‘Is there any reason why God should not have created men in the foreknowledge that they would sin?
For that made it possible for him to show in them and through them what their guilt deserved and
what his grace could give’

Lust

Before the fall: ‘the flesh did not yet, in a fashion, give proof of man’s disobedience by a disobedience
of its own’

‘when this grace was taken away and in consequence their disobedience was chastised by a
corresponding punishment, there appeared in the movements of their body a certain indecent
novelty which made nakedness shameful. It made them self conscious and embarrassed’
38 
‘embarrassed by the insubordination of the flesh’

Women?

‘He was induced to such sacrilege by feminine cajolery’

Two cities

‘two main divisions … and we are justified in following the lead of our Scriptures and calling them two
cities. There is in fact one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of
those who choose to live by the standard of the spirit’

‘Two cities, different and mutually opposed, owe their existence to the fact that some men, live by the
standard of the flesh, other by the standard of the spirit i.e. that some live by man’s standard, others
by God’s’

‘the city, that is the society, of the ungodly consists of those who live by the standards not of God but
of man’

‘the great difference that sunders the two cities of which we are speaking: the one is a community of
devout men, the other a company of the irreligious… in one city love of god has been given first place,
in the other, love of self’

‘the two cities were created by two kinds of love; the earthly city was created by self love reaching
the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self.
In fact the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the lord. The former looks for glory
from men, the latter finds its highest glory in God’

‘the peace of the Heavenly city is a perfectly ordered and perfectly harmonious fellowship in the
enjoyment of God, and a mutual fellowship in God’

This life

‘And so long as he is in this mortal body, he is a pilgrim in a foreign land, away from God, therefore he
walks by faith, not by sight’

Rich vs Poor man?

‘The rich man is tortured by fears, worn out with sadness, burnt up with ambition, never knowing
serenity of repose, always panting and sweating in his struggles with opponents. It may be true that
he enormously swells his patrimony, but at the cost of those discontents, while by this increase he
heaps up a load of further anxiety and bitterness. The other man, the ordinary citizen, is content with
39 
his strictly limited resources. He is loved by family and friends; he enjoys the blessing of peace with
his relations, neighbours, and friends; he is loyal, compassionate and kind, healthy in body, gentle in
habits, of unblemished character, and enjoys the serenity of good conscience. I do not think anyone
would be fool enough to hesitate about which he would prefer.’

Eternal life?

‘Life will only be truly happy when it is eternal’

Social relations of faith

‘Now God our master, teaches two chief precepts, love of God and love of neighbour … it follows
therefore that he will be concerned also that his neighbour should love God since he is told to love his
neighbour as himself’

Friendship

‘we should prefer to hear, or even to witness the death of those we love, than to become aware that
they have fallen from faith or from moral conflict – that is, that they have died in their very soul …
when good men die who are our friends we rejoice for them … they have been spared those evils by
which in this life even good men are crushed or corrupted’

Just war?

‘The wise man, they say, will wage just wars; … for if they were not just, he would not have to engage
in them … for it is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man the duty of waging
wars’

‘Even when a just war is fought it is in defence of his sin that the other side is contending; and victory,
even when the victory falls to the wicked, is a humiliation visited on the conquered by divine
judgement, either to correct or to punish their sins’

40 
 QUR’AN
The Historical Background

Islam was born in the Arabian peninsula in the 7th ​​Century C.E. The peninsula was populated by
nomadic tribes, as well as settled agriculturalists and merchants. There was no settled authority, but
a scattering of tribes, most devoted to polytheistic religions (later derided by Muslims as “the worship
of sticks and stones”).

Muhammad was born around 670, in Mecca. His family came from a poor branch of the leading
Meccan clan (the Quraish). His father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was a
child; he was brought up by his grandfather and uncle. As a young man, he worked as the business
manager of a wealthy widow (Khadija), whom he married when he was in his twenties. (She was
about 40 when they married, and she pre-deceased him). Little is known about his early life until his
“call” at age 40.

Like other young men in Mecca, Muhammad made solitary retreats into the nearby mountains. On
one of these, he had a vision in which the angel Gabriel commanded him to recite. The original
recitation is supposed to be Sura 96 of the Qur’an.

According to tradition, Muhammad was terrified by his vision (he is supposed to have wondered
whether he was going mad), but he was reassured by his wife, relatives, and friends. Among his early
supporters were his cousin, Ali, and his close friends Abu Bakr and Uthman. Around 613, he began
preaching in the streets of Mecca. His monotheistic message offended leading members of the
dominant Quraish; he was scorned, derided, and attacked. One of his initial persecutors, Umar,
became a convert.

Some traditions report an obscure episode in which Muhammad apparently tried to placate the
Quraish by claiming that he had had a vision allowing worship of traditional Meccan deities. Later,
perhaps because of the reaction of some of his early adherents, he retracted, suggesting that he had
been deceived by Satan into uttering these verses (the so-called “Satanic Verses”). (N.B. the ​
fatwa
against Rushdie).

Around 619, Muhammad lost his wife and his uncle, and his position in Mecca became precarious.
He began to look for support outside, and was encouraged by exchanges with people from Medina
(about 250 miles North of Mecca), a town with a population of émigré Jews. In 622, he moved to
Medina in the so-called ​Hijra​
(flight), and, around this time, he gave his movement a political identity,
formulating the ideal of a community of religious believers. In Medina, he apparently came into
contact with Christians as well as Jews, and originally taught his people to bow towards Jerusalem
when they prayed. The Jews seem to have regarded him as ignorant, and relations soured. The
direction of prayer was altered to Mecca. (In Sura 2, there are apparent responses to accusations of
inconsistency on this issue; Q 54-60.)

41 
In 624, Muhammad began to ambush the caravans of Meccan traders. The Meccans responded by
sending an army, but, although seriously outnumbered, Muhammad scored some impressive
victories. (Various passages in the Qur’an are interpretations of his triumphs and defeats.) He seems
to have led an expedition into Syria, and his military prowess won him the support of Bedouin
tribesmen. In 627, the Quraish tried to stamp him out once and for all, but Muhammad succeeded by
clever tactics. In 630, he returned to Mecca, essentially the leader of a united Arabian peninsula. He
died in 632.

The Qur’an

The Qur’an we have comes from a period about twenty years after Muhammad’s death. The written
records of the Prophet’s recitations were assembled under Uthman (the third of the four
“right-guided” Caliphs who were Muhammad’s immediate successors). There are highly controversial
traditions that suggest that there may have been some slippage between what Muhammad actually
recited and what was written down (according to a much-disputed story, one of the secretaries made
some changes, and the Prophet didn’t notice).

‘Qur’an’ means “recitation”. This text contains the word of God (Allah) transmitted through Gabriel
and Muhammad. Over a period of 25 years (maybe more), he had visions (not always in solitary
places), after which he would recite to his followers.

A standard response to the charge that we have no grounds for taking this at all seriously is to
contend that divine inspiration is the only possible explanation of the fact that an illiterate (if astute)
man could produce such glorious language. Muslims maintain that translation into other languages
loses the extraordinary beauty of the original – and they are especially critical of translations into
English.

The order of the recitations in the Qur’an runs counter to the order in which they were recited. The
relatively short Suras that occur at the end were chronologically prior to the long Suras at the
beginning. But Uthman’s compilers wanted to put the more wide-ranging expository pieces first.

Early suras, revealed in Mecca, generally short, highly poetic in style and focus on the basics of the
Islamic belief system, especially the attributes of Allah and death, judgment, heaven and hell.

Later suras, revealed in Medina, much longer and focus on instructive stories, social legislation and
ethics of interpersonal relations.

Many people have found the structure of the Qur’an quite baffling. It’s plainly not a narrative, but nor
is the material organized in any systematic way. Topics succeed one another without any obvious
rationale; we move from praising Allah, to consideration of particular kinds of laws, to denunciations
of opponents, to pieces of historical interpretation.

42 
Style is curious with its sudden pronominal shifts, often within same passage. These create a diversity
of voices – intentional? The plural to emphasize Allah’s majesty and power and punitive potential? A
means for allowing believers to talk about God? Unifying effect created by frequent repetition of
stock phrases

Since the Qur’an is the word of God, Muslims often treat copies of the book as sacred objects. There
are detailed rules for touching it. In Muslim countries, there is still a system of pre-school education,
typically used by the poor, that teaches small children to write parts of the Qur’an and to memorize
them.

Besides the Qur’an, Muslims also use reports of the sayings of the Prophet (​ hadith​
). The official
approach to these is that a saying must be certified by tracing a chain of transmission back to a
reliable source – a Companion of the Prophet. Islamic scholarship is often very rigorous about this
process of authentication.

The Pillars of the Faith

Islam is theologically a lot simpler than Christianity. At its center are two main doctrines:

There is one God.

The righteous are required to submit to God.

“Islam” means “submission”; “Muslim” means “one who has submitted”.

But so far, this isn’t very helpful. What is it to submit?

Submission involves the five pillars of the faith.

Confession of faith – “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet”. Muhammad is
regarded as the last, and greatest, in a line of prophets, including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.

Prayers – five times daily, preceded by ritual purification.

Fasting – in the month of Ramadan, nothing may be eaten or drunk between sunrise and sunset
(allowances are made for the sick, for pregnant women, and travelers).

Pilgrimage to Mecca – involves visiting the site at which Abraham is supposed to have placed a sacred
rock (this connects Islam not only with the source of Judaism and Christianity, but also with Arab
traditions that precede Islam).

Almsgiving – there’s a minimal level (analogous to tithing, but one fortieth); the righteous give more;
the Qur’an constantly urges fairness and generosity.
43 
The first four of these are matters of ritual. The last concerns everyday behavior. The Qur’an is
much concerned with directing the ​ actions​ of the faithful; faith is expressed through action (works).
It insists again and again on honesty and justice in daily life.

jihad​
There may be a sixth pillar – ​ . On some interpretations, Muslims shave the task of spreading the
word of Allah, and thus contending with unbelievers. This is controversial. A major source for this
dispute is Sura 2 190-193.

Judgment Day

In the short Suras at the end of the text, Muhammad often sounds like a Hebrew prophet, calling a
sinful people to their duties. These Suras are focused on the day at which the soul will be judged, and
on the different fates of the righteous and unrighteous.

These Suras do several things:

Establish Muhammad as messenger (81.19, 88.20)

Point out the fallen state of the world (89)
Recognize God as judge and accountant (96, 98).

We’re told again and again that the unrighteous will be tormented (101, 85), while the righteous shall
live in bliss (83.22 ff., 88.8 ff., 95.6). The vision of bliss, (unlike that prominent in Christian views of
heaven) seems to be a heightened state of earthly happiness. Instead of union with God, the faithful
receive the kinds of comforts that would be scarce in a desert environment. There are more
extensive versions of this vision at 55.46ff., 56.10ff. Sometimes, these passages are read as
guaranteeing to the faithful all sorts of sensual delights (for example, 72 virgins). This is highly
controversial.

The late Suras offer a pithy account of the kinds of righteousness required to attain bliss in the
hereafter. Most important is to honor God by embracing the true faith (84.25), not thinking we are
our own masters (96.6-7), and recognizing the unity of God (112). Yet it is plain that good works are
also important (84.25, 98.7, 93.6ff., 83.1, 89.17-20, 90.13-16, 92.5-11, 107). Righteousness requires
both faith and charity.

Against Asceticism

Muhammad is revered, despite the fact that his earthly life was divided among business transactions,
political leadership, and military strategy; he also had eight or nine wives. Throughout the Qur’an,
the emphasis isn’t on giving up everyday activities, but on pursuing them in a special way.
Apparently, we can manage with an everyday morality of honesty, generosity, fairness, and kindness.

44 
Jews and Christians

The Qur’an contains lengthy diagnoses of the errors of the “People of the Book”, mainly Jews and
Christians. These are religious groups to whom a revelation has been given. Some among them have
actually recognized the one true God. But the tendency has been to pervert the true doctrine. Jews
do this by failing to understand that faith is open to all – their error is to maintain the exclusivism of a
“chosen people”. Christians go astray by treating Jesus as divine, and thus dividing the deity – they
have compromised monotheism.

Muhammad is happy to concede that the great figures of Jewish tradition were genuine prophets. He
also claims that the birth of Jesus was special (3.36). The Christians have gone badly astray in basing
Jesus’ divinity on his supposed resurrection; the Qur’an claims that Jesus did not really die on the
cross (4.157). Identifying Jesus and God is a form of blasphemy (5.17). In fact, Jesus, like all of God’s
creatures, is dependent on God.

The question of how to deal with Christians and Jews was worked out in practice by Muhammad’s
successors. They conquered a large amount of territory, and instituted Islam, but they tended to see
this as creating a religious/political regime that would serve as an ideal for the “People of the Book”,
without coercing them. Islam gained conversions not by force but by persuasion. In the new state
there were tax benefits from becoming a full citizen (i.e. a Muslim). It’s worth noting that the Qur’an
holds out the possibility of salvation for some Jews and Christians (2.62). But they have to correct the
lapses common to the faiths.

Justice and Kindness

There are many repetitions of the themes of fair bargaining and supporting the unprotected. The
Prophet is particularly concerned that orphans should be looked after (a reflection of his own early
childhood?). There are frequent references to the problems with usury (compare with Jews?). You
may want to discuss the penalty prescribed for theft (5.38-9).

Typically, the Qur’an suggests that the righteous do better not to insist on the full claiming of what is
owed to them. Sometimes, the doctrine seems to be that we can earn credit by being forbearing
(5.45). So we seem to have a two-tier vision. Everyone is required to perform actions that are just
and fair, as well as to give the minimal amount to the care of the unfortunate. But we can also be
righteous in going beyond the law, in doing what is supererogatory (beyond what Allah commands).
There are hints that this second type of righteousness can serve as an insurance policy, canceling out
those occasions on which we fail to live up to our obligations.

Women

Islam is typically viewed as a religion that is profoundly anti-women. There are plenty of anti-female
hadith​ (e.g. “Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity”. There’s little
doubt that the Qur’an assigns different status to men and to women (2.222-3, 2.229 ff., 4.3, 4.11,
45 
4.15). But, there are many passages in which Muhammad urges husbands to treat their wives with
kindness, and on the provisions that the Muslim law demands in cases of divorce and inheritance.
You can imagine two sorts of Muslims – those who take the many remarks about female modesty,
privacy and dependence as fixed points, and those who think that the spirit of the religion is to
promote kind and just social relations. Is a feminist Islam possible?

Democracy

By the same token, is it possible to mix Islam with democracy? Some Muslims insist that democracy
is unthinkable because it raises the possibility of modifying the true – Qur’anic – law in light of a
popular vote. Many current trends in Islam are quite at odds with the Enlightenment (and
post-Enlightenment) model of the relations between religion and politics, according to which religion
is confined to the private sphere of belief. One theme of contemporary Islam is the attainment of a
global state in which Islam is the dominant religion and Islamic law is the law. (Those who sound this
theme needn’t insist that those who don’t practice Islam are punished (or killed). They may allow for
private practice of Judaism or Christianity, or even atheism.) The important point is that the state will
be run by Islamic law, and that there will be no disputing that. One might call this position ​ global
theocracy​.

The Muslim Empire

After Muhammad’s death, the Muslims expanded around the Mediterranean basin and into the East.
In the West, their expansion was checked by Charles Martel at the battle of Tours in 732 (one hundred
years after the Prophet’s death).

Muhammad’s death precipitated a crisis. The community was in danger of crumbling, and it was only
through the vigorous efforts of his successor, Abu Bakr, that it survived. Abu Bakr kept the Arabs
unified by pursuing an expansionist policy, invading Syria and Iraq. In 634, Abu Bakr died, and was
succeeded by Umar. Umar continued the expansion, taking Egypt and Syria, and overthrowing the
Persian empire. This was culturally important, in bringing a refined civilization within the Muslim
orbit.

Umar died in 644, and the succession was contested. The two main candidates were Uthman and Ali,
and the electors chose Uthman. After Uthman was murdered, there was another dispute. Ali
obtained control, but a civil war broke out between him and Mu’awiya (Uthman’s cousin), governor of
Syria. In 661, Ali was murdered, and the line of “right-guided” Caliphs ended. Mu’awiya inaugurated
a new dynasty (the Omayyad Caliphs), centered in Damascus.

The civil war precipitated the first split in Islam. Shi’ites believe that descendants of Ali have a special
claim to authority. (Some think in terms of a sequence of holy men, linked by ties of blood to the
original Prophet.) There have been further splits within Shi’ite Islam.

The Omayyads continued the holy war, spreading into North Africa, Spain, and France. Their success
46 
was the result in part of the weakness of the Byzantine empire and the Latin west, in part on the
bureaucratic abilities of the Omayyad Caliphs, and in part on the fact that the Goths and Vandals had
trouble adapting to a settled way of life. In the 740s, the Omayyad dynasty gave way to the Abbasid
line, and the center of Islam moved from Damascus to Baghdad.

The Arab expansion played an important role in preserving and extending ancient knowledge.
Although there were always scholars in Islam who rejected secular knowledge, others studied the
ancient texts and built upon them. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is responsible for the recovery and refinement
of Greek medicine, that Al-Hazen’s optics was extremely important to the work of the 16th​​and 17th
​
centuries, and that Al-Gorismi developed methods of solving equations and trigonometrical problems.
He also gave us the place notation we use in arithmetic.

The encounter between West and East in the Crusades brought major texts from the ancient and Arab
worlds to the attention of scholars in the Latin west. The Crusades began with a vicious series of
pogroms in Europe, and that the treachery of the Westerners in the original “liberation” of Jerusalem
(when they promised in advance to spare those who surrendered) contrasts with Saladin’s
magnanimity when he retook it.

Islam today

A living faith
One billion Muslims
Only 15% of world’s Muslims speak Arabic as their mother tongue
85% of Muslims today are Sunni
A Muslim must at minimum accept the existence of god and revelation and Qur’an as the actual world
of God
Period of Islamic revival – relationship between Mosque and State: enlargement of the scope of Islam
in social and political life

Over 50 majority Muslim states

Question of sovereignty of God
vs Qur’an notion of shura (consultation, deliberation)
And Ijma’ (agreement, consensus), a precedent for popular sovereignty?

Jihad: struggle, exertion or striving in the way of God

Major: great effort, internal striving for perfection, inward war against carnal soul
Minor: over actions, may include use of physical force

The Qur’an

Sura 1 (introduction)

Every muslim learns it in Arabic: oral, auditory experience; the most oft-cited in everyday life
47 
The bismillah (“In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful”) prefaces every action a Muslin
takes as a recognition of Allah’s omnipresence.

“Praise be to Allah” concludes every action.

Two themes:

i. God’s attributes
ii. Two groups: those of the straight path and those whose portion is divine wrath

Sura 2 (the cow)

Thorough summary and illustration of the Qur’an’s themes and teachings

Intro of Quran

Steadfast à Revelation à Hereafter

Believers, Unbelievers, Hypocrites

How can you reject Allah, when he created you?

Adam

Jews, chosen people, Deliverance, Moses, Red Sea, 40 nights à transgressed, infringed

‘Any (Jews, Christians, Sabians) who believe in Allah … shall have their reward’

‘People who buy the life of this world at the price of the hereafter’

‘The curse of Allah is on those without faith’

‘Wrath upon wrath’

‘Allah is an enemy to those who reject faith’

‘It is never the wish of those without faith … that anything good should come down to you’

‘Whoever submits his whole self to Allah and is a doer of good – he will get his reward’

‘Allah will judge between them (Christians and jews) in their quarrel on the day of judgement’

48 
‘To Allah belongs the East and the West: whithersoever ye turn, there is Allah’s countenance’

‘For Allah is to all people most surely full of kindness’

Turn to Mecca to pray

‘To each is a goal to which Allah turns him’

No swine

Charity

Fasting; self restraint; Ramadan

‘I listen to the prayer of every supplicant’

The Hajj

‘The life of this world is alluring to those who reject faith and they scoff at those who believe. But the
righteous will be above them On the day of Resurrection; for Allah bestows his abundance without
measure on whom he will’ (vs contemporary west?)

‘Mankind was one single nation’

Wine and gambling

‘Your wives are as a tilth’

Oaths

Social regulations: maternal duties, annulment of engagements, death duties

Attributes of Allah ‘ he feeleth no fatigue’

‘Let there be no compulsion in religion’

Sura 4 (women)

Creation of men and women

Orphans

Marriage: polygamy? Or very few in practice?

49 
Social regulations:

Remuneration of the poor

Inheritance
Gender-relations: ‘to the male a portion equal to that of two females’

Those who obey: gardens of paradise

Those who disobey: hell fire

Women – evidence of four, punishment for women, vs men, possibility of Allah’s mercy; imperative of
‘kindness and equity’

Who you can marry?

Chastity over Lust

Allah to relieve human weakness

Husbands as the protectors and maintainers of their wives

‘Admonish them first, next refuse to share their beds, and last spank them lightly’

Reconciliation and marriage counseling

Allah all knowing, forgiving

Jews disobedient; Sabbath breakers

Cursed unbelievers
Jews
Hypocrites
Tests of faith
‘The straight way’

‘Martyrs’ – just reward

‘Those who reject faith, fight in the cause of evil’
‘Whatever good happens to thee is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee is from they own
soul’

Allah the accountant

Rejecters of faith: ‘seize them and slay them’

Injunctions on killing other Muslims; if intentional à hell

50 
Those who strive on Allah’s behalf are ‘a grade higher’

Exception for those who are ‘really weak and oppressed’

Satan

‘Allah did take Abraham for a friend’

Women
- separation
- unfairness

‘Any who denieth Allah, His Angels, His Books, His messengers, and the Day of Judgement, hath gone
far astray’ à Hell

‘Grant to the believers a reward of immense value’

People of the Book – broke Covenant

Jews vs Christians
Jesus not crucified
‘The Messiah Jesus son of Mary was (no more than) a messenger of Allah’
Say not ‘Trinity’: desist
Christ’s disdain for Allah

Sura 12 (Joseph)

Most detailed story in the Qur’an

‘The most beautiful’

Prophet Yusuf
An edifying tale; clear didactic function

God vs Satan
All knowing God
Reward for those who do right

Correspondence between Joseph and Muhammad? A prototype? Both visionaries, both disavowed
by their people, both left home and with God’s aid rose to prominence, eventually reconciled with
their erstwhile enemies …

Snare of seduction by women, eternal temptress?

51 
à Nature of divine guidance?
At times it seems that humans face a choice and will be rewarded if they choose the path of the
believers; yet at other points, it appears that it is Allah who chooses

No partners for Allah: one, and only one; ‘never will I join gods with Allah’

‘No authority: the Command is for none but Allah’ (Political implications, mosque and state?)

Human nature: ‘the human soul is certainly is certainly prone to evil’

Reward in afterlife: ‘the reward of the hereafter’

Prophets/Messengers: ‘but men’

Sura 56 (inevitable)

Status of revelation and description of the hereafter

= Case for Resurrection

Description of Paradise for companions of right hand (sensual, materialistic, women, no frivolity,
undefiled virgins?)

Fate of non-believers, left hand (boiling water, black smoke, death in burning Hell-fire)

Qur’an as revelation of God, not be touched save by clean

Sura 112 (purity of faith)

The unity of God

His attributes: sovereignty, dominion over mankind and Day of Judgment, and above all his oneness

Sura 114 (mankind)

Security of the universal God, against Satan/evil spirits (Jinns) and men

52 
 Medieval Thought
Aquinas

Medieval World
Note that no empire comparable to the size of the Roman Empire comes into existence after Rome
falls.

The Byzantine Empire

-​ ​existed for more than a thousand years (from approximately 306 AD to 1453 AD).

In 476:

in 565:

53 
in 1170:

Muslim conquests
Dark shade: Muhammad, 622-632
Middle shade: Expansion during the Patriarchical Caliphate, 632-661
Lightest shade: Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661-750

54 
The​ Muslim conquests​
​ of the 7th and 8th centuries ​​ ​​
Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632​ Expansion during
​​
the Patriarchal Caliphate, 632–661​ Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

Europe, 1328

55 
Medieval Thought in General

Political/social context
-​ ​increasing plurality and fragmentation politically and ideologically
-​ ​part of an attempt to harmonize the various RELIGIOUS authorities of their own tradition with
ANTIQUE philosophy, especially Aristotle
o​In this sense we should see this as an extension of Augustine’s project.
​

-​ ​Main figures of scholasticism:

o​Anselm of Canterbury​
​
​ ,​
Peter Abelard​
​ ,​
Albertus Magnus​
​ ,​
Duns Scotus​
​ ,​
William of Ockham​
​ ,
Bonaventure​ and​Thomas Aquinas​
​ .
-​ ​Aquinas's masterwork,​ Summa Theologica​
​ , is often seen as the highest fruit of Scholasticism.

Scholasticism
-​ ​taught by academics (scholastics)
-​ ​in medieval universities circa 1100-1500
-​ ​POINT: to articulate and defend orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context.
o​Therefore think of it NOT as a philosophy or a theology, but a METHOD of learning
​

What is the Scholastic Method?

-​ e​mphasis on DIALECTICAL reasoning
-​ ​seeks to extend knowledge by inference
-​ ​seeks to resolves contradictions

Wider ideological context

-​ ​coincides with the growth of early Islamic philosophy, most famously Averroes
o​8thC onward: the Mutazilite branch of Islam driven to defend their beliefs against the more
​

orthodox Ash’ari school

§​to do so, they turn to philosophy
​

-​ ​And coincides with Jewish philosophy, notably Maimonides

-​ ​These two traditions occurred before the Christian scholastics, and their methods provide a
model for Acquinas et. al.
o​Particularly the methodologies of Islamic mathematics and astronomy, which inform the
​

philosophic logic of this period

-​ ​And many Greek texts were transmitted to the Latin West through the Islamic world.
o​Greek had vanished in the west except in the monasteries of Ireland.
​

o​“Medieval” = means middle period between classical philosophical and their “rediscovery” during
​

the Renaissance.
-​ ​ ​​C
most of this transmission occurs in SPAIN, particularly after the Reconquista in the 12th

The Rationalists

56 
Averröes (Ibn Rushd) 1126-98
Physician and lawyer
Spent most of his life in Spain
Cordova, but also worked in
ages as “the commentator”
(on Aristotle)
Maimonides, 1138-1204
Like Averröes, a physician
Spent much of his life in Known during the high middle
Cairo. Highly respected by
Muslim rulers

Aquinas, 1224-74
Born in Italy, took orders as
a Dominican, studied in Paris
before returning to Italy to
serve as Dominican prior

57 
​
Intellectual Relationships
The big (and obvious) issue is how one reconciles the claims of secular knowledge with those of
religious texts and traditional interpretations of them.
-​ ​ some​
all agree that ​ bits can be treated as allegorical,
-​ ​ but HOW do you stop this approach from spreading? (context: mysticism)
-​ ​ AAM offer different views of how the reconciliation should proceed.
o​Averroes is often seen as the most radical, and is interpreted as giving priority to secular
​

knowledge (we use secular knowledge to expose those parts of the scripture that need to be
read non-literally)
o​Aquinas probably has the most conservative position.
​

They then all try to resolve the following:

-​​what can we know about God?
-​​What is divine justice?
-​​What kind of laws are there?
o​Overall: they want to find indubitable principles from which substantive religious doctrines can be
​

derived.
-​​this can be boiled down to an exploration of the relationships between:
o​religion and philosophy
​

o​faith and reason

​

o​tradition and speculation

​

§​
OR, to use today’s concepts: RELIGION and SCIENCE
​

The problem they were grappling with arose from the recognition of two
source of truth:

1. By revelation, deemed to be expressive of divine wisdom, and therefore foundational to religion

2. By rational speculation, taken to be indicative of rational wisdom, and therefore central to

philosophy

Each source was held to be equally authoritative yet produced apparently incompatible claims. Today
– we regard this as a problem of epistemic justification.

From the point of view of science, religious claims lack the empirical justification of scientific truths.
From the point of view of religion, religious beliefs do not need the justification of empirical evidence.
Inevitably, all three derive a particular conception of religious belief from their respective religious
frameworks.

OUR perspective à today there is in general a marked disassociation of religion from science, or
religion from philosophy, because we tend to consider faith and reason to be totally unrelated.
58 
This was not the opinion of A. A. and M.

In a nutshell

Aquinas: reason gives way to faith

Aquinas: religion lies beyond the scope of philosophy

Quotes

Aquinas:

“The things that reason is fitted by nature to know are clearly true, and it would be impossible to
think of them as false. It is also wrong to think that something that is held by faith could be false since
it is clearly confirmed by God.”

“When something clearly acts for an end we say that the end is that toward which the movement of
the thing that acts tends; when it is reached, we say that the end has been reached.”

“And in the action of everything that acts there is a point beyond which the actor does not seek
anything further. Otherwise actions would go on forever – which is impossible.”

“Everything in nature moves and acts for an end that is a good since the end of something acting in
nature is the result of a natural appetite. Therefore everything that acts acts for a good.”

“The purpose of the first actor and mover should be the final purpose of all, just as the goal (finis) of
the commander of an army is the goal of all the soldiers under his command.”

“Human inquiry does not cease until it comes to the first cause… Therefore man desires by nature to
know the first cause as his ultimate end. But the first cause of everything is God. Therefore man’s
ultimate end is to know God.”

“we must conclude that God can be seen through the intellect, by both the separate intellectual
substances and our souls.”

“Nothing can be changed from a state of potentiality to actuality except by something that itself is in a
state of actuality… Thus it is necessary to posit some first efficient cause which all men call God.”

“We have a more perfect knowledge of God through grace than through natural reason.”

“God loves everything in existence… we have shown above all that the will of God is the cause of
59 
everything. Therefore for anything to have existence or any other good it must be willed by God.”

“The Soul is not material.”

“We must say that the human soul which we call the intellectual principle is incorruptible.”

The Ontological Argument

St. Anslem (11th CE Italian who moved to England and became Archbishop of Canterbury)
offered what many consider to be the MOST convincing justification for God’s existence.
1. God is (by definition) that being, greater than which no being can be conceived.
2. For anything of which we can conceive, that thing can exist either only in our conception
of it or also in reality.
3. We can conceive of a being greater than which no being can be conceived.
4. The being greater than which no being can be conceived either exists only in our
conception of it or else also in reality. [From 2].
5. If the being greater than which no being can be conceived only existed in our
conception of it then we could conceive of an even greater being (viz. one that also existed in
reality).
6. Plainly we cannot conceive of a being greater than the being greater than which no
being can be conceived.
7. Hence, the being greater than which no being can be conceived must exist in reality.
[From 5 and 6].
8. Therefore God exists. [From 1 and 7].

60 
 Mysticism
Al-Ghazali
The term ‘mysticism,’ comes from the Greek μυω, meaning “to conceal.” In the Hellenistic world,
‘mystical’ referred to “secret” religious rituals. In early Christianity the term came to refer to “hidden”
allegorical interpretations of Scriptures and to hidden presences, such as that of Jesus at the
Eucharist. Only later did the term begin to denote “mystical theology,” that included direct experience
of the divine.

Typically, mystics, theistic or not, see their mystical experience as part of a larger undertaking aimed
at human transformation and not as the terminus of their efforts. Thus, in general, ‘mysticism’ would
best be thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions,
and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions.

Al-Ghazali (1158-1111)

“their method is brought about by a combination of knowledge and practice. The objective of their
knowledge is to overcome the obstacles found in the soul.”

“The knowledge associated with mysticism was easier for me that the practice. I began to acquire
their knowledge by reading their books.”

“It became apparent to me that what was most distinctive about them and specific to them was what
could not be attained through teaching but rather through ‘tasting’, the ‘state’, and a ‘transformation
of attributes.’”

“I came to know with certainty that the mystics were the masters of states rather than statements,
and that I had acquired what I could by way of knowledge…. I had acquired certain faith in God
Almighty, prophecy and the Day of Judgment. These three foundations of faith had become
entrenched in my soul…”

“My desire to pursue the afterlife would take hold one morning, only to e dispersed by the forces of
appetite by evening.”

“But even though I could attain the pure state only from time to time, that did not extinguish my hope
of achieving it. Obstacles would impede me, but I would always go back to it.”

“I came to know with certainty that the mystics are exclusively the ones who pursue the course that
leads to God Almighty.”

“All their activity, whether outward or inward, is obtained from the light of the lantern of prophecy, in

61 
comparison with which no light on earth is capable of illuminating.”

“Purity, which is its first precondition, is the complete purification of the heart from everything but
God Almighty. The key to their way, which follows from this first step, just as prayer follows from
sanctity, is the complete obliteration in God.”

How does one HAVE a mystical experience?

This can only be sensed through EXPERIENCE. Hence the emphasis in Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)
on suffering.

Or the opposite type of experience as represented in Kabbalah, of experience of divine love through
recitation of words:
“That is why the Torah scroll must not be vocalized, for the meaning of each word accords with its
vowels. Once vocalized, a word means just one thing. Without vowels, you can understand it in
countless, wondrous ways.”

This helps explain the emphasis on autobiographical, self-center narrative

Julian’s first-person narrative; Al-G’s complete self-obliteration: “Purity, which is its first precondition,
is the complete purification of the heart from everything but God Almighty. The key to their way,
which follows from this first step, just as prayer follows from sanctity, is the complete obliteration in
God.”

The contradiction inherent in mysticism

Can never prove existence of holy b/c you are material, yet seek to experience it through the material.
The mystical state aims to unite these

K: “There is a secular world and a holy world, secular worlds and holy worlds. These worlds contradict
one another. The contradiction, of course, is subjective. We cannot reconcile the sacred and the
secular, we cannot harmonize their contradictions. Yet at the pinnacle of the universe they are
reconciled, at the site of the holy of holies.”

Why are we suddenly seeing a lot of WOMEN?

Scholars most often explain this sociologically? Mystical experiences are solitary activities, that don’t
involve mastering a field of knowledge, therefore mysticism can be construed as more accessible. At
the turn of the twentieth century, psychological theorists began to search for a MEDICAL explanation
of mystical experience, and began to associate it with hysteria, itself a gendered diagnosis.

62 
Background note on Kabbalah
Kabbalah​
The origins of the actual term ​ are unknown and disputed to belong either to Solomon ibn
Gabirol (1021 - 1058) or else to the 13th century CE Spanish Kabbalist Bahya ben Asher. While other
terms have been used in many religious documents from the 2nd century CE up to the present day,
the term Kabbalah has become the main descriptive of Jewish esoteric knowledge and practices.

Main Kabbalistic literature which served as the basis for most of the development of Kabbalistic
thought divides between early works such as Bahir and Heichalot (believed to be dated 1st Century
CE) and later works dated to the 13th century CE, of which the main book is the Zohar representing
the main source for the Contemplative Kabbalah. Because it is by definition esoteric, no popular
account can provide a complete, precise, and accurate explanation of the Kabbalah. Some scholars,
notably Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber, have argued that modern Hassidic Judaism represents a
popularization of the Kabbalah. According to its adherents, intimate understanding and mastery of
the Kabbalah brings one spiritually closer to God and enriches one's experience of Jewish sacred texts
and law.

According to Kabbalistic tradition, Kabbalistic knowledge was transmitted orally by the Jewish
Patriarchs, prophets, and sages, eventually to be "interwoven" into Jewish religious writings and
culture. According to this tradition, Kabbalah was, in around the 10th century BCE, an open
knowledge practiced by over a million people in ancient Israel, although there is little objective
historical evidence to support this thesis.

Foreign conquests drove the Jewish spiritual leadership of the time to hide the knowledge and make it
secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands. The Sanhedrin leaders were also
concerned that the practice of Kabbalah by Jews deported on conquest to other countries (the
Diaspora), unsupervised and unguided by the masters, might lead them into wrong practice and
forbidden ways. As a result, the Kabbalah became secretive, forbidden and esoteric to Judaism for
two and a half millennia.

According to most groups of Orthodox Judaism, Kabbalah dates from Eden and is an integral part of
the Jewish religious tradition. It is believed to have come down from a remote past as a revelation to
elect Tzadikim (righteous people), and, for the most part, was preserved only by a privileged few. By
contrast, contemporary scholarship suggests that various schools of Jewish esotericism arose at
different periods of Jewish history, each reflecting not only prior forms of mysticism, but also the
intellectual and culture milieu of that historical period. Questions of transmission, lineage, influence,
and innovation vary and cannot be easily summarized.

Originally, Kabbalistic knowledge was believed to be an integral part of the Judaism's oral law, given
by God to Moses on Mount Sinai around 13th century BCE, though there is a view that Kabbalah
began with Adam. When the Israelites arrived at their destination and settled in Canaan, for a few
centuries the esoteric knowledge was referred to by its aspect practice - meditation. Rebbe Nachman
of Breslov referred to a somewhat different approach called Hitbodedut, translated as “being alone”

63 
or “isolating oneself”, or by a different term describing the actual, desired goal of the practice –
prophecy.

During the 5th century BCE, when the works of the Tanakh were edited and canonized and the secret
knowledge encrypted within the various writings and scrolls, the knowledge was referred to as either
“the act of the Chariot" and "the act of Creation". Merkavah mysticism alluded to the encrypted
knowledge within the book of the prophet Ezekiel describing his vision of the "Divine Chariot". B'reshit
mysticism referred to the first chapter of Genesis that is believed to contain secrets of the creation of
the universe and forces of nature.

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 THE REFORMATION

There were many different Reformations, all of which would have said that they aimed at creating the
authentic Catholic church, or the Western Church of the Latin Rite. In addition to the Protestant
Reformation we’re reading about this week, keep in mind there was a sense of a need for Church
reform widely present in the early sixteenth century and the attempts to cleanse the Church that
arose in response to Luther (and others). This led later to the Counter-Reformation: a series of
reforms within the Catholic church itself a century later.

The texts we’re reading rose in large part out of the reaction against the practice of granting
indulgences: the ability to “buy” one’s way in earthly life greater leniency in the afterlife. The concept
of purgatory – a between point between earth and heaven/hell – had arisen as part of the humanizing
of the church in the 12thC. It seemed extreme to think that you would be damned to hell, or sent to
heaven, so a middle was conceived: purgatory, where you had the chance to make up for your sins on
earth. Purgatory was to be cleared out at the coming of the Final Judgment. Many commodities
could be traded for years in Purgatory, literally in the case of indulgence grants. Indeed, many
theologians described human virtues as commodities. Money and material works could be
exchanged for virtue – thus when you die, you could leave money in your will to pay the village’s tax
bill to the king, and this was just as good as having been kind all your life. Thus this rationale
encouraged charity, and should be seen as this as opposed to strictly a sign of corruption. Prayer also
was a commodity – a way of uniting the living and the dead together with mutual aid, of exchanging
an earthly act for grace. This bred a big industry in prayer, and all of it was encouraged by the Black
Death. Protestants aimed to do away with the concepts of purgatory and indulgence.

Timeline

312 Christianity allies with the emperors of Rome (Constantine)

476 Roman Empire formally dismantled, but Latin remains the language which unites
people.

1290 King Edward I had expelled all the Jews from England, first monarch in Europe to
do so.

1348-9 BLACK DEATH

1378 The Great Schism

1515 Papal bull announced to raise money to rebuild St. Peter’s

1517 The church’s supposedly reforming Lateran Council ended without achieving
much.

65 
 Luther’s complaints about the indulgences; continued to accept existence of
Purgatory until 1530 – then he realized that the logic he had unleashed meant he
couldn’t believe in purgatory.

1520s Divisions btw reformed and Luthern branches of Protestantism

Luther: sacred art generally okay. Reformed disagree.

1525 Culmination of a period in which anything seemed possible – ended with the
quelling of a German peasant rebellion.

1529 birth of term “Protestant”; Holy Roman Emperor’s Diet (imperial city) met in
Speyer, and a group of princes and cities who supported the programs of Martin
Luther and Huldrych Zwingli found themselves in a minority. So they issued a
“Protestatio” affirming the reforming beliefs they shared.

1547 - Coronation of King Edward the VI in England: used the term “Protestant” to
set aside a place for the diplomatic representatives of the reforming germans at
the ceremony.

1540-1 Prospects for reunion seemed possible

1545 Beg. Of the Council of Trent – start of Counter-Reformation

1572 Massacre of St. Bartholomew – massacre of Huguenots by Catholics.

1618 Outbreak of the 30 years war (largely btw German Lutherans and Catholics)

Various Protestant Reformers

Martin Luther

Basic Chronology
1483​ ​ Luther born
1501​ ​ Luther goes to University in Erfurt
1505​ ​ Luther decides to become a monk
1510​ ​ Peasant rebellion in Erfurt. Journey to Rome.
1512​​ Luther takes Chair of Theology in Wittenberg

66 
1513-17​ Development of theological views
​

1517​ ​Tetzel’s Indulgence campaign; the 95 theses

1518​ ​Luther questioned
1519​ ​Debate in Leipzig
1520​ ​Luther writes his three “manifestoes”
1521​ ​Luther appears at Diet of Worms
1524-5​ Peasant revolt; denounced by Luther
​

1525 Luther marries Katherine von Bora (ex-nun)

1546 Luther dies.

Luther didn’t start out trying to create a new church. He was an Augustinian monk, concerned, as
many Catholics were, with the failings of the church. Large numbers of faithful people worried about
the involvement of the Papacy in Italian politics, about the sales of church offices, about the
difficulties in providing spiritual care for ordinary people. Anti-papal sentiment was especially strong
in Germany, and it isn’t surprising that the reforms come from Germany. There had been significant
protests before, both in England (Wycliffe and the Lollards) and in Bohemia (Jan Hus; put to death in
1415). Luther’s celebrated theses were primarily triggered by the arrival of an indulgence salesman in
Luther’s neighborhood: Johan Tetzel in Joteborg. Just outside Saxony, where Luther lived, and where
the ruler, Frederick “The Wise”, denied permission for Tetzel to sell.

Luther was a bright child from a working class family. His father, a miner, was dismayed when his
talented son had a life-transforming experience in a thunderstorm and decided to become a monk.
From the start, Luther’s intellectual gifts were recognized by his order. But he was haunted by
recurring doubts, not about the existence of God but about the possibilities of human salvation.
Whether or not this is correct, it does seem clear that the Pauline theology of sin and judgment gave
him enormous trouble. We don’t know the exact trajectory of his views, but it’s clear that by 1517 he
had rejected the idea of salvation by works in favor of salvation by faith.

Catholic Christians had been used to the idea that they were required to do penances for their sins. In
light of Luther’s conclusions about sin, grace, and redemption, the practice of selling indulgences
appeared the height of corrupt cheating: instead of persuading poor people to cultivate the attitude
of faith, Tetzel and others like him were taking their money and, more importantly, giving them the
false impression that they had been absolved.

Luther’s broadcasting of the theses brought the revisionary theology of a previously obscure monk to
public attention. As Luther explained himself to his bishop, and to others, he started to go beyond
the original theses; in effect, the theological views he had been articulating to work out his own
worries about salvation became evident.

Initially, Luther was protected by Frederick (Frederick’s chaplain, Spalatin, was a personal friend of
Luther’s; it’s doubtful that Luther and Frederick exchanged more than a dozen words). Moreover,
the Pope was reluctant to put pressure on Frederick, because he wanted Frederick’s political help in
blocking the succession of Charles of Spain to the Holy Roman Empire (Charles V did succeed in 1519).
67 
At the beginning, Luther appears to the church as an intelligent but stubborn young monk, with some
misguided views; the official reaction, however, isn’t entirely dismissive, and there are suggestions of
the possibility of compromise.

But Luther, concerned with the fate of his immortal soul, wasn’t willing to compromise. Under
questioning, he said quite inflammatory things – for example, in 1518, appearing before the
Dominican cardinal Cajetan, he asserted the priority of the scripture over papal authority; to the
response that the Pope is authoritative, Luther is supposed to have declared “His holiness abuses
scripture; I deny that he is above scripture.” In a debate at Leipzig in the following year, he makes the
even more provocative statement that papal councils can err.

Back in Wittenberg, Luther wrote furiously. “The Freedom of a Christian Man” is one of three tracts
published in 1520. When a papal bull denouncing Luther was brought to Wittenberg, the students
mocked the messengers. During this period, it seems clear that Luther was benefiting not only from
Frederick’s protection, but also from German dissatisfaction with the Papacy.

In 1521, Luther was summoned to appear before Charles V at the parliament (Diet), held that year in
Worms. He was asked two questions:
Are these books yours?
Will you recant?

Luther replied that the books were his, but that he needed time to consider. Returning the next day,
he replied that some of them were devotional writings, which nobody would want him to recant;
some were personal controversy, and may be marred by rhetorical excesses (he was willing to
apologize for that); for the doctrinal writings, he would not recant until he had been shown to be in
error. At this point, he is supposed to have said: “I am bound to the scriptures I have quoted and my
conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything.”

Luther could easily have been silenced on the spot (despite the fact that Charles had promised
Frederick protection for Luther). He wasn’t, probably in part because of Charles’ political need to
avoid hostilities with Saxony, and in part because of the eruption of protests in Worms on Luther’s
behalf. So Charles sent Luther back, announcing an intention to prosecute him. Luther is effectively
kidnapped by friends and taken into safe-keeping in Saxony.

At this stage, the latent German opposition to the Papacy had broken out into enthusiasm for the
creation of reformed churches in Germany. During the 1520s, especially in the North, congregations
switched to modes of worship that were aligned, in various respects and to various degrees, with
Luther’s teachings. It became increasingly difficult for anyone, even a Pope or an Emperor, to stamp
this out. Some of Luther’s followers linked his message to socio-political reforms; in 1524-5 the
German peasants revolted, issuing demands in the name of Lutheran reform. Luther himself
responded by writing a tract “Against the Murdering Hordes of Peasants”, in which he urged princes
to “… knock down, strangle, and stab … and think nothing so venomous, pernicious, or Satanic as an
insurgent”. No doubt this shocked many people who had followed him.
68 
Salvation by faith

Luther extends the approach to salvation introduced by Paul and developed by Augustine. From his
Romans​
own accounts of his theological development, it’s clear that the central chapters of ​ were
immensely important to him.

According to the Catholic view, each of us is born into a condition of sin (original sin, stemming from
Adam). By accepting the Christian message, and undergoing the sacraments of baptism and
confirmation, that sin is taken from us. But, in our new condition, we typically sometimes fail and go
astray. Because that happens, it’s important for each person to confess regularly, to repent, and to
perform the penitential tasks prescribed for us by our confessor. In doing this we bring ourselves
back into a state of grace. It is possible, of course, that we die with sins unconfessed, and this is to be
avoided if possible (you might recall Hamlet’s reluctance to kill his uncle while Claudius is praying).
Yet, even if we die without the benefit of confession and absolution, we can still hope that our
constant performance of repentance for our sins will secure a place in purgatory, the location where
Christians do penance for residual sins.

On Luther’s reading of Paul, this is quite wrong, for it underestimates the extent to which sin is a part
of our condition. Baptism doesn’t replace a creature worthy of damnation with one worthy of
salvation. It only places us on a path where we might receive God’s grace. The important change
must occur within, in the direction of the soul towards God.

These theological ideas can obviously be elaborated in quite different ways in liturgical practice, and
they have been differently developed by different groups of Protestants. They lend themselves to
radically democratic possibilities for religious communities – full equality before God. Luther and his
successors typically didn’t go in that direction, in large measure because of the felt need for scholarly
expertise in settling points of doctrine.

Luther: “this faith can rule only in the inner man… and since faith alone justifies, it is clear that the
inner person cannot be justified, freed, or saved by any outer work or action at all, and that these
works whatever their character, have nothing to do with this inner person. On the other hand, only
ungodliness and unbelief of heart, and no outer work, make him guilty and a damnable servant of
sin… no other work makes a Christian.”

Predestination

There are passages in Luther, especially in the earlier writings, in which he seems to commit himself to
the doctrine of predestination; later, he appears to back away from this. The position does emerge
very clearly in Calvin – indeed it’s the doctrine most closely associated with Calvinism (despite the fact
Institutes​
that Calvin’s ​ covers a vast number of other issues).

69 
Calvin: “The covenant of life is not preached equally to all… it is plainly due to mere pleasure of God
that salvation is offered to some, while others have no access to it…. Some should be predestined to
salvation and others to destruction.”

Calvin: “All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life.”

Good behavior

Neither Luther nor Calvin would deny that those who have turned to God in faith tend to behave in a
morally good way: that is, they are more charitable, less inclined to indulge carnal appetites, and so
forth. Their point is that this behavior doesn’t ​ cause​them to become ​ worthy​of God’s salvation.
effect​
Rather it is the ​ precondition​
of an attitude – a quality of the soul, they would say – that is a ​ for
God’s grace.

Further, both are inclined to think that pious deeds and Christian actions are the outward sign of the
manifestation of faith. Especially within Calvinism, there’s a tendency to look for outward signs that
someone belongs to the elect. Initially, these are seen in terms of especially strict conformity to
Christian maxims for human conduct. As time goes on, the criterion tends to be broadened so that
worldly success is taken as a sign that one has been chosen by God.

Luther: “In this life he must control his won body an have dealings with others. Here the works begin;
here individuals cannot enjoy leisure; here they must indeed take care to discipline their bodies by
fasting, watchings, labors, and other reasonable discipline and to subject it to the Spirit.”

Luther: “While they are doing this, behold, they meet a contrary will in their own flesh, which strives
to serve the world and seeks its own advantage. This is the spirit of faith cannot tolerate, but with
joyful zeal it attempts to put the body under control and hold it in check.”

Luther: “In doing these works, however, we must not think that a person is justified before God by
them… [BUT] these works reduce the body to subjection and purify it of its evil lusts, and our whole
purpose is to be directed only toward the driving out of lusts.”

Calvin: Second Objection: “The doctrine of election takes guilt and responsibility from individuals.”
Answer: “Though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is
in themselves… Humans fall, but they fall by their own fault.”

Calvin: Fourth objection: “the doctrine of election destroys all zeal for an upright life.”
Answer: “If the end of election is holiness of life, it ought to arose and stimulate us strenuously to
aspire to it, instead of serving as a pretext for sloth.”

Religion and the State

​

70 
Both Luther and Calvin offer views about the proper relationship between Christianity and the State.
Luther’s approach stresses the spiritual character of the Christian life to justify allowing your deeds to
be governed by the laws of secular societies.

But how far can you go in honoring the laws of the state? Luther is prepared to allow for the Christian
hangman . Is that really in accordance with the commitment to the growth of faith on which he
insists? Where he plainly draws the line is in connection with matters of religion.
Calvin seems to favor a quite different approach. His ideal religion is practiced in community. The
members watch one another, exhorting and reproving.

Luther: “For no matter how harshly they lay down the law, or how violently they rage, they can do no
more than force an outward compliance of the mouth and the hand, the heart cannot compel, though
they work themselves into a frazzle. For the proverb is true: Thoughts are tax-free.”

Luther: “Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, a subject neither to law nor sword, and
have heed of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with ral Christians before you attempt to
rule it in an Xtn and evangelical manner… Xtns are few and between… it is out of the question that
there would be a common Xtn govt over the whole world… for the wicked outnumber the good.”

C: “The first foundation of discipline is to provide for private admonition… he or she must allow
themselves to be admonished; and everyone must study to admonish the brother when the case
requires… whose duty is not only to preach to the people, but to exhort and admonish from house to
house.”

71 
 MACHIAVELLI
Biographical details

Machiavelli was born in 1469, in Florence. His father was a lawyer, not wealthy but determined to
give his son a good education. It’s clear from Machiavelli’s writings that the education took – he is
deeply fascinated by classical learning and strongly influenced by Renaissance humanism.

In 1494, as a result of a French invasion of Northern Italy, the ruling Medici family was forced to flee
Florence. After the fall of the charismatic friar Savanarola in 1498, Machiavelli found a prominent
place in the republican regime. For the next fourteen years, he worked both on internal affairs
(particularly on matters of military organization and defense), and also served as a traveling diplomat,
representing Florence in France and in Rome. His experiences during this period gave him an
empirical basis for his subsequent writings.

In 1512, the republic collapsed and the Medici were restored. As an administrator of the former
regime, Machiavelli was questioned and tortured – put to the ​strappado​. He was subsequently
imprisoned, and released only in the general amnesty that followed the coronation of one of the
Medici as Pope (1513; he had been in prison for about a month). A condition of his release was that
he be confined to the territory of Florence, and he withdrew to a farm he owned seven miles from the
city.

It’s plain from his letters that Machiavelli found country life dull, and that he yearned to return to
public office. The ​ Prince​ seems to have been written in the hope that it would return him to favor,
but his attempt to secure the services of his friend Vettori as an intermediary or advocate failed. He
spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1527, in enforced retirement.

Prince​
The ​ was probably written by 1515; it may well have been completed by the end of 1513. The
Discourses​
occupied him between 1515 and 1519.

Two Traditional Puzzles

Relatively soon after his death, Machiavelli acquired an unsavory reputation (for example, there are
strongly negative references to him in Elizabethan plays). This reputation rested on the perceived
amorality of the ​Prince​
. Although many of the same themes are sounded in the ​ Prince​and in the
Discourses​, the former appears to concentrate on monarchical rule, while the latter is enthusiastic
about republican government, and specifically on the kind of political culture exemplified at the
height of the Roman republic. These facts generate two traditional puzzles.

1. Why does Machiavelli become a byword for unscrupulousness? Is it the endorsement of

violence? Or a separation of morality from politics? Or the absence of an orthodox religious

72 
perspective?
2. Is Machiavelli a consistent republican? Once we read the ​ Discourses​his preference for
republics is clear. So does this mean the ​ Prince​
is disingenuous? Is he simply angling for a job, and
disguising his politics to curry favor with the Medici?

NM’s scheme of values may be somewhat elusive, but he plainly has one. It’s centered on the idea
that ​
certain kinds of shared political life are genuinely worthwhile​. Similarly, even though Machiavelli
some​
believes that ​ ends justify means that others regard as always morally illegitimate, we should
resist the reduction of his views to the slogan “The end justifies the means”.

Machiavelli’s thought is best expressed as the recognition that certain ends are genuinely valuable,
that these ends cannot be attained without sacrificing other values, and that the decision to make
that sacrifice can be defended. He doesn’t dispute that there’s a scheme of values according to which
political assassination is forbidden. His view is that, if you opt for that scheme, you’ll have to give up
the value of a flourishing civic life; if flourishing civic life is the value that matters most to you (and
Machiavelli would not only claim that it’s a value, but also rate it very highly), then you’ll have to do
things that are opposed to the standard scheme of Christian values.

Similarly, it’s probably too simple to write Machiavelli off as inconsistent, or as sacrificing his political
convictions in the pursuit of selfish interests. Throughout his career, Machiavelli wants to make
possible the kind of social and political life in which people have the opportunity to engage in projects
that require the sustaining activity of others; civilization, as he conceives it, is valuable, and it requires
coordination, cooperation, and security. His considered view, it becomes apparent when reading the
Discourses​ , is that these conditions are most likely to be met under a republic. But it’s also part of his
notion of ​ virtú​ (see below) that it demands adaptation to existing conditions. He wants to realize civic
life in Italy (particularly in Florence), and, around 1513, the best option for that looks like working with
and through the Medici – which is probably why he writes the ​ Prince​. When he turns to the more
theoretical problem​ of explaining how to achieve the right sort of social and political life, he writes the
Discourses​ .

Three Crucial Concepts

virtú

Our translator wisely indicates the many places in the text where Machiavelli uses ​ virtú​
and cognate
notions. Some of these do link ​ virtú​
to virtue but the more prominent tendency is to think of it as a
matter of strength, ability, or prowess. It can’t be ​mere​
strength, of course, because Machiavelli
wants to distinguish the man of ​ virtú​
from the unscrupulous tyrant. ​Virtú​requires strength, ability,
and judgment in the service of the package of values in which Machiavelli is most interested.

The man of ​virtú​

pursues honor and glory, but the understanding of these latter notions isn’t just a
matter of individual success. The kinds of honor and glory that concern Machiavelli don’t necessarily

73 
come from charging into the enemy lines, but in making possible a certain kind of socio-political life.
The ultimate value consists in the creation and maintenance of a state in which individuals can live
truly civilized lives.

p “It is necessary not only to pay attention to immediate crises, but to foresee those that will come,
and to make every effort to prevent them… In this matter it is as doctors say of consumption: In the
beginning the disease is easy to cure, difficult to diagnose; but, after a while, if it has not been
diagnosed and treated early, it becomes easy to diagnose and hard to cure. So too in politics.”

fortuna

Machiavelli’s talk of chance or good luck can seem confusing. Is he invoking a peculiar secular deity,
supposing that our traits and actions make no difference, or advocating a theory of history on which
fortune’s wheel revolves? There’s something right about these questions insofar as they are at odds
with any providential view of history and politics. Machiavelli clearly wants to debunk the idea that
following some set of divine commands is a recipe for worldly success. But he’s after something
slightly more nuanced.

At the core of that view is the conviction that circumstances are changeable, and typically complex.
So, as things change, states and their leaders are faced with problems that can’t be solved either by
falling back on established habits or by trying to calculate. Typically, you have an unprecedented
situation, and your knowledge of all the relevant variables is radically incomplete. So how do you
cope?

The man of ​ virtú​is adaptable. He has to see that this is a novel situation, and that he can’t simply use
the strategies that have worked so far. Moreover, he doesn’t have the knowledge he needs to figure
out all the intricate chains of consequences that would ensue from various courses of action – often
he doesn’t have time to use what knowledge he has. Yet, in a certain sense, he can try to “tame”
fortuna​ . He can do this by acting decisively, in ways that complicate the decision-making of those
with whom he’s in conflict.

“Anyone who sacrifices his own convenience in order to make others happy is bound to
inconvenience himself, but can’t be sure of receiving any thanks for it. And since fortune wants to
control everything, she evidently wants to be left a free hand; meanwhile we should keep our own
counsel and not get in her way, and wait until she allows human beings to have a say in the course of
events.”

“I conclude, then, that since fortune changes, and men stubbornly continue to behave in the same
way, men flourish when their behavior suits the times and fail when they are out of step. I do think,
however, that it is better to be headstrong than cautious, for fortune is a lady. It is necessary, if you
want to master her, to beat and strike her. And one sees she more often submits to those who act
boldly than to those who proceed in a calculating fashion. Moreover, since she is a lady, she smiles on
the young, for they are less cautious, more ruthless, and overcome her with their boldness.”
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freedom

Machiavelli’s notion of freedom relates to his treatment of civic life as an ultimate value. He doesn’t
think of freedom in terms of the non-interference of others. To be free is not to be free ​ from
coercion, to have one’s own private sphere into which other people aren’t permitted to intrude.
That, he seems to think, would be an impoverished type of freedom, since what we can do as isolated
individuals isn’t very important. The freedom that matters to him is the freedom ​ to​have certain
options, options that are only made possible within civilization.

Discourses​
In the ​ , Machiavelli introduces the notion of freedom by defining it first for cities: cities are
free when they are not subject to external domination. When this occurs, cities (or states) can set up
institutions that are genuinely public, serving the common good. These institutions make much
wider options for individual lives. The commitment to participation in common projects, and the
common good runs through the ​ Discourses​
. It’s particularly apparent in Machiavelli’s contention that
the public treasury should be full, and individual citizens should be relatively poor.

View of Human Nature

The ​Prince​
overflows with eminently quotable maxims. It is better to be feared than to be loved; You
should combine the qualities of the lion and the fox; You should concentrate your cruelty into a single
act; A reputation for parsimony is preferable to a reputation for generosity.

Behind these maxims stands a picture of human nature. Machiavelli clearly doesn’t think there’s
much chance that powerful actors will follow the moral precepts to which they officially subscribe. In
general, he inclines to the view that people are motivated by self-interest. Hence the importance he
attaches to setting things up in a way that aligns the interests of the rulers with the common good.

Moral Stance

Machiavelli has a genuine ​ moral​ stance. He clearly believes that the actions of politicians can be
judged – he comments that some are right and others are not. Moreover, he is obviously well aware
of the conventional moral perspective. He takes that perspective to issue in absolute duties, duties
that interfere with our obtaining and maintaining those values on which he sets most store. On his
view, it’s quite possible to try to honor those duties, but those who pledge themselves to this course
will have rather unfortunate careers. If they are rulers, their people are likely to be extremely
miserable.

He supposes that there are other values, values that can be realized in this world, in socio-political
arrangements that give people security and the freedom to choose from a rich menu of options. His
first move within the domain of morality is to give these other values – particularly civic life – priority.
After that, he takes a consequentialist turn: it is ethically appropriate to do anything that needs to be

75 
done to secure the values that are given priority. Notice that considerations of justice and of the
rights of individuals don’t come into play so far at all.

Once this is done, I think Machiavelli is willing to recognize the conventional duties. I take him to
maintain that, when the important things have been secured, one of the luxuries that can be enjoyed
is trying to live up to Christian ideals. This is where thugs like Agathocles go wrong – they find no
place at all for the conventional duties.

Read in this way, Machiavelli poses an interesting dilemma for liberal societies. We tend to think that
certain types of individual rights are sacrosanct, although we’re prepared to waive some of them
under special circumstances. Machiavelli’s view is that rulers have an obligation to be vigilant, and to
abrogate the conventional duties whenever the public good is at risk. This shouldn’t be confused
with violating the duties whenever it’s expedient for the self-interest of the ruler. That’s tyranny.
But he would probably indict liberal democracies for not being tough enough to set up the conditions
that maintain their conception of civic life.

“I think here we have to distinguish between cruelty well used and cruelty abused.”

“But one cannot have all the good qualities, nor always act in a praiseworthy fashion, for we do not
live in an ideal world. You have to be astute enough to avoid being thought to have those evil
qualities that would make it impossible for you to retain power; as for those that are compatible with
holding on to power, you should avoid them.”

“Nevertheless, you should be careful how you access the situation and should think twice before you
act. Do not be afraid of your own shadow. Employ policies that are moderated by prudence and
sympathy. Avoid excessive timidity, which leads to carelessness, and avoid excessive timidity, which
will make you insupportable.”

“My reply is one ought to be both loved and feared; but, since it is difficult to accomplish both at the
same time, I maintain it is much safer to be feared than loved.”

Religion

NM can be read as posing a deep break with Christian morality, in his giving priority to this-worldly
values. He does think people could try to live according to Christian precepts; it’s just that, by secular
standards, their lives would go badly. A state that obeyed the Christian commandments would be
quickly overrun, and its people would suffer servitude (or worse). A Christian might declare that this
doesn’t matter; after all, the sufferers will have their reward in the afterlife. Machiavelli, however, i
less interested in the afterlife than in having things go better in this world. That may be a sign that he
doesn’t take the afterlife or Christianity very seriously.

Discourses​
In the ​ , NM offers an officially positive view of religion. Religion can be good for

76 
maintaining the civic life. There are plenty of hints that he believes that Roman paganism fulfilled
this function rather better than Christianity has done. These suggest that religions are to be assessed
not in terms of the truth of their doctrines, but for the role that they play in civic affairs.

“It was religion that facilitated whatever enterprise the senate and the great men of Rome designed
to undertake… its citizens were more afraid of breaking an oath than of breaking the law.” - D

“I conclude that religion introduced by Numa was among the primary causes of Rome’s success, for
this entailed good institutions; good institutions led to good fortune; and from good fortune arose the
happy results of undertakings. And, as the observance of divine worship is the cause of greatness in
republics, so the neglect of it is the cause of their ruin.” –D

Forestalling decline

The ​Discourses​center around an obvious question: how do you prevent a flourishing civil order from
becoming corrupted? The general form of Machiavelli’s answer is that you have to develop
institutions that constrain individuals, so that they can’t act from self-interest in ways that endanger
the public good. Religion can play a role here. But Machiavelli’s main suggestion is that you need to
have a balanced struggle among different parts of society.

Machiavelli doesn’t blink at the fact that internal conflict may result in civil strife and even a
significant amount of violence and death. This is simply the price one must pay to keep the polity
going. The important thing is that having different factions within the society prevents the laws from
being wrested in a direction that destroys the possibility of recognizing the common good as a shared
aim.

Another striking feature of Machiavelli’s treatment of the problem is his use of the story of Brutus and
his sons. He explains several times that, to preserve the republic, you have to kill the sons of Brutus,
whenever they appear. Just as the man of ​ virtú​
had to be vigilant, so too do the administrators of the
republic. They have to be looking out for potential rebellion and sources of corruption.

“One does not learn the danger of such an erosion of support from experience, as the first experience
proves fatal. So a wise ruler will seek to ensure they his citizens always, no matter what the
circumstances, have an interest in preserving both him and his authority. If he can do this, they will
always be faithful to him.”

“For at the start religious institutions, republics and kingdoms have in all cases some good in them, to
which their early reputation and progress is due. But since in process of time this goodness is
corrupted, such a body bust of necessity die unless something happens which brings it up to the
mark.”

A republic can MORPH and CHANGE – therefore it will enjoy “a fuller life and good fortune for a

77 
longer time than a principality.”

Methodology: Using History

NM derives some of his conclusions as general explanations of the things he’s observed; others come
from his attempts to give a general account of the pieces of political history he knows. Does this
suggest a new – “empirical” – turn in political theory? Is the reliance on history compatible with
Machiavelli’s stress on changing circumstances?

“Above all he should set himself to imitate the actions of some admirable historical character, as great
men have always initiated their glorious predecessors, constantly bearing in mind their actions and
their ways of behaving.”

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 THE NEW WORLD
What different justifications were employed for the colonization of the “New World”? De Las Casas,
Sepulveda, and Vitoria should all be read as advocates of the European, specifically Spanish, right to
colonise land across the Atlantic. The three, however, begin from very different suppositions about
the nature of the “Indians” and the European relationship to them. This informs three radically
different justifications for European behavior. When is colonization – and war – just?

DLC: “A just war requires not only just causes for its undertaking, but also legitimate authority and
upright spirit.”

How do we know when authority is “legitimate”? How can you measure whether actions proceed
with “upright spirit” – either in yourself or, more problematically, in others?

Timeline

1493: Pope issues Papal Bull – the new world protectorate to Spain

1530s: Vitoria’s most influential writings

1542: Spanish “New Laws” – indigenous peoples = UNENSLAVEABLE FREEMEN (context: slaves from
Africa after the 1530s)

​
The “Black Legend”​
(term coined in the XX century):

The political power of Spain became intimately associated with the religious power of the Pope. When
Charles V became the King of Spain in 1517, he was also Holy Roman Emperor. As the anointed
defender of Christianity, Charles V saw it as his duty to purify Europe from what he perceived as
heresies. He launched a bloody counterreformation war against Germany and ​ defeated the
Schmalkadic League of Protestant princes, at Mühlberg in 1548.​ Holland became in 1568 the other
party in a war that lasted 80 years. In the same vain, Spain launched an attack against England. This
venture resulted in the disastrous defeat of its armada in 1588.

Spain came to be portrayed by competing European powers as bloody and barbaric. It’s colonization
of the New World became a key example of the ruthlessness of the Spanish. Justifications for
colonization of the new world therefore also pivot around tensions related to Spain’s hegemony in
Europe.

1550-51:
Debate – de las Casas v. Sepulveda
touchstone: Aristotle – ideas on “natural slavery”
Aristotle – used as a justification for natural slavery

79 
 Politics​
Aristotle on slavery, in the ​ :
"Those whose condition is such that their function is the use of their bodies and nothing better can be
expected of them, those, I say, are slaves of nature. It is better for them to be ruled thus."

The Three Actors & Their Positions

Sepulveda – neo-Aristotelian humanist

-​ ​argued for Indian inferiority
-​ ​cultural barbarian is subject to the civilized man by nature
-​ ​slavery is a punishment for sin
o​Spanish RIGHT of conquest, colonization
​

o​Argued on basis of natural law philosophy

​

“I was seized by a doubt, to wit, whether it was congruous with justice and Christian charity that the
Spaniards should have made war on those innocent mortals who had caused them no harm… I also
want you to explain succinctly, with the clarity peculiar to your outstanding mind and subtle
understanding, all the possible causes for a just war, and then to resolve the question in a few words.”

De las Casas – Dominican friar

-​ ​ arrived in West Indies in 1502
-​ ​ 1514: became an ADVOCATE for the Indians
-​ ​ argues for the FULL HUMANITY of the slaves – concludes that evangelization, not rule, is the basis
of the relationship

Most Important of the 30 Juridical Propositions:

1)​
Pope has the authority of Christ himself over ALL – but must use the power in different ways for
​

and against the faithful and unfaithful.

2)​
Christians are by DIVINE LAW supposed to evangelize to unfaithful
​

3)​
Christian monarchs occupy a special position for conversion of unfaithful
​

7) Divided political realms exist so that some can preach faith to others

8) divided pol realms do NOT exist to further material wealth

10) real princes etc exist in other kingdoms far away; these dominions not abolished w/advent of
Christ

11) those who oppose 10 = heretics

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12) for NO sin should the unfaithful be deprived of their dominions

13) unfaithful cannot be punished by WORLDLY judges – unless they prohibit the spread of faith
directly, and have been warned not to do so.

19) All kings of these other places will ACCEPT monarchs of Castile as universal sovereign “after having
received our holy faith and sacred baptism of their own free will; and if before receiving these they do
not do so or wish to do so, they cannot be punished by any judge or court.”

22) The rulers of Castile are obliged by divine law to see that the faith is PREACHED. BUT must preach
with gentleness

23) do not preach aggressively, like Mohammed – do it gently, easily, like Christ

encomienda​
28) ​ repartimiento​
and ​ = BAD – impossible for these people to receive the faith.

30) everything done in the new world WITHOUT the sanction of the monarchs of Castille = null and
void.

Vitoria - lawyer
-​ ​international law – republic of the WHOLE WORLD
-​ ​school of Salamanca
o​reconcile reformation and Acquinas w/new world order
​

-​ ​law is in NATURE ITSELF, therefore al are a part of it.

-​ ​All humans share the same NATURE, therefore they all share the same RIGHTS
-​ ​2x realms of power: natural and supernatural
o​leads to the proposals that there are LIMITS on powers of government
​

§​England: EXTENDING the divine right of kings

​

§​This school: putting that divine right in people

​

-​ ​Rights of peoples
-​ ​First to say that the common good of the WORLD is superior to that of STATES
-​ ​Just war: only when used to prevent an even GREATER evil
o​Self-defense
​

o​Against a tyrant
​

o​Against a guilty enemy

​

§​Needs to be COMENSURATE, not more force in response

​

§​People have a right to depose their govt if they believe it’s waging an unjust war
​

“all forms of domino derive from natural or human law; therefore they cannot be annulled by lack of
faith.”

“this title against the barbarians is also invalid… the Spaniards, when they first sailed to the land of
81 
the barbarians, carried w/them no right to occupy their countries.”

Shifting Categories

The confrontation with peoples who look, sound, and act differently leaves Europeans flummoxed.
How should the existence of these peoples be understood? Into which preexisting categories should
they be slotted?

Children? Women? The Retarded? The Insane? Animals?

S, 6) “and since furthermore these Indians were otherwise so cowardly and timid that they could
barely endure the presence of our soldiers…. Scattered in flight like women before the Spaniards.”

S: “those… who are retarded or slow to understand… are by nature slaves, and it is proper and useful
that they be so…. If they reject such rule, then it can be imposed upon them by means of arms, and
such a war will be just according to the laws of nature.”

“the Spanish have a perfect right to rule these barbarians of the New World and the adjacent islands,
who in prudence, skill, virtues, and humanity are as inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, or
women to men… I might even say between apes and men.”

“…these half-men… who not only do not possess any learning at all, but are not even literate or in
possession of any monument to their history except for some obscure and vague reminiscences of
several things put down in various paintings; nor do they have written laws…”

Source Bases

The source bases these three writers rely on point to their formative influences and also shape the
conclusions they go on to form. This seems particularly striking in the contrast between Sepulveda
and de las Casas. Sepulveda, a philosopher, bases his conclusions on Aristotle, and argues that the
natural inferiority of Indians justifies their enslavement. De las Casas, a friar, uses biblical exegesis to
advocate an evangelical relationship between the Spanish and the Indians. Which of these positions
was more likely to aid the Crown’s conquest? Can one be read as more ‘moral’ than another?

Vitoria, a lawyer, seems to suggest the most radical way forward. In his eyes, all people, by virtue of
being human, possess natural rights. His justification for this position is preceded by a careful analysis
of different realms of jurisdiction: the natural, the human, and the divine realm. Here we see a
foreshadowing of Locke, and the conclusion is potentially radical. We cannot, as humans, arbitrate in
the divine realm; Vitoria thus brackets it. This leaves the natural and the human realms. Natural rights
proceed states, and therefore should be prioritized above them. Whereas the crown in England,
thanks to Henry the VIII, was that asserting divine rights lay in Kingship, Vitoria asserts that divine
right lies in people.

82 
This begs the question: what role, if any, should states like Spain play in debating the rights of
individuals and groups across the Atlantic? Are Indians and the Spanish equal? Vitoria ends his
argument short of embracing such a radical conclusion (they are not yet equal, b/c the Spanish had
enjoyed the privilege of exposure to the word of God), but his line of logic begins a chain that can be
traced to the development of human rights discourses on a global scale, through the Enlightenment
and beyond.

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 THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Galileo & Descartes
The Enlightenment political and moral thought of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
inspired by, and depends on, the development of early modern science. The Scientific Revolution
paves the way for Locke, Hume, Smith, Kant and company (Hume, after all, aspired to be the “Newton
of the mind”).

The Scientific Revolution begins with Copernicus (Nikolai Koppernigk, a Polish monk). Starting around
1509, Copernicus set himself the task of arriving at a more accurate model of the motions of the
heavenly bodies, so that the Church could carry out a calendar reform. The dominant model of the
solar system was a geocentric one, originally inspired by Aristotle and developed mathematically by
Ptolemy. The task of the astronomer was to construct the orbits of the planets by composing them
out of circular motions (this accords with the Aristotelian idea that the heavens are made up of a
special element, the quintessence, whose natural motion, unlike those of the four terrestrial
elements, is circular). From antiquity it had been recognized that the motions of the planets are
anomalous, in that, at particular times, observations taken on consecutive nights reveal them
reversing their dominant direction of motion. The standard devices for dealing with this are the
epicycle-deferent​ eccentric​
system, the ​ equant​
, and the ​ . The first is easy to explain: you imagine that
the planet describes a small circle whose center moves uniformly on a larger circle. Post-Ptolemaic
astronomers had invested enormous efforts in trying to use these devices to generate an accurate
account of the planetary motions. Handicapped in part by observational inaccuracies, the models
they produced remained problematic.

Copernicus took up this problem with all the resources of medieval astronomy (he has been described
as the “last medieval astronomer”). He struggled with it for more than thirty years, eventually
producing a system that was more accurate than any extant rival. His approach stemmed from a
reluctance to use one of the standard devices (the equant), and he seems to have seen, relatively
early, that he could avoid this by supposing that the sun was the center of the orbits of the earth and
the other planets; this supposition also allowed him to dispense with a number of epicycles, but, while
he deployed fewer than the Ptolemaic systems, his model retained a significant number of epicycles
(about 50).

Copernicus recognized that his approach faced a number of objections based on the prevailing views
about motion (views derived from Aristotle’s ​ Physics​
). He sought to defuse these by various
arguments in the style of late scholasticism (some of them derive from a predecessor, Nicole Oresme,
a fifteenth century scholar in Paris). Reluctant to publish, Copernicus was prodded into completing
his major book – ​On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ​ (a title resonant with the accepted
Aristotelian cosmology) – and, supposedly, the first printed copy was placed in his hands as he lay
dying in 1543.

84 
There was no immediate hostile Catholic response. Protestants were far more worried about
Copernicus’ suggestion that the earth moved, and they raised the objection that this would be at odds
with the Biblical verse reporting Joshua’s command to the sun to stand still. Relatively quickly,
however, it was recognized that, for any heliocentric (sun-centered) system there is a mathematically
equivalent geocentric (earth-centered) model. Although the geocentric accounts are a bit more
complicated, they could be taken to represent the ​real motions​. Mathematicians could save
themselves some pains by working with the heliocentric systems, conceiving of them as useful
shorthand devices for making predictions but not as corresponding to the ways in which the heavenly
bodies actually moved. (It would be like assuming that the earth is perfectly flat for purposes of
exploring the motions of bodies near its surface.)

Brahe attracted a young assistant, Johann Kepler, who had been taught by one of the few
sixteenth-century Copernicans. Kepler was convinced of the accuracy of Brahe’s observations, and
set himself the task of using them to calculate a completely accurate Copernican model. His
intellectual journey led him down many blind alleys, and, since he recorded all these in his published
reports, his books are extremely hard to read. After liberating himself from the thought that motions
must be composed out of elementary circular motions, he first proposed that the orbits were ovoid in
shape, and eventually worked his way to the claim that they are elliptical (Kepler’s First Law – buried
in his astronomical presentations). Kepler recognized this at the end of the first decade of the
seventeenth century. Very few people understood what he had accomplished. Galileo, who
corresponded with him, did not; indeed, Galileo continued to believe in circular orbits to his death in
1642.

Galileo was born in 1564, the son of a musician. Trained in mathematics and natural philosophy, he
probably became a Copernican towards the end of the sixteenth century. In 1608 he is supposed to
have heard of a Dutch lens maker who had combined lenses to produce magnified images, and he
used the idea to make the first telescope. Turning it on the sky, he identified the moons of Jupiter
(the “Medicean planets”), the phases of Venus, and sunspots – all recorded in his ​ Starry Messenger
(1610). The power of the telescope could be demonstrated ​ on earth​ by turning it on distant objects
whose properties could be checked by viewing them from close up (ships coming into the Venetian
harbor, for example). But there were objections to the use of the telescope ​ in the heavens​, for,
according to Aristotelian cosmology, the heavens were made of different stuff, and it could by no
means be assumed that an instrument fashioned from mundane elements (sublunary matter) could
disclose the properties of bodies made from the quintessence. From 1610 until 1615, Galileo
campaigned tirelessly for the accuracy of the telescope as an astronomical instrument, by establishing
the continuity of observations made with the naked eye and with telescopes of different power, by
using the observations of new stars in the heavens (​novae ​
were seen in 1588 and 1604) to dispute the
changelessness of the supposedly immutable heavens, and, most importantly, by improving both the
telescopes and the techniques for using them. By 1615, the overwhelming majority of the learned
world had accepted his claim that the telescope could provide accurate information about the
heavens.

Galileo proposed to use the telescopic findings to make a case for heliocentrism, but, in 1616, Cardinal
85 
Bellarmine intervened, declaring that public teaching of Copernicanism was forbidden. Only in the
early 1620s, when Matteo Barberini, a friendly interlocutor of Galileo’s, became Pope (Urban VIII) was
there some relaxation of the ban. Galileo was led to understand that he might publish a judicious
discussion of the rival claims of different astronomical systems. Deciding to write in dialogue form,
he completed the ​ Dialogue Concerning the Two Great Systems of the World​ and submitted the text
for Papal scrutiny in 1632. The ​ Dialogue​ was a devastating critique of Aristotelian cosmology and
physics, and Ptolemaic astronomy, both defended by a character, Simplicio, who is inevitably
out-argued by the two other figures, Salviati (Copernicus’ spokesman) and Sagredo (an allegedly
neutral figure). The official conclusion is a decision to agree that, despite the appearances, God
might have created a geocentric universe that looks deceptively heliocentric – a position raised in
cavalier fashion on the closing page, and a position that happened to be that defended by Barberini in
his earlier conversations with Galileo.

Dialogue​
The papal office inspected the ​ , and summoned Galileo to Rome. He was shown the
instruments of torture and commanded to recant. He complied, although the apocryphal story is that
he muttered under his breath “​ Eppur se muove​ ” (It does move, all the same). He was sentenced to
house arrest, outside Florence.

But the damage was done. The ​ Dialogue​was published and read in many European countries. In it
Galileo had responded to the classic objections to the motion of the earth (such as the worry that
clouds and birds would be left behind) by offering cogent arguments about local motion (many of
which depended on thought experiments that draw on familiar observations). The telescopic
observations were deployed to raise trouble for geocentric views, and effectively, Galileo was able to
show that the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic position faced insuperable difficulties, while the Copernican
system could overcome what had originally seemed severe problems.

In the last decade of his life, Galileo continued to work on issues about motion, formulating his
thoughts in ​Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences​ , a manuscript that was smuggled out of Italy.
The ​Discourses​offers the results about motion of falling bodies under uniform acceleration for which
Galileo is famous. Essentially, Galileo provided us with modern kinematics.

But he wasn’t the only figure working on problems of motion. From the early 1630s on, Descartes
Discourse on Method​
had been elaborating scientific results across a range of disciplines. The ​ was
originally published as a prefatory piece to three other discourses, one on geometry, one on optics,
and one on meteorology. The geometrical work is notable for its introduction of Cartesian
coordinates, and the formulation of previously unsolvable problems in algebraic terms; (Descartes
greatly developed the algebra of the sixteenth century French lawyer François Viète). The optics
provide laws of reflection and refraction; (Descartes independently discovered Snell’s Law). The
meteorological work provides the first explanation of the rainbow.

Yet, mindful of the fate of Galileo, in the 1630s he kept his large-scale system of physics to himself.
That system saw the universe as a vast machine, made up of small particles operating under laws of
motion. Descartes was quite willing to extend the conception to all bodies, including those of animals
86 
and of human beings, and he sought a mechanical explanation of the motions of planets. Many other
thinkers of the time (Hobbes and Gassendi, for example) also believed in the thesis that all bodies
were composed of atomic corpuscles (the “corpuscular hypothesis”), but they did not develop the
kind of dynamical account attempted by Descartes.

Changes of social role

Part of the shift in this period consists in new ideas about the relative importance of certain kinds of
intellectual endeavors. This is most evident in the case of mathematics, a subject which, from the
medieval perspective is subordinate to philosophy; Renaissance mathematicians sometimes served as
entertainers at princely courts (Tartaglia and Cardano, early solvers of cubic equations without explicit
algebraic notation, would amuse the aristocracy by publicly finding the answers to challenging
problems). By the late seventeenth century, mathematics has come to be recognized as an important
autonomous discipline, and as the key to main areas of physical science. Galileo writes that “the
Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics”, an amazing statement from an Aristotelian
perspective. There’s a simultaneous upgrading of various kinds of practical knowledge, and the
displacing of some exercises of theological argumentation.

“This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not form the
authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations.” - G

Claims about method

The major contributors to the substantive science frequently articulate their views about method.
This is especially obvious with Descartes, who plainly views himself as having the key to a more
enduring corpus of knowledge.

Social organization of inquiry

One of the big features of the period is that inquiry into the natural world becomes assigned to a new
group of people, often to people who are outside universities. There spring up informal networks of
investigators – as in the group linked by the French friar Mersenne. Eventually, we get the first
scientific societies, both in Britain and in France. These are sometimes quite self-consciously opposed
to “the schools”, to universities and to Aristotelianism.

“I am referring at all times to merely physical propositions, and not to supernatural things which are
matters of faith.” -G

Galileo’s ​
Letter

Galileo is making a very ambitious claim. He’s supposing that ​ highly-disputed​ theses about ​
remote
objects force a non-literal reading of the scripture. Typically, his style of argument combines both
87 
attack and defense. He tries to show that a literal interpretation would make no sense if the
Aristotelian view of the planetary motions were correct.

What exactly does Galileo have to go on at this stage? The telescopic observations. But you should
also point out that he faces a serious difficulty, about which he knows. If Copernicanism were true,
the stars ought to be seen at different angles at different times of the year; think of sitting on a
carousel – as you go round, you see the surrounding objects at different angles. But, as every learned
person knew, you ​ don’t​observe any such changes of angle (this phenomenon, stellar parallax, only
became observable in the nineteenth century, when telescopes were greatly improved). Galileo’s
response – correct, in fact – is that the stars are vastly further away than they have been taken to be.
Not only does he lack a body of convincing evidence for that, but it can easily be seen as pushing
Copernicanism in the direction of an infinite universe.

So Galileo’s argument was much harder to make than it may appear to us today. What exactly are the
methods for acquiring knowledge of the natural world? To what extent can religious texts help us?
Should we even think of them as in the business of providing insights into natural phenomena?

“I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the
earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun.”

“Every truth is in agreement with all other truth.”

Descartes’s ​
Method

Failure to articulate explicit principles of sound investigation allows the haphazard development of
opinion, Descartes believes - much of it false. The remedy is to delineate, as exactly as possible, the
criteria for the adoption of new truths. This is the task that Descartes undertakes in the ​Discourse on
Method​ . He wants a method of discovery that will build up knowledge systematically in such a way
that we won’t be led off track by premature settling of issues. He thinks such a method exists
because he takes himself to have worked by one – probably implicitly – in his early discoveries about
nature. With such a method in place, the ramshackle mess that has descended from Aristotle can
give way to a complete system of precise knowledge.

What is the method?

Plainly inspired by the case of mathematics, Descartes proposes four rules:

1)​​not to admit anything doubtful
2)​​to resolve problems into parts [academic disciplines, kinds of knowledge]
3)​​to start with the easiest and simplest things
4)​​to engage in complete reviews of all the steps.

“But putting forward this essay merely as a story or, if you prefer, as a fable in which, among some

88 
examples one can imitate, one will perhaps also find many others which one will have reason not to
follow, I hope that it will be useful to some without being harmful to anyone…”

But he will conform to certain moral conventions while performing the methos. He will:
1)​​obey laws of country
2)​​be firm and resolute in actions as he could – follow any path he set for himself
3)​​always conquer SELF rather than fortune
4)​​review occupations of live and pick best one for him (knowledge-seeker)

Descartes’s​
Meditations

Meditations​
Descartes’ ​ is often seen as the founding text of modern philosophy. The third level of
methodological presentation, sketched in the ​Discourse​ Meditations​
and elaborated in the ​ , attempts
to give more substance to the idea of a foundation for knowledge in the operations of pure reason by
showing how an individual can move from a state of complete doubt to one of knowing all sorts of
things about the physical world.

The Main Issues of the Meditations

Systematic Doubt​ . Does the fact that our senses sometimes incline us to believe things that are false
cast any general doubt on the beliefs we acquire by means of perception? Can we make sense of the
idea that we might always be dreaming? Or that we might be mad? In both of these cases can’t we
draw a contrast between dreams (or madness) and wakeful states (sanity) ​ within​ our experience?

The Cogito​. Everyone associates “​ Cogito, ergo sum​

” with Descartes. Why is Descartes so
convinced of this? Does he make a genuine inference (“I think ​ therefore​I am”)? If so, how is he so
sure of the premise (“I think”)? Should he have any confidence in a ​subject​of thought – or just make
the more minimal claim that ​ there is​
thought? Couldn’t one raise skeptical doubts about the
language he employs?

Objections raised to the Cogito:

-​ ​just b/c something is doing the thinking, doesn’t mean that it’s “I”
-​ ​should have said “thinking is occurring”
o​Nietzsche would make this criticism
​

§​
Instead of “I think”, it should be “it thinks”
​

§​
Just the way we say “it rains”
​

o​Kirkegaard also made it:

​

-​ ​"x" thinks
I am that "x"
Therefore I think
Therefore I am

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o​Where "x" is used as a placeholder in order to disambiguate the "I" from the thinking thing.
​

o​Here, the cogito has already assumed the "I" 's existence as that which thinks. Kierkegaard
​

argues that Descartes is merely “developing the content of a concept”, namely that the "I",
which already exists, thinks.

Qualities in the objects​

.​At the end of Meditation 2, Descartes introduces a very important example,
one that sets the stage for many arguments among his successors. He uses a thought experiment
about a piece of wax to suggest that there are some features of appearances that ​ don’t​
correspond to
anything external. So the program of reconstructing the world is going to turn out to be quite
revisionary: we aren’t going to get all our common sense views back.

By bringing the wax closer to the fire, some of its apparent properties change. Descartes argues that
the wax itself remains, despite the apparent loss of some qualities. On this basis, he distinguishes
between those properties essential to the wax – the important ones – such as extension in space,
flexibility, and mutability, and those like its smell. The move he is making is to view certain parts of
the appearances of things as stemming from us; they are products, at least in part, of our minds.
Other parts are genuinely in the world, and they are the basic properties on which everything else
(including the appearances) depends.

This yields a metaphysical foundation for “the mechanical philosophy”. The world, in itself, is a
swarm of colorless, odorless corpuscles, particles that possess such “primary qualities” as extension,
shape, and motion. A full objective description of nature could be given in terms of the ways in which
the totality of particles moves. Everything else is derivative.

This picture has been immensely influential. It was adopted by many of Descartes’ contemporaries
and successors – Gassendi, Hobbes, Boyle, Locke, and Newton, for example. It gave rise to many
research programs in eighteenth and nineteenth century science, some of them quite successful.

God​. Of course, at the end of Meditation 2 we haven’t any assurance of the existence of an external
world. Strictly speaking, we ought to think of the example of the wax as drawing a distinction
between two kinds of properties of the appearances in the Cartesian theater, those that endure under
change and those that don’t. Descartes’ route to the external world leads through the existence of
God; but that may be a tendentious way of putting things, since an important part of the project may
be to renew rational theology.

Ultimately, Descartes will use the existence of God to vindicate the thesis that whatever appears to us
clearly and distinctly is true. The trouble is that his proof of the existence of God seems to deploy
that thesis as a premise, and the conclusion that God exists then serves as supporting argument for
the premise. This is the famous Cartesian circle. Scholars have labored mightily to extricate
Descartes… to no definitive conclusion yet.

90 
Mind and Body​ . The discussion of Meditation 6 renews and extends the themes of the example of
the wax. Descartes distinguishes between the realm of mental contents and the things that belong to
external objects; pain, for example, isn’t in the fire. Bodies are explicitly conceived as mechanisms
(thus pointing towards a thoroughgoing treatment in terms of the physics of motion). Minds are
different. In particular, they are indivisible.

The dualist view that the world consists in two sorts of things – bodies and immaterial minds – has
been enormously influential.

91 
 HOBBES
Hobbes was born in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. As a young man he Hobbes served as
tutor and secretary to a number of prominent people (including Bacon, but most consistently the
Cavendish family). Educated in classical humanities, Hobbes discovered the exact sciences in mid-life,
and thereafter became convinced of the demonstrative character of geometry (his model for all
science). He visited Galileo, corresponded with many of the luminaries of the age (including
Descartes), and was a principal figure on the British intellectual scene.

From 1640-51, Hobbes lived in France, avoiding the Civil War, an event that made a profound impact
upon him. Leviathan was published in 1651. Many people viewed it as an evil (“atheistical”) book,
and it was burned at Oxford. Hobbes engaged in a number of controversies, particularly with
members of the nascent Royal Society. He died in 1679.

Context: England in the 17thC

English Civil War/ 3x wars btw Official battle lines btw Important b/c establishes precedent
English Parliamentarians that English crown cannot govern
Revolution (later 1642-1651 (Roundheads) and Royalists without the consent of Parliament –
(Cavaliers) tho not officially established until
term favoured by
the Glorious Revolution later in
Marxists like
century.
Christopher Hill)

1625 Charles I ascends Charles – only mild ambitions, but

expected them to be obeyed w/out
question. Married a French Catholic
Princess, a Bourbon. Wanted to take
part in thirty years war.
Began to fine Puritans around the
country for not attending Anglican
church services.
Didn’t call parliament for over ten
years – autocratic – tho this meant
he had very little $$ to spend.

Nov 1640 Charles bows to pressure,
finally calls Parl back for real –
needs money.
New, angry Parliament passes laws:
King can’t tax w/out P’s consent, P
gets say over K’s ministry, P must
meet every 3 years.
People also beginning to polarize
against King, b/c of things like
imposition of drainage of the Fens,
for which King awarded only select

92 
 people the contracts.
1641 – Irish Rebellion – warfare
there for much of the period. 1649
Cromwell kills 3500 people at
Drogheda – Royalist (catholic)
supporters.

Jan 1842 Charles tries to arrest 5
members of Parliament,
storms House, but can’t find
them
After failing to do this, he leaves the
London area in fear of his safety.
Places begin to take sides.
Generally, cities and ports favour
Parl (esp southeast), and rural areas
favour King (esp northwest)

Jan 1849 Charles I beheaded

1649 Charles I executed, his son

Charles II exiled, and
replacement of Monarchy
with Commonwealth of
England

1653 Protectorate headed by Oliver Cromwell steps in and takes control

Cromwell b/c of infighting in Parliament.
Essentially a military dictatorship

1658 Cromwell dies; Protectorate Cromwell’s son Richard steps in and

ends takes place as Lord Protector. But
army has little confidence in him.
Army removed Richard after 7
months before finally dissolving into
its own faction.

Restoration 1660 Charles II 1660-85 – son of Bourbon Catholic monarchy

executed King – declared King
all along by new Parliament
restored, but parliament more
active.
Charles II gained reputation as fun
loving and easy going. Theaters and
other fun things had been closed by
Cromwell and the Puritans, and
when reopened by Charles II new
genre of “Restoration Comedy”
emerged.

1685- Dec James II Last Catholic Monarch. Deposed by

1688 his Protestant daughter.
“Jacobites” form, taking name from
James, in order to restore the

93 
 Stuarts to the English/Scottish
thrones.

Both Charles II and James II –

brothers, sons of Charles I – grow up
in France and brought back a
softened attitude toward the
Catholic Church, with a deep respect
for absolutism and broad religious
tolerance.

“Glorious 1688 James the II and VII deposed
Revolution” by daughter Mary II and her
husband (and first cousin)
William of Orange.
James = Catholic, Mary and Orange =
Protestant. The Stuarts lived in
France and Spain from then on, and
occasionally those governments
attempted to help Stuarts regain the
throne. Company had a monopoly
on trade with all Spanish territories,
south America, and the west coast
of north America.

Within the colonies, the Glorious

Revolution instituted the idea that
the people could overthrow and
replace a ruler they deemed
unsuitable; uprisings against royal
governors occurred in all the
colonies after this.

1707 Act of Union creates Kingdom

of Great Britain

The state of nature

Hobbes’s fundamental premise rests on the equality of people: we are share an equal capacity for
rapaciousness (Ch 6). Competition is inevitable because we all have needs that are hard to fulfill –
indeed that can only be fulfilled through the frustration of similar needs in others. Diffidence comes
from the fact that, even when we have taken steps to meet our needs, we constantly have to worry
that those whose needs have not been met will find ways to deprive us of what we have so far
obtained. Glory is the product of something Hobbes views as a different kind of basic propensity in
human nature, the desire not only to have but to have more.

But were people ever in a Hobbesian state of nature? Hobbes denies that he is telling a historical

94 
story. He does suggest that there are isolated places that remain in a state of nature (America). The
real point is that sliding back into the state of nature is always a possibility for us; the Civil War is very
much on Hobbes’ mind.

Life in the state of nature “is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

War

Humans in the state of nature constantly face the threat of war. But what does Hobbes mean by
‘war’? It’s not the actual occurrence of violence all around that is so dreadful, but the constant threat
of such violence

Why does this threat arise? Hobbes tells us that there are three principal causes:
1)​​
competition
2)​​
diffidence
3)​​
glory

Even though ultimately it’ll be possible to provide for the needs of all (once we have the state in
place), we can’t get it without the powers of enforcement provided by the state. Why not? Because,
Hobbes believes, there can be no incentive to engage in a long-term project if the rewards of your
labor are going to be taken from you (or stand a high chance of being taken).

“The difference between man and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim
to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he.”

“And therefore if two men desire the same thing, they become enemies.”

Only the establishment of the Leviathan will protect us from our fellow men.

“A multitude of men, are made one person, when they are by one man, or one person, represented”
The Leviathan
​

After establishing his conception of human nature in Book 1, Hobbes goes on in Book 2 to delineate
the Leviathan.

Why submit to the Leviathan? Because most reliably protects your interests. Game theory helps to
understand these tradeoffs, as we walked through in class:

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Player 2
C D
95 
 C <7,7> <0,10>
Player 1
D <10,0> <2,2>

The table tells you that, if Player 1 performs the action C and Player 2 performs the action C, both will
get 7 “welfare points”, being relatively well off; if #1 does C and #2 does D, #1 will get 0 and #2 will get
10, so that #1 will do badly and #2 will do very well.

Hobbes’ state of nature is often viewed as a situation in which the individual actors are forced to play
PD with one another. The logic of his argument can then be taken to run as follows. In the absence
of any authority that can enforce cooperation, the agents will head for the grim outcome of mutual
defection – and life will be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”. But if there’s a power with the
sword, it can compel each agent to cooperate, leading to the much happier outcome of mutual
cooperation.

“Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”

Hobbes’ Ethics

At first glance, Hobbes would seem committed to a version of ethical subjectivism. He repeatedly
tells us that, in the state of nature, there’s no right or wrong (see e.g. 188). It’s easy to think,
therefore, that the only conceptions of right, wrong, justice, injustice etc. are those introduced within
particular societies. Once a group of people have made a covenant with one another and have
established a sovereign, then we can talk about justice (and so forth) in terms of the laws laid down
by that sovereign. Actions are required just in case there are rules that demand them of us. (Notice
that Hobbes could build in a distinction between ethics and the law, by supposing that there are
separate kinds of acts of rule-making.)

Despite the strong appearance of a subjective approach to ethics, Hobbes might turn out to be an
objectivist. The problem posed in the state of nature is one of our self-preservation. Solving that
problem might generate strong constraints, so that any framework of laws and norms that genuinely
promoted peace would have to include particular requirements and liberties.

“Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea, or conception of any thing we call
infinite.”

The Commonwealth Itself

In the Leviathan, the power of the sovereign is absolute. The individuals make covenants with one
another, but they do not make a covenant with the sovereign. It follows, according to Hobbes, that
nothing the sovereign does can be a breach of covenant, or in violation of law.

96 
Hobbes’ “sovereign” may be read, from the beginning, as referring to a single individual (a monarch).
Chap 19 attempts to argue for the view that, typically, the purposes for which the sovereign is
introduced will be better served by concentrating power in the hands of a monarch than by setting up
a representative assembly. Throughout, Hobbes’ guiding idea seems to be that the alternatives to
monarchy retain some of the worrying features of the state of nature.

97 
 LOCKE
Locke was born in 1632 and died in 1704. After being educated at Oxford, he trained as a physician,
and became the medical advisor to the future Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury was prominent in
post-Restoration politics, at times holding high office, although he was also in political and legal
trouble because of his resistance to the Catholic leanings of Charles II (and his brother, later James II).

Locke was probably involved in political movements and plots for which others were arrested and
executed, and he spent much of the 1680s in exile in Holland. He became famous for his ​ Essay
Concerning Human Understanding​ (a work in metaphysics and epistemology), but published the
Treatises on Government​ Letter on Toleration​
and the ​ anonymously. The ​ Second Treatise​ was written
before the bloodless revolution of 1688 in which James II fled the country, and in which William of
Orange (a Dutch prince) and his wife Mary (James’ daughter) assumed the throne; it’s easy, however,
to recognize the concord between the ​ Second Treatise​ and the political movement that eventually
gave rise to the events of 1688 – a leader who fails to protect basic rights of the citizens is
overthrown.

Locke was a member of the Royal Society, and a friend of Newton and Boyle. Like Newton, he tended
to Unitarianism in matters of religion.

The ​
Second Treatise

Treatise ​
Locke wrote a first ​ in opposition to Sir Robert Filmer’s defense of patriarchy. Filmer argued
for a theory of political authority that began with God’s granting of power to Adam, and the descent
of kingship among Adam’s descendants. Plenty of mid- and late-seventeenth century Englishmen
were bound to find this account worrying, and Filmer was attacked by several authors. It hardly
needed Locke’s genius to demolish the theory.

The ​Second Treatise​ can be read as a positive answer to Filmer’s question: From what does the power
of states (and monarchs) derive? The task is to show how there can be legitimate authority. Like
Hobbes before him, Locke views the justification of the state as stemming from the decisions of
citizens to grant powers to some central institution that will serve the citizens’ ends. Of course, he
differs from Hobbes in his conception of the predicament of people in the absence of a state, and
specifically in his views about the rights of people antecedent to the state.

Locke’s answer develops in three stages. First, he offers a general account of the state of nature,
explicitly distinguishing it from a state of war. Second, he develops a view of property. The bulk of
the ​Treatise​is devoted to an account of how individuals can enter into agreement with one another
to introduce a legitimate authority.

The State of Nature

98 
Locke plainly has a richer conception of natural law (and natural right) than Hobbes. In section 6, we
learn that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions”. There have to be
some restrictions on these natural rights, since some actions (ferocious violence towards others, for
example) would forfeit them.

Instead of claiming that there’s no executive, with power to enforce the laws of nature, he maintains
all​
that, in the state of nature, we ​ have this power. As he notes (section 13), this can easily lead to
disorder. Even though he distinguishes it from the state of war, he doesn’t pretend that the state of
nature is completely secure. There are reasons why we need to turn to the political state.

It’s easy to read Hobbes as conjuring up agents who are relentlessly pursuing their own selfish goals.
Participants in Locke’s state of nature might find themselves in trouble not because they are selfish
(or driven by “Glory”) but simply because they disagree on the facts: some suppose that an individual
deserves punishment; others don’t see why, and take the punitive posse to be out of line; and things
escalate from there.

“in the state of nature everyone has the executive power of the law of nature.”

Property

Locke’s conceptions of natural rights rest on property ownership:

I own myself
I have rights to myself
I have rights to acquire things to help myself (food, material goods)
Therefore I come to own those things once I mix them with myself (by eating them, as in food; by
adding my labor, as in land I till).

Locke offers here an analysis of ​original acquisition​. Original acquisition takes place when one person
appropriates something that has not previously been marked out as private by anyone else; the first
condition for legitimate original acquisition is thus that the item acquired be so far unowned. There
are two further constraints: first, you can legitimately acquire only what you can use (this can easily
be linked to divine commands against waste); second, you must leave enough and as good for others.
Locke articulates the first proviso by suggesting that legitimate original acquisition involves “mixing
your labor” with the object acquired. This is easy to understand in the case of land. You mix your
labor with the land by cultivating it, and the first condition here takes the form of requiring that you
not acquire more than you can cultivate.

Quite clearly, most of the property owned in Locke’s time, as in ours, was not acquired through
original acquisition. Its legitimacy must arise from processes of transfer. Legitimate transfer can
occur through the process of free gift, as happens across the generations when some people inherit
the legitimate possessions of others. It can also occur through trade and barter, perhaps first without

99 
any medium of exchange, but for recorded history through the use of money. Locke doesn’t say
much, however, about the conditions that ought to govern legitimate transfer. When is transfer
legitimate? When not? Should you be allowed to pass on to another more than that other can make
use of? Should you be allowed to obtain so much of some desirable commodity that there’s no
longer enough and as good for others?

Government by Consent

Locke offers us a version of a social contract theory of the state. He poses the problem very clearly at
the beginning of Chapter 9. Having already argued that to consent to a government is to place
yourself and your possessions under the dominion of that government, he asks (section 123) why
anyone should give up their freedom to do as they please. His answer is akin to Hobbes’ in one
obvious way: we give up a certain kind of liberty to obtain security (which, it might be argued, itself
expands our liberty). He goes on to list three ways in which we improve our situation in the state of
nature: by having a fixed standard of agreed-upon law instead of constant disagreement, by replacing
the vengeance of those who may be personally involved with that of an “indifferent judge”, and by
setting up a situation in which there’ll be sufficient power to enforce the law against anyone who
breaks it.

These three considerations provide reasons for replacing the state of nature with the political state.

Given his concerns about the Hobbesian sovereign, and given the political strife Locke had seen in his
own times, he wants to find ways of protecting the citizens against the abuse of centralized power.
Principal among these is the idea of dividing the legislative body from the executive body.

The state is legitimate because the people have consented to it; the people consent because they
expect certain kinds of benefits and protections; when the benefits and protections are not provided,
they have a right to rebel against the existing state and fashion one that can deliver what they have
expected.

Letter on Toleration

Letter​
Locke argues in the ​ that belief isn’t voluntary. Hence, even if there are people who don’t have
the beliefs required for salvation, you can’t force them to acquire them. Religious professions that
persecution of heretics is designed to save souls are thus hypocritical cover for fanaticism and cruelty.

Two groups, it seems, Locke would find difficult to reconcile into his schema: atheists and Catholics (or
any corporate group that combines civil and ecclesiastical authority).

100 
 SPRING SEMESTER
STUDY GUIDE 1

DAVID HUME
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
1751
Hume’s Project

1. secular​
Hume wants to offer a ​ moral theory. He aims to show how ethics can be
divorced from religion, how it needn’t be linked to stern ideas about duty.
2. Hume emphasizes features of morality that are worth caring about. He’s interested
in our human relations, our affection for one another. Above all, he links morality to our
social lives together.

“Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse; and if this
contrary impulse ever arises from reason, this latter faculty must have an original influence
on the will, and must be able to cause, as well as hinder any act of volition. But if reason
has no original influence, ‘tis impossible it can withstand any principle, which has such an
efficacy, or ever keep the mind in suspence a moment. Thus it appears, that the principle,
which opposes our passion, cannot be the same with reason, and is only call’d so in an
improper sense. We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of
passion and reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can
never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. “

Hume’s Method

Hume explicitly aspired to be “the Newton of the mind”. Newton is all over the ​
Enquiry
(see, for example, 16, 34, 53). The key to understanding how it is supposed to work is to
take the effort to imitate the Newtonian method seriously.

What did Hume take Newton to have done?

101 
Newton rounds up the phenomena about motions; he enunciates some general principles
about different sorts of motions; he shows that those principles can be treated in a uniform
way by supposing a force of gravitational attraction that varies inversely as the square of
the distance between the bodies; on this basis he puts forward a law of universal
gravitation.

How could you do the same thing with respect to morality?

Like this: you start with the moral judgments people make; you enunciate general
principles about these; you then declare that these general principles can be treated in a
uniform way if you suppose that we are responding to certain very general qualities of
character and actions; on this basis you put forward a law that moral judgments are
responses to the presence or absence of these qualities.

Just as Newton gives you a way of ​

predicting the outcomes of previously unstudied
instances of motion, so too with Hume. The general law is supposed to enable us to arrive
at judgments about cases beyond those that have been studied in the collection of moral
phenomena on which it’s based.

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that
the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the
being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am
is​
surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, ​ , and ​is not​
, I meet
with no proposition that is not connected with an ​ ought​ ought not​
, or an ​ . This change is
imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ​ ought​ ought not​
, or ​ ,
expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and
explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether
inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely
different from it.”

Justice

Hume supposes that we live under conditions of scarcity, and that these conditions make it
necessary to allot resources to individuals. The confidence that the allotment will be
supported by others underlies everyone’s ability to plan. So, when we see a transfer of
goods from a well-supplied person to someone who is in great need, our initial sympathy
has to be qualified if that transfer is made by force, against the rich person’s will. We can’t
undermine the conditions that make stable society possible. It’s quite compatible with this
to suppose that we might disapprove of the rich person for a lack of generosity towards the
indigent.

In cases like this, there’s a more substantive use of reason. Before we even pose the
question of whether a trait or action would be approved by virtually everyone, we have to
be sure to have the consequences in clear focus. In particular, we have to understand the
actual ways in which a stable social life is made possible. The test is whether the trait or
102 
action would be approved by people who had clear knowledge of the effects and of the
conditions of stable social life. Applying this test yields a further set of generalizations
about what we approve and disapprove.

The Unified Theory

Hume tries to offer a unified account of these phenomena. What we’re responding to, he
agreeable​
tells us are qualities that are either ​ useful​
(to ourselves or to others) or ​ (to
ourselves or to people generally). ​ He isn’t supposing that people are normally in any
position to offer this description of what we’re doing​ . Most of us make the right moral
judgments, without understanding their basis, just as most of us make the right judgments
about how bodies move, without recognizing the principle of gravitation. The moral
theorist – Hume – comes along and tells us what is behind our everyday practice (just as
Newton told us what’s behind the motions of bodies).

It’s notable that Hume doesn’t give us any precise definition of ​

utility​
. He talks vaguely
about general, common, or public good. In difficult cases it’s far from obvious what would
count as the public good.

For just this reason, Bentham developed Hume’s appeal to utility into a much more precise
instrument. From Bentham’s perspective, Hume’s idea that the touchstone of moral
judgment lies in our approval or disapproval (given appropriate refinement through
operations of reason) was far too vague to settle important matters. Bentham, in
particular, worried that the imprecision of “social utility” might serve to allow for gross
inequalities. Hence he developed the much sharper moral perspective that declares (a)
that individual well-being is a matter of the net balance of pleasures and pains, (b) that
pleasures and pains are measured only in terms of intensity and duration, and (c) that
social utility is the sum of the measures of individual well-being for all individuals in the
society (“each to count for one and none for more than one”). This is the core idea of
Utilitarianism.

Hume is not a Utilitarian​

Strictly speaking ​ . He’s a sentimentalist moral theorist whose
explanatory framework emphasizes utility as the crucial factor in the direction of moral
sentiments.

‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of
my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least
uneasiness of an ​ Indian​
or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as little contrary to reason
to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent
affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances,
produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment;
nor is there anything more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound
weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation.”

103 
 ROUSSEAU
Discourse on Inequality​(1754)
Social Contract ​
and the ​ (1762)
DI is an indictment of existing forms of political life, and that SC takes up the project of
trying to do better: DI is diagnosis, SC is a plan for treatment.

Life and Background

Rousseau was born in 1712 in Geneva, the son of a watchmaker; Rousseau’s mother died in
childbirth. His life involved a wide range of activities: he worked as an apprentice
engraver, moved around Switzerland and what is now Italy, as well as France; wrote a very
successful opera and a successful novel; had liaisons with aristocratic women and fathered
five children by a laundress. (One of the women with whom Rousseau was involved, Mme.
De Warens, was a few years older than he; Rousseau addressed her as “Mama”; his account
of the relationship is supposed to have inspired Freud’s ideas about the Oedipus complex.)

Rousseau’s ​ Émile​is a cross between a novel and a treatise on education (one that comes
under criticism from Mary Wollstonecraft in the ​ Vindication of the Rights of Women​ ); the
theoretical ideal contrasts with his behavior as a parent: he consigned the five children to
orphanages. He converted to Catholicism and later converted back. As his ​ Confessions​is
at pains to reveal, he was guilty of both dishonesty and theft. His life oscillates between
periods of great success and downfalls. He died in 1778.

The​
Discourse

“Reason is what engenders egocentrism, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what
turns man in upon himself. Reason is what separates him from all that troubles him and
affects him. … the human race would long ago have eased to exist, if its preservation had
depended solely on the reasonings of its members.” (DI)

One obvious approach to the DI is to consider it in relation to Hobbes. Is he telling a

counter-‘state of nature’ story, one that is rather nicer than Hobbes? If so, who is right?

Rousseau is very clear - indeed he is explicit - that he isn’t doing real history. The
important question is to find out what we are like by nature, and in what ways the
characteristics we observe (and may hope to change) result from the intrusions of society.
His method is to draw on what he knows about human beings under a range of conditions,
and on what he knows about non-human animals, to identify the possibilities and limits of
human behavior.

“The state of nature where everything takes place in such a uniform manner and where the
face of the earth is not subject to those sudden and continual changes causes by the
passions and inconstancy of people living together.” (DI)
104 
Rousseau suggest that, under some conditions, a solitary life in which each of us was
completely free would be entirely in accordance with our natures. Given the demands of
scarcity, our natures also admit the possibility of forming associations with one another, in
which we respond to the challenges of the non-human world partly with the help of
language to coordinate our efforts.

“Two principles that are prior to reason, of which one makes us ardently interested in our
well being and our self preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to
seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow man, perish or suffer.” (DI)

“Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest
hearts.”

The opening of Part 2 tries to connect the institution of property with more primitive ways
of making distinctions. Rousseau recognizes the fragility of human cooperation. But,
when cooperation is successful, people will need to pay attention to the qualities of
potential cooperators. They can even make their cooperation more efficient by dividing
the labor. Dividing the labor, in turn, can easily form the basis for making social
distinctions i.e. cases in which there are crucial jobs, some of which can be done by virtually
anyone and others of which can only be done by those who are especially able in some
respect.

With division of labor in place, it’s easy to envisage how a functioning society might need to
set up special relationships between some members and particular resources: the person
who performs a particular job may need the use of a certain tool, for example.

Eventually, you get the division of land with which Part 2 opens. The more successful the
cooperative ventures are, the more you get social divisions and inequalities in terms of
property.

The next phase is for the making of an explicit ‘social contract’ – in something like Locke’s
sense – whereby the institution of private property comes under protection. What social
philosophers perceive as provisions of justice come in as a device for defending the
possessions of those who have most.

Rousseau sees an inevitable intensification of the inequalities, as wealth becomes

concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and the masses become ever more
abject in their misery (76-7; in due course we will compare the closing pages of DI with
Marx’ claims about the dynamic of capitalism).

So how do we avoid this terrible outcome?

The problem of the SC

105 
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

SC opens with a focused statement of the problem, to which Rousseau seems to have been
Émile ​
led by the arguments of DI. (​ can be seen as a third stage of the project; the theory of
education explains how to develop the sort of person who can make – and keep – a social
contract.)

We’re to start with human nature (‘men as they are’) and to consider possible options for
social arrangements (‘laws as they might be’). Interestingly, it seems that the principal
political ideal in terms of which the problem is to be posed is different here – in DI, equality
took center stage, whereas in SC it’s freedom. But the judgment about existing societies is
similarly negative.

Lurking behind Chapter V, there seem to be two major issues.

1. How is consent supposed to work?

Rousseau seems to think that you need to do something much more active than simply
taking advantage of the resources of the state; it’s almost as though each individual has to
think through, and explicitly take, the decision to enter into the social contract prevailing in
the neighborhood – a social contract that was, itself, quite deliberately made.

2. Can any group of people in fact make a social contract?

Hobbes and Locke take this for granted (and this is part of Hume’s critique in Of Original
Contract). For Hobbes, the state of nature is so terrible that people will covenant with
those who happen to be around. For Rousseau, there are prior conditions that must be
met before you frame the contract.

In making the social contract you do give up your freedom: you ‘alienate’ yourself and all
your rights to the entire community (148). So how can the contract solve the problem as
posed?

The General Will

The fundamental question is how can subordination to the General Will be a form of
freedom? i.e. a form of freedom so desirable that achieving it outweighs the losses
incurred in alienating oneself to the community?

Rousseau explicitly denies that the General Will is such-and-such when a majority of the
members of the body prefer it to be the case that such-and-such. He distinguishes between
the ‘General Will’ and the ‘will of all’ (155), and he also claims that ‘… what makes the will
general is not so much the number of votes as the common interest that unites them’ (158).
It is therefore ​
not​
simply majority rule.

106 
But matters are complicated by Rousseau’s claims that citizens who refuse to obey the
General Will are ‘forced to be free’ (150) and those who find themselves in a minority are
shown to be in error about the General Will (206). To subordinate oneself to the General
Will is to resolve to cooperate in a way that will be directed towards some outcome in
which all members of the group thrive.

At the stage where people consider forming a social contract, they have to consider
whether they are sufficiently like-minded, and sufficiently mutually committed, to share a
concept of the collective good and to be willing to work together in achieving it. Only
under this condition can the social contract go forward. Where it does, each party to the
contract agrees to subordinate whatever private preferences he/she has to the General
Will.

“Unequal in force or intelligence they may be, men all become equal by convention and by
right.”

“The general will is always right.”

“We always want what is good for us, but we do not always see what it is.”

“There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will.”

The State

The task of the state is to identify forms of interaction for which there is a collectively
optimal outcome, to identify the collectively optimal outcome, and to institute mechanisms
that will promote it.

psychological ​
To enter into a social contract is to undergo a ​ change, so that one becomes
disposed to prefer an outcome that is collectively good rather than the one that accords
with the private interests.

This psychological shift needn’t be thought of as a tendency to calculate, and to weigh

explicitly the effects on the welfare of others. Parties to the Social Contract may have
undergone an ​ emotional​ change that leads them to act in the appropriate way. Indeed the
idea of an emotional change is much closer in spirit to Rousseau.

It might be helpful to think of the relevant disposition as one of solidarity with one’s fellow
contractors – or, perhaps, fraternity, or love.

Some of the things Rousseau says can be understood by thinking about the kinds of
interactions available under different circumstances.

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- If our association is too small, it may be hard to find interactions that deliver sufficiently
high payoffs to the members (we can’t satisfy the requirement of increasing the probability
of success).

- If it’s too large, we’re more likely to find ourselves in interactions in which people don’t
share an understanding of the collective good. It’s difficult to have a clear conception of the
consequences for groups with which you don’t have any regular interaction.

- There must be no ‘partial society’ within the state . If there’s a partial society, then
there’s a danger that there’ll be a choice between two forms of interaction. And thus the
whole ceases to exist. The whole must and in fact can only be ‘one and indivisible’.

“Sovereignty is indivisible … For either the will is general, or it is not.”

“Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact
gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members.”

‘He will be forced to be free.’

Our new freedom consists in changing our will so that we desire what is collectively good.
If, on a given occasion, we’re inclined to want something else, that’s because we’ve made
some kind of error, perhaps by misidentifying the collective good, perhaps by giving
priority to some private satisfaction. If the state intervenes to compel us to conform to the
General Will, it is, in effect, redirecting our activity in accord with what we really wanted.
It can be seen as promoting our genuine desires – and thus as enhancing our freedom –
when we’re in a state of ignorance or weakness of will.

Rousseau is sometimes read as being on the road to totalitarianism: to subordinate

yourself to the General Will is to put the state above the individual. But Rousseau is also
keen to emphasize the commitment to other individual people: you come to want the
collective good because you feel solidarity – fraternity, as the French revolutionaries would
later quote him – with those with whom you have contracted.

ADAM SMITH
Wealth of Nations
1776
Background and Life

Smith lived from 1723 to 1790. A younger contemporary of David Hume, he became a
professor at Glasgow University in 1751, where he taught a wide variety of subjects. After

108 
1764 he became private tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch, and eventually received a pension
that enabled him to live in Edinburgh and write.

In 1759, Smith published ​ The Theory of Moral Sentiments​(TMS), a work that went through
six editions in his lifetime. Like Hume, and like their common teacher Francis Hutcheson,
Smith develops an approach to morality based on our emotional responses.

WN was published in 1776, and was well-received. Smith was offered an administrative
position (as Commissioner of Customs for Scotland), and he eventually became Rector of
the University of Glasgow. Late eighteenth century politicians sought his advice.
According to a famous anecdote, on one occasion when he visited London, the leaders of
the government rose in respect until he was seated.

Homo economicus

Smith’s concept of the person that is articulated and presupposed in his economic analyses.
In arguing for the response of prices to supply and demand, or in exploring the
consequences of free trade, he supposes ​ that individuals will pursue their economic
well-being​
. It’s very easy to view Smith as the father of the concept of ​
rational agents
deployed in contemporary microeconomic theory.

One of the most famous lines in WN occurs relatively early: “It is not from the benevolence
of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to
their own interest” (15). From this line, you might expect that Smith has a very simple –
even simplistic – psychological view. Interestingly, TMS provides a rich notion of the
person; beginning from the assumption he shares with Hume, that ​ people have a natural
disposition to sympathize with those around them​ , Smith argues that our propensity to want
to be in harmony with the emotions of those around us, ​ leads us to regulate our conduct by
submitting our decisions to the judgment of conscience, conceived as an internal impartial
spectator​(“the vice-regent of the deity”, “the man in the breast”). Out of this comes a wide
range of emotional tendencies and dispositions. The psychology of TMS seems to go very
much beyond the very simple story of ​ Homo economicus​ , the butcher or brewer dedicated
to his own interest, narrowly defined in terms of wealth, and concerned with nothing else.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our
dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their
humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantages.”

“Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the
society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.”

Political Economy

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WN is often seen as the first treatise in political economy, and Smith is viewed as founding
a new discipline. Smith was extremely influential. The later work of Malthus, Ricardo,
James Mill, and John Stuart Mill builds on his agenda and on his attempts at solution.
When political economy gives way to neo-classical economics, it’s quite easy to see
economists from the late nineteenth century to the present as giving precise mathematical
expression to ideas that are formulated qualitatively in Smith. In his ​Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844​ , Marx clearly takes the conclusions of standard political
economy from Smith – the famous “Alienated Labor” is preceded, as we’ll see in a few
weeks, by three essays that are summary and commentary on WN, with occasional
references to later updates.

Later, Marx adopts a much more negative view of Smith, and, in ​Capital​, the heroes of
political economy are taken to be Ricardo and a new candidate for founder, Sir William
Petty. (Some of the dismissal of Smith surely rests on Marx’ revisionist history of political
economy.) Petty was a member of the early Royal Society, a contemporary of Pepys, who
wrote on the economic and social issues of Ireland.

What is WN’s place in the history of economics and of social science generally? Why did
topics like money, wealth, and commerce start to get discussed in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries?

In the late fifteenth century, the Spanish and Portuguese gained access to extraordinary
sources of wealth – they are the ones who open up “Eldorado” in the New World, and who
find their ways to the spice islands of the East. Yet, by the seventeenth century, the wealth
– and the political power – had to been transferred to three European nations, France (a
traditionally strong power), Britain (rather backward from the perspective of the fifteenth
century), and the Netherlands (recently emancipated from Spain). Given that these
countries seem to control only the least profitable bits of the Americas, how do they come
to be so wealthy?

This raises the question of the sources of wealth and power. It’s really surprising that all
the Spanish and Portuguese gold doesn’t result in lasting wealth. One of the main themes
of WN is its insistence that wealth consists in ​
productivity​
. Smith’s diagnosis is that gold
only generates wealth if it’s used in starting a form of manufacture. Again and again,
throughout WN, he campaigns against the idea that you ought to restrict the flow of gold
out of a country. (i.e. He is drawing a difference between idle and productive capital).

Division of Labor

Because Smith takes ​ the key to productivity to be division of labor​

, this is where WN starts.
Smith’s work antedates the industrial revolution; he’s explaining the dynamic of an earlier
form of capitalism – exemplified by the pin factory. Smith makes certain psychological
assumptions: allegedly, specializing on a task enables people to work more speedily and
efficiently, but, there are also costs resulting from boredom (840).

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Smith leans heavily on the idea of a ​ to ​
natural propensity​ “truck, barter, and exchange one
thing for another”​
(14).

The Liberal Reward of Labor

Smith is commonly viewed as a social conservative who has little interest in, or sympathy
for, the plight of poor workers. This stereotype descends from the plaudits heaped on
Smith by Thatcher and Reagan (although it’s arguable that part of their enthusiasm for
Smith is that they accept his attempt to show that workers will be better off under
free-market capitalism). Interestingly, Smith not only advances this argument, but also
insists on the inequity of permitting collusion among entrepreneurs while disallowing
unions among workers (see 75-8). However, viz-90, Smith commits himself to the view
that ​just societies require providing for the least fortunate members​
.

“Where wages are high, accordingly we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent
and expeditious, than where they are low.”

Smith’s account of how to help the poor begins quite early in WN. He sees very clearly that
the notion of poverty involves both an ​
absolute​ and a ​
relative​
notion; the praise for the
division of labor ends with the thought that, in a productive society, even those at the
bottom may have access to goods not available to those at the top of a less productive
society. You can be poor, then, by not having much, or by having less than those around
you.

“It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of
the division of labour which occasions, in a well governed society, that universal opulence
which​ extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people … and a general plenty diffuses itself
​
through all the different ranks of the society.”

The ​stationary state​is that condition in which the returns to the workers are just sufficient
to enable them to survive and to leave behind them exactly the same number of
replacements. In effect, the productivity of the society supports a population level that
remains constant across the generations. Smith points out that you can have societies with
different levels of productivity and both (or all) in the stationary state. In these societies,
the workers won’t be well-rewarded. He concludes (79, 81) that ​ the situation of the
workers isn’t a function of the absolute wealth of a nation. Instead, it depends on the rate at
which the economy is growing.​Wages are higher if labor is relatively scarce, so that, from
the workers’ point of view, the best situation is one in which there are plenty of
opportunities for ​entrepreneurial investment​ .

Unlike some later thinkers (e.g. J.S. Mill), Smith doesn’t offer a general discussion of
distribution​
. This isn’t because he’s unconcerned with the plight of the poor, but because
he thinks that a growing economy will ​ automatically​transfer wealth to the bottom strata.
He thinks there’s historical evidence for the fact that the situation of the poor has
improved. The worry is that the liberal reward of labor can only be temporary.
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Free Trade

Smith’s famous advocacy of free trade occurs in his attack on the “Mercantile System”.
Scholars incline to think that this way of setting things up is somewhat unfair in that there
was no such “system”; rather, Smith was criticizing common practices of restricting
imports and encouraging some kinds of ​ domestic​ industry. The basic argument is simple.
Imagine that Scotland can’t produce wine as cheaply as France can, and that the Scots
government protects the domestic wine production by imposing a tariff against French
wine. It follows that wine-drinking Scots are going to pay a higher price than they might
have done in the absence of a tariff. Consequently, there will be some wasted resources
within Scotland that might have been put into another form of production (woolens, say).
If we imagine two scenarios, one where the Scots make tariff-protected wine and one
where they import French wine and make woolens, the output of the Scots economy will be
greater if they pursue the latter.

Nor is there any real hardship for the erstwhile winemakers if they switch to woolens. For
they can obtain at least the same return on their investment from a more productive
employment of their capital. Further, they won’t be tempted to transfer their winemaking
to another place – Bordeaux, say – because Smith thinks that they can’t increase their
profits by doing that, and they do run a greater risk; the risk is greater because of the
difficulties of supervising an operation at a distance from one’s home. Hence everybody
benefits from a policy of pursuing private economic interests.

This is the point of the famous ​

“​
invisible hand​”​
(483). ​ Collectively good outcomes result
from uncoordinated pursuit of individual interest​. Smith’s basic normative theory of society
conceives social institutions as devices for bringing about this harmony. The
governmental task is to set things up so that ​each individual does well and, in doing well,
serves the public good​. Free markets are viewed as important devices for achieving this,
but it would be quite wrong to conclude that Smith favors free markets ​ in everything​
.

“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great
as he can … led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention
… by pursing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually
than when he really intends to promote it.”

IMMANUEL KANT
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
1797
Life
Many contemporaries whispered that Kant didn’t have much of a life. Born in the Prussian
town of Königsberg in 1724, Kant served as a philosopher and geographer at the university.
112 
He lived alone and never married, devoting his time to silent contemplation and, as some
recent scholars have suggested, depressive reflection. He is considered to be the last and
arguably greatest of the Enlightenment theorists of knowledge. He died in Prussia in 1804.

Kant’s Machinery
It’s quite characteristic of Kant that he should provide a preface in which he characterizes
what is to follow in abstract terms, intended to show where G fits into his philosophical
system. We begin with a survey of the types of human knowledge, divided into main topics
(physics, ethics, logic), and with an assessment of the sources of this knowledge.
Critique​
Here Kant draws on a distinction that he explains in the ​ , the distinction between ​
a
priori​
knowledge and ​a posteriori​
(or empirical) knowledge.
Kant tells us in the preface that, just as physics has both an empirical part and a pure part,
so too with morality. When we study nature, part of our investigation inevitably involves
observation and experiment; but we can’t gain knowledge from observation without
presupposing some ​ a priori​
principles (for example that every event has a cause). By the
same token, there are parts of morality that must be adapted to circumstances, and moral
principles that will require some empirical knowledge. Behind these stand the moral
principles in which he is most interested, the ​ pure​ a priori​
or ​ moral principles (2,2,389).
These belong to the ​ metaphysics of morals​ .

The Good Will

A standard philosophical way of posing the relevant questions is to ask about which of
these is fundamental, or which is (are) prior to which. More straightforwardly, consider
the following possible sets of claims.
1. There are some situations that are intrinsically good – situations, say in which
people are happy, have all their needs satisfied, and engage in wonderfully rewarding
activities (you can fill this out in whatever way you think appropriate). To act rightly is
to try to bring about situations like this: right actions are those that stem from reasonable
intentions to make the world as good a place as possible. Virtues are dispositions of
character that tend to produce right actions. So the good is prior to the right, and the
notion of virtue is understood in terms of the notion of right action.
2. There are some traits of character that are intrinsically virtuous (justice,
temperance, and so forth). For someone to act rightly is to act in a way that expresses
virtue; (it may be important here that the virtues are unified, that is that they don’t tug in
different directions). Situations are good when they result from right action and express
(or maybe reinforce) virtue. So the notion of virtue is prior to that of right action, and
the notion of good is derivative from the concepts of virtue and of right action.
3. There are some ways of acting that are intrinsically right (that express our genuine
duties). Situations are good when they result from, or express, right actions. Virtues are
character traits that lead people to perform right actions. The perfection of virtue would
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 be a completely universal tendency to do the right thing under all possible circumstances.
So the notion of the right is fundamental, and the concepts of good and of virtue derive
from it.

Acting from Duty

In accordance with the second of his notions of the ​a priori​
, he explains that human beings
already tacitly know the source of rightness – it “dwells in natural sound understanding” –
so that the philosopher’s task is to make clear and explicit what each of us dimly
understands.
The first step is to recognize that right action involves acting in accordance with duty,
although, as the ​Preface​ already informed us, being in accordance with duty isn’t enough.
Kant’s strategy is to explain what moral rightness is by identifying the ways we can fall
short: we can go against our duty, we can be compelled to perform our duty, we can do
what is our duty because we had some inclination to do it or because we see, prudently,
that it will contribute to our attaining our long-term goals. Instead, we act rightly when we
act in accordance with our duty ​ simply because we recognize that that is our duty​
. The
example of the man tempted to suicide (11,10,398) is valuable here because it dramatizes
Kant’s claim that we mustn’t be prompted by any personal wish.
The next phase is an attack on positions, like Hume’s, that trace moral rectitude to our
sentiments. Kant imagines someone who is genuinely benevolent and who likes nothing
better than helping others. He denies that these actions of giving aid have real moral
worth, essentially assimilating this person to others who act from their (selfish) desires.

Universal Law
The solution to the problem comes with a cryptic sentence: Kant admits that he has
“deprived the will” of every impulse to obey the law, and claims that nothing is left but “the
conformity of actions as such with universal law”. The final clause of this sentence gives his
preliminary formulation of the categorical imperative. The crucial point here is that,
according to Kant, we do know one thing about the moral law, namely that any moral law is
universal. Laws don’t prescribe for a single case, but cover all cases of a type. The moral
law applies to all; everyone has the same rights, duties, and permissions. So we are offered
the test for deciding if an envisaged course of action accord with duty – we have to take the
maxim of the action and ask if it could be willed as a universal law.
Kant illustrates what he has in mind with the example of promising. You find yourself in
difficulties, and consider whether you can make a promise that you intend not to keep.
Your maxim, the way in which the option presents itself to you, is something like “I may
make a promise that I plan to break, when I am in circumstances of hardship, for the
purposes of rescuing myself”. To apply Kant’s proposed test, you have to ask whether the
generalization of this could be willed as a universal law. Could “Anybody in conditions of
hardship can make a promise that he/she intends to break for the purposes of extricating
himself/herself” be a moral law? Kant claims that it couldn’t because the willing of a
114 
universal license would undermine the institution of promising – “for in accordance with
such a law there would properly be no promises at all” . So the test is supposed to work
because we’ll find that some maxims (intuitively those that would be associated with
deviations from duty) can’t be willed as universal laws; when we try to do so, we become
entangled in contradictions.

A Priori Morality
Section II opens with Kant’s assessment of what he’s accomplished. He claims to have
followed the only possible route to determining the principle of morality. These paragraphs
as an attack on the method of someone like Hume who proposes to arrive at moral
principles by identifying instances of morally worthy behavior and then working out what
they have in common. Kant claims that this is hopeless, since we can never be sure, by
means of experience, that any particular action is morally worthy. (Our motives are
always suspect, and, even in cases where we suppose people to have acted from respect for
duty, some extraneous inclination may have intervened.)
How might Hume reply to Kant? He can simply deny, for example, that there’s any need for
us to have firm guarantees that actions we take to be morally worthy really live up to that
billing. Maybe moral theory will be indefinitely revisable; we start off with some
judgments, and, in Hume’s Newtonian style, try to find a unifying account of them; perhaps
as we learn more there will have to be modifications both of our theoretical principles and
of our alleged data. Kant’s best response to this, I think, is that our judgments are
contaminated from the beginning with the mistakes and prejudices of our society. Hume’s
best reply to that would be to concede the point, but to claim that the only thing we can do
is to work our way patiently out of this predicament by coping with the difficulties that
occur; an ​a priori​
theory would be nice if there were one, but it just isn’t available.

Categorical Imperative
How do rational agents represent and govern their actions by laws? According to Kant,
they give themselves commands, or ​ imperatives​ . Imperatives come in two types,
hypothetical​ and ​categorical​. There’s no great difficulty in understanding the first type – a
hypothetical imperative tells you what to do to achieve some specified goal (“If you want to
get a degree from Columbia College, you must pass CC”). Imperatives like this arise from
what Kant takes to be a conceptual truth, that a rational agent who wills an end wills the
means to that end. Hypothetical imperatives plainly account for the ​ transfer ​
of acts of will
from one outcome to another, but they don’t explain the source of a rational agent’s willing.
Crudely, if you already understand that a rational agent has certain goals, then recognizing
a hypothetical imperative enables you to see why that agent has other aims that promote
the goals initially identified. But you can’t account in this way for why a rational agent has
all the goals she does.
Maybe there isn’t any such explanation. Perhaps all we can say is that rational agents
arbitrarily adopt certain goals, and then aim to realize the conditions necessary for

115 
attaining those goals. Kant sets out to explore the possibility of going further, of finding an
imperative that commands without any reference to an antecedently specified goal – a
categorical​imperative. He wants to show that an imperative of this sort is possible, and
indeed possible without making any empirical assumptions (​ a priori​
).

Rational Beings as Ends

Kant returns to the difference between hypothetical and categorical imperatives in a quite
intuitive way, asking if there are any ends that have “absolute worth”. He answers the
question by declaring that human beings – and rational beings in general – have absolute
worth, and are marked out as ends independently of anyone’s inclination. I confess that I
don’t see any serious argument for this, but it leads Kant to offer a second formulation of
the categorical imperative: always treat humanity, in your own person and in others, as an
end and never as a mere means.

The Kingdom of Ends

The ideal of rational beings bound together by mutual respect and essential equality of
rights leads very naturally into Kant’s third formulation of the categorical imperative. He
isn’t talking about an actual or hypothetical political state. Instead he’s using an ​
image
from political philosophy (specifically from Rousseau) to illuminate issues that arise in the
moral sphere. We’re to imagine that rational beings form an inclusive community, and that
their actions ought to be governed by the laws that they would enact if they understood
each and every one of them to be an end, having absolute worth. The second formulation
insisted on not treating others as means, but always as ends. Now you’re supposed to
summon up before your mind the totality of all rational beings, each being seen as an end
with absolute worth. You imagine yourself, and all the others, making a “social contract”
together, one that will set down the rules that govern our moral lives.
Kant introduces this formulation because he wants to connect his approach to morality
with an approach to human freedom. The crucial new point is that we are the authors of
the moral law (just as, in Rousseau’s story, the participants are the authors of the laws of
the state). Kant takes from Rousseau the idea that we express our freedom through
coming to obey laws that we have set down for ourselves. This enables him to conclude
that, in obeying the commands of duty, we become truly free.

116 
 Kant Chart
 
“Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world” 
 
“Now I say that the human being and in general every rational being exists as an end in itself, not 
merely as a means… if, then, there is to be a supreme practical principle… with respect to 
human will, a categorical imperative, it must be… rational nature exists as an end in itself.” 
 
Types of  Judgments  Faculty  Birthda Imperative Kingdom 
Philosophy  y gift  s  of Ends 
Formal            Categorica Autonomy 
l 
  Logic  Righ Wron WILL  “B/c it is  Objectively  Dignity – 
(rationa t  g  my  necessary –  no price 
l)  duty.”  apodictical  
 
            Hypothetic Heterono
al   my 
Materi Freedo Goo Bad  SENTIME “B/c it  Possible  Fancy 
al  m  d  NT  makes  purpose  ­  Price 
(ethics)  ­feelings  you feel  practical 
special  principle 
to get 
and me 
feel 
good to 
give.” 
 
  Nature  Virtu Vice  OUTCOME “b/c it  Assertorica Market 
(physic e  S ­  makes  l (is or is  Price 
s)  utilitarian  for good  not) 
social 
relations
.” 
 
Examples:  
1) Suicide action in DISCORD w/ HUMANITY 
2) borrowing money uses OTHERS as MEANS 
3) using/wasting talent uses SELF as MEANS 
4) ameliorating others’ suffering action not in HARMONY w/HUMANITY 
 

REVOLUTIONS

117 
The concept of Revolution

Our current conception of revolution must be understood as inherited from the French.
Before the events that began in 1789, “revolution” meant both “rolling back” and “turning
around” (from the Latin ​ revolvere​). The first use of the term “revolution” in a political
sense stems from fourteenth century Italy, when the term “rivoluzione” was used to
describe urban uprisings, family feuds, rebellions, and other forms of protests in city states.
By the seventeenth century most European languages had adopted the term “revolution” to
describe broader political change, especially civil wars and changes of rulers. Thus the
English Civil Wars of the 1650s were described at the time as a “revolution”. With the
Glorious Revolution of 1688, the term had even assumed positive connotations – and not
only positive, but sometimes utopian, quasi-religious connotations of salvation in this
world, of happiness and liberation from oppression. Descriptions of the American events,
beginning with the Declaration of Independence (and subsequent declaration of war), as
“revolution” can thus in some senses we read as an attempt to align the American struggle
with this older tradition of positive reform.

The war the followed the American revolt, however, triggered change once again in the
conception of “revolution.” Supplanting the positive associations with the 1688, revolution
came again to be associated with civil war and strife. The French Revolution further
solidified this impression. The French Revolution, in fact, lent the term “revolution” infamy
for some (as Burke’s reaction to its potential for gore suggests). Since the French
Revolution, the term has come to carry two connotations. First, revolution suggests short
term, potentially violent change. But it also connotes longer-term structural change. We
should understand “revolution” as both an event and a process.

The Nation

Both the American and French projects may be understood as attempts to create or to
redefine a national culture, and then to locate for this people its ideal form of state and
governance structure.

Who is a “people”? How are they defined? By language, by shared history, by religion? By
location? By political and civil rights as defined by the state?

The answer, in both the French and the American cases, is probably most accurately “a
little bit of all these things” – though scholars enjoy arguing about it to this day. It is
important to note that in both cases can be detected similar nation-building enterprises:
­ establishment of national holidays to supplant religious rituals
­ standardization of language (assimilation in France, forcing all to learn high French;
introduction of American spelling and vocab to differentiate from the British, then
aggressive assimilation of immigrants – or blatant exclusion if there were deemed
inassimilable.)
­ new iconography and symbology – images of the nation (Marianne, the bald eagle)
on coins, public buildings, etc.
118 
 ­ ritual celebration of national festivals (a monarchy like Britian, for example, has no
th​
equivalent of July 4​ or Bastille Day; national celebration is embodied through the
person of the monarch. So you get the Queen’s birthday off – or a bank holiday for
the announcement of the engagement of William and Kate).

Declaration of Independence (1776)

“In the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the,
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle
them.”

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these
States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Federalist Number X (1787)

“By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a

minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion,
or of interest, adverse to the rights of the other citizens.”

“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one by destroying the
liberty which is essential to its existence, the other, by giving to every
citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.”

What is the Third Estate? ​

Sieyès, ​ (1789)

‘the third estate is always identified in my mind with the idea of a nation’

‘all the privileged, without distinction, form a class that is different from and opposed to the
third estate’

‘every public need ought to be the responsibility of everybody’

‘So what is the third estate? Everything, but an “everything” shackled and oppressed. What
would it be without the privileged order? Everything, but an “everything” free and
flourishing.’

‘the privileged, far from being useful to the nation, can only weaken it and harm it.’

‘an entire class of citizens finds its glory in remaining inactive in the midst of general
activity and is able to consume the best part of the produce without having helped in any
sloth​
way to bring it into existence. Such a class is surely foreign to the nation in its ​ ’
119 
Declaration of Rights of Man (1789)
nation​
‘The ​ is the source of all sovereignty’

representatives​
‘The ​ of the people of France’

rights​
‘for ever keep attention to their ​ duties​
and their ​ ’

sacred​
‘​ rights of men’
free​
‘Men are born, and always continue ​ equal​
and ​ ’

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852)

“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed… The feeling of the
nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of
the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes
against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

The State

What form government best represents “the people”? The American answer borrowed
from the British precedent, specifically the compromised devised in the aftermath of the
Glorious Revolution: while sovereignty lay with “the people” this nation was to be
represented by a concentration of interests. Power should be equally divided between an
executive, a legislature and a judiciary. An elaborate system of checks and balances, as well
as revolving and stepped terms for legislators, conceded that change was inevitable, but
ensured it would progress gradually. The Whiggish mentality later embodied by Burke can
clearly be seen here.

As the French Revolution unfolded, numerous answers were suggested to this question.
The Assembly Nationale at the beginning functioned like an elective aristocracy; then it
decalred itself more radically to be a republic; then Robespierre’s Committee of Public
Safety seemed like tyranny; the post-1794 Directory seems again like an aristocracy; then
in 1799 Napoleon’s entry on the stage ushers back in a age of monarchy – not just of
monarchy, but of empire. Today France is an elective republic.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen​

(1789)

‘natural, imprescriptible and inalienable rights’

public utility​
‘Civil distinction therefore can be founded only on ​ ’

‘liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression’

(compatible? How do you define oppression?)
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 hurtful to society’​
‘The law ought to prohibit only actions ​ (how do you define this?)

will of the community​

‘The law is an expression of the ​ ’ (Rousseau)

‘by their virtues and talents’ (meritocracy?)

What is the Third Estate? ​

Sieyès, ​ (1789)

‘a common law and a common representation are what make one nation’

‘every public need ought to be the responsibility of everybody’

common​
‘what is a nation? A body of associates living under a ​ law and represented by the
same ​legislature​
’

‘by heads and not by order’

United States Constitution (1787)

“All legislative power shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist
of a Senate and a House of Representatives.”

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States…
according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding the whole
Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

“The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to
pay Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think
proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand
eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not
exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

Federalist Number X (1787)

“the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal
distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever
formed distinct interests in society.”

“The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of
modern legislation.”
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“the great number of citizens and the extent of territory which may be brought within the
compass of republican, than of democratic government; and it is in this circumstance
principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former, than in
the latter… Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests;
you make it less probably that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade
the rights of others.”

Rights

The American and French Revolutions signaled a shift from the understanding of people as
subjects​ citizens​
to their construction as ​ . What are one’s rights as a subject under a
monarchy? As a citizen in a Republic? Note that in all of these instances, rights are being
defined through ​the state​
. Hence the French “Declaration of the Rights of Man ​ and Citizen​
.”
What happens to people legally excluded from the state – do they possess any rights?

Declaration of Independence (1776)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Government, and to provide new Guards
for their future security.”

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)

‘No man ought to be molested on account of his opinions … provided that his avowal does
not disturb the public order.’

‘The unrestrained communication of thoughts.’

‘A common contribution … divided equally’ (taxation)

‘Every community to which a separation of powers and a security of rights is not provided
for, wants a constitution.’

‘The right to property being inviolable and sacred.’

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?​

Frederick Douglass, ​ (1852)

“Fellow citizens! There is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have
allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of
the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of

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the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a
GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.”

“Not take the constitution accordin to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a
single pro-slavery clause in it. “

Violence

When is violence sanctioned within a state? Outside a state? Does the existence of a
tyrannical leader – or the concentration of power in general—preclude the existence of
equality? Machiavelli noted that Republics tend to be very peaceful within their borders,
but aggressive in policing their boundaries. Is that simply what Robespierre was doing to
the French people—sorting out who belonged to the nation and who didn’t?

On the moral and political principles of domestic policy ​

Robespierre, ​ (1794)

‘to make liberty’s destiny depend on the truth, which is eternal’

‘every new faction will meet death in the mere thought of crime’

‘the public reason is the guarantee of liberty’

‘democracy is a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are its own
work, itself does all it can do well, and through delegates all it cannot do itself.’

‘we must end the war of liberty against tyranny and pass safely across the storms of the
revolution: such is the of the revolutionary system’

‘public virtue ... which is nothing other than the love of country and its laws’

‘this sublime sentiment assumes a preference for the public interest over every particular
interest’

‘virtue is the soul of democracy’

‘the first rule of your political conduct must be to relate all your operations to the
maintenance of equality and the development of virtue’

‘In the system of the French revolution, what is immoral is impolitic, what is corruptive is
counter-revolutionary’

‘ceaseless surveillance and control over all the public functionaries’

‘virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is
powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an
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emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the
general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs’

EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Burke’s Life

Burke was born in 1729, in Ireland, and was brought up as a Protestant. After studying
law, he decided to devote himself to writing. He became private secretary to the Marquess
of Rockingham, leader of the “Rockingham Party” of Whigs, was elected (in a sense) to
Parliament, and served in Rockingham’s second administration. The last years of his
political career were devoted to the attempted impeachment of Warren Hastings; the trial
ended inconclusively in 1794. After retiring from Parliament, Burke died in 1797.

Burke was a Whig (a member of the party of reform). He urged a strategy of conciliation
with the American colonies, that he was a critic (sometimes a harsh critic) of the foreign
policy of Lord North and George III, and a tireless scourge of what he took to be the
corruption of the East India Company.

Reflections on the Revolution in France​ (R) surprised some of his allies and his opponents –
George III congratulated him on it. But, read carefully, it isn’t out of keeping with many of
Burke’s writings and political causes. Burke is a proponent of constructive reform not of
violent, destructive, revolution; that is, at least, how he would put his reaction.

R was written early in the French Revolution, when the events of the Terror were still in
the future, and, as those events unfolded, Burke came to seem prophetic.

Burke’s Project

Burke is a great rhetorician, but it’s easy to feel that R lacks any overall argumentative
structure. First we need to recognize the historical context in which Burke writes his
letter. As he makes very clear, he is responding not just to the revolution but to the
reception of it by English groups of religious dissidents. Various passages in R indicate
that Burke sees the idea of revolution as a bacillus that could infect other countries.
Interpreting the English enthusiasm for the French Revolution as an attempt to assimilate
the events of 1789 to those of 1688, he is, in effect, focusing on three periods and arguing
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for a particular way of understanding them. The first is the British Civil War of the 1640s
(the immediate context of ​Leviathan​
); the second is the revolution of 1688, and the
replacement of James II by William and Mary.

Burke tends to agree with Hobbes’ assessment of the awfulness of civil war, and he opposes
a Lockean reading of the “Glorious Revolution”. Instead of seeing this as the legitimate
response to breach of contract on the part of the exiled sovereign (James II), he proposes
that it be understood as a minimal deviation from tradition required to honor an important
constraint. Hence if Richard Price and the Revolution Society think that the events of 1789
were justified because of the right of French citizens to make a new contract, they have a
misguided understanding of the significance of 1688, and of the relations between the state
and the individuals who are governed by it.

Conservatism

Like Smith, Burke has often been embraced by conservatives (one sign is that the Liberty
Fund sponsors editions of their works), but I think it’s arguable that, in both instances,
contemporary “conservatism” shows considerable disregard for eighteenth century ideas.
If contemporary politicians were asking “What would Burke do?”, they would hardly be
tearing down the political institutions of other countries or what remains of the social
security network in our own. The essence of Burke’s conservatism, expressed throughout
R, is that the task of each generation is to preserve and thoughtfully modify what it has
been bequeathed by its predecessors. Again and again, he urges his readers to think of
reform as a gradual process in which institutions that have been patiently built up are
amended to cope with their flaws. The tone throughout is against arrogance and
recklessness, distrustful of abstract ideals and general principles.

“The very ides of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to full us with disgust and
horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we
possess as an inheritance from our forefathers.”

“You had all these advantages in your antient states but you chose to act as if you had never
been moulded into civil society, and had every thing to begin anew.”

“Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves.”

Reform

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Burke is very clear that reform is important; he isn’t arguing that political affairs should be
left just as they are (see 19, 148-9, 217). He makes very definite proposals about how
reform should be carried out, grounded in his analysis of the events of 1688. Reform is
tied to preservation: there is some feature of the antecedent political arrangements that is
important, and whose continued maintenance becomes problematic; some change is
needed, and Burke recommends that you make the minimum modification that will allow
the important feature to be preserved.

“The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like
every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori.”

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Equality

Burke is no egalitarian. His moral perspective suggests that attaining social equality isn’t
possible, and also not necessary. Each of us is to fulfill our function within society, and
doing that can lead to happiness, even when the station we occupy is “humble” (33). He
takes over from Smith the thought that the distribution of resources within a prosperous
state, while unequal, is automatically to the advantage of the relatively poor (112-13; Burke
understands Smith’s account well enough to recognize that the expansion of population is
an index of prosperity, but he doesn’t appreciate Smith’s point that the liberal reward of
labor is obtained when the productivity of the state is ​ increasing​). Burke’s main opposition
to egalitarian proposals, readily understandable in the context of 1789, is that equality
cannot legitimately be obtained by “leveling down” (43, 122). Like Hume, he believes that
any attempt at permanent equality must fail, and, in an anticipation of contemporary ideas,
he suggests that distinctions in wealth and rank can serve as a source of hope for those who
do not have them (122).

The core of Burke’s objections to egalitarianism stem from his emphasis on the importance
of inherited property (51). The ability of people to pass on to their children what they
have earned is, for him, an important constraint on any scheme for fair division of the
resources of a society. This can readily be understood, I think, in terms to his emphasis on
the importance to us of tradition, of seeing ourselves in a process that extends beyond our
own lives; in many of his discussions of this theme, the perspective looks backward; here,
however, we are conceived as looking to the future and wanting our descendants to use
and build on what we have acquired.

126 
The rejection of equality is counterposed with a positive vision of the functions of the state
(52-3). We “contrive” government to answer “human ​ wants​” (52)

“Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total
independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of
abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right
to everything they want everything.”

“In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among
their rights.”

Political aestheticism

the description of the capture of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (62-7). I think it’s a good
idea to read the concluding paragraph (66-7);

This whole passage is an extended illustration of Burke’s theme that revolutions will
inevitably blunt moral sensibilities (56-7). He wants to convey to the reader the gap
between the attitudes that would “naturally” be felt by a properly sympathetic spectator
and the emotions expressed in the actions of the mob. Behind the discussion stand the
sentimentalist approach to morality of Hume, and perhaps particularly Hume’s emphasis
on our sympathy and admiration for the ornaments of wealth and rank.

“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

“But among the revolutions in France must be reckoned a considerable revolution in their
ideas of politeness.”

“From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the centinel at her door, who
cried out to her, to save herself in flight—that this was the last proof of fidelity he could
give—that they were upon him, and he was dead. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with blood, rushed out into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred
strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but
just time to fly almost naked, and through ways unknown to the murders had escaped to
seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure in his own life for a moment.”

127 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

Life
Mary Wollstonecraft lived a short, eventful, and often unhappy life. She ran a school that
failed, endured a period as a governess, struggled to make a living through her writing, and
died in 1797 of puerperal fever, giving birth to a daughter (who grew up to become Mary
Shelley). Despite V’s repeated commendation of friendship between men and women,
rather than passionate love, Wollstonecraft had a turbulent romantic life. After the
publication of V in 1792, Wollstonecraft had an unhappy affair that produced an
illegitimate daughter. Later, she became pregnant by the English radical, William Godwin,
whom she married about six months before her death.

Liberal Feminism
This is arguably the foundation text of liberal feminism, which may be understand as the
view that inequalities in the performance of men and women on the entire spectrum of
human endeavors are almost entirely to be understood in terms of socially generated
asymmetries, coupled with the normative thesis that all positions in society should be open
to men and women alike and that the obstacles traditionally placed in the paths of women
should be removed. Liberal feminism, unlike later feminisms, does not offer a critique of
current social institutions to which men and women might aspire; it is, if you like, more
concerned with providing women equal access to careers in the law, in politics, or in
business, than with claiming that attention to the capacities and predilections of women
might lead us to rethink the conduct of the law, the forms of our politics, or the ways in
which business is done.
“Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built on this simple principle,
that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the
progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with
respect to its influence on general practice.”

Nature vs. Nurture: Education

MW attempts to undermine the claim that facts of biology dictate social roles for men and
women. She starts with the obvious concession that, on average, men are physically
stronger than women (7). She denies that one can draw any conclusions from this about
the mental, or, in her preferred terms, moral, differences between men and women. She
insists, again and again, that the socialization of women both prevents them from
developing their minds and characters in important ways, and also encourages them to
cultivate various types of weakness in the interests of manipulating men.

128 
Have all the barriers been removed? Are we now in a situation in which the actual
distribution of achievement between the sexes represents the intrinsic capacities of men
and women? It’s fairly clear that some of the inequalities about which Wollstonecraft
complains have been removed, but there’s room for serious debate about whether women
are still encouraged to develop in certain directions and discouraged from going in others.
“In the government of the physical world, it is observable that the female, in general, is
inferior to the male. The male pursues, the female yields--this is the law of nature; and it
does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. This physical
superiority cannot be denied--and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this
natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring
objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the
influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts,
or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society."

Private v. Public - What is Equal Education For?

The​big theme of V is the importance of providing equal education for men and women.
Wollstonecraft gives you plenty of passages about the proper development of reason and
the actual development of trivial abilities and alluring defects (see, for one example, 53).
She opposes both the contemporary practices of educating girls and the theoretical claims
offered by prominent thinkers. Her ​ bête noire​here is Rousseau. But there’s a serious
question of how far Wollstonecraft breaks free from Rousseau. Rousseau explains that
woman’s proper function is to bear children (but, given the whole argument of the book, at
most to raise the female children). Many of Wollstonecraft’s arguments are directed by the
thought that a more egalitarian program of education will make women into better wives
and mothers. For most of the book, she’s content not to dispute the primarily private role
of women.
“Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good
wives; — that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.”

Class
Is the liberation of some women – middle-class women – secured by their buying the
services of the poor? Is that consistent with the underlying ideas of equality that motivate
both her?

Ideals of Marriage
Again and again, V insists that “love, from its very nature, must be transitory” (29; see also
27, 30, 53, 74). Marital happiness, she tells us, depends on friendship; friendship requires
129 
(approximate) intellectual and moral equality; hence, for happy marriages, women must be
educated so that they can be the intellectual and moral equals of their husbands. There’s a
very clear suggestion that husband and wife might be carried away by passion at the very
beginning, but that this will quickly pass, and that the principal character of the marriage
will be determined by how well they get along once this brief tumultuous period is over.
There are even intimations that she thinks it a good thing that this period should be brief.
As she explains (74) because the principal determinant of the happiness of a marriage is
the intellectual and moral compatibility, it would be no bad thing if people could
concentrate on this from the beginning. Hence, if “some circumstances checked” the
passion of two young people, and they chose to marry on the basis of their estimate of their
compatibility, that would be “happy”. The implication must be that they don’t lose
anything very important by not going through the turbulent phase. Presumably a marriage
that has the ecstasies of passion and then long years of intimate friendship is better than
one that just has a longer span of friendship, but it’s not so much better that you’d want to
trade the high degree of compatibility for a crowded hour of glorious life.
“Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it
manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own
superiority.”

Manners and Morals

Wollstonecraft’s opposition to inculcating elegance and grace instead of an ability to think
is an implicit rejection of the idea that aesthetic qualities can be measured on the same
scale as genuine virtues (the position we saw in ‘ and Burke). She makes the point quite
explicitly in her comparison of women and soldiers, both of whom are trained to be skilled
in superficial matters of etiquette but not equipped with more solid capacities (22-3).

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of
flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of
perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true
dignity and human happiness consists--I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire
strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility
of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with
epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of
love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt."

TOCQUEVILLE
Democracy in America​
(1835-1840)

130 
Context

What’s going on in France in 1820s?

­ Nap defeated at Waterloo in 1815 
o One million French men had died during Nap Wars 
­ Constitutional Monarchy reestablished – bourbon restoration [Charles X] 
­ Bourbons overthrown in in civil uprising of 1830 
o July monarchy – lasts until 1848 [then French second Republic proclaimed] –
House of Orleans – not King of FRANCE, but King of the FRENCH 
▪ 1852 – Nap II 
▪ 1870 – Franco-Prussian war – third republic 

In America?
­ market revolution 
­ extension of franchise during this decade (no property quals – WHITE MEN) 
­ solidification of cotton system and most brutal era of slavery on plantations 
­ Jacksonian democracy – populism emerging over first gen of southern planters as
politicians 
­ Clearing of the Cherokees – homogenization 
­ Immigration beginning  

Democracy

Tocqueville is the first author we’ve read who gives a serious extended treatment of
democracy. Plato, Aristotle, and Rousseau all mentioned democracy. One obvious
divergence is that Tocqueville takes democracy to allow for the election of representatives
who legislate and administer; but he supposes that American democracy realizes the idea
of popular government because any deviation from the popular view would be quickly
checked.

Does Tocqueville simply think of democracy as a matter of voting and of control of the
government? There’s a genuine connection between democracy and equality: democracy is
seen as an attempt to satisfy an ideal of equality. The big question here (as so often in
discussions of equality) is “Equality of what?” In some passages the emphasis is clearly on
equal standing before the law, but that doesn’t seem to demand any particular scheme for
political decision-making. There are two other kinds of equality that emerge in
Tocqueville’s discussion: equality in economic well-being, and equal access to social
positions .

“I increasingly viewed this equality of social conditions as the factor which generated all
the others, and I discovered that it represented a central focus in which all my observations
constantly ended.”
131 
“The political constitution of the United States seems to me to be one of the forms of govt
which a democracy can assume but it is not my view that American institutions are either
the only or the best ones that a democratic nation might adopt.”

“democratic govt allows the idea of political rights to filter down to the least of its citizens,
just as the division of possessions places the idea of the right to property within the general
grasp of all men. That, in my view, is one of its greatest merits.”

America as model

Tocqueville’s official reason for crossing the Atlantic is to study American penitentiaries,
but his real purpose is to find a way to make his liberal ideals more concrete in the context
of French politics. From the beginning of D, we’re given a clear picture of the point of a
thorough study of American democracy – if you understand this, the fullest realization of
democratic ideals, then you’ll see what’s good about it, as well as what the mistakes are,
and, as a result, the would-be democrats of Europe can see how to “instruct democracy”.

But it isn’t just that Europeans might think it a good idea to make their societies more
democratic. Rather, Tocqueville considers equality as a force that is taking history in a
particular direction. The task for the European politician is to understand that force so
that it can be properly directed—and, of course, both Marx and Hegel will place much more
emphasis on the dynamics of historical change than on the preservation of the initial
conditions.

It’s also worth emphasizing the extent to which Tocqueville’s history is a view from New
England. He recognizes that there were important differences – and that there continue to
be important divergences between the attitudes of various parts of the country (North and
South, Eastern seaboard and frontier) .

“The gradual unfurling of equality in social conditions is, therefore, a providential fact
which reflects its principal characteristics.”

“The whole of the book in front of the reader has been written under the pressure of a kind
of religious terror exercised upon the soul of the author by the sight of this irresistible
revolution.”

“It is not simply, therefore, to satisfy a curiosity, albeit justified, that I have examined
America; my aim has been to discover lessons from which we may profit.”

132 
Majority Oppression

One of the phrases for which Tocqueville is famous is “the tyranny of the majority.” There
are interesting points about the ways in which political platforms might bind legislators to
the will of the majority (103), about the instability of majoritarian opinion (105), about the
possibility of protecting minorities through guaranteed rights (107), about the intrusions
of majority opinion into the lives of minorities (110-2), and the consequent uniformity of
American opinion (114).

“this instinctive love for one’s country reigns supreme.”

“I know of no country where there is generally less independence of thought and real
freedom of debate than in America.”

The Role of Religion

Tocqueville sees religion as a continuing factor in American socio-political life. Tocqueville

makes a number of claims: America is the place in which Christianity has the most
influence on the ways in which people live; because of its Christian background, Americans
set more severe moral standards; family values are particularly important in America;
religion works in harmony with political liberty – you can give a free reign to people who
are captive to their consciences ; the separation of church and state is a cause of the sway of
religion; complete political liberty would be inappropriate (impossible?) for non-believers;
religious aspirations harmonize with the American zeal for doing well in this-worldly
terms.

Social Explanations of norms, customs, and ideas.

One of the striking features of D is Tocqueville’s use of types of reasoning and explanation
that we haven’t previously seen in CC, specifically in his attempts to identify causal
relations between social conditions and attitudes. Quite early in the book, he suggests that
the circumstances of life in nineteenth century America generate a form of
anti-intellectualism that scorns higher education. The second volume treats these kinds of
questions more extensively (as you’d expect when the topic has shifted from politics to
“mores”). We are offered a sociological explanation of American tendencies to
133 
pragmatism; these passages seem especially prescient in light of American intellectual
developments at the end of the century; interestingly, the pragmatists themselves were
concerned to identify the social factors that generate abstract questions and philosophical
themes.

“Certainly, I am far from claiming that to achieve this result the exercise of political rights
should be granted all at once to every man; but I do say that the most potent, and possibly
the only remaining weapon to involve men in the destiny of their country is to make them
take a share in its govt. In our day, civic spirit seems to be inseparable from the exercise of
political rights.”

Individualism

Tocqueville frequently characterizes Americans as a society of entrepreneurs – good

examples of Smith’s ​ Homo economicus​ – sometimes heroic, more often limited. But, of
course, he also stresses the importance of cooperative projects, the involvement of citizens
together in public life, which he views as the counterpoise to individualism.

There is a serious concern here, one that contributes to Tocqueville’s theme of the
“mediocrity of democratic societies”. Economic interests are narrowing. But, in an
egalitarian society in which individuals successfully pursue their own well-being, there are
also factors that lead to special forms of religion and spirituality (through a sense that the
material rewards are not enough), so that there are some possibilities for a resurgence of
humanism.

“Why in America, this land of democracy par excellence, does no one raise that outcry
against property in general which often echoes throughout Europe? Do I need to explain?
In America, the proletariat does not exist. Since each man has some private possessions to
protect, he acknowledges the right, in principle, to own property.”

“Do you not notice how, on all sides, beliefs are ceding place to rationality and feelings to
calculations? If, amid this general upheaval, you fail to link the idea of rights to individual
self-interest, which is the only fixed point in the human heart, what else have you got to
rule the world except fear?”

“Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which persuades each citizen to cut himself
off from his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of his family and friends in such a way
that he thus creates a small group.”

134 
The Tendency to Mediocrity

When Tocqueville compares America and Europe he sees, again and again, a principal type
of difference. In America the mean level of performance is higher and the variance greatly
diminished. American society, he thinks, tends to forms of mediocrity. The costs of
equality seem to be that you have to settle for a world that’s comfortable and dull.

Presumably, part of the point about “instructing” democracy is that you try to do better
than this, by preserving those features that elevate the mean while allowing for the high
reaches of the distribution. In the end, Tocqueville doesn’t seem to have a formula for
doing this. Perhaps he thinks it’s an inevitable consequence of democratic life that you lose
the really great achievements.

“There are so few ignorant, and at the same time so few educated individuals as in
America.”

MARX

Overview of Marx’s Works

The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844​ contains a discussion of “Alienated

Labor” and “Private Property and Communism”. These pieces plunge into some of Marx’
most important concepts and themes; the first gives them a sense of the philosophical
depths underlying his political proposals, and the second can easily be connected with a
political program of liberation.

Theses on Feuerbach​
. This is short and contains some of Marx’ most quotable lines. Marx is
developing Feuerbach’s naturalistic response to Hegel more thoroughly.

The German Ideology​ . This contains some really important passages, providing, for
example, a vivid account of the post-Capitalist condition and a succinct juxtaposition of
Marx’ views about history with those of Hegel.

Grundrisse​
. Another work unpublished in Marx’ lifetime, this is something of a mess. It
does, however, contain presentations of some topics that are more vivid than those Marx

135 
 Capital​
articulated in ​ I, as well as coverage of themes that he intended to elaborate in the
Capital​
later volumes of ​ .

Capital​
provides the crux of Marx’s political economy. includes Marx’s account of
commodity fetishism, the circulation of commodities, to surplus value, exploitation.

The Manifesto​
. Here we have the political side of Marx. It’s pretty straightforward, and
contains some quite provocative remarks about property and social arrangements (e.g. the
bourgeois family).

Three Ways to Think of Marx:

Philosophical​. What is Marx’ account of the actual human predicament and of human
possibilities? Does Marx have any moral theory? Is he, for example, interested in
questions about justice? What is the ideal for a post-capitalist society? What exactly is the
theory of history?

Political​
. What exactly is Marx’ political program? What replaces the bourgeois
institutions of private property and the family? If the demise of capitalism is historically
Manifesto​
inevitable, what’s the point of the ​ ? Has Marx’ program ever been realized?
What has happened to the proletariat?

Economic​ . What exactly is the fetishism of the commodity? What is Marx’ theory of value?
How does capitalism create surplus value? Can the account of exploitation be detached
from the labor theory of value? Why is capitalism destined to collapse?

“Thus the social character is the general character of the whole movement; just as society
itself produces man as man, so is society produced by him. Activity and consumption, both
in their content and in their mode of existence, are social: social activity and social
consumption… Thus society is the consummated oneness in substance of man and
nature—the true resurrection of nature—the naturalism of man and the humanism of
nature both brought to fulfillment.”

“It will be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity
and suffering, only lose their antithetical character, and thus their existence, as such
antitheses in the social condition; it will be seen how the resolution of the theoretical
antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of men.”

136 
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however, is
to change it.”

“The demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another

way, i.e. to recognize it by means of another interpretation. The Young-Hegelian
ideologists, in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’ statements, are the staunchest
conservatives.”

Alienated Labor

In the early 1840s, Marx became convinced of the importance of studying political economy
and he engaged in a fairly close reading of the classical texts, particularly Smith’s WN;
although Smith comes in for some relatively scathing treatment in ​ Capital​(where Marx
goes to considerable lengths to dispute Smith’s originality), the first three papers in the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscipts of 1844​ provide a very insightful summary of the
main ideas Smith offers; hence, when Marx begins by claiming that he has “proceeded from
the premises of political economy”, he is being exact. In effect, Marx has retraced the path
that leads from the optimism of the early parts of WN to the point in Book V where Smith
confronts the possible consequence of the intensified division of labor (WN 840, 846).
Instead of waving his hand in the direction of some remedial program of education, Marx
now brings in his post-Hegelian philosophical apparatus to analyze the situation.

Under capitalism, the worker is alienated in four ways: he is alienated from the products of
his labor, from the act of production, from his species being, and from other people.

The conditions of capitalism are fundamentally alienating and oppressive because of the
kind of being we are, and the other forms of alienation point to facets of our nature that go
unfulfilled. Marx contrasts human beings with other animals by suggesting that we fulfill
ourselves through a self-conscious deployment of natural resources for meeting our
physical needs, that is through freely-chosen work, and through cooperative projects with
others. There’s a background ideal of life in community where each person finds in a
pattern of labor a meaningful way to live. All this is inverted under capitalism, where what
should be the meaning-generating part of our lives is subordinated to the satisfaction of
our brute functions.

“We have proceeded from the premises of political economy… we have shown that the
worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of
commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power
and magnitude of his production…”

137 
“… the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he creates,
the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the
more deformed becomes the worker.”

“If my own activity does not belong to me, if it is an alien, a coerced activity, to whom, then,
does it belong?”

Marx’ Theory of History

Marx explicitly characterizes his own approach by standing Hegel on his head.

The fundamental ideas of the theory of history are that the material conditions under
which a society produces the things it needs are the determinants of social relations and of
the ideas that rationalize these relations, and that the development of these material
conditions will (with one exception) inevitably give rise to a state in which the prevailing
material conditions break down, generating a transition to a new state of production. The
one exception, of course, is the post-capitalist condition, which is special because there is
no longer the motive force of historical change, namely class struggle.

Setting things up this way makes it clear that the account consists of two kinds of causal
claims: (1) claims about the ways in which the economic conditions realized at a time relate
to the social and intellectual life of that time; (2) claims about the ways in which economic
conditions develop, producing crises and transitions. ​ Capital​does spend some time on
elaborating this second set of claims.

“Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc.—real, active men, as they are
conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse
corresponding to these.” (154)

“In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we
ascend from earth to heaven. that is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine,
conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at
men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process
we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this
life-process.” (154)

“Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.”

138 
Class and Class Struggle

Marx has started from the concepts and categories of classical political economy, and, for
him, the most basic classes are those divisions of society that political economy employs in
its explanations. Remember Smith’s three main divisions of people – landowners,
entrepreneurs, and workers. Like Marx after him, Smith recognizes that the groupings of
economic agents vary from historical epoch to historical epoch. Within these large groups,
one can recognize subdivisions – productive and unproductive workers, for Smith,
petit bourgeoisie​
industrial capitalists and ​ , for Marx. Smith is interested in the coincidence
in or divergence of the interests of the groups he considers (WN 284-8), but he doesn’t
focus on the clash of interests as a potential historical force. Marx, perhaps reading
political economy through Hegel, seems to me to make just this move, viewing the
opposition in the interests of the basic kinds of historical actors as the source of the
“contradiction” through which the “dialectic” of history moves forward.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

“Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated
labour, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.”

“Communism is the positive expression of annulled private property—at first as universal

private property.”

“Communism as the positive transcendence of private property, or human

self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for
man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e.
human) being.”

The Basic Features of Capitalism

From the capitalist’s point of view, the task is to generate as much surplus-value as
possible. There are two ways to do this: you can increase the length of the working day, or
you can make the production process more efficient, thereby diminishing the length of that
portion during which the worker produces the products that will sell for a minimum
sustainable wage (more exactly: products that will cover the cost of the raw materials and a
minimum sustainable wage). The use of technology and machinery turns out to be a
device for increasing exploitation by shrinking the part of the working day in which
“workers work for themselves”. Marx thinks that the drive to increase the index of
139 
exploitation will inevitably lead to intensified division of labor, working days that are as
long as possible (both of which, in the terms of 1844, will exacerbate the alienation of the
worker), that the competition among capitalists will constantly decrease their number, that
technological improvements will yield a “disposable industrial reserve army”, and he hints
that these developments will stretch capitalism to breaking point. On top of this, there are
supposed to be crises of overproduction that will disrupt markets and possibly ruin parts
of the system. These collectively amount to the “contradiction with capitalism” that will be
resolved by revolution and the transition to the post-capitalist state.

“Wages are a direct consequence of estranged labour, and estranged labour is the direct
cause of private property. The downfall of the one aspect must therefore mean the
downfall of the other.”

“The transcendence of self-estrangement follows the same course as self-estrangement.

Private property is first considered only in its objective aspect—but nevertheless with
labour as its essence. Its form of existence is therefore CAPITAL.”

“The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of human life is,
therefore, the positive transcendence of all estrangement—that is to say, the return of man
from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i.e. social mode of existence. Religious
estrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness, of man’s inner life, but
economic estrangement is that of real life.”

STUDY GUIDE 2
Contemporary Civilizations 
Semester Long Review Sheet 
 
Rousseau:  
 
Discourse on Inequality:  
­Rousseau changes the question to : how can one know inequality without knowing man?  
­we must not consider man as he is now, deformed by society, but as he was in nature.  
­Progress drives man as a species further from its original condition in the ​
state of  nature​. 
As knowledge increases, so our ignorance of the true nature of man  increases 
­Rousseau next claims that he perceives two basic principles that exist "prior to reason"—that is, before 
man is deformed by society and rationality.  
­​
self­preservation 
­​
pity​
.  
­From these principles, which do not require sociability, natural right flows.  
Man's duties are not dictated to him by reason alone, but by self­preservation and pity.  

140 
 ­Therefore a man will not harm another sentient (pain­feeling) being unless his own self­
preservation is at stake.  
­The duty not to harm others is based not on rationality but on sentience, 
the state of being able to feel. 
­ According to Rousseau, this solves the age­old question of whether 
animals participate in natural law.  
­As they are not rational, he says, animals cannot have any part in 
a natural law, but as sentient beings they take part in natural right, 
that is, they feel and are the subjects of pity. This gives animals at 
least the right not to be mistreated by man. 
­Rousseau argues not that animals have all the rights that humans do, 
but only that to harm another sentient creature is universally wrong. 
­Main Point: natural rights and laws mean nothing if we do not understand the nature of man.  
­There must be a correlation between the two for natural laws to mean anything.   
­Therefore, to understand what this nature is, we have to take reason out of the equation 
entirely, as man in his original condition may not have been a rational creature. 
There are two types of inequality: natural (or physical) and moral.  
­​
Natural inequality​  stems from differences in age, health or other physical  characteristics.  
­Note that "physical" inequality also includes intelligence and presumably 
the capacity for reason. 
­​
Moral inequality​  is established by convention or the consent of men. 
­By defining moral inequality as the elevation of some men over others by 
consent and convention, and hence as a form of political rule, Rousseau 
twists the terms of the question again. He begins to ask how inequality in  society: 
that is, how power and hierarchy began to operate amongst men 
What is at issue is an attempt to decide when rights replaced violence in human relationships and when 
nature was subjected to law. 
­ others have tried but All of them took ideas from society and transplanted them  into the 
state of nature. They spoke of savage man, but really depicted civil man.  However, no  writer doubts 
the existence of the state of nature, despite the fact that it does not really  appear in Scripture. 
­Religion compels us to believe that men are unequal because God wanted 
them to be like this, that God drew men out of their original state 
of nature immediately after the Creation. 
­religion does not forbid conjectures, such as Rousseau's, which try 
to hypothetically analyze the nature of man and find out what man 
might have been if he had remained "abandoned" in the state of 
nature. 
Rousseau aims to speak in a language suited to all times and places, and to show man's real nature 
His final line about finding a place where one might wish the species to have stopped introduces the idea 
of a critique of modernity 
­This is the first and clearest statement of an important theme: that modern society  and 
inequality are a bad thing 
We must beware of confusing savage man with civil man, as in mistaking domestic animals for wild ones. 
­Being naked and without shelter is not a disadvantage to savage man, although it  would 
be to us.  
­Savage man sleeps much and thinks little. Self­preservation, whether through attack or 
defense, is his major care. To succeed in this, he needs robust senses. 
Any animal is but an ingenious machine, to which Nature gives senses to operate and to protect itself.  
141 
 ­Man contributes to his own operation because he is a free agent, but is otherwise  similar 
to the animals.  
­Animals choose by instinct: man chooses by freedom.  
­Man is therefore more adaptable than an animal.  
The key distinction between man and beast is the faculty of ​ perfectibility​
. 
­This distinct and unlimited faculty is the source of all of man's miseries.  
­It draws him out of his original condition and causes his enlightenment, his vices  and his 
virtues to develop. 
It is clear that nature has done little to bring men together, or to make them sociable.  
­There is no reason why men in the natural state should need each other. 
­Those who talk of the misery of the state of nature are wrong, as, for example, few  savages 
want to commit suicide, suggesting that their life is more pleasant than ours.   
­In instinct alone, savage man has all he needs. 
­Savages are not wicked because they do not know what it is to be 
good. 
Commiseration, or empathy, is strong in savage man, and weak in civil man.  
Amour propre​  is a kind of extreme self­preservation unbalanced by pity. 
­Reason engenders ​ amour propre​ , and turns man back on himself.  
­Philosophy isolates man, and makes him unlikely to help others. 
­ Pity is a natural sentiment that, by moderating self­love, contributes to the mutual ​ self­
preservation​  of the species.  
­In the state of nature pity takes the place of laws, morals and virtues. 
  ­pity was the only rule that natural man needed.  
­Pity takes the place of laws because if you pity another and 
empathize with him, you cannot harm him.  
­In the civil state, however, laws develop, in part because self­preservation 
and pity are no longer balanced against each other.  
­Mankind would have ceased to exist if it depended upon reasoning alone. 
Natural inequality increases as a result of instituted inequality. 
­It would be hard to make savage man understand what domination is, or to make  him 
obey you. 
­Ties and servitude are formed solely by men's mutual dependence and the  reciprocal needs 
that unite them.  
­It is impossible to subjugate a man without placing him in a position where he needs  another. 
Rousseau intends to suggest that if savage man can be good without laws, then perhaps only laws make 
him bad. However, if this is true, then why are laws introduced? 
­The first man who enclosed a piece of ground, and then said, "this is mine," and  then  found 
enough gullible people to believe him, was the true founder of civilsociety. 
­The institution of property is the beginning of ​moral inequality​, because if 
men can "own" things, then differences in ownership that are unrelated to 
physical differences are possible. 
­As long as men applied themselves only to one­man tasks, they were free and  healthy.  
­The moment when one man needed the help of another, and one man 
wanted what was enough for two, equality disappeared, work became 
necessary and oppression developed. 
The origin of society irreversibly destroyed natural freedom, fixed the laws of inequality and property, 
and turned usurpation into right.  
­All men were subjugated to servitude and labor for the profit of a few. 
142 
There is a great distance between the state of nature and the state of society.  
­Savage and civil man differ so much that what makes one happy makes the other 
miserable.  
­Now we have honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure 
without happiness. This is clearly not man's natural state.  
­The growth of inequality is due to the development of the human mind, and  becomes 
legitimate through the establishment of property and human laws.  
­Modern, moral inequality is therefore contrary to natural right when it is not directly 
proportional to physical inequality. 
 
Social Contract:  
Man was born ​ free​, and he is everywhere in chains."  
­These "chains" are the constraints placed on the freedom of citizens in modern  states.  
The stated aim of this book is to determine whether there can be legitimate political authority­­whether a 
state can exist that upholds, rather than constrains, liberty. 
­Rousseau rejects the idea that legitimate political authority is found in ​nature 
­Rousseau's suggested answer is that legitimate political authority rests on a  covenant (a 
"​social contract​") forged between the members of society. 
Rousseau links freedom with moral significance: 
­our actions can only be moral if those actions were done freely.  
­In giving up our freedom we give up our morality and our humanity 
A people only become a people if they have the freedom to deliberate amongst themselves and agree 
about what is best for all. 
There reaches a point in the state of ​ nature​, Rousseau suggests, when people need to combine forces in 
order to survive.  
­The problem resolved by the ​ social contract​ is how people can bind themselves to  one 
another and still preserve their ​ freedom​. 
­ The social contract essentially states that each individual must surrender himself 
unconditionally to the community as a whole.  
­(1) Because the conditions of the social contract are the same for 
everyone, everyone will want to make the social contract as easy as 
possible for all.  
­(2) Because people surrender themselves unconditionally, the individual 
has no rights that can stand in opposition to the state.  
­(3) Because no one is set above anyone else, people don't lose their 
natural freedom by entering into the social contract. 
This social contract is not simply the sum total of the lives and wills of its members: it is a distinct and 
unified entity with a life and a will of its own. 
­Since no individual can be bound by a contract made with himself, the social contract  cannot 
impose any binding regulations on the sovereign. 
­ subjects of the sovereign are doubly bound: ​ as individuals they are bound to the sovereign, and 
as members of the sovereign they are bound to other individuals.​  Though  the sovereign is not 
bound by the social contract, it cannot do anything that would violate  the social contract since it owes 
its existence to that contract.  
­Further, in hurting its subjects it would be hurting itself, so the sovereign will act  in the 
best interests of its subjects without any binding commitment to do so. 
He suggests that ownership of land is only legitimate if no one else claims that land, if the owner occupies 
no more land than he needs, and if he cultivates that land for his subsistence.  
143 
 ­In the social contract, each individual surrenders all his property along with himself to  the 
sovereign and the general will. In doing so, he does not give up his property since he  is also a subject 
of the sovereign. 
The ​ freedom​  we have in the state of nature is the freedom of animals: unconstrained and irrational.  
­By entering into civil society we learn to restrain our instincts and to act rationally.  
­By leaving our natural state of do­as­you­please, we come to recognize that we  need  reasons 
to justify our actions.  
­This rationality is what defines our actions as moral.  
Rationality and morality distinguish us from animals, according to Rousseau, so it is only by becoming a 
part of civil society that we become human.  
­The community is superior to the individual because it is a community of humans and  the 
individual is just a solitary animal. 
Society can only function to the extent that people have interests in common: the end goal of any state is 
the ​
common good​ .  
­Rousseau argues that the common good can only be achieved by heeding the  general ​ _
will​ as expressed by the ​ sovereign​.  
The sovereign is inalienable: it cannot defer its power to someone else, or be represented by a smaller 
group.  
­It expresses the general will, which will never coincide exactly with any particular private will.  
­As the will of the people, the sovereign can only exist so long as the people have  an 
active and direct political voice. 
­An expression of the general will takes the form of ​ law​, whereas the expression  of a 
particular will is at best an application of law. 
­A citizen must render whatever services or goods are necessary to the state, but  the  state 
cannot demand more than what is necessary from the citizen.  
Furthermore, the sovereign is only authorized to speak in cases that affect the body politic as a whole.  
­Cases that deal only with individuals or particularities do not concern all citizens,  and so 
do not concern the sovereign: the sovereign deals only with matters that  are of  common interest. 
­ As a result, each citizen is free to pursue private interests, and is only bound to  the 
sovereign in matters that are of public concern. 
Rousseau suggests that there is a universal and ​ natural​
 justice that comes to us from God, but that it is not 
binding.  
­Evil people will not obey God's law, and so we must set up positive, binding laws within 
society, or else those who obey God's law will suffer at the hands of  those who disobey  it. 
Rousseau defines law as an abstract expression of the ​ general will​ that is universally applicable.  
­All laws are made by the people as a whole and apply to the people as a whole:  the law does 
not deal with particularities. 
­ The law can never deal with individual people or groups, so while it can say that  a 
certain group should have certain privileges or that a certain person should be the head  of state, it 
cannot determine which particular individual or group should receive these  privileges 
An ideal lawgiver is not easy to find. 
­He must be supremely intelligent, and willing to work selflessly on behalf of a  people.  
­Because the laws shape the character and behavior of the people to a great extent,  the 
lawgiver must exhibit great insight.  
­In order for the laws to be unbiased, the lawgiver should not himself be a citizen of the state to 
which he gives laws. 
  ­He is outside and above the authority of the sovereign. Remarking on the  difficulty of 
finding such a person, Rousseau notes: "Gods would be needed to give men  laws." 
144 
Because the government deals with particular acts and applications of the law, it is distinct from the 
sovereign​ , which deals only with general matters. 
­A great many dangers arise when government and sovereign are confused or  mistaken for 
one another. 
In a large state, each individual will be only a small part of the sovereign, and so each individual will be 
less inclined to follow the general will and more inclined to follow his or her own particular will.  
­In order to keep so many people in line, the government will need to be able to  exercise a great 
deal of power.  
­Thus, the larger the population, the greater force the government must have relative to  each 
individual 
Any magistrate in government will have to exercise three different kinds of will:  
­his individual will that pursues his own interests,  
­the corporate will that expresses the will of the government, 
­ the general will that expresses the will of the people as a whole. 
Rousseau roughly distinguishes three forms of ​ government​ .  
­When all or most of the citizens are magistrates, the government is a democracy.  ­When 
fewer than half the citizens are magistrates, the government is an  aristocracy. 
­ When there is only one magistrate (or in some cases a small handful of  magistrates),  the 
government is a monarchy.  
There is not one form of government that is best for all.  
­the larger the population, the fewer magistrates there should be.  
­Thus, large states are well suited to monarchy, small states to democracy, 
and intermediate states to aristocracy. 
There are three main kinds of aristocracy.  
­(1) Natural aristocracy, frequently found in primitive civilizations, where elders  and  heads 
of families govern a village or tribe. 
(2) Elective aristocracy, which Rousseau considers the best kind of aristocracy, where  those 
with power or riches, or those who are best suited to govern, are   
placed in charge.  
­(3) Hereditary aristocracy, which Rousseau considers the worst kind of  aristocracy,where 
certain families govern everybody else.  
­As long as the magistrates can be trusted to govern justly, Rousseau believes that 
aristocracy is an excellent form of government. It is better to have a select group  of the  best men 
govern than to have everyone try to govern together regardless of  qualifications. 
Rousseau expresses serious reservations about monarchy, just as he does about democracy. 
Political associations exist in order to ensure the protection and prosperity of their members. 
  ­A growing population is a sign of prosperity, and so a sign of good government.  
­Peace, culture, and other factors are nowhere near as important. 
The government is inevitably at odds with the ​ sovereign​, and the friction between the two can cause the 
government to degenerate.  
­Either the government will contract­­going from democracy to aristocracy or from 
aristocracy to monarchy­­or the state itself will dissolve.  
­The state dissolves into anarchy when the government usurps sovereign 
power.  
­Such usurpation breaks the ​ social contract​ so that citizens become free of 
their social obligations only to be subjected by force. 
The censor's office acts as the spokesman for public opinion.  

145 
 ­Public opinion is closely related to public morality, which we have seen is in turn  closely 
related to the laws.  
­The censorial office sustains the laws and public morality by sustaining the  integrity   
Rousseau distinguishes three different kinds of religion.  
­First, there is the "religion of man," which is a personal religion, linking the  individual to 
God.  
­Rousseau admires this kind of religion (and indeed professed to practice 
it) but suggests that by itself, it will hurt the state.  
­ A healthy state needs citizens who will struggle and fight to make the 
state strong and safe. 
­Second, there is the "religion of the citizen," which is the official religion of the state, 
complete with dogmas and ceremonies.  
­This religion combines the interests of church and state, teaching 
patriotism and a pious respect for the law.  
­ However, it also corrupts religion, by replacing true, sincere worship 
with official, dogmatic ceremony.  
­It also breeds a violent intolerance of other nations. 
­ Third, there is the kind of religion that Rousseau associates with the Catholic church,  among 
others, which he condemns forcefully.  
­In trying to set up two competing sets of laws­­one civil and one 
religious­­it creates all sorts of contradictions that prevent the proper 
exercise of any kind of law. 
Rousseau recommends a compromise between the first two kinds of religion.  
­The sovereign, as he has already stated, only has power to determine matters that  are of 
public concern. 
  ­So long as it does not disturb the public interest, the people are free to worship  whatever and 
however they please.  
However, all citizens should also pledge allegiance to a civil religion with a very few basic precepts: the 
existence of a God, the belief in an afterlife, justice for all, the sanctity of the ​social contract​
 and the ​
law​, 
and the prohibition of intolerance, which should prevent friction between members of different religions. 
 
Kant: Groudings for the Metaphysics of Morals:  
Philosophy may be divided on the basis of whether it is "pure" or "​ empirical​ ." 
­Pure philosophy deals only with ​ a priori​
 concepts; concepts that occur to us  independent of 
any experience or perception.  
­Pure" or "​ a priori​" concepts are ideas that occur to us when we think about things in our  minds, 
"prior" to and independent of any experience of how things happen in the world.  
­Empirical philosophy deals with the objects we experience in the world around  us 
Developing a clear understanding of moral principles can help people to keep track of their moral 
obligations.   
­"Empirical" or "​ a posteriori​
" concepts are ideas that we derive from our experience of  the 
world 
Developing a clear understanding of moral principles can help people to keep track of their moral 
obligations. 
­A clear understanding of morals can also help people to ensure that their  motivations are 
pure. 
 Actions are not truly moral if they only appear to conform to moral law but lack a moral motivation 
The one thing in the world that is unambiguously good is the "good ​ will​
."  
146 
 ­Qualities of character (wit, intelligence, courage, etc.) or qualities of good fortune  (wealth, 
status, good health) may be used to either good or bad purposes. 
­ By contrast, a good will is intrinsically good­­even if its efforts fail to 
bring about positive results. 
The highest purposes of each individual are presumably self­preservation and the attainment of happiness.  
­​
Reason​  does not appear to be as well suited as instinct for these purposes.  
­Indeed, people with a refined capacity for reason are often less happy 
than the masses 
­The fact is that reason serves purposes that are higher than individual 
survival and private happiness.  
­Reason's function is to bring about a will that is good ​ in itself,​
 as 
opposed to good for some particular purpose, such as the 
attainment of happiness. 
The specific obligations of a good will are called "duties."  
­actions are genuinely good when they are undertaken for the sake of duty alone. 
­actions are judged not according to the purpose they were meant to bring about,  but  rather 
by the "maxim" or principle that served as their motivation. 
­duties should be undertaken out of "reverence" for "the law." 
An action is moral if and only if it is intrinsically good­­good "in itself 
Only a rational being can recognize a general moral law and act out of respect for it.  
­The "reverence" for law that such a being exhibits is not an emotional feeling of  respect  for the 
greatness of the law. 
­Rather, it is the moral motivation of a person who recognizes that the law 
is an imperative of reason that transcends all other concerns and interests 
The moral law must be applicable in all situations.  
­Thus the law of morality is that we should act in such a way that we could want  the  maxim 
(the motivating principle) of our action to become a universal law. 
Although most people are not aware of the moral law in any conscious sense, even untrained minds show 
a remarkable ability to abide by it in practice. 
We need to find a principle with universal validity­­a principle that is valid no matter what issue we are 
considering.  
a priori​
­The only principles that fit this criterion are the ​  principles of ​reason​ ­­that  is, the 
principles of logic that we have to follow if our statements are to make  sense. 
Rational beings may align their "will" either with the objective laws of ​ reason​  and morality or with 
subjective needs and interests. 
­Reason's demands may be called "imperatives."   
­"Hypothetical imperatives" command that a particular action is necessary 
as a means to some purpose, such as the attainment of personal happiness. 
­"Categorical imperatives" command that some action is necessary in and  of 
itself. 
­People may appear to act in a certain way because of a pure demand 
of reason, yet we can never be sure that they do not have some 
circumstantial interest or ulterior motive other than a pure 
categorical imperative.  
­Categorical imperatives must therefore be derived ​ a priori. 
Thus the categorical imperative may be formulated as follows: act only in such a way that you could want 
the maxim (the motivating principle) of your action to become a universal law.  

147 
 ­This statement can also be given this formulation: act as if your action would  establish its 
maxim as a universal law of nature. 
If there is some necessary law that compels rational beings to follow the categorical imperative, that law 
must be based on the concept of the "​ will​" of a rational being.  
­The "will" is the faculty that enables rational beings to choose what course of  action  to 
follow.  
­Rational beings may pursue certain "ends" using appropriate "means." 
­ Ends that are based on physical needs or wants will always provide merely  hypothetical 
imperatives.  
­The categorical imperative, however, may be based only on something 
that is  an "end in itself"­­ that is, an end that is a means only to itself and 
not to some other need, desire, or purpose. 
Rational beings are ends in themselves. 
­In pursuing their objectives, rational beings must always view themselves not only as  means 
to some purpose, but also as ends in themselves.  
­They must also recognize that other rational beings are ends in themselves as   well.  
­act in such a way that you always treat other people not merely as means to 
some end, but also as ends in themselves. 
Back to the previous examples –  
­When people commit suicide, they treat their own life as a mere means for  escaping an 
upsetting situation.  
­When people make false promises to repay debts, they treat the people they have 
borrowed from as mere means to their own financial gain.  
­A view of humanity as an end in itself requires us to pursue the maximum 
fulfillment of humanity's potential, which means that we must cultivate 
our talents.  
­Similarly, a view of humanity as an end in itself requires us to work 
towards maximum happiness for humanity, which means that we must 
take care for the welfare of others. 
This comes from ​ reason​, not from experience 
Now, if rational beings are ends in themselves, and not means to some other end, then the will of a 
rational being must be thought of as the maker of universal law.  
­Otherwise their actions would be governed by some interest and they would  function as 
mere means to some purpose 
­their obedience to the law cannot be based on any specific interest.  
­Rather, they must understand themselves to be subjects as well as authors 
of the law, and they must recognize that the law requires unconditional
obedience. 
This notion of rational beings as simultaneous authors and subjects of universal law leads us to the idea of 
a perfect community in which all people follow the objective laws of ​ reason​  and treat their fellows not 
merely as means to ends but also always as ends in themselves.  
­This perfect community may be called the "kingdom of ends," meaning a legal  community 
(kingdom) composed of ends in themselves which respects all its  members as ends in themselves. 
­ Morality consists in adopting only those maxims and motives that are 
consistent with the establishment of a kingdom of ends. 
Thus the principle of morality may be formulated in three distinct but interrelated ways: 
 ­(1) in terms of the form of universality (act such that your maxim could become 
universal law);  
148 
 ­(2) in terms of their purpose or "end" (act such that all rational beings are  respected as 
ends in themselves);  
­(3) in terms of a complete social system (act such that your maxim could be law  in the 
kingdom of ends).  
An absolutely good ​ will​ must never be in conflict with itself; its actions must have the intrinsic value of 
universal laws of ​ reason​ .  
­The purposes of an absolutely good will must never be relative only to certain ends, but  must 
rather have the intrinsic value of ends that could be recognized by all rational  beings.  
­Consequently, the absolutely good will must choose its maxims as though it were  a 
law­giver in the kingdom of ends 
When rational beings pursue morality and the kingdom of ends, they elevate themselves above the 
demands of nature and of their material circumstances.  
­They thus establish the independence, or "autonomy," of their will.  
­By contrast, when a person's goals are determined by something other than  universal law, 
their will is "heteronomous"­­it depends on external factors in  determining its goals. 
 
Mill: On Liberty 
On liberty will look at what kind of power society can legitimately exert over the individual. 
Mill writes that eventually men progressed to a point where they wanted their leaders to be their servants, 
and to reflect their interests and will.  
­It was thought that it was not necessary to limit this new kind of ruler's power, because  he was 
accountable to the people, and there was no fear of the people tyrannizing itself.  
­However, when an actual democratic republic developed (The United 
States), it was realized that the people don't rule themselves.  
­Rather, the people with power exercise it over those without power.  
­In particular, a majority may consciously try to oppress a 
minority.  
Mill writes that this concept of a ​ tyranny of the majority​
 has come to be accepted by major thinkers.  
­Mill, however, argues that society can also tyrannize without using political means. 
  ­Rather, the power of ​ public opinion​ can be more stifling to individuality  and dissent than 
any law could be.  
­Thus, he writes that there must also be protection for people against the 
prevailing public opinions, and the tendency of society to impose its 
values on others. 
The question, then, as Mill sees it, is where and how to limit public opinion's sway over individual 
independence 
­People tend to believe that having strong feelings on a subject makes having reasons for  that 
belief unnecessary, failing to realize that without reasons their beliefs are mere  preferences, often 
reflecting self­interest.  
­Furthermore, on the occasions when individuals do question the 
imposition of public opinion on social standards, they are usually 
questioning what things society should like or dislike, not the more  general 
question of whether society's preferences should be imposed on  others. 
He will argue that the only time individuals or society as a whole can interfere with individual liberty is 
for self­protection 
­the argument that a certain law or public opinion might be for an individual's own good  or 
welfare does not suffice to justify that law or public opinion as a coercive force; 

149 
 ­coercion by the many toward the individual is only acceptable when an individual poses  a threat 
to others.  
­It is fine to argue with a person about his actions, but not to compel him.  
Mill writes, "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” 
 It is only when people are capable of learning from discussion that liberty holds; otherwise the people 
must be taken care of. 
Mill writes that if a person causes harm to others actively or inactively, it is appropriate for society to 
condemn him legally or through general disapprobation.  
­Individuals can even be compelled to do good for other people, such as to save  someone's life, 
because to do otherwise would be to cause evil to another person.  
­In contrast, society only has an indirect interest in what a person does to himself or to  other 
freely consenting people 
Mill divides the appropriate sphere of human liberty falls into three categories, claiming that any free 
society must respect all three.  
­First, there is the domain of the conscience, and liberty of individual thought and 
opinion. 
­Second, there is planning one's own life, and the liberty of tastes and pursuits.   
­Third, there is the liberty to unite with other consenting individuals for any purpose that  does 
not harm others.  
These liberties reflect the idea that true freedom means pursuing one's own good in one's own way, as 
long as it does not prevent others from doing the same.  
­These ideas directly contradict society's increasing tendency to demand  conformity, and 
unless moral conviction turns against this tendency, the demand  for conformity will only 
increase. 
Mill turns to the issue of whether people, either through their government or on their own, should be 
allowed to coerce or limit anyone else's expression of opinion 
­Mill emphatically says that such actions are illegitimate.  
­Even if only one person held a particular opinion, mankind would not be 
justified in silencing him. 
­ Silencing these opinions, Mill says, is wrong because it robs "the human 
race, posterity as well as the existing generation."  
­ In particular, it robs those who ​ disagree​
 with these silenced opinions. 
Mill then turns to the reasons why humanity is hurt by silencing opinions.  
the suppressed opinion may be true.  
­since human beings are not ​ infallible​
, they have no authority to decide an issue for  all 
people, and to keep others from coming up with their own judgments.  
­the reason why liberty of opinion is so often in danger is that in practice people tend to  be 
confident in their own rightness, and excluding that, in the infallibility of the world  they come in 
contact with.  
­such confidence is not justified, and that all people are hurt by silencing  potentially true I
deas. 
Mill looks at possible criticisms of his reasoning and responds to them. 
­even though people may be wrong, they still have a duty to act on their  "conscientious 
conviction."  
­When people are sure that they are right, they would be cowardly not to 
act on that belief and to allow doctrines to be expressed that they believe 
will hurt mankind.  

150 
 ­To this, Mill replies that the only way that a person can be confident that 
he is right is if there is complete liberty to contradict and disprove his 
beliefs. 
  ­Humans have the capacity to correct their mistakes, but only through 
experience ​ and​ discussion.  
­Human judgment is valuable only in so far as people remain open to 
criticism.  
­Thus, the only time a person can be sure he is right is if he is constantly 
open to differing opinions; there must be a standing invitation to try to 
disprove his beliefs. 
­ there is the criticism that governments have a duty to uphold certain beliefs that are 
important to the well being of society 
­ Mill replies that this argument still relies on an assumption of infallibility­­
the usefulness of an opinion is still something up for debate, and it still  
requires discussion.  
­the truth of a belief is integral to whether it is desirable for it to be 
believed 
­Mill considers the criticism that truth ​ may​  be justifiably persecuted, because  persecution is 
something that truth should have to face, and it will always survive.  ­Mill replies 
that such a sentiment is harshly unfair to those who actually are  persecuted for holding 
true ideas.  
­By discovering something true, these people have performed a great service 
to humanity.  
­Supporting the persecution of such people suggests that their contributions 
are not truly being valued  
­Mill responds to the possible argument against him that since we do not actually put 
dissenters to death any more, no true opinion will ever be extinguished.  
­Mill replies that legal persecution for opinions is still significant in society, 
for example in the case of blasphemy or atheism.  
­There is also no guarantee, given general public opinion, that more extreme 
forms of legal persecution will not reemerge.  
­there continues to be social intolerance of dissent.  
­societal intolerance causes people to hide their views, and stifles 
intellectualism and independent thought.  
­Stifling free thinking hurts truth, no matter whether a 
particular instance of free thinking leads to false conclusions. 
Even if the popular opinion is true, if it is not debated it will become "dead dogma." 
­ If truth is simply held as a prejudice, then people will not fully understand it, and will not 
understand how to refute objections to it.  
­ Dissent, even if it is false, keeps alive the truth against which it dissents 
Mill then turns to two potential criticisms of his argument. 
­one could say that people should be taught the grounds for their opinions, and that  having 
been taught these grounds, they do not then merely hold prejudices but really  understand the basis of 
their opinions. 
­in cases where differing opinions are possible, understanding the truth 
requires dispelling arguments to the contrary. 
­ If a person cannot refute objections, then he cannot properly be said to 
understand his own opinion. 
151 
 ­ Furthermore, he must hear these objections from people who actually 
believe them, because it is only these people who can show the full force of 
the arguments.  
­Responding to objections is so important that if no dissenters exist, it is 
necessary to imagine them, and to come up with the most persuasive 
arguments that they could make. 
­is not necessary for mankind in general to be familiar with potential objections to 
their beliefs, but only for philosophers or theologians to be thus aware.  
­Mill replies that this objection does not weaken his argument for free 
discussion, because dissenters still must be given a voice with which to object 
to opinions. 
He writes that if a true opinion is not debated, the meaning of the opinion itself may be lost. This can be 
seen in the history of ethical and religious beliefs­­when they stop being challenged, they lose their 
"living power." 
­As a result, people do not truly understand the doctrines they hold dear, and their 
misunderstanding leads to serious mistakes. 
­it could be asked whether it is essential for "true knowledge" for some people 
to hold erroneous opinions.  
­Mill replies that having an increasing number of uncontested 
opinions is both "inevitable and indispensable" in the process of 
human improvement.  
­However, this does not mean that the loss of debate is not a 
drawback, and he encourages teachers to try to compensate for the 
loss of dissent. 
He writes that in the case of conflicting doctrines, perhaps the most common case is that instead of one 
being true and one false, the truth is somewhere between them. 
­Progress usually only substitutes one partial truth for another, the newer truth more  suited 
to the needs of the times.  
­Dissenting or heretical opinions often reflect the partial truths not recognized in  popular 
opinion, and are valuable for bringing attention to a "fragment of wisdom." 
Human imperfection implies that a diversity of opinion would be required to understand truth. 
Mill looks at the question of whether people should be allowed to ​ act​
 on their opinions without facing 
legal punishment or social stigma. 
­ Mill observes that actions should not be as free as opinions, and reasserts that both must be 
limited when they would cause harm to others and be "a nuisance to other people."  
­ However, many of the reasons for respecting different opinions also apply to respecting 
actions. Since humans are ​ fallible​
, different "experiments of living" are valuable. 
­ The expression of individuality is essential for individual and social progress. 
Individuality is essential to the cultivation of the self.  
­A basic problem that Mill sees with society is that individual spontaneity is not  respected as 
having any good in itself, and is not seen as essential to well­being.  Rather, the majority thinks that 
its ways should be good enough for everybody 
­He places great moral emphasis on the process of making choices, and not simply 
accepting customs without questions: only people who make choices are using all of  their human 
faculties. 
Individuality is valuable because people might learn something from the nonconformists. Dissenters may 
discover new goods, and keep alive existing goods. 

152 
Society and the individual should each receive control over that part of human life that it is particularly 
interested in. 
­since people receive the protection of society, they owe certain conduct in return. 
­Individuals must not injure those interests of other people that should be considered  rights.  
­Individuals must fairly share the burden of defending society and its members from  injury.  
­Individuals may be censured by opinion, though not by law, for harming others while not 
violating their rights.  
Thus, society has jurisdiction over any aspect of human behavior that "affects prejudicially the interests of 
others." 
­However, society does not have an interest in those aspects of life that affect no one  but the 
person acting, or only affects people by their consent. 
He writes, "there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of 
another who is offended at his holding it." Mill argues that there is a universal tendency of people to 
extend the bounds of "moral police" unjustly. 
­People can preach against such activities, and try to change people's minds, but they  should 
not be coercive. 
Two basic principles: 
­ First, people are not accountable to society for actions that only concern themselves. 
­The only means society has to express disapproval of such actions is through  "advice, 
instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought  necessary by them for 
their own good." 
­ Secondly, the individual is accountable for actions that hurt others, and society can  punish 
a person socially or legally as is deemed necessary for such actions.  
­sometimes when an action causes harm to others, such as when a person 
succeeds in a competitive job market, the general social good is positive, and 
there is no right to punish people for the harm caused.  
­Similarly, free trade is allowed because of its socially beneficial effects. 
 
Utilitarianism: 
Mill begins his essay by observing that very little progress has been made toward developing a set of 
standards by which to judge moral right and wrong. 
­argues that in order to know what morality dictates, it is necessary to know by what 
standard human actions should be judged. 
Mill then addresses the issue of moral instinct, and whether the existence of such an instinct would 
eliminate the need for determining the foundation of morality. He argues it does not.  ­ the existence 
of such a moral sense is disputable.  
­ even if this sense does exist, it does not tell us whether something is right or wrong 
in a particular case. 
­ Rather, this instinct supplies only general principles.  
­ although general laws are a necessary part of moral thinking, it is the 
application of these laws to specific cases that constitutes morality itself. 
Yet our moral beliefs have undergone little alteration over the course of history; their durability implies 
that there exists ​some​  standard that serves as a solid, if unrecognized, foundation.  
­Mill argues that this unrecognized standard is the principle of utility, or the "greatest 
happiness principle." 
­Utilitarianism cannot be "proven" in the ordinary sense of the word, Mill asserts,  since it 
is not possible to prove questions regarding ultimate ends. 

153 
Mill observes that many people misunderstand utilitarianism by interpreting utility as in opposition to 
pleasure. 
­ In reality, utility is defined as pleasure itself, and the absence of pain 
­"actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they  tend to 
produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the  absence of pain; by 
unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." Pleasure and  the absence of pain are, by this account, 
the only things desirable as ends in  themselves, the only things inherently "good” 
The next criticism Mill takes on is the claim that it is base and demeaning to reduce the meaning of life to 
pleasure. 
­ To this Mill replies that human pleasures are much superior animalistic ones: once  people 
are made aware of their higher faculties, they will never be happy to leave  them uncultivated; thus 
happiness is a sign that we are exercising our higher faculties 
­When making a moral judgment on an action, utilitarianism thus takes into account  not just 
the quantity, but also the quality of the pleasures resulting from it. 
Mill delineates how to differentiate between higher­ and lower­quality pleasures:  
­A pleasure is of higher quality if people would choose it over a different pleasure  even if 
it is accompanied by discomfort, and if they would not trade it for a greater  amount of the other 
pleasure. 
Another misconception about utilitarianism stems from a confusion of happiness with contentment.  
­People who employ higher faculties are often less content, because they have a  deeper  sense of 
the limitations of the world.  
­However, their pleasure is of a higher character than that of an animal or a base  human. 
­Thus the people best qualified to judge a pleasure's quality are people who have  experienced 
both the higher and the lower. 
One such objection is that happiness couldn't be the rational aim of human life, because it is unattainable.  
­Furthermore, people can exist without happiness, and all virtuous people have  become 
virtuous by renouncing happiness. 
­Mill replies that it is an exaggeration to state that people cannot be happy. He  contends that 
happiness, when defined as moments of rapture occurring in a life  troubled by few pains, is indeed 
possible, and would be possible for almost everybody  if educational and social arrangements were 
different 
Mill observes that the utilitarian's standard for judging an act is the happiness of ​ all​
 people, not of the 
agent alone.  
­Thus, a person must not value his own happiness over the happiness of others; and  law and 
education help to instill this generosity in individuals. 
­utilitarianism is not concerned with the motives behind an action; the 
morality of an action depends on the goodness of its result only. 
Another criticism of utilitarianism is that it leaves people "cold and unsympathizing," as it is concerned 
solely with the consequences of people's actions, and not on the individuals as moral or immoral in 
themselves 
Mill says that throughout history, one of the biggest barriers to the acceptance of utility has been that it 
does not allow for a theory of justice. 
­Mill argues that justice can be distinguished from other forms of morality by looking  at the 
difference between perfect and imperfect obligations.  
­Imperfect obligations are those that no one person has the right to require of 
another.  
­Perfect obligations are those that a person may demand of another.  
­Justice corresponds with the idea of perfect obligation: it involves the idea of a  personal right. 
154 
 ­ In cases of justice, the person who has been wronged has had his or her 
moral right impinged upon; it is thus his or her moral right to seek 
restitution. 
Mill contends that there are two components to justice. 
­ The first is the desire to punish a person who has done harm. This desire comes  from  the 
impulse of self­defense, and the feeling of sympathy. 
­Justice's moral component can be seen rather in the quality of the outrage 
people feel at an injustice: people can be upset by an injustice not only if it 
affects them individually, but if it goes against the interests of society at large;  this 
demonstrates a moral concern 
­The other component of justice is that there is an identifiable victim who suffers if  justice 
is infringed upon 
­the idea of a right is not a concept separate from justice, but is rather a 
manifestation of the other aspects of justice, namely the desire for 
punishment and the fact that there is an assignable person who has been  harmed.  
­A right means that a person has a valid claim on society to protect 
him in the possession of that right. However, if one wants to know 
why society should defend this right, Mill argues that the only reason 
is one of general utility. 
Justice grounded on utility is the chief part, and the most important part, of all morality; it concerns many 
of the most basic essentials for human well­being.  
­Mill argues that the moral rules that forbid people to harm each other are more  important than 
any rules of policy, rules about how societal affairs should be  managed.  
­Furthermore, the preservation of justice preserves peace among human beings. Thus,  there is 
a very strong utility interest in preserving and enforcing justice's dictates. 
Mill closes by observing that justice is a name for some moral requirements, which are  higher 
on the scale of utility, and thus more important, than any others. 
­Justice is the name for certain social utilities that are more important than any other  kind, 
and thus should be preserved by a feeling that is different in kind from others. 
 
Smith: Wealth of Nations 
 
Adam Smith did not think that individuals are much happier for being wealthier.  
­People perhaps imagine that goods will make them happier and seek them for  that  reason, 
but they are deluded. And the delusion is a good thing, Adam Smith thinks,  because without it 
people would not work. 
He seems to think that work and production is an end in itself.  
­Adam Smith seems to think that the indefinitely increasing production of things  to be 
consumed by individuals is good, whether it makes them happier or not,  whether of not  it helps them 
live worth­while lives. 
But Adam Smith does not say that labour in modern nations is more productive because of machinery, or 
because the workforce is better educated.  
­He says that it is more productive because it is more specialized; tasks have been  divided 
and subdivided until anyone can easily learn to do any job and do it well.  ­The 
division of labour leads to invention, and it makes it easier for a  worker to learn 
and become skilled at the job.  

155 
Book 1 of the ​ Wealth of Nations​  is concerned with 'the causes of this improvement in the productive 
powers of nature, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the 
different ranks and conditions of men in the  
­Wealth is distributed as wages, profits and rent, which are discussed in book 1, but not  nearly 
as thoroughly as they were later by 19th century economists. 
­An important point to notice in this book is that the extent of the division of labour is  limited 
by the extent of the market. The more people there are involved  in mutual  exchange, the more 
specialized each can be. 
Book 2 'teaches of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of 
the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according to the different ways in which it is 
employed'  
­Stock is pretty much the same as capital: more narrowly, capital is money, used  among  other 
things to buy stock ­ the physical prerequisites to production. 
­This topic is connected with division of labour: the accumulation of stock is relevant  because 
it is presupposed to the further division of labour. 'Labour can be more and more  subdivided in 
proportion only as stock is previously more and  more accumulated'  
­Anything that impedes further accumulation therefore impedes further subdivision of  labour. 
What he is thinking of here seems to be something like this. 
­If I want to specialize in producing some pieces of farm equipment, then I am not  going 
to be growing my own food; someone else has to have put aside a supply for me to  eat before I can 
stop producing my own to concentrate on producing something else.  
­Similarly, if I am going to specialize in shaping the tool out of, say, 
wood, and not spend some of my time looking for the wood, then someone 
has to set aside a supply of wood before I can specialize to this extent.  ­And so 
on: every further stage of specialization supposes that a  stock of whatever things 
it needs has been set aside, before the  worker can give up preparing those 
things to concentrate more  narrowly on this precise stage of the process. 
 So book 2 is concerned with the accumulation and allocation of stock, as the presupposition of further 
division of labour. 
Book 3 is something of a digression. It describes how the improvement of labour productivity in rural 
occupations could not occur in Europe until towns and long­distance trade had developed, because of the 
importance of property as an incentive to improvement in production.  
­The connection with earlier topics seems to be this, that the natural progress of wealth is  
from agriculture to manufacture ­ food is the first thing that has to be set  aside before  anyone can 
specialize in manufacture, and town manufactures use materials from the country.  
­The natural course of the accumulation of stock (the topic of book 2) 
would therefore seem to have its starting point in the country. Book 3 
explains why in Europe this was not so. (And elsewhere it might not be  so.) 
­ Division of labour made more progress in town industries at first, 
because for political reasons the kings fostered self­government, and thus 
better government, in towns, while tyrannical landlords inhibited industry  in the 
countryside. Thus book 3 prepares the way for book 4, by showing  the importance 
of political factors in the development of the wealth of  nations. 
Book 4 is concerned with 'theories of political economy' that 'have had a considerable influence... upon 
the public conduct of princes and sovereign states', 'and the principal effects' ­ mostly bad ­ 'which they 
have produced in different ages and nations'  

156 
 ­The term 'political economy' is noteworthy. 'Economy' meant originally the  direction of a 
household (Greek 'oikos' a house, 'nomos' a law). The management  of a  household involves 
especially getting supplies. ​ Political​
 economy is the  corresponding  art in relation to state.  
­The two main theories of political economy with which book 4 is 
concerned are usually called the 'mercantile' and 'physiocrat' theories.  
­The first was the theory that a nation's wealth is increased mostly 
by export industry,  
­the other that it is increased mostly by agriculture.  
­Both theories are still around. Reduced to a nutshell, Adam Smith's 
answer to both is that a nation's wealth is increased by whatever industry 
is most profitable: meaning, whatever industry produces the greatest  surplus, 
available to support further division of labour.  
­So the argument of book 4, to boil it down, is that government should not try to  direct 
Industry into export industry, or into agriculture, or in any particular direction, but should  allow it 
to go in whatever directions private individuals find profitable.  
­As he sums up the argument at the end of book 4: 'All systems either of  preference or of 
restriction, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system  of natural 
liberty establishes itself of its own accord.   
­Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free  to 
pursue his own interest his own way...'  
­In fact this conclusion does not establish itself of its own accord, as soon 
as systems of preference and restriction are refuted. 
­ Book 4 refutes theories proposing that industry should be directed 
especially into export or into agriculture. This is not enough to show that 
the direction of industry should be left to private individuals.  
­Once government has been freed from prejudices in favour of 
export or of agriculture, and taught that the only thing that matters 
is to maximise the surplus, why should not government direct 
industry into the activities appropriate to maximizing the surplus?  
To establish the system of natural liberty supplementary argument is needed to show that government 
guidance cannot improve upon the independent action of individuals seeking their own profit.  
­It would have to be argued for example that government will not steadily seek to 
maximize production, but will be diverted to other ends, or that it cannot properly  process 
information about how the goal is to be sought.  
­Smith does suggest some such supplementary argument: By the system of 
natural liberty 'the sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the 
attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable 
delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or 
knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the 
industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments  most 
suitable to the interest of the society'  
But in the modern economy the direction of industry is not left to individuals. Many firms are very large; 
their management organizes a great range of activities, employees are not individual profit­seekers but do 
as they are directed 
­In modern society it is not the case 'that every man... is left perfectly free to pursue his  own 
interest in his own way': most men, and women, do as the management says. 

157 
So is there an argument to show ​ either​
 that individual initiative would be more effective than initiative by 
large organizations (so that large firms should be broken up), ​ or​
 that although some large organizations 
may be good at directing industry, governments cannot be? 
To finish with the plan of the book: Book 5 is about 'the revenue of the sovereign, or commonwealth' The 
first four books have dealt with the revenue or wealth of the individuals of which the nation is composed, 
book 5 deals with the wealth of the nation as a political entity. 
­ It deals with the necessary expenses of government, taxation, and public debt. In this  section 
the author discusses the public support of education and religion. 
Wealth depends on division of labour, that depends on accumulation of stock, and that depends on 
profitability:  
­so government's best contribution to the wealth of the nation is to leave  individuals free to find 
the most profitable employment of their labour or capital. 
­What makes Adam Smith jump to his conclusion, I suspect, is the 
aesthetic, and perhaps religious, pleasure he always takes in the thought of 
a system of nature designed by God in which individuals pursuing their  own 
legitimate interests unknowingly contribute to the good of the whole. 
'Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for 
whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he 
has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that 
employment which is most advantageous to the society' 
'He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is 
promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own 
security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he 
intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an 
end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. 
By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he 
really intends to promote it' 
­This is one of only two passages in which Adam Smith mentions the invisible Hand. Here he is 
talking about investment in domestic as against foreign trade 
many other cases​
­But here he says 'in this, as in ​ ', so it's fair enough to 
generalize, as expositors of Adam Smith generally do, and say that he  
thinks that a free market economy in which people seek their own private  interest 
is led by an invisible hand in directions beneficial to everyone 
The invisible hand is God, the designer of nature as a system in which the interests of the parts harmonise 
in the whole (another Stoic idea). 
­ Adam Smith does not think that human beings are ​ merely​  self­interested; when  they  engage 
in philosophical reflection they can appreciate and rejoice in, sympathize with,  the beneficence of the 
divine designer: but part of the design is that generally people  should pursue their own interest without 
thought of the whole.  
­This is a beautiful thought, but notice there is no argument to back it up. He  nowhere really 
shows that individuals' pursuit of their own interest is necessarily  and always better for the public 
interest than action coordinated by government. 
 
Marx: Communist Manifesto 
 
The Manifesto begins by addressing the issue of class antagonism. 
­ Marx writes, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class  struggles."  

158 
 ­Throughout history we see the oppressor and oppressed in constant opposition to  each 
other.  
­This fight is sometimes hidden and sometimes open. However, each time the 
fight ends in either a revolutionary reconstruction of society or in the classes'  
common ruin 
Modern bourgeois society sprouted from the ruins of feudal society.  
­This society has class antagonisms as well, but it is also unique:  
­class antagonisms have become simplified, as society increasingly splits into 
two rival camps­­​ Bourgeoisie​  and ​Proletariat​
. 
The bourgeoisie have become powerful, and have pushed medieval classes into the background.  
­The development of the bourgeoisie as a class was accompanied by a series of  political 
developments.  
­With the development of Modern Industry and the world­market, the 
bourgeoisie has gained exclusive political sway.  
­The State serves solely the bourgeoisie's interests. 
The bourgeoisie are unique in that they cannot continue to exist without revolutionizing the instruments of 
production.  
­This implies revolutionizing the ​ relations of production​
, and with it, all of the  relations in 
society.  
­Thus, the unique uncertainties and disturbances of the modern age have forced Man  to face 
his real condition in life, and his true relations with others 
Because the bourgeoisie needs a constantly expanding market, it settles and establishes connections all 
over the globe. Production and consumption have taken on a cosmopolitan character in every country.  
­This is true both for materials and for intellectual production, as national  sovereignty and 
isolationism becomes less and less possible to sustain.  
­The bourgeoisie draws even the most barbaric nations into civilization and compels  all 
nations to adopt its mode of production. 
­ It "creates a world after its own image." All become dependent on the 
bourgeoisie.  
­It has also increased political centralization. 
The Manifesto now turns to the ​ proletariat​.  
­As the bourgeoisie developed, so did the proletariat, and it is the proletariat who will 
eventually destroy the bourgeoisie.  
­The proletarians live only as long as they can find work, and they can find work only  as long 
as their labor increases capital. 
­ They are a commodity, and are vulnerable to all the fluctuations of the market.  
­Due to the development of machines and the division of labor, the 
proletarian's work has lost all "charm;" the proletarian is simply an 
appendage of a machine.  
­Furthermore, as his work becomes more repulsive, his wage only decreases. 
As soon as this class was created it began to struggle with the bourgeoisie.  
­This struggle originally involved the individual laborer, and later groups of workers, 
rebelling against the bourgeois that directly exploited them.  
­Furthermore, when they did form unions, they were under the influence of the  bourgeois, and 
actually served to further the objectives of the bourgeoisie. 
The proletariat is helped in its unification by the increased means of communication made possible by 
modern industry, allowing for the struggles to take on national character.  

159 
 ­While the organization of the proletariat into a class is continually destroyed by  competition 
among workers, each time it rises again stronger.  
­Furthermore, as other classes try to use the proletarians to forward political their own  ends, 
they give them tools to fight the bourgeoisie. 
Until now, every society has been based on class oppression. 
­ In order for a class to be able to be oppressed, however, its slavish existence must be 
sustainable, held steady: in contrast, laborers in modern industrial society are  continually suffering a 
deterioration​  of their status; they become poorer and poorer.  ­The bourgeoisie are thus unfit to rule, 
because they cannot guarantee "an existence  to its slave within its slavery." 
­Thus, with the development of Modern Industry, the bourgeoisie produces 
"its own grave­diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally 
inevitable." 
The Manifesto then discusses the relationship of the Communists to the proletarians.  
­The immediate aim of the Communists is the "formation of the ​ proletariat​
 into a  class,  [the] 
overthrow of the ​ bourgeois​  supremacy, [and the] conquest of political power by the  proletariat." 
­ The Communists' theory simply describes a historical movement underway 
at this very moment. This includes the abolition of private property. 
Laborers do not acquire any property through their labor.  
­Rather, the "property" or capital they produce serves to exploit them.  
­This property, controlled by the bourgeoisie, represents a social­­not a 
personal­­power.  
­Changing it into common property does not abolish property as a right, but 
merely changes its ​ social​ character, by eliminating its class character. 
­In a Communist society, then, labor will exist for the sake of the 
laborer, not for the sake of producing bourgeois­controlled property 
Opponents hold that Communism will destroy all intellectual products.  
­However, this reflects a bourgeois misunderstanding. The disappearance of "class  culture" 
is not the same thing as the disappearance of all culture. 
He says the modern family is based on capital and private gain.  
­Thus he writes, the Communists "plead guilty" to wanting to do away with present  familial 
relations, in that they want to stop the exploitation of children by their parents.  
­Similarly, they do not want to altogether abolish the education of children, but simply to free it 
from the control of the ruling class 
We see then that the first step in the working class' revolution is to make the proletariat the ruling class. 
­ It will use its political power to seize all capital from the bourgeoisie and to  centralize all 
instruments of production under the auspices of the State.  
­Of course, in the beginning this will not be possible without "despotic 
inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois 
production." 
When class distinctions have disappeared, public power will lose its political character. 
­ This is because political power is nothing more than "the organized power of one  class 
for oppressing another."  
­When the proletariat eliminate the old conditions for production, they will 
render class antagonism impossible, and thereby eliminate their own class 
supremacy.  
­Bourgeois society will be replaced by an "association" in which "the free 
development of each is the condition for the free development of all." 
Marx presents and critiques three subsets of Socialist and Communist literature. 
160 
 ­The first subset is Reactionary Socialism. 
­fight against the rise of the ​
bourgeoisie​  and modern Industry, without 
realizing the historical process the bourgeoisie represent. 
­their chief complaint about the bourgeois was that it creates a revolutionary 
proletariat​ that will uproot the old order of society.  
­Thus, they objected to the bourgeoisie because they were a threat to 
their way of life 
­The second subset of Socialism is Conservative, or Bourgeois, Socialism 
­This subset reflects the desires of a segment of the bourgeois to redress 
social grievances, in order to guarantee the continued existence of bourgeois 
society.  
­ They want the advantages of the social conditions generated by 
Modern Industry, without the struggles and dangers that necessarily 
accompany them.  
­"They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat."  
­These bourgeoisie believe that the best society is the society in which 
they have power; they want the proletariat to keep its weak role, but 
to stop hating the dominant bourgeoisie. 
­The third subset is Critical­Utopian Socialism and Communism 
­These socialists  looked for new social laws to create the material 
conditions necessary to free the proletariat 
The Manifesto concludes with a discussion about the role of the Communists as they work with other 
parties.  
­The Communists fight for the immediate aims of workers, but always in the context of  the 
entire Communist movement.  
­Thus, they work with those political parties that will forward the ends of  Communism, 
even if it involves working with the bourgeoisie.  
­However, they never stop trying to instill in the working class a 
recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, 
and to help them gain the weapons to eventually overthrow the 
bourgeoisie. 
 Thus, "the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social 
and political order of things." 
­ They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by forcibly overthrowing all  existing 
social conditions.  
The Manifesto ends with this rallying cry: "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. 
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF 
ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!" 
 
Das Kapital 
 
Marx introduces us to his analysis of commodities.  
­A commodity is an external object that satisfies a human need either directly or  indirectly.  
­He says that useful things can be looked at from the point of view of quality and quantity.  
­They have many attributes and can therefore be used in many ways.  
­He uses the term ​ use­value​ in relation to commodities' quality. "The 
usefulness of a thing makes it a use­value."  

161 
 ­A commodity's use­value is a trait of the thing itself, and is 
independent of the amount of labor needed to make the commodity 
useful. 
­Exchange­value is the proportion by which use­values of one kind exchange for use­ values 
of other kinds.  
­It is a constantly changing relation, and is not inherent to the object.  
Thus, a use­value only has exchange­value when it consists of abstract human labor. 
­ This is measured by the amount of labor­time socially necessary to produce it.  
­A commodity's value would stay constant if the labor­time also stayed constant. With greater 
productivity, it takes less labor to produce a commodity, and thus, less labor is "crystallized" in the 
product, leading to a decrease in value.  
­"The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely  as the 
productivity, of the labor which finds its realization within the commodity."  ­Something can be a 
use­value without being a value.  
­This occurs when something's usefulness is not produced through labor. 
­However, nothing can be a value without also being a use­value; if 
something is useless, so is the labor contained in it. 
This labor theory of value is very important to Marx's theory. It implies that the price of commodities 
comes from how much labor was put into them. 
 
Neitzsche: The Geneology of Morals 
 
Nietzsche opens his preface with the observation that philosophers generally lack self­knowledge.  
­Their business is to seek out knowledge, knowledge that takes them away from  themselves. 
They only rarely pay adequate attention to present experience, or to  themselves. 
Nietzsche introduces the subject of his inquiry: "the ​ origin​ of our moral prejudices." 
­In order to understand the value of morality, we need to understand how it arose   among 
us rather than just accepting its dictates as indisputable truths.  
­Until now, we have always assumed that the "good man" is better than the 
"evil man."  
­But perhaps, Nietzsche suggests, what we call "good" is actually a danger, by 
which the present prospers at the expense of the future.  
­Perhaps what we call "evil" will ultimately be of greater benefit to us. 
Nietzsche hopes that we might gain a broader perspective by seeing morality not as some eternal absolute, 
but rather as something that has evolved, often by accident, never free from error­­much like the human 
species itself.  
­When we can see our morality also as part of the human comedy and look upon it 
cheerfully, we will truly have elevated ourselves. 
It has been suggested that over time that the habit of calling unegoistic actions "good" led us to conclude 
that they were somehow good in and of themselves. 
­Nietzsche disagrees with this account, suggesting that those to whom "goodness"  was 
shown did not define "good."  
­Rather, it was the "good" themselves­­the noble and the powerful­­who 
defined the term.  
­They came to see themselves as good when they came to see the contrast 
between themselves and those who were below them: the common people, 
the poor and the weak.  

162 
 ­Their position of power included the power over words, the power 
to decide what would be called "good" and what "bad." 
Nietzsche suggests that the "slave revolt in morality" begins when ​ ressentiment,​
 or resentment, becomes a 
creative force. 
­ Slave morality is essentially negative and reactive, originating in a denial of  everything that 
is different from it.  
­It looks outward and says "No" to the antagonistic external forces that 
oppose and oppress it. 
­ Master morality, on the other hand, concerns itself very little with what is outside of it.  
­The low, the "bad," is an afterthought and is noticed only as a contrast 
that brings out more strongly the superiority of the noble ones. 
­While both slave and master morality can involve distortions of the truth, master 
morality does so far more lightly.  
The nobles saw themselves as naturally happy, and any misunderstanding rested on the contempt and 
distance they held from the lower orders.  
­By contrast, the man of ​ ressentiment​ distorts what he sees so as to present the noble man 
in as bad a light as possible, and thereby to gain reassurance. 
­The noble man is incapable of taking seriously all the things that fester and build in  the man 
of ​
ressentiment 
­In allowing resentment and hatred to grow in him, in having to rely on 
patience, secrets, and scheming, the man of ​ ressentiment​  ultimately becomes 
cleverer than the noble man. 
­ This constant brooding and obsession with ones enemies begets the greatest 
invention of ​ ressentiment​ : evil.  
The concept of the "evil enemy" is basic to ​ ressentiment​  just as "good" is basic to the noble man. 
­ And just as the noble man develops the concept of "bad" almost as an afterthought,  so is 
the concept of "good" created as an afterthought by the man of ​ ressentiment​  to  denote himself. 
The overthrow of master morality in favor of slave morality is nothing to be proud of.  
­These barbarians may have been fearful, but they were also admirable. Today's world of 
ressentiment​  is neither: it is merely mediocre.  
­Nietzsche characterizes the nihilism he detests in contemporary society as a 
weariness with humanity.  
­We no longer fear humanity, but we also no longer have hopes for, reverence 
of, or affirmation of humanity.  
­Nietzsche fears that our slave morality has rendered us insipid and 
dull. 
Nietzche presents a contrast between lambs and birds of prey, in order to understand the origin of the 
concept of "good" as born from ​ ressentiment.  
­It is quite natural that lambs may consider birds of prey to be evil, since they kill and  carry 
off lambs.  
­And from this, it may also be understandable that lambs consider everything 
unlike birds of prey­­themselves, for instance­­to be good. 
While Nietzsche accepts these conclusions as understandable, he denies that they can be used to reproach 
or condemn birds of prey for killing lambs.  
­It would be as absurd to ask a bird of prey ​ not​
 to kill as it would be to ask a lamb to  kill.  
­Killing is an expression of strength, and it is only through a 
misunderstanding caused by language that we manage to see the bird of prey 
as somehow distinct from its expression of strength. 
163 
 ­Nietzsche suggests, the bird of prey is the strength is the killing. 
­ The lamb's morality is in no position to hold the bird of prey accountable for 
killing: that would be equivalent to blaming it for existing. 
When slave morality lauds its conception of "good," praising all those who do not kill, hurt, or offend, it 
is essentially praising all those who are too powerless to cause any harm for not causing any harm.  
­It interprets the inaction resulting from impotence as a positive, meritorious deed,  as 
enduring ills and leaving revenge to God.  
­Slave morality depends on the belief in a subject (or a "soul") which is independent  of its 
deeds, so that it can interpret its weakness as freedom, and its inaction as praiseworthy. 
It culminates with the claim that "justice" is an invention of slave morality made out as an ideal that 
masters brazenly disregard. 
­ Slave morality does not seek revenge, but waits for the "Judgment of God" that will  restore 
justice. 
Nietzsche concludes with the remark that the struggle between "good and evil" and "good and bad" is one 
of the oldest and greatest on earth, and that the "good and evil" of ​ ressentiment​
 has unquestionably come 
out on top.  
­He asks, however, if there might be a resurgence of the overthrown master morality, 
suggesting that we might will this with all our might. 
Nietzsche opens the second essay by examining the significance of our ability to make promises.  
­To hold to a promise requires both a powerful memory­­the will that a certain event  should 
not be forgotten­­and a confidence about the future and one's ability to hold  to the promise in the 
future.  
­This confidence demands that, on some level, we must make ourselves 
calculable or predictable, and for a people to be predictable, they must share 
a common set of laws or customs that govern their behavior. 
Society and morality thus serve the purpose of making us predictable, which in turn serves the purpose of 
allowing us to make promises.  
­This complicated process has as its end the "sovereign individual" who is able to  make 
promises, not because he is bound by social mores but because he is master of  his own free will. 
­ The sovereign individual is then faced with the tremendous responsibility of being  free to 
make claims regarding his own future: we call this sense of responsibility a  "conscience." 
Nietzsche remarks that making others suffer was considered a great joy­­Nietzsche calls it a 
"festival"­­that would balance out an unpaid debt.  
­We find the origins of conscience, guilt, and duty in the festiveness of cruelty: their  origins 
were "like the beginnings of everything great on earth, soaked in blood  thoroughly and for a long time 
We have come to see suffering as a great argument ​ against​ life, though creating suffering was once the 
greatest celebration of life.  
­Nietzsche suggests that our revulsion against suffering is, on the one hand, a  revulsion 
against all our instincts, and, on the other hand, a revulsion against the  senselessness of suffering.  
­For neither the ancients nor the Christians was suffering senseless: there was always  joy or 
justification in suffering.  
­Nietzsche suggests that we invented gods so that there was some all­witnessing  presence to 
insure that no suffering ever went unnoticed. 
Nietzsche traces the origins of guilt and conscience to the primitive relationship between buyer and seller, 
creditor and debtor.  
­We are creatures who measure and evaluate everything: everything has a price,  deeds  just as 
much as goods.  
­This relationship exists also between people and the community they live in. 
164 
 ­ The community provides shelter, peace, security, and much else besides, 
placing people in its debt. People who break the laws of their community are 
not only not repaying the debt, but they are assaulting their creditor. No  wonder 
such offenders face the harshest of punishments. 
Nietzsche also observes that the more powerful the community becomes, the less it needs to punish 
offenders.  
­If the community is weak, any attack against it is life threatening, and such a threat  must be 
eliminated.  
­A community that is strong enough to resist all sorts of assaults has the luxury of  letting 
offenders go unpunished.  
­Such a society has overcome its demand for strict justice. 
­ We give the name "mercy" to the expression of power in letting an 
offender go. 
Nietzsche next turns to the origin of justice, suggesting that the reactive affects of revenge and 
ressentiment​  are the last to be touched by justice.  
­Very few can truly be just toward someone who has harmed them.  
­Still, the noble man who lashes out against someone who harms him is far 
closer to justice than the man of ​ ressentiment,​
 who is poisoned by 
prejudice and self­deception. 
Justice and the institution of law essentially take revenge out of the hands of the offended party.  
­If I am robbed, it is justice, and not myself, that has been harmed, and so justice  must  claim 
revenge.  
­Thus, Nietzsche suggests, the concept of justice can only exist in a society that has 
established laws that can be transgressed: there is no such thing as "justice in itself." 
We have seen that origins and utility are worlds apart. 
­ Anything that has existed for any length of time has been given all sorts of different 
interpretations, meanings, and purposes by different powers that master and subdue  it.  
­That something has a purpose or utility is only a sign that a "will to power" is acting  upon it.  
­Things and concepts have no inherent purpose, but are given purpose by 
the different forces and wills that act upon them. 
The concept of punishment, for instance, has an aspect that is enduring and an aspect that is fluid.  
­Contrary to what we might otherwise assume, Nietzsche suggests that the act of  punishing is 
what endures, and the purpose for which we punish is what is fluid.  ­Punishment 
has such a long history that it's no longer clear exactly why  we punish.  
­Nietzsche provides a long list of different "meanings" that punishment 
has had over the ages. 
In this list, Nietzsche nowhere mentions the development of "bad conscience," and suggests that even 
today, punishment does not awaken a feeling of guilt.  
­Punishment arouses the sense of "something has gone unexpectedly wrong" not of "I  should 
not have done that."  
­Punishment is treated as a misfortune, and serves to make us more prudent 
and tame. 
 
Freud: Ego and Id 
 
Civilization and its Discontents 
 

165 
● This was written later.  Very reminiscent of Nietzsche.  The “oceanic feeling” is a residual trace 
of when a child cannot differentiate himself from the rest of the world.  Freud argues that there is 
a tension between society and the individual.  The child develops the ego:  1.he learns pleasures 
can be taken.  2.  He learns he can control them.  Ego is founded on a search for pleasure and its 
boundaries are formed by separating the ego from pain.  Religion stems from the “oceanic 
feeling”.  It is a means of connection.  The original notion of religion comes from the infantile 
need for a father and a psyche.  Religion is a representation of a super ego.  Freud is providing a 
psychological explanation of what others view as social.  It is not God who provides the religious 
experience, it is from the common aspect of everyone.  This is like the oceanic feeling.  God 
provides a narrative form for this feeling.  People turn to religion because it fills an impulse and 
connects them with others. 
● Ch. II:  emphasizes religion as a dogma (law).  Pleasure is found in many things.  This is one 
aspect of diversity in society.  Example:  art and alcohol.  Intoxication helps you avoid the bad 
and brings the good.  Art helps you avoid the bad.  Intoxication both avoids and seeks but art is 
just a search for pleasure.  Drinking and enjoying art have the same source.  The capacity to enjoy 
art is a marl of higher civilization.  Civilizations that invest the most in art, culture and music are 
better.  Human are in such need of love that we find pleasure giving love.  This is the way for 
controlling the unfilled desire of eing loved. 
● First half:  Civilization evolves from the family as the father stays with the family.  He does this 
because of a desire to be near his love object and she needs people to help with work. 
Civilization is an expression of the need for love.  Religion renders nature harmless and useful.  A 
people are in civilization when they organize nature to their benefit.  When they develop aesthetic 
tastes, when they develop the law to control you relationship with one another.  This is called 
justice (like Hume).  Civilization is a control over the libidinal instinct.  The family assure a 
sexual partner, love of children, and kinship. But one foregoes, the ability to have sex whoever, 
whenever.  He I snow convinced of a destruction instinct of a death wish.  An example is the 
sadomasochistic sex inflicting aggression on yourself and your love object.  Everyone has the 
desire to be suppressed.  Energy turns into the energy of guilt. 
● To Nietzsche this is bad because it adheres to the aesthetic ideal.  Freud sees aesthetic ideals as an 
escape from reality.  He says that although civilization is full of pain, we are better off to be in it. 
Civilization is repression.  To Nietzsche the life force should be restrained.  Freud sees 
civilization as a necessary means of control for humans.  The strength of the super ego is reliant 
on the strength of infantile desire and aggression.  The theory of the individual psyche parallels 
cultural development.  It is hard to see aggression instinct because it is linked to the libido.  It is 
separate but they appear together.  Aggression is the pleasure of killing.  Libido fuels community 
and protection.  Civilization is only possible by repressing the aggression instinct.  We imagine 
ourselves as self­regulated (Kant, Hume, Rousseau).   
● Freud​  felt that our minds are made up of three parts. The id is our desire for pleasure. The ego 
takes reality into account and regulates the id. And the superego is the societal morality that 
regulates everything we do. ​ Freud​ believed that the superego constantly comes into conflict with 
our desires and this conflict is a source of unease. He argued that civilization could never be 
entirely comfortable for humanity, since civilization's purpose was to control and repress each 
person's instinctive desires. Civilization, according to Freud, was to the individual much as the 
superego was to the ego and id: it was a method of controlling and punishing the individual's 
excesses so that society could prosper. There was a bright side to civilization that Freud did not 
ignore: civilization fostered art, culture, literature, and an increase in the quality of life of its 
members. But Freud firmly believed that civilization would always struggle against humanity's 
selfish instincts, and thus civilized humans would always be somewhat discontent with their lot.  
166 
 
 
Woolf: Three Guineas 
Three Guineas​  starts with an acknowledgement of a unique event: that a man should ask a woman her 
opinion about possible strategies for the prevention of war.  
­The narrator begins by delineating the difference between the  correspondents.  
­Supposedly of the same class, the great variation in the barrister and 
the narrator in terms of legal status, employment opportunities, 
financial independence and education seem to make a mockery of  class 
labelling.  
Feeling rather unqualified to give advice about war, the narrator reads some male accounts of war in 
which, although she discovers some deviation (not all men are pro­war), her overwhelming discovery is 
of a love and glorification of war.  
­This is where, according to Woolf, the woman's viewpoint is essential.  
­Men, and in particular male children, she argues, are socialised to 
patriotism, competition, militarism and dominance. 
­Women's history of exclusion from the public school system, the 
university and employment places them outside these kinds of 
motivations. Their different experience produces a different point of  view. 
The text continues by deliberating on how best women can exert their influence. 
  ­Woolf tackles the complex question facing all marginalised groups:  
­how can difference of view or experience be expressed to mainstream 
culture without the marginal becoming the centre.  
It is important for Woolf that women maintain their difference, but they must enter the public sphere of 
education and employment in order to be heard.  
­Women need to be within and without.  
­Women's influence is growing, the narrator points out:  
­they are now entering the professions and there exist women's 
colleges, but, in 1938, many doors are still locked.  
In answering this question, the narrator turns to her second letter, from the treasurer of the Rebuilding 
Fund.  
­She traces the history of the struggle for the initial building of that college and of male 
hostility to women's higher education.  
­She notes the continued discrepancy between male and female 
education.  
­Women can only attend lectures, they cannot take degrees, for 
example.  
In a utopian moment, the narrator wonders about the benefits of poverty.  
­She imagines a university, adventurous and experimental, which is forever 
changing, which eschews tradition and awards.  
­Lectures would be replaced by conversation.  
Reality has its way, however, and she acknowledges that if women are to enter the professions and 
thereby hold positions from which they can influence the prevention of war, they must be educated. 
­She duly donates a guinea to the rebuilding fund.  
Next, the narrator turns to a letter from the treasurer of a society which helps women enter the 
professions.  
­This society too is poverty stricken, glad of donations of books, fruit or cast­off clothing.  

167 
 ­When the narrator queries this, she is informed by the treasurer of the vast  discrepancy 
between men and women's salaries in the professions, and of the  resistance to women's employment. 
­ Women's purchasing power, and hence their influence, is negligible. 
­They are not paid for their work in the home and have little access to  their husband's 
salary. 
­ Until women have their own income, they cannot exert 
influence, therefore another guinea must be given to the society which 
encourages women's entry into the professions. 
Women can maintain their difference, Woolf argues, by following the principles of poverty, chastity, 
derision and freedom from unreal loyalties. 
­ By these, she means earning only enough money to live independently and not selling  one's 
brain for money;  
­she means refusing honours and self­publicity, and resistance to 
pride.  
­The guinea is given with these conditions, including that 
women help “all properly qualified people, of whatever sex, 
class or colour” to enter their chosen profession.  
Finally, the narrator turns to the barrister's letter and his request for advice on how to “protect culture and 
intellectual liberty”, a phrase taken from For Intellectual Liberty's manifesto, one of the anti­fascist 
organisations Woolf was supporting in the 1930s.  
­Woolf urges women actively to support disinterested culture, through writing, ensuring  that 
they are in no one's pay.  
­The guinea is given to the barrister's society, but membership is withheld.  
The cause will be most effectively fought by women from without rather than within.  
­Their society will be called the Society of Outsiders and will be “without office, meetings, 
leaders or any hierarchy, without so much as a form to be filled up, or a  secretary to be paid.”  
It is relatively easy, Woolf argues, for women to remain apart from patriotism: the “our” in “our country” 
does not apply to women, since it has enslaved her, denied her basic legal rights including the vote, the 
right to own property and the right to protect herself.  
­“Our country” ceases to be hers if she marries a foreigner.  
­Woolf's interrogation of gender, nationality and citizenship is well ahead of its time: “As 
a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world”. 
 The most radical element of the essay is Woolf's linking of fascism and patriarchy.  
­In the tyrannical father we see the beginnings of the dictator, she argues.  
­Hence, fascism is not a foreign enemy; it is at home in Britain, in the private   house.  
­The desire to control and exert force on women is akin to the kind of 
intolerance exhibited by fascist dictators. “[T]he public and private worlds 
are inseparably connected;” suggests Woolf, “the tyrannies and servilities  of the 
one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.”  
In saying this Woolf not only opens up and politicises the codes of the nineteenth­century home, she also 
anticipates one of the slogans of the women's movement in the 1970s: “the personal is the political” 
The narrator makes clear that she is dealing with “the daughters of educated men” (glossed in the notes as 
men who have attended public schools and universities).  
­Critics have debated whether this is a classist privileging of middle and upper class  women, 
or whether this limitation is justified by the argument that Woolf is not  attempting to speak for working 
class women, but rather working from her own  experience.  

168 
 ­Such a privileging can also be read as a rhetorical device to do with audience; the  narrator 
has tailored her comments to suit the barrister and these are the women who  would be most familiar 
to and have most resonance with him.  
Whatever one's reading of the designated audience, Woolf, by labelling her female subjects via their 
fathers, strengthens her argument that class is a meaningless category for people so excluded from 
systems of capital 
 
DuBois: The souls of Black Folk 
 
The aim of the collection, is to impress upon the world the particular experience of being an African 
American some forty years after the Civil War. 
Coined the Father of social science, Du Bois brings together a blend of history, sociological data, poetry, 
song, and the benefit of his personal experience to propose his vision of how and why color poses such a 
dilemma at the turn of the twentieth century. 
­His assertion is fortuitous, and the collection continues to provide insight into the  ways 
that the African­American culture is intrinsic to the larger American culture,  and how history has 
made that relationship inherently problematic. 
States that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color­line."  
­His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double­consciousness, this  sense of 
always looking at one's self through the eyes of  others," have become  touchstones for thinking about 
race in America.  
­In addition to these enduring concepts, ​ Souls ​offers an assessment of the progress  of the 
race, the obstacles to that progress, and the possibilities for future progress  as the  nation entered 
the twentieth century. 
Du Bois examines the years immediately following the Civil War and, in particular, the Freedmen's 
Bureau's role in Reconstruction.  
­The Bureau's failures were due not only to Southern opposition and "national  neglect," but 
also to mismanagement and courts that were biased "in favor of black  litigants."  
­The Bureau did have successes as well, and its most important contribution to  progress was 
the founding of African American schools.  
­Since the end of Reconstruction in 1876, Du Bois claims that the most 
significant event in African American history has been the rise of the 
educator, Booker T. Washington, to the role of spokesman for the race.  
Du Bois argues that Washington's approach to race relations is counterproductive to the long­term 
progress of the race. 
­ Washington's acceptance of segregation and his emphasis on material progress  represent an 
"old attitude of adjustment and submission." 
­ Du Bois asserts that this policy has damaged African Americans by contributing  to the 
loss of the vote, the loss of civil status, and the loss of aid for institutions of  higher education.  
Du Bois insists that "the right to vote," "civic equality," and "the education of youth according to ability" 
are essential for African American progress. 
Du Bois relates his experiences as a schoolteacher in rural Tennessee, and then he turns his attention to a 
critique of American materialism in the rising city of Atlanta where the single­minded attention to gaining 
wealth threatens to replace all other considerations.  
­In terms of education, African Americans should not be taught merely to earn  money.  
­Rather, Du Bois argues there should be a balance between the "standards 
of lower training" and the "standards of human culture and lofty ideals of 
life." 
169 
 ­ In effect, the African American college should train the "Talented Tenth" 
who can in turn contribute to lower education and also act as liaisons in 
improving race relations. 
Du Bois returns to an examination of rural African American life with a presentation of Dougherty 
County, Georgia as representative of life in the Southern Black Belt. 
­ He presents the history and current conditions of the county.  
­Cotton is still the life­blood of the Black Belt economy, and few African  Americans are 
enjoying any economic success. 
­ Du Bois describes the legal system and tenant farming system as only 
slightly removed from slavery. He also examines African American 
religion from its origins in African society, through its development in  slavery, 
to the formation of the Baptist and Methodist churches.  
­He argues that "the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part 
of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part of 
American history."  
­He goes on to examine the impact of slavery on morality. 
In the last chapters of his book, Du Bois concentrates on how racial prejudice impacts individuals.  
­He mourns the loss of his baby son, but he wonders if his son is not better off dead than 
growing up in a world dominated by the color­line. 
­ Du Bois relates the story of Alexander Crummel, who struggled against  prejudice in his 
attempts to become an Episcopal priest. 
­In "Of the Coming of John," Du Bois presents the story of a young black man who  attains 
an education. John's new knowledge, however, places him at odds with a Southern 
community, and he is destroyed by racism.  
Finally, Du Bois concludes his book with an essay on African American spirituals. 
­ These songs have developed from their African origins into powerful expressions of the sorrow, 
pain, and exile that characterize the African American experience. 
­ For Du Bois, these songs exist "not simply as the sole American music, but as the  most 
beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas." 
 
Fanon: Wretched of the earth 
 Defend that decolonization is always violent → inevitably violent 
­ this is because violence is learned from the colonists themselves 
­ when you try to take the settler’s position you must do just as they did 
­ settlers were violent in getting there → psychological account 
­ Economic reason for violence:  
­ need one half the salves to make this work → country who gets rid of slavery 
will be out of business really quickly 
There is tremendous hypocrisy 
­ goes to colonize to help the people, but keep them pathetic or else it is not economically 
viable 
● To overcome the binary system in which black is bad and white is good, Fanon argues that an 
entirely new world must come into being. This utopian desire, to be absolutely free of the past, 
requires total revolution, "absolute violence" (37). Violence purifies, destroying not only the 
category of white, but that of black too. According to Fanon, true revolution in Africa can only 
come from the peasants, or "fellaheen." Putting peasants at the vanguard of the revolution 
reveals the influence of the FLN, who based their operations in the countryside, on Fanon's 
thinking. Furthermore, this emphasis on the rural underclass highlights Fanon's disgust with the 
170 
 greed and politicking of the comprador bourgeoisie in new African nations. The brand of 
nationalism espoused by these classes, and even by the urban proletariat, is insufficient for total 
revolution because such classes benefit from the economic structures of imperialism. Fanon 
claims that non­agrarian revolutions end when urban classes consolidate their own power, 
without remaking the entire system. 
● He has some existential tendencies.  The Algerian war was one of the first successful wars of 
decolonization.  Fanon was educated in France as a psychiatrist and then lived in Algeria.  This 
text was the Bible of many revolutionary movements.  He provides both a separation and 
condemnation of western values.  Fanon is similar to Dubois.  He has anecdotes and a mix of 
different kinds of analysis.  This is more like souls of white folk and more Marxist.  He has the 
same idea of starting from the bottom up.  He discusses European values, but calls for people to 
throw them away and make their own.  These values are in fact the agents of repression.  Fanon 
says that liverty, etc…those virtues are off.  He rejects the argument that it is not that they are 
developed enough to be concerned with this but they don’t want to be.  Europe is opulent because 
it oppressed the rest of the world.  Colonialism builds on racism. This creates poverty. 
● Repression creates anger and tension in the community.  Self hood is turning against yourself and 
despising yourself.  You are not fully human if you are that way.  He uses medical knowledge to 
show how this is incorrect.  These people experience life without agency.  This is to be egoless. 
Violence is the onlypossible means of self realization.  It is the only response to colonization.  In 
this text, violence becomes productive.  You realize yourself by identifying the enemy and 
defeating them.  The peasants need to act out of aggression and not repress it.  In action, you can 
have self realization.  Deliberate murder is the key to existentialism.  Must be the peasants 
because they have never had crumbs from the table of colonialism.  This is a post­modern critique 
of the existing system, not a plan for the future. 
 
 
Rawls: Justice as Fairness & Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics 
 
Trying to answer the question of how do you make progress in ethics? 
­ not descriptive or predictive 
­need to find a source that offers credence 
­trying to figure out a method by which if you had an ethical principle you can test it and prove it, in an 
almost scientific manner 
­ principles by which you can judge what you do 
­ ethics foundation of what will be laws → taught in law school 
Two parties arguing some sort of radical adjudication is necessary → he is trying to figure this 
adjudication out 
­competing claims that cannot be mutually satisfied are necessary 
­ someone must win/be right 
This goes back to Darwin 
­inductive logic 
­when you’ve got a theory that is really a good one 
­looks at the theory of induction 
­look at good theories and sees what properties and characteristics they 
have in common 
­ this works because these theories all had inductive strength 
independently of their similarities 
“Reflective Equilibrium” 
171 
 ­the fact that all these thinks are true and all have the same qualities 
combined with 
­ the properties all seem to make for good theories 
­ each has independent sources of validity → can support eachother and make 
eachother more plausible 
How do we do this in ethics? 
­1) look for competent judges 
­ independently competent judges → gives characteristics  
­ don’t judge by principles but by personalities 
­ they need: intelligence, knowledge, reasonable man ( can see pros and cons), 
open minded, knows his own prejudices, has an imagination → imagine 
themselves in the shoes of the accused 
­ need to make a genuine effort to see it from both sides – each person has a 
legitimate claim – sympathy is key 
Can you come to an agreement without a third party? 
­once you get the principles straight you can, these must come from the judges though­  with 
these principles anyone can make the judgement 
­ ideally parties can see the rationality of the decision and come to an agreement on their  own 
­2) Get the judges to make easy judgments 
­get stability 
­ complete easy cases, feel confident that this is the right judgment 
­get a set of judgments 
­ explication: set of principles  
­ figure out basic postulates that link all the judgments together 
­ find a set of principles that will apply these judgments axiomtasation  
­ gets facts/judgments aiming to get simplest principles that imply them 
­ principles such that had a competent judge seen the situation they would come up with  the 
same judgment 
Actually uses the history of law 
­ it’s a way of getting a rational defense of the principle 
 
Spanish Inquisition → both sides are appealing to two different ideologies 
­ people for inquisition cant give evidence – cant predict the future 
­ he is in favor of religious toleration 
The Root idea of justice is fairness 
­ just when all parties would agree in absence of threat advantage 
­ what principle will you set forward as the most basic principles of society → if you have no 
clue where you stand 
­ Arguably you will be willing to live by these 
Everyone gets the maximal out of liberty, all benefit are distributed equally, 
except when inequal distribution would benefit all the most 
A Rational person will always choose the situation where all get the most help and benefit the most  → if 
not everyone benefits, you could be in trouble , you don’t know where you stand 

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