What is politics?

2.1
 Outline
• Classical contribution to modern political
values
• Medieval World: religion & politics
• Modern world: expansion of politics
 Term 2 Topics
• Leadership & morality
• The state & sovereignty
• Democracy
• Ideology
• The Cold War
 Key political themes on MEHP course
• Freedom
• Power
• The People
 What is politics?
• The Art of Government
• Public Affairs
• Compromise & consensus
• Power & the distribution of resources

Heywood, 2013
 Political traditions of Classical Athens
• Asking critical questions
• Participatory (not representative) democracy
• Citizen with duties
• No real concept of individual rights
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510
 Etymology
• Polis – city/state
• Polites - citizen
• Politika – affairs of the city/state
 The state
• Aristotle ‘man is a political animal’.
 Rationality and citizenship
• Some people more rational than others
• In deliberating about law/public life (as a
citizen) man found his highest form of self
expression.

Aristotle, Politics; Nicomachean Ethics

 Classical Athenian democracy
• All adult citizens could attend assembly + vote
(up to 6,000).
• Most officials chosen by lot.
• Courts run by the people (juries)
• BUT Slaves, women + foreigners had no
political rights
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of
others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to
them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in
the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal
justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is
also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is
preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the
reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his
country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness
in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one
another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not
put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While
we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence
pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect
for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those
which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those
unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation
of the general sentiment.
Pericles’ Funeral Oration from Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War
Pericles’ funeral oration

Phillip Von Foltz, The Age of Pericles, 1853

Leadership
 Roman contribution to politics
• Natural law (esp. Cicero)
• True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of
universal application, unchanging and everlasting… It is a sin
to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal
any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely…
• The Roman Republic (institutions – Senate, magistrates etc)

Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus

 Medieval Christian world view

• Augustine’s City of God (5th C), people give up worldly

pleasures to dedicate themselves to Christian faith.
• Pessimistic about human
nature
• Against Classical Greek
idea man can be fulfilled by
living in rational City State

St Augustine, City of God, 426

“... the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly
City glories in the Lord.”
 Christianity and Politics
• Even though those elected for salvation and those elected for damnation are
thoroughly intermingled, the distinction arising from their respective destinies gives
rise to two classes of persons, to whom Augustine refers collectively and
allegorically as cities—the City of God and the earthly city. Citizens of the earthly
city are the unregenerate progeny of Adam and Eve, who are justifiably damned
because of Adam’s Fall. These persons, according to Augustine, are aliens to God’s
love (not because God refuses to love them, but because they refuse to love God as
evidenced by their rebellious disposition inherited from the Fall). Indeed, the
object of their love—whatever it may be—is something other than God. In
particular, citizens of the “earthly city” are distinguished by their lust for material
goods and for domination over others. On the other hand, citizens of the City of
God are “pilgrims and foreigners” who (because God, the object of their love, is not
immediately available for their present enjoyment) are very much out of place in a
world without an earthly institution sufficiently similar to the City of God. No
political state, nor even the institutional church, can be equated with the City of
God. Moreover, there is no such thing as “dual citizenship” in the two cities; every
member of the human family belongs to one—and only one.

https://iep.utm.edu/aug-poso/
 Christianity & politics
• Christianity gives equal value for each human
soul.
• Pursue one’s own inclinations (conscience) =
duty.
→ Modernity: lead life by own talents +
inclinations.
The Virtuous ruler from The Allegory of good and bad government,
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338-4
 Good government & good leaders in
Medieval Europe
• Importance of character of ruler. Figures
represent courage, justice, magnanimity,
peace, prudence + temperance.
• Harmonious relationship between ruler +
citizens
 The Renaissance & politics (14th – 17th)
• Resurgence of interest in Classical learning.
Enquiry into art, literature, science, politics etc
• Includes other movements (e.g. Humanism,
feeds into Reformation)
Modernity – some general themes
• Secularisation of politics (Machiavelli/Hobbes)
• Print? Gutenberg Press 1436 → literacy
• Print capitalism
• Nations/nationalism?
 Early modern period: Expansion of
government – 1 War
• Civil War → enthusiasm for absolute
government.
• Concentrates sovereign power with ruler + his
laws to guarantee peace. (e.g. Hobbes after
English Civil War 1642-51).
The Battle of Naseby, English Civil War
Expansion of government -2 technology
• Pen + ink led to development of modern
bureaucracy/records.
• Identities, passports could be issued/ checked,
frontiers drawn with accuracy on maps (Treaty
of Westphalia 1648).
• Explosives to attack nobles’ fortresses.
 War Making and State Making as Organized
Crime, Charles Tilly

If protection rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest,

then war making and state making - quintessential protection
rackets with the advantage of legitimacy - qualify as our largest
examples of organized crime. Without branding all generals and
statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of
that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past
few centuries, a portrait of war makers and state makers as
coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater
resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea
of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which
operators of armies and states offer services to willing
consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and
expectations call forth a certain kind of government.
1. War making: Eliminating or neutralizing their own
rivals outside the territories in which they have clear
and continuous priority as wielders of force
2. State making: Eliminating or neutralizing their rivals
inside those territories
3. Protection: Eliminating or neutralizing the enemies
of their clients
4. Extraction: Acquiring the means of carrying out the
first three activities — war making, state making, and
protection
 Growing bureaucratic power
• Louis XIV (1643 -1715), Louis XV (1715-74)
… Furet analysis
• Frederick the Great (1740 – 86)
• Peter the Great (1682 - 1725), Catherine the
(Great 1762-96).
 The Enlightenment
• Conflicting forces: minimal government
(Locke/Smith), personal/political liberation
(Kant).
• Rights of man. But French Revolution creates
greater government involvement in citizens’
lives?
 Some conclusions...
• Many questions remain the same:
• Nature, the state, systems of government,
rights & citizenship, property. (see Big
Questions)

• But modern politics also different...

 Modern politics - 1
‘Politics used to refer merely to the actions of
monarchs, parliaments, and ministers, and to
the activities of the politically committed who
helped or hindered their accession to authority.
Everything else was social or private life. With
the expansion of the power of governments,
nearly everything has come to be described, in
one way or another, as ‘political’’.
Keith Minogue, A Very Short Introduction to Politics
 Modern Politics -2
• The state/government effect on marriage,
family + welfare etc.
• Change in perception of politics. E.g. Larger
bureaucracy, information/social
engineering/ideological manipulation through
print, television etc.
 Notes: Aristotelian virtues
with respect to acting in the face of danger,
courage is a mean between
the excess of rashness and the deficiency of cowardice;

with respect to the enjoyment of pleasures,

temperance is a mean between
the excess of intemperance and the deficiency of insensibility;

with respect to spending money,

generosity is a mean between
the excess of wastefulness and the deficiency of stinginess;

with respect to relations with strangers,

being friendly is a mean between
the excess of being ingratiating and the deficiency of being surly; and

with respect to self-esteem,

magnanimity is a mean between
the excess of vanity and the deficiency of pusillanimity.
(Nic. Ethics II 6)