John Locke (1632-1704) was an English doctor and philosopher who was very influential on the American Founding Fathers (Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson), the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. One passage of the Declaration of Independence is almost wholesale lifted from Locke’s political work. He is famous for two works, the classic text of Empiricism, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and the political work, Two Treatises of Government. He was friends with scientists such as Boyle and Newton. Like Hobbes, he witnessed the struggle between the English Monarchy and Parliament, and his political writings are deeply influenced by his times. Jefferson considered him one of the greatest thinker who ever lived.
Like Hobbes, Locke believed that human beings have natural rights that they derive from the state of nature and that government gets its power and rights from this and not divine decree of God, but unlike Hobbes, Locke believed that the power of the sovereign must not infringe on the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to property. Like Hobbes, Locke argued that the state of nature is not sufficient for individuals to live as they want and so they establish the state by natural contract, but unlike Hobbes Locke argued that this must be achieved by establishing a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances. While Hobbes argued that the sovereign is transferred the rights of the individual such that the sovereign can take life, restrict liberty and seize property for the good of the people as the people, Locke argues that the people have the right to rebel against the sovereign if the sovereign infringes on these rights. Thus, for Locke, the social contract with the sovereign is not unbreakable and does not fully transfer individual rights to the sovereign. Like Machiavelli and unlike Hobbes, Locke believed in checks and balances to the power of the sovereign to protect the rights of individuals.
As many critics have pointed out, neither Locke nor the American founding fathers believed that these rights extended to all of humanity and there resulted great contradictions between love of individual rights and the brutal practices of slavery and colonialism. Locke was a major investor in the Royal African Company, a secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations and a member of the Board of Trade, all of which were central to the African slave trade that took Africans from Africa to America to benefit the English plantations. While he argued that labor gives the individual a natural right to property, he also argued that the work of servants and slaves rightfully belongs to their master. Marx would later, as could be expected, agree that labor gives a right to ownership but disagree that the master or ruling class have the right to the fruits of the labor of the slaves, servants and lower classes. Like the founding fathers wrote “All men are born equal” but owned slaves themselves, Locke was clearly in agreement with the racism of his times and was writing for the equality of Europeans who owned property, servants and slaves and not of all-inclusive humanity.
Locke argued that money allowed property to be accumulated without injury to anyone. Many, including Marx and Native Americans and Africans, would take exception to this. Locke also writes that government should act such that individuals can accumulate as much wealth as they can but that wealth is distributed to the rest of society. He does not provide many insights as to how to go about this. Locke does argue that one of the major reasons that individuals should seek a social contract in the state of nature is to preserve their property and the fruits of their labor. In this, he is much more like Aristotle than Plato as Aristotle argues the state must draw everyone into a common unity yet preserve the diversity of personal property and ownership. While Hobbes sees preservation of one’s life as the primary reason for the social contract, Locke argues that the preservation of both life and property are the primary reasons and that the sovereign cannot arbitrarily take life or property from the individuals bound together in the social contract.
One last idea of Locke’s that has been very influential on many is the idea of the individual as a blank slate or tabula rasa (“blank slate” in Latin). An Empiricist, Locke believed that there are no innate ideas in the human mind and that all ideas are acquired by experience (unlike Descartes and much like Hume). Locke read a 12th century Arabic novel (translated into Latin) by Ibn Tufail titled Living Son of Wakening which tells the story of a child isolated from human society on a desert island who grows naturally by experience and reason to human adulthood. Another popular novel at the time was Robinson Crusoe which presents a gentleman and native “savage” on an island in the state of nature. Locke believed that education (like Confucius and the Confucians Mencius and Xun Zi) is central to all development and that the mind is an empty cabinet waiting to be filled.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was much influenced by many of the thinkers we have covered including the Confucians. He was particularly concerned with being on the side of individual liberty checking the powers of sovereignty with Locke vs. Hobbes. Unlike Hobbes but somewhat like Locke’s idea of tabula rasa, Rousseau imagined that the state of nature was innocent and pure and that it was society that corrupted the purity of the individual. Like Locke, Rousseau was a major influence on the American as well as French revolution (our topic for next week, after Mill and Thoreau). I gave you selections from his two most famous political works, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and On the Social Contract. Rousseau was not only influenced by many of the thinkers we have read so far, but was also an influence on many of the thinkers we have yet to read, including the founding fathers, Hegel, Nietzsche, Paine, Marx, Engels and Bakunin.
Rousseau was born in Geneva which was governed as a democracy involving a minority of the male property owning class having voting power. He wandered Italy and France for a time as a secretary and tutor to aristocrats. In 1749 he saw an advertisement by the Academy of Dijon in a newspaper which asked for essay submissions in response to the question, “Has the rebirth of the sciences and arts contributed to the improvement or the corruption of manners?”. Rousseau had an awakening experience, and decided that the original human nature is innocent and pure and that it must be society that had brought about corruption and ignorance.
This was in complete disagreement with many of his contemporaries including his close friend Diderot, who were champions of the Enlightenment and science and believed that human nature was being freed by the progress of society. Diderot wrote to Rousseau about his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, “never was so much intelligence used to make us stupid…while reading it, one longs to go on all fours”. Voltaire and Diderot were passionate about science freeing the mind of humanity from primitive superstitions. Rousseau argued that humanity was good in the beginning and that society would ultimately destroy all that was good about humanity. Society makes people take up artificial practices and wear masks (much like those worn to aristocratic parties at the time). Remember that Hobbes argued society was an artificial construction, but Hobbes believed that human beings were naturally selfish, not pure, like Xun Zi. Rousseau argues that the artificial nature of society is corruptive and breeds hypocrisy. Nietzsche would later take up this cynical turn against social progress and argue like Rousseau it chains the individual.
Unlike Locke, Rousseau saw property and the excesses of luxury as evil and destructive to our natural being. Rousseau, unlike Locke and Hobbes, praises the “savage” peoples, using his famous phrase, “the noble savage” and saw them as living a more authentic and peaceful existence than modern “civilized” people. Like Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau believed that human individuals were equal in the state of nature, but he does not see the social contract as helping but rather harming this natural equality. Like Locke, Rousseau believed that humans are a blank slate, but more than Locke he believed that human nature continues to be a free and changeable, determined by the situation in which it lives.
Rousseau avoided arguing about natural laws (key for Hobbes and Locke), preferring human nature as an undefined freedom. While Hobbes believed that the state of nature was brutal, and Locke believed that the state of nature had semi-responsible property retainers who had yet to establish laws for their benefit, Rousseau saw the state of nature as a peaceful and simple time. Society came about through domination and inequality, not natural equality cohering in a social contract of equals (much as Marx and Nietzsche will argue later). Some came to have more than others, and the social contract legitimated these differences (note that Locke would argue the same, but see it as a positive thing). Thus, property is the root cause of social problems because it is an inequality that disrupts the natural equality of humanity such that we have masters and slaves. Later in the class, we will see that Foucault, also influenced by Rousseau (as well as Nietzsche) argues that institutions use binary divisions like knowledge/ignorance and sane/insane to maintain divisions of power and inequality.
While we live in society and enjoy its conveniences, Rousseau argues that we must resist the urge to give up our freedom, our most basic human nature. Because human nature is free and changeable, society can turn us into machines and slaves. To resist this slavery, we must (like Locke argued) be able to overthrow unjust governments and break social contracts (unlike Hobbes who saw the contract as unbreakable). We must also (like Machiavelli and Locke argued) have checks on the power of the sovereign and society such that society preserves the natural freedom of humanity and does not replace it with restrictions and repression. Rousseau turns Hobbes’ sovereign on his head: because the sovereign or government is, in fact, the will and hand of the people, it must be subject to the participation of the people to be authentic. The social contract is founded on mutual agreement, and so it must be maintained by mutual agreement.
Unfortunately, as critics have pointed out, this does not solve all of the problems that many see easily in the theories of Hobbes. Rousseau replaces the sovereign with the general will, which is indeed democratic, but what about the individual or minority group that disagrees with the general will? Both Hobbes and Rousseau argue that those who disagree must be made to agree or they are outside society. Both argue that the individual must be subordinate to the collective for the good of everyone. Rousseau does argue for checks on the power of the state to preserve the liberty of the individual, but the expression of the general will is, for Rousseau, such a check that then overrides the individual who disagrees with the majority. Rousseau does not precisely specify how the general will or government will refrain from dominating the dissenting individual. Rousseau, unlike Marx, was afraid of revolutions because he saw them as domination of the powerless by the powerful and pointed out that they often have terrible consequences. Nevertheless, his ideas were important for both the American and French revolutions. Many have pointed out that Robespierre of the French Revolution referred repeatedly to Rousseau while using the idea of general will to brutally eliminate his opposition. This is very similar to the use of Nietzsche by the Nazis. Others have noted the similarities to the problematic Communist revolutions and their abuses.
In The Social Contract, Rousseau begins famously by writing, “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains”. He goes on to consider the birth of the social contract and how it can be, if balanced properly, an aid to freedom as much as a restriction on it. The birth of society is in the family. The major difference is that the father dominates the children (and wife, unmentioned) but loves the children while the state dominates the individual but does not love the individual. Thus, the father encourages the freedom and life of the children out of love while the later relation of the social-contract state does not necessarily encourage the freedom of the individual.
If Hobbes is right, we are mere herds of cattle to be controlled by the state. If Aristotle is right, some are born superior to others and they should control the subordinates. Rousseau argues that society, like slavery, is not natural and came about by the force of the stronger. If we obey society because of force, then there is no reason for duty. He uses the example of a robber with a gun and argues that one is not bound by duty to tell the robber about hidden valuables. If the sovereign/state is given power by protecting the people, why should the people stand with the state when it persecutes them or needlessly seeks war? This is the major question one likely asks after reading Hobbes.
To renounce one’s liberty is to renounce one’s humanity. Any social contract which makes one side the absolute authority and the other the absolutely obedient contradicts itself such that it is meaningless. If a slave has rights but no power, then it is as if the master has the slave’s rights and these rights contradict the rights that the master has already. In so far as the master gives the slave no power, the slave has no duty to follow the master and follows the master merely by force. If it is not unjust for the master to chain or kill the slave, then it is not unjust for the slave to escape or kill the master when the gun or whip can be grabbed. Rousseau mentions Balboa taking possession of the Pacific Ocean and South America from the natives for Spain. The words “slavery” and “right” are mutually exclusive. In the case of the dissenting minority, if the state gets its power from the agreement of the majority, in what way is it just for the minority to be included in the social contract if they do not agree? The only just state is thus the state which enables individual liberty and is controlled by the people as equals.
Rousseau, as already discussed, does believe that the minority is subject to the general/majority will, but for Rousseau this is only because the state justly protects individual freedoms. Otherwise, without such protections, there is no injustice when the minority refuses to participate in the state. This is particularly interesting issue when one considers America and Jim Crow laws.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Ethics: Balance, Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
In studying balance as an Ethical concept, we will look at Ma’at in the wisdom of ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the middle way in the teachings of the Buddha of India and Aristotle of ancient Greece, and then finish with the Analects of Confucius, one of the great ancient world Ethics texts and a masterwork on the balance of concern for the self and others.
Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.
In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.
In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.
In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.
Read the ancient Egyptian wisdom quotes with this in mind (particularly p. 7, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, and 46).
The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred. Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.
Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.
Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.
The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).
Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.
Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”
Examine Oneself:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snuggly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39
Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.
In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.
In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.
In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.
Read the ancient Egyptian wisdom quotes with this in mind (particularly p. 7, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, and 46).
The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred. Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.
Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.
Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.
The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).
Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.
Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”
Examine Oneself:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snuggly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Greek Thought & Heraclitus
We must start with the Greeks the way that we started with Egypt: with modern understandings of race and identity. This is because just like Egypt, the identity of the Greeks is a political problem that must be discussed. The Egyptians were an African people, and although they did not call themselves “black”. Likewise, the Greeks and Romans did not call themselves “white”. The terms “white” and “black” have a complicated history, as both were used by the Chinese and Muslims before Europe rose to power. Indian, Chinese, Persian and then European writers have used the term “white” to describe themselves favorably and have used the term “black” to describe other people unfavorably, but the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans did not use these terms. It is likely that the terms originated in Asia, amongst the Indians and the Chinese, where they are sometimes still used today. In fact, the Chinese portray the Buddha, who was Indian, to be Chinese and sometimes call Indian people “black”. The use of the terms passed through the middle east and the Islamic empires into Europe. Today, Europeans use the term “white” to describe themselves and “black” to describe Africans, though at times the Irish and Russians have been “blacks”. The British also used the term to describe Indians and other peoples.
As Europe rose in the wake of Islamic empire, Renaissance artists presented the Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to look like themselves. This is very much like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people presenting the Buddha and other Indian figures to look like themselves and not Indian. The Europeans began to refer to themselves, as well as the Greeks and Romans, as “white”. We can see from this complicated history that it is more accurate to describe the Greeks, Romans, and Germanic Europeans as interrelated but distinct ethnicities. The word “white” does not cover the differences. The Greeks and the Romans presented themselves as a bronzed and olive-skinned Mediterranean people, and neither the Greeks nor the Romans identified with the Germanic tribes to the North and West.
During the Renaissance, the Italians in each warring city state (Florence, Venice, and Rome) were convinced that they were each the original Roman Catholic Christian people though they often did not identify with each other. They also read Greek to read the Christian New Testament of the Bible (written in Greek and often translated into and read in Latin). Thus, the Greeks and Romans have been portrayed by Western Germanic Europeans (like myself) as European “white” people from the Renaissance up until the present time.
However, the Greeks were not always considered to be the birth of reason, politics, or science as they often are today, even by the Germanic peoples themselves. Renaissance thinkers, like Ficino and Pico, believed that Greek thinking originated in Egypt and Persia, speaking proudly of standing in the same tradition of philosophy with Zarathustra and Hermes (known to be the Greek version of Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge and scribes).
In Germany during the protestant Reformation there was a rejection of Rome and the Catholic Church and intellectuals of the time turned to Greek sources such as the original Greek New Testament. The Protestant scholars took Greek texts and made leaps in Biblical studies, philosophy, history, science and mathematics. This was not a rediscovery of their own people, as it was often misrepresented, but a rediscovery of the wider Christian tradition that included people of many different ethnicities such as the Greeks and the Romans. This situation rose along with Europe’s wealth and power, such that in the late 1700s, in the time of Hegel and the rise of German thought (archeology, philosophy and theory of history) the Greeks were called the birthplace of civilization. Many scholars even theorized that the Greeks were descended from the North (the Germanic slave peoples who the Greeks called uncivilized and stupid). While many of these scholars’ theories have been debunked, the impact of this theorizing remains with us today. This is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe and enshrine in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional cinema.
In this process, the Greeks ceased to be part of Christian heritage and became the birth of secular society, philosophy and science. They became the origin of the modern European nation state as these states ceased to be officially part of Christian empires. After WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust, the ‘’European Race’’ that was spoken of by scholars openly became an eyesore. In academic speak, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe ceased to be “the European Race” and became “The West”. This is the story of our identity today. Notice that there is still the understanding of a European race underneath the new vocabulary, but today it is most often spoken of as “Western Culture” and also “the Western Mind”. These terms hide all of the differences between cultures and ethnicities. Notice also that Germanic people, like myself, are in fact the ancestors of the Celts and Germanic tribes, but these cultures are not celebrated as the origins of anything modern or European. The Germanic people, like the Arabs, came to inherit civilization from more ancient peoples and then wrote up the history books as if they themselves were civilization’s origins.
The Beginnings of Greek Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics
Now that we have talked about race, identity and “Western” history, it is time to talk about Heraclitus and the beginnings of Greek thinking which starts in modern day Turkey, the Eastern half of ancient Greece, the half that is not known as Greece today. Like Italy during the Renaissance, Greece was a set of city-states which did not often identify with each other, territories circling the Aegean sea in what is today Greece and Turkey. Athens, the birthplace of Socrates and home to Plato and Aristotle was one of these city-states, and Ephesus, the birthplace of Heraclitus and other thinkers active before Socrates, was another.
We only have fragments of the pre-Socratic (before Socrates) thinkers’ thought and writings. These thinkers were believed to have been active between 600 and 400 BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only some of the writings of Plato and Aristotle. As best as we know, Greek thought began with Thales, the first thinker/philosopher/scientist of whom we have fragments from other ancient authors who write about him and his theories. Thales and several other early Greek thinkers lived in the ancient city-state of Miletus (in modern day Turkey). Thales believed that the cosmos and all things are made of water. Miletus is quite close to Ephesus, where Heraclitus, who was born just before 500 BCE and shortly after Thales, believed that all things are made of fire. Both cities had been provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire.
The Skepticism of Heraclitus
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
As Europe rose in the wake of Islamic empire, Renaissance artists presented the Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to look like themselves. This is very much like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people presenting the Buddha and other Indian figures to look like themselves and not Indian. The Europeans began to refer to themselves, as well as the Greeks and Romans, as “white”. We can see from this complicated history that it is more accurate to describe the Greeks, Romans, and Germanic Europeans as interrelated but distinct ethnicities. The word “white” does not cover the differences. The Greeks and the Romans presented themselves as a bronzed and olive-skinned Mediterranean people, and neither the Greeks nor the Romans identified with the Germanic tribes to the North and West.
During the Renaissance, the Italians in each warring city state (Florence, Venice, and Rome) were convinced that they were each the original Roman Catholic Christian people though they often did not identify with each other. They also read Greek to read the Christian New Testament of the Bible (written in Greek and often translated into and read in Latin). Thus, the Greeks and Romans have been portrayed by Western Germanic Europeans (like myself) as European “white” people from the Renaissance up until the present time.
However, the Greeks were not always considered to be the birth of reason, politics, or science as they often are today, even by the Germanic peoples themselves. Renaissance thinkers, like Ficino and Pico, believed that Greek thinking originated in Egypt and Persia, speaking proudly of standing in the same tradition of philosophy with Zarathustra and Hermes (known to be the Greek version of Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge and scribes).
In Germany during the protestant Reformation there was a rejection of Rome and the Catholic Church and intellectuals of the time turned to Greek sources such as the original Greek New Testament. The Protestant scholars took Greek texts and made leaps in Biblical studies, philosophy, history, science and mathematics. This was not a rediscovery of their own people, as it was often misrepresented, but a rediscovery of the wider Christian tradition that included people of many different ethnicities such as the Greeks and the Romans. This situation rose along with Europe’s wealth and power, such that in the late 1700s, in the time of Hegel and the rise of German thought (archeology, philosophy and theory of history) the Greeks were called the birthplace of civilization. Many scholars even theorized that the Greeks were descended from the North (the Germanic slave peoples who the Greeks called uncivilized and stupid). While many of these scholars’ theories have been debunked, the impact of this theorizing remains with us today. This is the theory that we can disprove but we still believe and enshrine in museums, textbooks and most importantly, fictional and nonfictional cinema.
In this process, the Greeks ceased to be part of Christian heritage and became the birth of secular society, philosophy and science. They became the origin of the modern European nation state as these states ceased to be officially part of Christian empires. After WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust, the ‘’European Race’’ that was spoken of by scholars openly became an eyesore. In academic speak, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe ceased to be “the European Race” and became “The West”. This is the story of our identity today. Notice that there is still the understanding of a European race underneath the new vocabulary, but today it is most often spoken of as “Western Culture” and also “the Western Mind”. These terms hide all of the differences between cultures and ethnicities. Notice also that Germanic people, like myself, are in fact the ancestors of the Celts and Germanic tribes, but these cultures are not celebrated as the origins of anything modern or European. The Germanic people, like the Arabs, came to inherit civilization from more ancient peoples and then wrote up the history books as if they themselves were civilization’s origins.
The Beginnings of Greek Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics
Now that we have talked about race, identity and “Western” history, it is time to talk about Heraclitus and the beginnings of Greek thinking which starts in modern day Turkey, the Eastern half of ancient Greece, the half that is not known as Greece today. Like Italy during the Renaissance, Greece was a set of city-states which did not often identify with each other, territories circling the Aegean sea in what is today Greece and Turkey. Athens, the birthplace of Socrates and home to Plato and Aristotle was one of these city-states, and Ephesus, the birthplace of Heraclitus and other thinkers active before Socrates, was another.
We only have fragments of the pre-Socratic (before Socrates) thinkers’ thought and writings. These thinkers were believed to have been active between 600 and 400 BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only some of the writings of Plato and Aristotle. As best as we know, Greek thought began with Thales, the first thinker/philosopher/scientist of whom we have fragments from other ancient authors who write about him and his theories. Thales and several other early Greek thinkers lived in the ancient city-state of Miletus (in modern day Turkey). Thales believed that the cosmos and all things are made of water. Miletus is quite close to Ephesus, where Heraclitus, who was born just before 500 BCE and shortly after Thales, believed that all things are made of fire. Both cities had been provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire.
The Skepticism of Heraclitus
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Hobbes & Sovereignty
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is often called the second great philosopher (the first being Descartes) in the modern European philosophical tradition. He is known for his 1651 book Leviathan which argues that the people agree to transfer their rights to a sovereign by social contract, and that this agreement justly allows the sovereign to do whatever is necessary to protect the people including use of brute force and deception. Machiavelli, who influenced Hobbes and was the subject of the last lecture, argued that any sovereign must be good at these two evil but necessary aspects of society. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes was a realist and though he supported the traditional monarchy got in trouble even with the loyal Royalists he was trying to support by arguing that the king/sovereign derives authority not from God but from natural law (the basic way humanity and nature work). Like Machiavelli, Hobbes is infamous for supporting the brute power of the king but he is also famous and influential for his discussion of natural rights (self-evident liberties), the equality of humanity, and social contracts (government as an artificial agreement of individuals that concedes power to authority through consent).
Hobbes was working as a tutor and scholar in Florence and Paris, and had been working on a complete physics of natural motions that built up from inanimate objects to the motions of the body to the motions of society. He returned home to England in 1637, finding a country torn by civil wars and complex politics. While things were quite complicated between England, Scotland and Ireland, the two main sides of the English civil war were the Royalists who supported the rule of King Charles the first and the Parliamentarians who supported the rights of nobles in Parliament to check the powers of the king and guarantee liberties for the nobility. Just as in Florence in Machiavelli’s time, there was a brief period (10 years, 1649-1659) of Parliamentary rule after the execution of Charles the first before England returned to monarchy under Charles the second.
Before the civil war, Parliament was not a permanent body in English government. Parliaments were called at the king’s request to aid the king’s purposes, particularly the collection of taxes and the waging of warfare. Rulers have needed the help of local nobles for these purposes since the earliest city state societies, and so the earliest form of democracy in Sumer was just such a council of nobles as was Athenian democracy (though in Athens there was no ruler for a time above the council). In England before the civil war, Parliament could send bills to be considered as potential laws to the king (like we have in American law still today) as well as petition grievances, but the king had the right to call the council as well as dissolve the council, so it was not a permanent body that held the king’s powers in check.
The king needed the nobility, but could also ignore the needs of the nobles for the sake of the crown (according to both Machiavelli and Hobbes, for the greater good of all embodied in the king). Charles called and dismissed several parliaments that had grievances against him before ruling without a parliament for 11 years. The nobles and later historians called this period the Eleven Years Tyranny, which is ironic if you consider that the nobles held power over the people without any form of representation. Charles was forced to make peace with the kings of France and Spain, to levy great taxes on merchants, and occasionally torture and punish even nobles who rebelled (such as cutting off ears, a punishment common for the commoners but rare for the nobility).
Many in the cities of England and the military favored the parliament, while the rural areas favored the king. Both sides believed that they fought for the traditional English way and wished for Charles to remain on the throne. After several bloody wars and political back-stabbings, the Parliamentarians began to wonder whether Charles should remain king or whether Parliament itself could rule England (much like the brief period of Athenian democracy, a country ruled by a council of the noble families). Captured by the Parliamentarians, Charles was tried and found guilty of high treason against England, and executed in 1649. English Civil War Societies, much like those in America, reenact the wars every year (but with pikes and shields, not muskets as in America).
At this time, Hobbes was completing his book Leviathan, published the next year in 1650. In Paris he had good contact with Royalists in exile who believed, like Hobbes, that a strong central authority prevented injustice and civil war. The brief period of Parliamentary rule was messy and divided, which the Royalists and Hobbes watched from overseas. In 1660 Charles II returned from exile and re-conquered England and restored the monarchy of his father (a period known as the Restoration). Charles II, who had in fact been tutored by Hobbes as a boy, gave Hobbes protection during times of persecution and a pension.
While the Royalists did in this way win the long fight, only some were delighted by Hobbes’ Leviathan. Many Royalists were outraged by Hobbes’ idea that the king derived authority from the natural rights and protection of the people, not by the divine decree of God. Hobbes does mention God and divine covenants as a basic type of contract, but he argues that one can only enter a contract with God by God’s grace and not by natural right, unlike the mortal human contract that supports a human king. This is why Charles II had to offer him protection during purges of atheism and “profanity” when Hobbes’ book Leviathan was targeted openly. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes was intensely loved and hated and his work spread amongst those who hated him as much as anyone. While many today loath the idea of a sovereign without checks and balances, Hobbes is important for his ideas about the natural nature of society, liberty, rights, and equality.
The Leviathan
In the selections I gave you from Leviathan, some of the most famous, Hobbes argues that in the natural condition, the basic state of humanity in nature, life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Hobbes argues that human beings are more equal than they are different in strength and intelligence. People think that they are above others but this merely confirms their equality (like the DMV reports that 80% of those questioned say they are an above average driver). Everyone wants to obtain their ends and posses what they desire, but because they desire what others want they make enemies easily. Without power over them, there is little happiness and much grief. Each wants safety, even glory, at the expense of the others. The state of nature is therefore a war of all vs. all, a war against every other person.
Hobbes writes that there may never have been such a pure state of nature for all of humanity, but argues that the “savages of America”, the native Americans, live in such a state in his time and thus have no government at all. Next week, Rousseau will argue the opposite and look to the American tribes as well as others to argue that in the state of nature people were pure and uncorrupted. In the state of nature, when there is no government, nothing is unjust. There is neither justice nor injustice, neither right nor wrong. Force and fraud are cardinal virtues (consider the similarity with Machiavelli’s Prince). There is no permanent property that is rightfully one person’s or another’s (consider Plato & Aristotle arguing whether society provides or prohibits private property). The only reason to seek peace is fear of death, which is ironic considering that we call peace a sort of rest when we say “rest in peace”.
For Hobbes, the basic “right of nature” is self-preservation (much like Darwin’s survival of the fittest as a kind of natural law). Hobbes eventually argues that one can pledge one’s life to society, but one still has the right to defend oneself even when society comes to claim this debt. Hobbes draws the useful distinction between a law (a prohibition) and a right (a prohibition of a prohibition, a freedom or liberty). In the state of nature, everyone has the unchecked right to everything, including the lives of others. People should seek peace and form societies for their own sakes, but before the social contract there is nothing preventing anyone from doing anything. People should treat others the way they want to be treated, but to do this they have to voluntarily give up liberty. They must give up the liberty of harming others to prevent harm from being done to themselves.
Hobbes makes the further distinction that liberties and rights can be renounced or transferred to another, such as an authority. Basically, Hobbes argues through much of the Leviathan that people come to understand that they must transfer the liberty of harming others to the sovereign or state in order to ensure mutual peace and prosperity. Once they have entered into such an agreement, a social contract, they have agreed to a standard of justice and this is what creates justice and injustice. Following in accord with the contract is justice, and breaking the contract is injustice. Following the contract creates duty as well as the difference between right and wrong. A declaration of the contract is made by the participants, and now the participants are bound in duty to the contract and the authority in which the contract is embodied.
People naturally want liberty for themselves, but they also wish to dominate others. Unlike other animals, however, people can create voluntary and artificial structures such as social contracts and nation-states. The only way to do this is to confer/transfer power, strength and liberty to a sovereign. The sovereign is either one person (king, queen, sultan) or a group of people (parliament, congress, pow wow). Later in the text, Hobbes sides with the Royalists vs. the Parliamentarians and argues that it is best to have a single human sovereign (such as Charles the first, or second), because otherwise there will be civil war and strife (like that witnessed in the brief period between Charles the first and Charles the second).
The sovereign, the artificial and mortal God, as Hobbes calls it, is now owed allegiance underneath the authority of the natural and immortal God who only contacts humanity by grace and revelation. When the sovereign acts, it is as if everyone acts. This is famously captured in the image on the front of the publication of Leviathan with a king made out of smaller people, wielding a sword. Because one has pledged one’s strength and life to the sovereign, if you try to rebel the sovereign actually punishes you with your own hand as well as the hand of everyone else. If the sovereign believes you must be killed for the good of everyone else, it is as if you have condemned yourself to death voluntarily. Hobbes argues that you still have the right to try to defend yourself, but the social contract makes it right and legal for the king to have the liberty to end your life and the lives of others, foreign and domestic, if it is in the interest of the sovereign who embodies the interests of the whole populace. Also, Hobbes argues that even if the minority does not voluntarily enter the contract, they are bound to it through the interests of the majority and if they do not agree they can be killed without right to safety as this right only exists within the social contract through participation (consider colonialism, as we will near the end of the class, and how this can be used by foreign powers to set up empires and kill those who disagree in the name of security and liberty).
In the name of the social contract, the sovereign can’t commit injustice. Consider that this was the charge of the Parliamentarians against Charles the first, and the reason Charles was executed while Hobbes is writing the work. The sovereign has the right to censor all works of literature and art, to decide matters of property and war. Hobbes quotes the gospels, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, arguing that there must be an individual who embodies the whole as king or there will be continuous civil war. The king must be “like the sun to the stars”, eclipsing all other authority by natural right. He writes, “If there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of England, that these powers were divided between the King, and the Lords, and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided and fallen into this civil war…and so continue, till their miseries be forgotten”. Consider that Hobbes is arguing against checks and balances to the King’s power, unlike Machiavelli did in his republican works.
Hobbes was working as a tutor and scholar in Florence and Paris, and had been working on a complete physics of natural motions that built up from inanimate objects to the motions of the body to the motions of society. He returned home to England in 1637, finding a country torn by civil wars and complex politics. While things were quite complicated between England, Scotland and Ireland, the two main sides of the English civil war were the Royalists who supported the rule of King Charles the first and the Parliamentarians who supported the rights of nobles in Parliament to check the powers of the king and guarantee liberties for the nobility. Just as in Florence in Machiavelli’s time, there was a brief period (10 years, 1649-1659) of Parliamentary rule after the execution of Charles the first before England returned to monarchy under Charles the second.
Before the civil war, Parliament was not a permanent body in English government. Parliaments were called at the king’s request to aid the king’s purposes, particularly the collection of taxes and the waging of warfare. Rulers have needed the help of local nobles for these purposes since the earliest city state societies, and so the earliest form of democracy in Sumer was just such a council of nobles as was Athenian democracy (though in Athens there was no ruler for a time above the council). In England before the civil war, Parliament could send bills to be considered as potential laws to the king (like we have in American law still today) as well as petition grievances, but the king had the right to call the council as well as dissolve the council, so it was not a permanent body that held the king’s powers in check.
The king needed the nobility, but could also ignore the needs of the nobles for the sake of the crown (according to both Machiavelli and Hobbes, for the greater good of all embodied in the king). Charles called and dismissed several parliaments that had grievances against him before ruling without a parliament for 11 years. The nobles and later historians called this period the Eleven Years Tyranny, which is ironic if you consider that the nobles held power over the people without any form of representation. Charles was forced to make peace with the kings of France and Spain, to levy great taxes on merchants, and occasionally torture and punish even nobles who rebelled (such as cutting off ears, a punishment common for the commoners but rare for the nobility).
Many in the cities of England and the military favored the parliament, while the rural areas favored the king. Both sides believed that they fought for the traditional English way and wished for Charles to remain on the throne. After several bloody wars and political back-stabbings, the Parliamentarians began to wonder whether Charles should remain king or whether Parliament itself could rule England (much like the brief period of Athenian democracy, a country ruled by a council of the noble families). Captured by the Parliamentarians, Charles was tried and found guilty of high treason against England, and executed in 1649. English Civil War Societies, much like those in America, reenact the wars every year (but with pikes and shields, not muskets as in America).
At this time, Hobbes was completing his book Leviathan, published the next year in 1650. In Paris he had good contact with Royalists in exile who believed, like Hobbes, that a strong central authority prevented injustice and civil war. The brief period of Parliamentary rule was messy and divided, which the Royalists and Hobbes watched from overseas. In 1660 Charles II returned from exile and re-conquered England and restored the monarchy of his father (a period known as the Restoration). Charles II, who had in fact been tutored by Hobbes as a boy, gave Hobbes protection during times of persecution and a pension.
While the Royalists did in this way win the long fight, only some were delighted by Hobbes’ Leviathan. Many Royalists were outraged by Hobbes’ idea that the king derived authority from the natural rights and protection of the people, not by the divine decree of God. Hobbes does mention God and divine covenants as a basic type of contract, but he argues that one can only enter a contract with God by God’s grace and not by natural right, unlike the mortal human contract that supports a human king. This is why Charles II had to offer him protection during purges of atheism and “profanity” when Hobbes’ book Leviathan was targeted openly. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes was intensely loved and hated and his work spread amongst those who hated him as much as anyone. While many today loath the idea of a sovereign without checks and balances, Hobbes is important for his ideas about the natural nature of society, liberty, rights, and equality.
The Leviathan
In the selections I gave you from Leviathan, some of the most famous, Hobbes argues that in the natural condition, the basic state of humanity in nature, life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Hobbes argues that human beings are more equal than they are different in strength and intelligence. People think that they are above others but this merely confirms their equality (like the DMV reports that 80% of those questioned say they are an above average driver). Everyone wants to obtain their ends and posses what they desire, but because they desire what others want they make enemies easily. Without power over them, there is little happiness and much grief. Each wants safety, even glory, at the expense of the others. The state of nature is therefore a war of all vs. all, a war against every other person.
Hobbes writes that there may never have been such a pure state of nature for all of humanity, but argues that the “savages of America”, the native Americans, live in such a state in his time and thus have no government at all. Next week, Rousseau will argue the opposite and look to the American tribes as well as others to argue that in the state of nature people were pure and uncorrupted. In the state of nature, when there is no government, nothing is unjust. There is neither justice nor injustice, neither right nor wrong. Force and fraud are cardinal virtues (consider the similarity with Machiavelli’s Prince). There is no permanent property that is rightfully one person’s or another’s (consider Plato & Aristotle arguing whether society provides or prohibits private property). The only reason to seek peace is fear of death, which is ironic considering that we call peace a sort of rest when we say “rest in peace”.
For Hobbes, the basic “right of nature” is self-preservation (much like Darwin’s survival of the fittest as a kind of natural law). Hobbes eventually argues that one can pledge one’s life to society, but one still has the right to defend oneself even when society comes to claim this debt. Hobbes draws the useful distinction between a law (a prohibition) and a right (a prohibition of a prohibition, a freedom or liberty). In the state of nature, everyone has the unchecked right to everything, including the lives of others. People should seek peace and form societies for their own sakes, but before the social contract there is nothing preventing anyone from doing anything. People should treat others the way they want to be treated, but to do this they have to voluntarily give up liberty. They must give up the liberty of harming others to prevent harm from being done to themselves.
Hobbes makes the further distinction that liberties and rights can be renounced or transferred to another, such as an authority. Basically, Hobbes argues through much of the Leviathan that people come to understand that they must transfer the liberty of harming others to the sovereign or state in order to ensure mutual peace and prosperity. Once they have entered into such an agreement, a social contract, they have agreed to a standard of justice and this is what creates justice and injustice. Following in accord with the contract is justice, and breaking the contract is injustice. Following the contract creates duty as well as the difference between right and wrong. A declaration of the contract is made by the participants, and now the participants are bound in duty to the contract and the authority in which the contract is embodied.
People naturally want liberty for themselves, but they also wish to dominate others. Unlike other animals, however, people can create voluntary and artificial structures such as social contracts and nation-states. The only way to do this is to confer/transfer power, strength and liberty to a sovereign. The sovereign is either one person (king, queen, sultan) or a group of people (parliament, congress, pow wow). Later in the text, Hobbes sides with the Royalists vs. the Parliamentarians and argues that it is best to have a single human sovereign (such as Charles the first, or second), because otherwise there will be civil war and strife (like that witnessed in the brief period between Charles the first and Charles the second).
The sovereign, the artificial and mortal God, as Hobbes calls it, is now owed allegiance underneath the authority of the natural and immortal God who only contacts humanity by grace and revelation. When the sovereign acts, it is as if everyone acts. This is famously captured in the image on the front of the publication of Leviathan with a king made out of smaller people, wielding a sword. Because one has pledged one’s strength and life to the sovereign, if you try to rebel the sovereign actually punishes you with your own hand as well as the hand of everyone else. If the sovereign believes you must be killed for the good of everyone else, it is as if you have condemned yourself to death voluntarily. Hobbes argues that you still have the right to try to defend yourself, but the social contract makes it right and legal for the king to have the liberty to end your life and the lives of others, foreign and domestic, if it is in the interest of the sovereign who embodies the interests of the whole populace. Also, Hobbes argues that even if the minority does not voluntarily enter the contract, they are bound to it through the interests of the majority and if they do not agree they can be killed without right to safety as this right only exists within the social contract through participation (consider colonialism, as we will near the end of the class, and how this can be used by foreign powers to set up empires and kill those who disagree in the name of security and liberty).
In the name of the social contract, the sovereign can’t commit injustice. Consider that this was the charge of the Parliamentarians against Charles the first, and the reason Charles was executed while Hobbes is writing the work. The sovereign has the right to censor all works of literature and art, to decide matters of property and war. Hobbes quotes the gospels, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, arguing that there must be an individual who embodies the whole as king or there will be continuous civil war. The king must be “like the sun to the stars”, eclipsing all other authority by natural right. He writes, “If there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of England, that these powers were divided between the King, and the Lords, and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided and fallen into this civil war…and so continue, till their miseries be forgotten”. Consider that Hobbes is arguing against checks and balances to the King’s power, unlike Machiavelli did in his republican works.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Indian Philosophy
Early India and Hinduism: The Vedas and Upanishads
‘Hindu’ is the Persian name for India (Persia and India are next door to each other and have traded for thousands of years). Our society borrows the term from the British, who get the term from the Persians. Hinduism may have many gods but there is an understanding that each god is one aspect of the great father and creator God, named by most traditions Brahma. Thus, even though there are many forms of worship that focus on specific gods, there is an understanding that it is all one interrelated tradition.
There are three paths of worship in Hinduism.
First, there is devotional worship, known as Bhakti Yoga (‘Yoga’ means ‘discipline’, or practice). In Bhakti devotional worship, the devotee prays, sings hymns, lights incense, and performs rituals to gain favor with the gods and heavens. It is impossible not to notice that most of what we call ‘religion’ the world over is in fact forms of Bhakti practice, devotion to particular gods and ancestral spirits. The two most populous forms of Bhakti Hinduism are Shaivism, the worship of Shiva (the transformer and destroyer) and his incarnations such as Ganesh (the elephant headed god), and Vaishnavism, the worship of Vishnu (the savior or preserver) and his incarnations (such as Krishna).
Raja yoga, the second path, is worship by meditation and asceticism (living in isolation, standing in place for days, chanting the names of God for hours, sitting on spikes, and other means of hard activity meant to gain a meditative state of insight). Notice that Christian monks could easily be seen as adhering to this ascetic path. If you enjoy jogging, and find it ‘spiritual’, this could be seen as a form of Raja yoga.
Jnana yoga (“zshna-na”), the third path and my personal favorite, is worship by acquiring knowledge and understanding the order of things through study and philosophizing. Notice that Greek philosophers and Christian/deist scientists of Europe like Newton can be seen as following this route. Indeed, Hinduism is so diverse and inter-accepting that it is hard to not see all of the forms of other cultures somewhere in one of its parts. This class itself could be seen as a form of Jnana yoga, designed to bring you closer to the core by studying the ways of the world (namely the religious traditions in their sameness and difference).
All are understood to work towards the same goal: liberation from the bonds of attachment and desire and rising into enlightenment and release.
First, there is hope for a better next life. Many are familiar already with the Hindu idea of reincarnation. This is not, as we learned in Shamanism, a form of afterlife particular to India, but in fact there is evidence that many tribal cultures and early Egypt believed that one’s present life will be reincarnated in another life on earth based on one’s actions and intentions. This interconnection is called ‘Karma’, which simply means ‘action’ in Sanskrit. Interestingly, physical causation is ‘karma’, just as metaphysical causation (next life physics) is ‘karma’, same word and understanding of cause and effect applied to a different sphere of existence. If you punch someone in the head, it is karma that makes their head reel backward, and karma that also weighs down your chance for a favorable life after death in the Hindu tradition.
Second, there is hope for release, for freedom from rounds of rebirth on earth. This can be thought of as dwelling in a heaven with one’s personal or family god, but also as a dwelling with the order of things without residing in any particular place. Bhakti yoga tends to favor the dwelling with a lord, while Raja and Jnana tends to favor the dwelling with the universe as a whole, however it is important to remember that some Hindus believe that both amount to the same exact thing (while others will insist that their school’s truth is ‘more true’, the same variation one finds in any religion and in our own culture). This release is also called Moksha and Samadhi, but in America we know this first and foremost by the same name as the famous grunge band, Nirvana.
The Vedas were oral traditions, huge memorized lengths of stories and doctrines that were spoken and repeated. There are four Vedas, and these form the most ancient and respected source of Hinduism. Our scholars believe the Vedas to have been formed sometime before 1200 BCE, but many Hindu devotees believe that the Vedas are far older. The Rig (or ‘Rg’) Veda is the oldest and most central. The Vedas, compared to the Upanishads, are largely stories of creation and the tales of the gods, explaining how the universe was created and how things got to be the way they are.
The Upanishads (800 BCE) were a later development. These were more ‘philosophical’, teachings about the soul and how to release the soul from desire and merge with the great One and All. The Upanishads frequently interpret the stories of the Vedas as metaphoric teachings, instructions for the truly wise on how to develop the mind or soul. ‘Upanishad’ means “sitting down near and beside”, as these are believed to be the close teachings of the priest, philosopher or master who has taught the Vedas for a long time and thus knows something of their secret ‘inner’ meaning. Greek philosophy, particularly the pre-Socratic thinkers (philosophers before Socrates, of whom we have only fragments), shares an uncanny resemblance to many of the discussions in the Upanishads (all the more reason to see less of a strict separation between ‘West’ and ‘East’).
One of the most famous sayings from the Upanishads is Tat Tvam Asi, “That is you”. No matter what “that” you are looking at, it is in fact your own self because all is one and there are no complete or permanent separations between any two things.
As the Upanishads continued to gain teachers and followers, there was a new flowering of many schools of thought between 700 and 400 BCE that took much from the Vedas and Upanishads but developed the teachings in new directions. These new schools often rejected the caste system (still in place today in spite of these ancient rebellions) and thus gained massive followings among all classes and castes of India. Jainism was one of the first, but it was quickly developed and transformed itself into a religion that is possibly the most popular system of thought in history, Buddhism (Christianity, Islam and Science are contenders for first, second, third and fourth place depending on how and who one counts).
Some scholars today argue that Jainism and Buddhism helped develop Hinduism in response such that Hinduism looks as it does today (with an emphasis on total liberation AS WELL AS the goal of merit and reincarnation). However, Buddhism (which I have personally heard some Hindus describe as ‘Hinduism for Export’) flourished outside of India and thus became a much more international religion for dominating diverse empires, whereas Hinduism and Jainism largely remain confined to India even today (with significant minority populations in Canada, America, South Africa and many other places). Also, of course, Hindu gurus (teachers, sages) have become quite popular in giving religious insight to people in the ‘West’ in recent decades, particularly after the 1960s and the cultural revolution (it could be argued, even more popular than Buddhist or Jain teachers).
Jainism (650 BCE)
Jainism, or “Jain Dharma” (dharma means “teaching/law/order of the universe”) was and is practiced by Jains (not Jainists as some mistakenly say). There are currently 4 Million in India today, with many others in communities around the world including New York and Toronto. Jainism rose just before Buddhism, as Mahavira (650 BCE), the main teacher and founder of Jainism, lived just before the Buddha (550 BCE), though all of these dates are still in debate.
Jainism advocates two principles that are shared with Indian thought but credited to Jain innovation: Anekantavada, the multiplicity of reality or “non-one-ended-ness” and Syadvada, the hypothetical and imperfect nature of perspective and judgment. According to these two principles, all human beliefs and judgments are temporary and partial views of the greater whole.
Jains were also early proponents of the idea that the cosmos works in cycles: like the physical rising and setting of the sun, consciousness rises, then sets. People start to become awakened teachers and develop religion in the rising era, and people lose religion in the setting era. This is endless, like the cosmos. The cosmos becomes enlightened to its own self through us, and then loses consciousness of itself through us. Unfortunately, we currently live in an era of dimming religion and consciousness according to most Jain and Hindu teachers (the Hindus following the Jains in this picture).
Jain teachers and saints are known as Tirthankaras, “one who makes a ford” (cutting through water as order over chaos, as land becoming firmament in the chaotic waters). Mahavira (also Mahavir), the founder of Jainism, is understood by Jains to be the 24th Tirthankara. Like others of his time, Mahavira was a practitioner of austerities that are aimed at detachment from desire and multiplicity of the world: fasting, standing in jungles, going without food or luxuries for extended periods of time. Statues of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras show vines growing up their legs and bodies, as vines grow several feet in the jungle a day and so would grow up your body if you practice standing austerities for days at a time. Jains believe that these practices purify the self/soul/mind.
Here, we come to THE critical difference between Jainism and the other schools of Indian thought. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is ALWAYS NEGATIVE, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated.
Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of karma and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant.
The best way to understand the dual practice of avoiding karma AND shredding karma is the Metaphor of the Leaky Boat: You ride in a boat across water to a distant shore (Nirvana). Notice that water represents chaos and desire, and the land represents the firm and the enlightened. The boat is leaky, and water is pouring in. You have to BOTH plug the leaks (preventative principles like vegetarianism that prevent bad karma from getting IN you) and bail out the water that has already inside the boat (shredding karma, practicing austerities like fasting or standing in postures to get the karma you already have in this life OUT of you). Jains believe that it is only by this two-pronged strategy that the individual can be fully liberated and join back together with the cosmos and thus gain eternal life rather than round after round of rebirth.
Buddhism (550 BCE)
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha, the “awakened one”, practiced austerities like Mahavira, but found that this way was not enough. Buddhism is famous for long periods of meditation, and this is quite like Jain austerities of standing in postures, but Buddhism suggests that it is through balance and not extremes that one will be liberated. The Buddha found Jain asceticism to be one sided and promoting of self hatred which is still attachment and duality.
According to the tradition and legend, Buddha’s father was the king of a kingdom in Northern India. When the Buddha was born, the king’s wise men told him that his son would be EITHER a great king OR a great holy man. The king did not want his son to be a holy man, but rather the next king, so to control his son he hid his son away in his palace and gave him all the luxuries in the world, hiding death and pain from him, surrounding him with dancing girls and servants and only healthy, happy, obedient people. At 29, the Buddha had become bored of this, and snuck out to see the city, taking along his trusted servant. In succession, the Buddha the Four Sights (an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man). When he saw the first three, his servant each time told him that this was unfortunately inevitable for everyone, but when he got to the fourth, the holy man (likely a Jain or proto-Jain), his servant told him that the monk was working on the first three (age, sickness, and death).
The Buddha was immediately envious of something more wonderful than he had ever possessed in the palace, and so he escaped into the jungle where he found sages practicing austerities. The Buddha did these Jain (or proto-Jain, depending on the scholar) austere practices in the jungle for six years, but he found that this brought no great enlightenment and in fact brought him self-hatred and self-denial (notice here that this is where Buddhism breaks away from Jainism as a direct criticism of Jain practice, taking much of Jainism with it in the process but seeking a middle way between denial and indulgence, attached to neither). The Buddha left the jungle disappointed. He decided to sit beneath a large tree, the Bodhi Tree (which one can go see in India today, a tree supposed to have been grown from the original in the original spot), and he vowed not to rise until he found complete and total truth or he would give up his life. After 49 days, at the age of 35, he realized complete enlightenment, Nirvana. This is defined in the tradition as the total extinction of greed (raga), hate (dosa), and delusion (moha), obtainable in this life by any being by overcoming duality and desire.
Major philosophical ideas of Buddhism
The Doctrine of the Middle Way: In all things, as the mind splits things into opposites and prefers one while rejecting the other, one should always practice moderation between the extremes. As a criticism of Jainism, this means that one should balance pain and pleasure, being attached to neither, rather than chase pain and difficulty to liberate the self. The Buddha found Jain practice to be immoderate: too much de-emphasis of self is attachment to self hate, not detachment from particular things (as self-hate is particular and bound up with particular things just as much as self-love or pride is). One must love and hate the self, bringing the two together, to find detachment from many and complete identity in the One, the All.
Doctrine of Impermanence: The Buddha taught that all things are impermanent. Thus, everything is constantly evolving, never the same twice. Only the great All is eternal, the One to which we all belong, but as soon as you say this it becomes a conception, a particular being separated from other particular beings, and then is simply a temporary being in your mind.
Codependent Arising (Pratityasamutpada): Another major teaching of Buddhism is codependent arising of all phenomena. While this is a hard thing to grasp or discuss, it means that all things are themselves in so far as they are connected to every other thing. Opposites, such as heat and cold or self and other, do not anchor things in themselves or give things their true meaning, but rather all things exist dependent on all other things. While this may frustrate some, and they would say ‘this tells me nothing’, Buddhists believe that all things are impermanent, and so you should not expect to have final knowledge of any particular thing. Instead, you must investigate each thing you want to describe as best as you can, connected to the things to which you want to connect it.
‘Hindu’ is the Persian name for India (Persia and India are next door to each other and have traded for thousands of years). Our society borrows the term from the British, who get the term from the Persians. Hinduism may have many gods but there is an understanding that each god is one aspect of the great father and creator God, named by most traditions Brahma. Thus, even though there are many forms of worship that focus on specific gods, there is an understanding that it is all one interrelated tradition.
There are three paths of worship in Hinduism.
First, there is devotional worship, known as Bhakti Yoga (‘Yoga’ means ‘discipline’, or practice). In Bhakti devotional worship, the devotee prays, sings hymns, lights incense, and performs rituals to gain favor with the gods and heavens. It is impossible not to notice that most of what we call ‘religion’ the world over is in fact forms of Bhakti practice, devotion to particular gods and ancestral spirits. The two most populous forms of Bhakti Hinduism are Shaivism, the worship of Shiva (the transformer and destroyer) and his incarnations such as Ganesh (the elephant headed god), and Vaishnavism, the worship of Vishnu (the savior or preserver) and his incarnations (such as Krishna).
Raja yoga, the second path, is worship by meditation and asceticism (living in isolation, standing in place for days, chanting the names of God for hours, sitting on spikes, and other means of hard activity meant to gain a meditative state of insight). Notice that Christian monks could easily be seen as adhering to this ascetic path. If you enjoy jogging, and find it ‘spiritual’, this could be seen as a form of Raja yoga.
Jnana yoga (“zshna-na”), the third path and my personal favorite, is worship by acquiring knowledge and understanding the order of things through study and philosophizing. Notice that Greek philosophers and Christian/deist scientists of Europe like Newton can be seen as following this route. Indeed, Hinduism is so diverse and inter-accepting that it is hard to not see all of the forms of other cultures somewhere in one of its parts. This class itself could be seen as a form of Jnana yoga, designed to bring you closer to the core by studying the ways of the world (namely the religious traditions in their sameness and difference).
All are understood to work towards the same goal: liberation from the bonds of attachment and desire and rising into enlightenment and release.
First, there is hope for a better next life. Many are familiar already with the Hindu idea of reincarnation. This is not, as we learned in Shamanism, a form of afterlife particular to India, but in fact there is evidence that many tribal cultures and early Egypt believed that one’s present life will be reincarnated in another life on earth based on one’s actions and intentions. This interconnection is called ‘Karma’, which simply means ‘action’ in Sanskrit. Interestingly, physical causation is ‘karma’, just as metaphysical causation (next life physics) is ‘karma’, same word and understanding of cause and effect applied to a different sphere of existence. If you punch someone in the head, it is karma that makes their head reel backward, and karma that also weighs down your chance for a favorable life after death in the Hindu tradition.
Second, there is hope for release, for freedom from rounds of rebirth on earth. This can be thought of as dwelling in a heaven with one’s personal or family god, but also as a dwelling with the order of things without residing in any particular place. Bhakti yoga tends to favor the dwelling with a lord, while Raja and Jnana tends to favor the dwelling with the universe as a whole, however it is important to remember that some Hindus believe that both amount to the same exact thing (while others will insist that their school’s truth is ‘more true’, the same variation one finds in any religion and in our own culture). This release is also called Moksha and Samadhi, but in America we know this first and foremost by the same name as the famous grunge band, Nirvana.
The Vedas were oral traditions, huge memorized lengths of stories and doctrines that were spoken and repeated. There are four Vedas, and these form the most ancient and respected source of Hinduism. Our scholars believe the Vedas to have been formed sometime before 1200 BCE, but many Hindu devotees believe that the Vedas are far older. The Rig (or ‘Rg’) Veda is the oldest and most central. The Vedas, compared to the Upanishads, are largely stories of creation and the tales of the gods, explaining how the universe was created and how things got to be the way they are.
The Upanishads (800 BCE) were a later development. These were more ‘philosophical’, teachings about the soul and how to release the soul from desire and merge with the great One and All. The Upanishads frequently interpret the stories of the Vedas as metaphoric teachings, instructions for the truly wise on how to develop the mind or soul. ‘Upanishad’ means “sitting down near and beside”, as these are believed to be the close teachings of the priest, philosopher or master who has taught the Vedas for a long time and thus knows something of their secret ‘inner’ meaning. Greek philosophy, particularly the pre-Socratic thinkers (philosophers before Socrates, of whom we have only fragments), shares an uncanny resemblance to many of the discussions in the Upanishads (all the more reason to see less of a strict separation between ‘West’ and ‘East’).
One of the most famous sayings from the Upanishads is Tat Tvam Asi, “That is you”. No matter what “that” you are looking at, it is in fact your own self because all is one and there are no complete or permanent separations between any two things.
As the Upanishads continued to gain teachers and followers, there was a new flowering of many schools of thought between 700 and 400 BCE that took much from the Vedas and Upanishads but developed the teachings in new directions. These new schools often rejected the caste system (still in place today in spite of these ancient rebellions) and thus gained massive followings among all classes and castes of India. Jainism was one of the first, but it was quickly developed and transformed itself into a religion that is possibly the most popular system of thought in history, Buddhism (Christianity, Islam and Science are contenders for first, second, third and fourth place depending on how and who one counts).
Some scholars today argue that Jainism and Buddhism helped develop Hinduism in response such that Hinduism looks as it does today (with an emphasis on total liberation AS WELL AS the goal of merit and reincarnation). However, Buddhism (which I have personally heard some Hindus describe as ‘Hinduism for Export’) flourished outside of India and thus became a much more international religion for dominating diverse empires, whereas Hinduism and Jainism largely remain confined to India even today (with significant minority populations in Canada, America, South Africa and many other places). Also, of course, Hindu gurus (teachers, sages) have become quite popular in giving religious insight to people in the ‘West’ in recent decades, particularly after the 1960s and the cultural revolution (it could be argued, even more popular than Buddhist or Jain teachers).
Jainism (650 BCE)
Jainism, or “Jain Dharma” (dharma means “teaching/law/order of the universe”) was and is practiced by Jains (not Jainists as some mistakenly say). There are currently 4 Million in India today, with many others in communities around the world including New York and Toronto. Jainism rose just before Buddhism, as Mahavira (650 BCE), the main teacher and founder of Jainism, lived just before the Buddha (550 BCE), though all of these dates are still in debate.
Jainism advocates two principles that are shared with Indian thought but credited to Jain innovation: Anekantavada, the multiplicity of reality or “non-one-ended-ness” and Syadvada, the hypothetical and imperfect nature of perspective and judgment. According to these two principles, all human beliefs and judgments are temporary and partial views of the greater whole.
Jains were also early proponents of the idea that the cosmos works in cycles: like the physical rising and setting of the sun, consciousness rises, then sets. People start to become awakened teachers and develop religion in the rising era, and people lose religion in the setting era. This is endless, like the cosmos. The cosmos becomes enlightened to its own self through us, and then loses consciousness of itself through us. Unfortunately, we currently live in an era of dimming religion and consciousness according to most Jain and Hindu teachers (the Hindus following the Jains in this picture).
Jain teachers and saints are known as Tirthankaras, “one who makes a ford” (cutting through water as order over chaos, as land becoming firmament in the chaotic waters). Mahavira (also Mahavir), the founder of Jainism, is understood by Jains to be the 24th Tirthankara. Like others of his time, Mahavira was a practitioner of austerities that are aimed at detachment from desire and multiplicity of the world: fasting, standing in jungles, going without food or luxuries for extended periods of time. Statues of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras show vines growing up their legs and bodies, as vines grow several feet in the jungle a day and so would grow up your body if you practice standing austerities for days at a time. Jains believe that these practices purify the self/soul/mind.
Here, we come to THE critical difference between Jainism and the other schools of Indian thought. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is ALWAYS NEGATIVE, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated.
Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of karma and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant.
The best way to understand the dual practice of avoiding karma AND shredding karma is the Metaphor of the Leaky Boat: You ride in a boat across water to a distant shore (Nirvana). Notice that water represents chaos and desire, and the land represents the firm and the enlightened. The boat is leaky, and water is pouring in. You have to BOTH plug the leaks (preventative principles like vegetarianism that prevent bad karma from getting IN you) and bail out the water that has already inside the boat (shredding karma, practicing austerities like fasting or standing in postures to get the karma you already have in this life OUT of you). Jains believe that it is only by this two-pronged strategy that the individual can be fully liberated and join back together with the cosmos and thus gain eternal life rather than round after round of rebirth.
Buddhism (550 BCE)
According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha, the “awakened one”, practiced austerities like Mahavira, but found that this way was not enough. Buddhism is famous for long periods of meditation, and this is quite like Jain austerities of standing in postures, but Buddhism suggests that it is through balance and not extremes that one will be liberated. The Buddha found Jain asceticism to be one sided and promoting of self hatred which is still attachment and duality.
According to the tradition and legend, Buddha’s father was the king of a kingdom in Northern India. When the Buddha was born, the king’s wise men told him that his son would be EITHER a great king OR a great holy man. The king did not want his son to be a holy man, but rather the next king, so to control his son he hid his son away in his palace and gave him all the luxuries in the world, hiding death and pain from him, surrounding him with dancing girls and servants and only healthy, happy, obedient people. At 29, the Buddha had become bored of this, and snuck out to see the city, taking along his trusted servant. In succession, the Buddha the Four Sights (an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man). When he saw the first three, his servant each time told him that this was unfortunately inevitable for everyone, but when he got to the fourth, the holy man (likely a Jain or proto-Jain), his servant told him that the monk was working on the first three (age, sickness, and death).
The Buddha was immediately envious of something more wonderful than he had ever possessed in the palace, and so he escaped into the jungle where he found sages practicing austerities. The Buddha did these Jain (or proto-Jain, depending on the scholar) austere practices in the jungle for six years, but he found that this brought no great enlightenment and in fact brought him self-hatred and self-denial (notice here that this is where Buddhism breaks away from Jainism as a direct criticism of Jain practice, taking much of Jainism with it in the process but seeking a middle way between denial and indulgence, attached to neither). The Buddha left the jungle disappointed. He decided to sit beneath a large tree, the Bodhi Tree (which one can go see in India today, a tree supposed to have been grown from the original in the original spot), and he vowed not to rise until he found complete and total truth or he would give up his life. After 49 days, at the age of 35, he realized complete enlightenment, Nirvana. This is defined in the tradition as the total extinction of greed (raga), hate (dosa), and delusion (moha), obtainable in this life by any being by overcoming duality and desire.
Major philosophical ideas of Buddhism
The Doctrine of the Middle Way: In all things, as the mind splits things into opposites and prefers one while rejecting the other, one should always practice moderation between the extremes. As a criticism of Jainism, this means that one should balance pain and pleasure, being attached to neither, rather than chase pain and difficulty to liberate the self. The Buddha found Jain practice to be immoderate: too much de-emphasis of self is attachment to self hate, not detachment from particular things (as self-hate is particular and bound up with particular things just as much as self-love or pride is). One must love and hate the self, bringing the two together, to find detachment from many and complete identity in the One, the All.
Doctrine of Impermanence: The Buddha taught that all things are impermanent. Thus, everything is constantly evolving, never the same twice. Only the great All is eternal, the One to which we all belong, but as soon as you say this it becomes a conception, a particular being separated from other particular beings, and then is simply a temporary being in your mind.
Codependent Arising (Pratityasamutpada): Another major teaching of Buddhism is codependent arising of all phenomena. While this is a hard thing to grasp or discuss, it means that all things are themselves in so far as they are connected to every other thing. Opposites, such as heat and cold or self and other, do not anchor things in themselves or give things their true meaning, but rather all things exist dependent on all other things. While this may frustrate some, and they would say ‘this tells me nothing’, Buddhists believe that all things are impermanent, and so you should not expect to have final knowledge of any particular thing. Instead, you must investigate each thing you want to describe as best as you can, connected to the things to which you want to connect it.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
No Class or Club on Friday Feb 18th or Monday Feb 21
Hey everybody (particularly students in Social & Political Philosophy, students in Ethics and Philosophy club members),
There will be no Ethics class or Philosophy Club on Friday Feb 18th and there will be no Social & Political Philosophy class on Monday Feb 21st for President's day weekend.
Much happiness,
Eric
There will be no Ethics class or Philosophy Club on Friday Feb 18th and there will be no Social & Political Philosophy class on Monday Feb 21st for President's day weekend.
Much happiness,
Eric
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Machiavelli & Power
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527 CE) is possibly one of the most misunderstood political philosophers in history. The word Machiavellian was an English word before there was an English translation of The Prince, his most famous work. While he does advocate holding power by ruthless brutality and deception in The Prince, some scholars point out that his other works argue for the very opposite of ruthless dictatorship and Machiavelli held a position in a republic like those he prized. It is still a debate as to whether Machiavelli meant The Prince to be taken as a joke and unmasking of the realities of power or whether he meant it as a work of political realism that is brutally honest about how power must be held. Rousseau, who we will soon study, believed The Prince to be a satire of the powerful Medici family. The Italian Communist Gramsci, who we will study in the second half of the class, believed that Machiavelli was serious but was explaining to the poor how politics work and not the rich who already understand how politics work. Either way, joke or treatise, it is a classic read by many thinkers and leaders we will study in this class because of its insightful descriptions of the reality and brutality of politics.
Machiavelli was not known for his political writings during his lifetime, and The Prince was published years after his death. He was a politician, and ambassador and a writer. While he was alive he was famous for his comic plays (another piece of evidence that may indicate The Prince is a farce). It was only after his death and the infamy of The Prince that he became primarily identified with this text and the word Machiavellian became a new word in several languages.
His political career flourished in the years of the republic that ruled the city of Florence between 1494 and 1512 when the Medici family was briefly out of power. At the time, there was no unified Italy. In fact, many living in Italy at the time would have no idea what Italy was. In addition, none of the great Renaissance artists or thinkers would have heard of the Renaissance, as it is a French word applied by a French historian to the period two hundred years later. Four city states, Florence, Venice, Milan and Naples, were warring powers and were involved against each other with the Catholic Church and the kings of France and Spain. The Medici family were the great patrons of the painters, sculptors and philosophers of the Renaissance and ruled Florence before and after the brief republic. The republic was ruled by nine citizens elected by drawing lots every two months. Citizenship was not common, however, as Machiavelli himself was well off but not high enough in the ranks to have citizenship himself. Nonetheless, he held powerful positions in the republic as chancellor, ambassador to France and Spain, and head of the military. This, and the time of warring states (like China) set the backdrop for The Prince. After the Medici family regained control of Florence and abolished the republic, Machiavelli was accused of conspiracy and tortured. After he was found innocent and released, he withdrew into his estate and spent his time writing the comedies and political works that made him famous in his life and infamous after his death.
Speaking of comedy, here is a wonderfully Machiavellian joke before diving into The Prince.
Two young kids are talking about their families.
“My father is a politician”, says one.
“Really? Honest?”, asks the other.
“No, the regular kind”, replies the first.
The Prince
Machiavelli dedicated his most famous work to Lorenzo de Medici, the great patron of Renaissance art and Neo-Platonism. Was this book making fun of the terrible power of the Medici, or was it a practical guide for maintaining public good in times of great war and terror? Scholars still debate. Either way, the work was privately circulated by Machiavelli amongst his friends and was only published years after his death.
The Prince focuses on “new princes”, leaders who come to power by rising up through the ranks and who do not receive power from a noble lineage. Machiavelli provides several examples from ancient times and his own time of such rulers. When a new ruler comes into power they must stabilize and consolidate their power to maintain it and the security of the public they rule. The main argument of the work is that one should cultivate both love and fear as a ruler, and one must be prepared to act with complete brutality and hypocritical deception. This is done out of necessity at inevitable times when the ruler and ruled are threatened. Like Hobbes, who was influenced by Machiavelli and we will study next time, he argues that a strong king is necessary in the brutal world and so evil is sometimes justified.
Unlike Plato & Aristotle, who were a great influence on Machiavelli as well as most Renaissance thinkers, Machiavelli does not believe in constructing an ideal city as a model and does not believe it to be good to rule people in terms of an ideal. Like Nietzsche, who we will study later and who was influenced by Machiavelli, he was a brute realist who believed in theorizing about how people and power is and not how things ought to be. He believed that people are naturally ambitious and warlike, so we must prepare for this and balance the bad in human nature with the good. Also like Nietzsche, Machiavelli considered religion to be a means of control and that a ruler should not be overly religious or pious because it will make them unable to be brutal when they must be. He does suggest, however, that it is in the ruler’s interests to make the ruled people as religious as possible, and I suggest that this equally applies to idealizing the objectivity of the sciences and the freedom and good will of democracies.
Like John Stuart Mill, who we will study soon, Machiavelli can be called a pragmatist who considers the true to be the useful and practical, not the perfect or immutable. Machiavelli, like Mill, is associated with the principle “the ends justify the means”. Like Mill, Machiavelli argues that sometimes this can result in harm, but if we consider the long view and the social view it is in the interest of everyone overall. Machiavelli argues that if a state is too nice, it will be overrun by conquerors and there will be terrible times for everyone. It is bad to routinely abuse people as this will lead to ruin, but brutality must be used occasionally or the state will be equally ruined. A good ruler must know how and when to be brutal as life is tough and some situations require violence or deception (like Plato suggested last week in the noble lie of The Republic).
Machiavelli argues that one should befriend weak rivals but crush strong ones. He writes that one should wipe out the entire family of those one crushes and completely destroy the lands of those one conquers such that one does not have to fear revenge or counter-attack. Consider the warring families of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as well as modern gang warfare (such as the Black Widow, Griselda Blanca, who murdered entire families along with the children as one of the early cocaine kingpins of Miami in the early 80s).
One should not be brutal casually or needlessly, but if you have to be brutal then you have to go whole hog and ensure that your enemy will not be able to retaliate. When one has to be brutal, one should be brutal all at once such that it does not have to be a daily routine for maintaining authority. Otherwise, he writes, one must “always keep a knife in hand”. In other words, treat people the way you want to be treated unless you absolutely have to kill them and their entire family. He writes that it is best to delegate this task to someone else in the administration such that the ruler can be feared but also appear benevolent and blameless to the greatest extent possible. This was classic politics of middle age Europe, where kings would rely on particular noble houses to commit great atrocities and then condemn them publicly long after agreeing on exchange of favors in private.
Machiavelli famously writes that it is best to be both loved and feared, but if one has to choose between the two one should be feared. It is best to appear liberal to most of the people most of the time but be ruthlessly authoritarian to the individual who steps out of line. One should seek the safety of being feared, but avoid being despised and hated. One should be a patron of the arts, of festivals and spectacles, but prepare for trouble. One should try to keep one’s hands off the property and women of others, but be ready for total war. He refers to the myth of Achilles being nursed by the centaur Chiron of Greek mythology to illustrate how one must learn to be both human and animal to be, like Achilles, a great leader.
Influence and Legacy of The Prince and Machiavelli
The Pope put The Prince on the banned index in 1559, but it spread aided by the new development of the printing press. Block printing had arrived in Europe from China, where it was first used to print Buddhist texts. Interestingly, “humanist” thinkers like Erasmus who resisted Catholic authority equally despised the book. Catholics and Protestant kings read The Prince, while the Catholic kings condemned the work as Protestant rebellion and the Protestant kings condemned them as Catholic authoritarianism. One critic accused Machiavelli of being an atheist while simultaneously calling The Prince “the Koran of the courtiers”.
Hobbes, who we will study next time, was influenced by The Prince and came to similar conclusions about the power of the sovereign. Locke, who we will cover soon and who influenced the American founding fathers on the issue of rights, was influenced by the political writings of Machiavelli.
Hitler claimed he read Machiavelli’s Prince frequently in bed before falling asleep. Mussolini was fond of quoting the book, as is the Italian mafia don John Gotti. Gramsci, the communist opponent to the fascist Mussolini and jailed when Mussolini rose to power, considered The Prince to be a brilliant book that teaches everyone how power operates.
The founders of the American Republic and authors of the Constitution such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison all made use of Machiavelli’s idea of checks and balances between powers as a good way of securing a good republic.
As a final thought, Machiavelli did write in his other political works that the life of the king was a sad life and that the common person was much happier not to have to engage in necessary violence and lies. Perhaps unnecessary violence and lies are much more fun.
Machiavelli was not known for his political writings during his lifetime, and The Prince was published years after his death. He was a politician, and ambassador and a writer. While he was alive he was famous for his comic plays (another piece of evidence that may indicate The Prince is a farce). It was only after his death and the infamy of The Prince that he became primarily identified with this text and the word Machiavellian became a new word in several languages.
His political career flourished in the years of the republic that ruled the city of Florence between 1494 and 1512 when the Medici family was briefly out of power. At the time, there was no unified Italy. In fact, many living in Italy at the time would have no idea what Italy was. In addition, none of the great Renaissance artists or thinkers would have heard of the Renaissance, as it is a French word applied by a French historian to the period two hundred years later. Four city states, Florence, Venice, Milan and Naples, were warring powers and were involved against each other with the Catholic Church and the kings of France and Spain. The Medici family were the great patrons of the painters, sculptors and philosophers of the Renaissance and ruled Florence before and after the brief republic. The republic was ruled by nine citizens elected by drawing lots every two months. Citizenship was not common, however, as Machiavelli himself was well off but not high enough in the ranks to have citizenship himself. Nonetheless, he held powerful positions in the republic as chancellor, ambassador to France and Spain, and head of the military. This, and the time of warring states (like China) set the backdrop for The Prince. After the Medici family regained control of Florence and abolished the republic, Machiavelli was accused of conspiracy and tortured. After he was found innocent and released, he withdrew into his estate and spent his time writing the comedies and political works that made him famous in his life and infamous after his death.
Speaking of comedy, here is a wonderfully Machiavellian joke before diving into The Prince.
Two young kids are talking about their families.
“My father is a politician”, says one.
“Really? Honest?”, asks the other.
“No, the regular kind”, replies the first.
The Prince
Machiavelli dedicated his most famous work to Lorenzo de Medici, the great patron of Renaissance art and Neo-Platonism. Was this book making fun of the terrible power of the Medici, or was it a practical guide for maintaining public good in times of great war and terror? Scholars still debate. Either way, the work was privately circulated by Machiavelli amongst his friends and was only published years after his death.
The Prince focuses on “new princes”, leaders who come to power by rising up through the ranks and who do not receive power from a noble lineage. Machiavelli provides several examples from ancient times and his own time of such rulers. When a new ruler comes into power they must stabilize and consolidate their power to maintain it and the security of the public they rule. The main argument of the work is that one should cultivate both love and fear as a ruler, and one must be prepared to act with complete brutality and hypocritical deception. This is done out of necessity at inevitable times when the ruler and ruled are threatened. Like Hobbes, who was influenced by Machiavelli and we will study next time, he argues that a strong king is necessary in the brutal world and so evil is sometimes justified.
Unlike Plato & Aristotle, who were a great influence on Machiavelli as well as most Renaissance thinkers, Machiavelli does not believe in constructing an ideal city as a model and does not believe it to be good to rule people in terms of an ideal. Like Nietzsche, who we will study later and who was influenced by Machiavelli, he was a brute realist who believed in theorizing about how people and power is and not how things ought to be. He believed that people are naturally ambitious and warlike, so we must prepare for this and balance the bad in human nature with the good. Also like Nietzsche, Machiavelli considered religion to be a means of control and that a ruler should not be overly religious or pious because it will make them unable to be brutal when they must be. He does suggest, however, that it is in the ruler’s interests to make the ruled people as religious as possible, and I suggest that this equally applies to idealizing the objectivity of the sciences and the freedom and good will of democracies.
Like John Stuart Mill, who we will study soon, Machiavelli can be called a pragmatist who considers the true to be the useful and practical, not the perfect or immutable. Machiavelli, like Mill, is associated with the principle “the ends justify the means”. Like Mill, Machiavelli argues that sometimes this can result in harm, but if we consider the long view and the social view it is in the interest of everyone overall. Machiavelli argues that if a state is too nice, it will be overrun by conquerors and there will be terrible times for everyone. It is bad to routinely abuse people as this will lead to ruin, but brutality must be used occasionally or the state will be equally ruined. A good ruler must know how and when to be brutal as life is tough and some situations require violence or deception (like Plato suggested last week in the noble lie of The Republic).
Machiavelli argues that one should befriend weak rivals but crush strong ones. He writes that one should wipe out the entire family of those one crushes and completely destroy the lands of those one conquers such that one does not have to fear revenge or counter-attack. Consider the warring families of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as well as modern gang warfare (such as the Black Widow, Griselda Blanca, who murdered entire families along with the children as one of the early cocaine kingpins of Miami in the early 80s).
One should not be brutal casually or needlessly, but if you have to be brutal then you have to go whole hog and ensure that your enemy will not be able to retaliate. When one has to be brutal, one should be brutal all at once such that it does not have to be a daily routine for maintaining authority. Otherwise, he writes, one must “always keep a knife in hand”. In other words, treat people the way you want to be treated unless you absolutely have to kill them and their entire family. He writes that it is best to delegate this task to someone else in the administration such that the ruler can be feared but also appear benevolent and blameless to the greatest extent possible. This was classic politics of middle age Europe, where kings would rely on particular noble houses to commit great atrocities and then condemn them publicly long after agreeing on exchange of favors in private.
Machiavelli famously writes that it is best to be both loved and feared, but if one has to choose between the two one should be feared. It is best to appear liberal to most of the people most of the time but be ruthlessly authoritarian to the individual who steps out of line. One should seek the safety of being feared, but avoid being despised and hated. One should be a patron of the arts, of festivals and spectacles, but prepare for trouble. One should try to keep one’s hands off the property and women of others, but be ready for total war. He refers to the myth of Achilles being nursed by the centaur Chiron of Greek mythology to illustrate how one must learn to be both human and animal to be, like Achilles, a great leader.
Influence and Legacy of The Prince and Machiavelli
The Pope put The Prince on the banned index in 1559, but it spread aided by the new development of the printing press. Block printing had arrived in Europe from China, where it was first used to print Buddhist texts. Interestingly, “humanist” thinkers like Erasmus who resisted Catholic authority equally despised the book. Catholics and Protestant kings read The Prince, while the Catholic kings condemned the work as Protestant rebellion and the Protestant kings condemned them as Catholic authoritarianism. One critic accused Machiavelli of being an atheist while simultaneously calling The Prince “the Koran of the courtiers”.
Hobbes, who we will study next time, was influenced by The Prince and came to similar conclusions about the power of the sovereign. Locke, who we will cover soon and who influenced the American founding fathers on the issue of rights, was influenced by the political writings of Machiavelli.
Hitler claimed he read Machiavelli’s Prince frequently in bed before falling asleep. Mussolini was fond of quoting the book, as is the Italian mafia don John Gotti. Gramsci, the communist opponent to the fascist Mussolini and jailed when Mussolini rose to power, considered The Prince to be a brilliant book that teaches everyone how power operates.
The founders of the American Republic and authors of the Constitution such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison all made use of Machiavelli’s idea of checks and balances between powers as a good way of securing a good republic.
As a final thought, Machiavelli did write in his other political works that the life of the king was a sad life and that the common person was much happier not to have to engage in necessary violence and lies. Perhaps unnecessary violence and lies are much more fun.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Ethics: Mill & Utilitarianism
The last class focused on ethical concepts that focus on the beginning or cause of an action rather than the end or consequence (with the possible exception of balance, which suggests a medium of the two). Today, we focus on consequentialism and its foremost school, Utilitarianism. Thus, I had you read the first two chapters of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In this work, Mill argues that we should always look at our actions and ask if the consequences are ethical (do good/make people happy and reduce harm/pain). He specifically mentions Kant as wrong about principle and mentions virtue ethics as well, claiming that these two conceptions ignore how we use principle and virtue for happiness and reduction of harm by taking each as a good in itself out of context.
Mill notes: if you call it Utilitarianism, people think it is dry and boring.
If you call it Principle of Happiness or Pleasure first, people think its decadent.
This is why people called Epicurus decadent.
Brief Tradition of Consequentialism
(included in Mill’s own text)
Epicurus (340-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who believed that happiness was the most important thing, and all virtues, purposes and ends are subordinate to it. From him we get the word ‘Epicurean’ as in ‘Gourmet’, one who appreciates the finer more pleasant tastes of things. As Mill notes, Epicurus was attacked as a glutton in his time, but he actually had a taste for thought, civilization, and what Mill calls the ‘higher virtues’, mental pleasures in giving to others rather than physical selfish pleasures of drinking every night. Mill argues that Epicurus took the long view just as he did, so his opponents are wrong to call happy principle people “swine”.
Jeremy Bentham (1750-1830 CE)
The first to come up with Utilitarianism, but Mill gave it the name.
Bentham believed in max happiness, while Mill complimented this with min pain.
Bentham also believed that simple and common pleasures are just as good as sophisticated, saying the common plays are just as good as fine opera.
Mill rejected this, believing that fine society was of a higher happiness than common culture, as mental pleasure is superior to physical, as selfless pleasures (giving to others) makes one happier than selfish pleasures (receiving from others).
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE)
Born in London, Mill was influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought.
His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text talking about how evil it was to fall into it rather than believe in the principle as good, and he added the name and developed the thinking, becoming its famous spokesman.
Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics.
His liberal social thought is his most famous. He argued for equal rights for all, the end to the subjugation of women and slavery.
Mill’s text: Utilitarianism
Mill’s harm principle as the principle to end principles, putting all focus on harmful consequences. This is not simply ease or expediency in limited personal vision, but the long view over time of what makes people happy and saves them from pain.
Notice: Mill completely agrees with Kant, we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text. For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.
Both come up with a supreme principle.
Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action.
Kant says: Always follow principle, and you will likely be happy.
Mill says: Always follow happiness (self and others), and you will likely be principled.
Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act). Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.
We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham says: Always act to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize the negative (at least, this is what scholars concur in reading his writings and comparing them to Bentham’s today). Thus, we see the whole principle is ‘max happy and min pain’, but one can lean either way on it. There are times when maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority over the minority, which Mill speaks about vs. Bentham), and there are times when minimum pain hurts maximum happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).
Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.
Attacks on Utilitarianism:
Mill addresses many of these directly in the text.
Interesting Paradox/Problem for Utilitarianism: the Good of the Bad as Example
Mill notes this, as do other modern writers on Utilitarianism noting as Mill does that this is a common attack against the Utilitarian principle as ethical conception/system.
COMPARE: PBS documentaries all the time on slavery and the US overcoming slavery as freedom and our view as Americans of the type of place South Africa is.
COMPARE: Prosecuting Attorney arguing that someone is a habitual criminal so latest normal behavior is prime for relapse vs. Defense Attorney pointing at the same evidence as reform and pulling one’s life together as normal from bad upbringing and environment.
Dennett uses three mile island as ex: this caused good nuclear standards to follow, so we could say as a utilitarian that the catastrophe was just as good as people simply coming up with the standards without the disaster.
Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad.
The attack on Utilitarianism says that it is prone to confusing bad with good especially compared to systems of principles or rights that are given, not based on their consequences
Marx attacks Utilitarianism with a common argument today: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us happy? Yes: the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. Obviously, it is the task master or overseer and not the worker who gets to say who is useful in their place and how happy the system is overall.
Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized. Marx and us could criticize him for this short sightedness.
HOWEVER, Mill was a champion against the enslavement of Black people and the second class status of women. He was an early champion of both, so this is mixed.
He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love:
“It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.”
Defense against anti-environment challenge:
Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment.
More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness. We will read on wilderness for environmental week. This poses us an interesting question: when utilitarianism asks us to take the long view, how long a view can we take? If we pollute the earth and ignore it for hundreds of years, our long view can still be too short.
Mill notes: if you call it Utilitarianism, people think it is dry and boring.
If you call it Principle of Happiness or Pleasure first, people think its decadent.
This is why people called Epicurus decadent.
Brief Tradition of Consequentialism
(included in Mill’s own text)
Epicurus (340-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who believed that happiness was the most important thing, and all virtues, purposes and ends are subordinate to it. From him we get the word ‘Epicurean’ as in ‘Gourmet’, one who appreciates the finer more pleasant tastes of things. As Mill notes, Epicurus was attacked as a glutton in his time, but he actually had a taste for thought, civilization, and what Mill calls the ‘higher virtues’, mental pleasures in giving to others rather than physical selfish pleasures of drinking every night. Mill argues that Epicurus took the long view just as he did, so his opponents are wrong to call happy principle people “swine”.
Jeremy Bentham (1750-1830 CE)
The first to come up with Utilitarianism, but Mill gave it the name.
Bentham believed in max happiness, while Mill complimented this with min pain.
Bentham also believed that simple and common pleasures are just as good as sophisticated, saying the common plays are just as good as fine opera.
Mill rejected this, believing that fine society was of a higher happiness than common culture, as mental pleasure is superior to physical, as selfless pleasures (giving to others) makes one happier than selfish pleasures (receiving from others).
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE)
Born in London, Mill was influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought.
His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text talking about how evil it was to fall into it rather than believe in the principle as good, and he added the name and developed the thinking, becoming its famous spokesman.
Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics.
His liberal social thought is his most famous. He argued for equal rights for all, the end to the subjugation of women and slavery.
Mill’s text: Utilitarianism
Mill’s harm principle as the principle to end principles, putting all focus on harmful consequences. This is not simply ease or expediency in limited personal vision, but the long view over time of what makes people happy and saves them from pain.
Notice: Mill completely agrees with Kant, we need a test for principles and an overall principle to serve as this text. For Kant, this test is ‘can it always be followed?’, while for Mill the test is ‘does following the principle make people happy as a consequence?’.
Both come up with a supreme principle.
Thus, for Kant, one should never lie because the principle is most important as beginning or all good action, while for Mill, one should never lie as long as this has good consequences because this is the most important as end of all good action.
Kant says: Always follow principle, and you will likely be happy.
Mill says: Always follow happiness (self and others), and you will likely be principled.
Both also come up with a pure ‘good in itself’: Kant’s is intention (the good-in-itself beginning of an act) and Mill’s is happiness (the good-in-itself end of an act). Both say that it is impossible to argue for this good-in-itself, but it simply shows itself in us.
We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham says: Always act to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize the negative (at least, this is what scholars concur in reading his writings and comparing them to Bentham’s today). Thus, we see the whole principle is ‘max happy and min pain’, but one can lean either way on it. There are times when maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority over the minority, which Mill speaks about vs. Bentham), and there are times when minimum pain hurts maximum happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).
Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but we are evolving in a positive direction slowly and we should stick to the Utilitarian view even when there are problems if we truly (and he thinks we do) desire good consequences basically as human beings.
Attacks on Utilitarianism:
Mill addresses many of these directly in the text.
Interesting Paradox/Problem for Utilitarianism: the Good of the Bad as Example
Mill notes this, as do other modern writers on Utilitarianism noting as Mill does that this is a common attack against the Utilitarian principle as ethical conception/system.
COMPARE: PBS documentaries all the time on slavery and the US overcoming slavery as freedom and our view as Americans of the type of place South Africa is.
COMPARE: Prosecuting Attorney arguing that someone is a habitual criminal so latest normal behavior is prime for relapse vs. Defense Attorney pointing at the same evidence as reform and pulling one’s life together as normal from bad upbringing and environment.
Dennett uses three mile island as ex: this caused good nuclear standards to follow, so we could say as a utilitarian that the catastrophe was just as good as people simply coming up with the standards without the disaster.
Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad.
The attack on Utilitarianism says that it is prone to confusing bad with good especially compared to systems of principles or rights that are given, not based on their consequences
Marx attacks Utilitarianism with a common argument today: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us happy? Yes: the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. Obviously, it is the task master or overseer and not the worker who gets to say who is useful in their place and how happy the system is overall.
Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized. Marx and us could criticize him for this short sightedness.
HOWEVER, Mill was a champion against the enslavement of Black people and the second class status of women. He was an early champion of both, so this is mixed.
He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love:
“It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.”
Defense against anti-environment challenge:
Many could say that ‘use’ and ‘happy’ can easily lead to how we abuse the environment.
More relevant today, Mill loved deep forests and argued that wilderness was necessary in the long view of use and happiness. We will read on wilderness for environmental week. This poses us an interesting question: when utilitarianism asks us to take the long view, how long a view can we take? If we pollute the earth and ignore it for hundreds of years, our long view can still be too short.
Intro Philosophy: City State Priests and Egyptian Wisdom
City-State Priests and Specialized Knowledge
As human beings progressed and traded devices and thinking between groups, they gathered into larger groups and settled into cities. Often the city was the state (hence, “city-state”), and the city would be the single center of a region it controlled. Then, many nations with a city each would conquer each other to make the earliest empires (consider Summer was conquered by Babylon, Babylon by Assyria, Assyria by Persia). We can see that as many tribes joined together to create city states the number of experts and types of experts multiplied. The shamans of the tribe became many types of priests and scribes in many temples. This means that experts became specialized. We can see that this pattern continued until the present time. Some priests would specialize in types of math used to chart the stars, others would specialize in healing people and animals. The many hats (or masks, rather) of the shaman became the many types of priests and scribes who recorded knowledge and made new discoveries.
Cities were centers of trade, such that not only was the city a site for many groups to converge and form a new culture but this culture also traded with other convergent cultures. Many are surprised to learn that ancient Sumer and Egypt traded with India hundreds of years before the Greeks and Israel arose. From the earliest times, culture, trade and thought have been international.
Consider the Assyrians. “Assyrian” did not name one ethnicity but rather a citizen of Assyria. Many people of different ethnicities called themselves Assyrians just as many people call themselves Americans. Assyria invented all of the siege weapons that were used in feudal Europe, but the Assyrians conquered others mostly by trade and diplomacy. Princes would be sent to be educated in Assyria, the center of knowledge in its day, and then the Assyrians would make contracts with the prince’s people to put them on the throne to maintain political control. Just like today (read Confessions of an Economic Hitman), the primary method of conquest is economic and military solutions are called for only when the economic methods have failed.
Egyptian Wisdom
Before considering passages of the Egyptian wisdom texts, I want to address two common misconceptions about the Egyptians.
First, the Egyptians are rarely portrayed as an African people but rather museums and text books portray them as a semi-European/Asian people who are quite light in skin color. When we consider that the Egyptians painted all of their statues and carvings (as did the Greeks), and they always painted men as dark red and women as yellow, as well as having black braided hair (Herodotus the Greek historian describes the “wooly” hair of the Egyptians) it seems that the Egyptians were an African people and we are only slowly growing to recognize this. It is a big debate between Eurocentric and Afrocentric scholars today.
Second, another common misconception of the Egyptians is that they were a slave-driving, brutal people who were all about authority. This is then contrasted with the Greeks, who are considered to be wise and questioning and the birth of civilized politics. In fact, the Egyptians treated foreigners, slaves and women considerably better than the Greeks, and the pyramids were built not by slaves but by conscripted labor. Recently tombs for workers have been discovered, confirming what Egyptologists have thought for several decades. This misconception comes largely from the Bible and movies like the Ten Commandments.
The Egyptians had many types of texts and scribes, including fictional comedies and tragedies, lists of minerals and plants, essays on medicine, ethics and politics, and important to this class, wisdom literature. The Egyptian wisdom proverbs we read come from this last class of Egyptian texts.
As many tribes converged to live in city states, people began to see more of people than they had before. Suddenly, obvious truths became questionable. Rather than be unquestioning of authority, the Egyptians had more variety of authorities and questioning of authority than most cultures before them. We can see in the wisdom proverbs the questioning of authority, nobility, knowledge, teachers, prediction, wealth, luxury, punishment, and other fundamental aspects of civilization. The Egyptians were not just great builders and rulers, but also wisdom seekers and questioners.
One last concept that appears in the texts is the “heart guided individual”. The heart was thought to be the physical and mental center of the human individual. As Egyptian society developed, increasingly being “guided by the king” was replaced with being “guided by the heart”. The heart is the essence of the human and the intention within the action. Repeatedly in the text, individuals are called to listen to their heart rather than build luxury and maintain authority. These are issues that we all struggle with to this day, and so we can learn much about early human experience by reading these proverbs.
Next time, we will study the readings on India and look into its thought and thinkers.
As human beings progressed and traded devices and thinking between groups, they gathered into larger groups and settled into cities. Often the city was the state (hence, “city-state”), and the city would be the single center of a region it controlled. Then, many nations with a city each would conquer each other to make the earliest empires (consider Summer was conquered by Babylon, Babylon by Assyria, Assyria by Persia). We can see that as many tribes joined together to create city states the number of experts and types of experts multiplied. The shamans of the tribe became many types of priests and scribes in many temples. This means that experts became specialized. We can see that this pattern continued until the present time. Some priests would specialize in types of math used to chart the stars, others would specialize in healing people and animals. The many hats (or masks, rather) of the shaman became the many types of priests and scribes who recorded knowledge and made new discoveries.
Cities were centers of trade, such that not only was the city a site for many groups to converge and form a new culture but this culture also traded with other convergent cultures. Many are surprised to learn that ancient Sumer and Egypt traded with India hundreds of years before the Greeks and Israel arose. From the earliest times, culture, trade and thought have been international.
Consider the Assyrians. “Assyrian” did not name one ethnicity but rather a citizen of Assyria. Many people of different ethnicities called themselves Assyrians just as many people call themselves Americans. Assyria invented all of the siege weapons that were used in feudal Europe, but the Assyrians conquered others mostly by trade and diplomacy. Princes would be sent to be educated in Assyria, the center of knowledge in its day, and then the Assyrians would make contracts with the prince’s people to put them on the throne to maintain political control. Just like today (read Confessions of an Economic Hitman), the primary method of conquest is economic and military solutions are called for only when the economic methods have failed.
Egyptian Wisdom
Before considering passages of the Egyptian wisdom texts, I want to address two common misconceptions about the Egyptians.
First, the Egyptians are rarely portrayed as an African people but rather museums and text books portray them as a semi-European/Asian people who are quite light in skin color. When we consider that the Egyptians painted all of their statues and carvings (as did the Greeks), and they always painted men as dark red and women as yellow, as well as having black braided hair (Herodotus the Greek historian describes the “wooly” hair of the Egyptians) it seems that the Egyptians were an African people and we are only slowly growing to recognize this. It is a big debate between Eurocentric and Afrocentric scholars today.
Second, another common misconception of the Egyptians is that they were a slave-driving, brutal people who were all about authority. This is then contrasted with the Greeks, who are considered to be wise and questioning and the birth of civilized politics. In fact, the Egyptians treated foreigners, slaves and women considerably better than the Greeks, and the pyramids were built not by slaves but by conscripted labor. Recently tombs for workers have been discovered, confirming what Egyptologists have thought for several decades. This misconception comes largely from the Bible and movies like the Ten Commandments.
The Egyptians had many types of texts and scribes, including fictional comedies and tragedies, lists of minerals and plants, essays on medicine, ethics and politics, and important to this class, wisdom literature. The Egyptian wisdom proverbs we read come from this last class of Egyptian texts.
As many tribes converged to live in city states, people began to see more of people than they had before. Suddenly, obvious truths became questionable. Rather than be unquestioning of authority, the Egyptians had more variety of authorities and questioning of authority than most cultures before them. We can see in the wisdom proverbs the questioning of authority, nobility, knowledge, teachers, prediction, wealth, luxury, punishment, and other fundamental aspects of civilization. The Egyptians were not just great builders and rulers, but also wisdom seekers and questioners.
One last concept that appears in the texts is the “heart guided individual”. The heart was thought to be the physical and mental center of the human individual. As Egyptian society developed, increasingly being “guided by the king” was replaced with being “guided by the heart”. The heart is the essence of the human and the intention within the action. Repeatedly in the text, individuals are called to listen to their heart rather than build luxury and maintain authority. These are issues that we all struggle with to this day, and so we can learn much about early human experience by reading these proverbs.
Next time, we will study the readings on India and look into its thought and thinkers.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Plato & Aristotle, Caste & Class
Lecture on Plato & Aristotle, Caste & Class
Plato (427-347 BCE) & The Republic
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or “Broad” because he had a wide figure. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide “breadth” of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court (remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time).
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means “porch”, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world knowledge), when in fact the Library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul (3 layers in their places). Thus, the Good is proper order of the elements (perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology). The Timaeus, which is supposed to be the discussion the day after the Republic, has a student of Socrates named Timaeus lecture on the cosmos, showing Plato’s particular views on cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city. One should order the self and order the city the way the cosmos are ordered. Both are supposed to have been written about 360 BCE.
As the Republic opens, Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice at a social gathering (read: wine party). Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’. Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. Remember the politics of the time- Many tyrants came and fell, one by one.
Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a caste system, with a three-fold division. This division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being.
Head is fire/reason/rulers,
Heart/chest is air/spirit/police,
Hands/Stomach is earth/desire/workers.
The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls. Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil to be ordered from below.
Socrates argues (in reading) that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. He argues that we will lie to the people and tell them a Phoenician story, which is that the classes are based on metals. The police and philosophers are made of silver and gold, so they are suited to be put above the others.(Why lie? Because the common will not understand philosophy, Plato’s system…this corresponds to the cave, where most will never leave, and need puppets to see anything).
All is sacrificed for the common good: no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart.
Socrates argues (and the interlocutors naively agree as simple yes men) that if they separate out the police and educate them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole. The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it: elevating priests as a class- he also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order. The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire.
The Allegory/Analogy/Story of the Cave describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher/king beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority.
Everyone is chained in a cave, watching shadows of puppets/models carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight. The seeker first sees real things outside of the cave, and realizes that the puppet/models were just copies of the real things. Then the seeker can get adjusted and see that the sun is the cause of all these things, and that the world of the cave is a poor copy of the world outside the cave. This is the realization of the forms and then the all/light/reason/consciousness that produces the forms which are copied in the cave below. This is opinion to belief (cave) to knowledge to reason (outside). Notice that the city is a device for creating philosophers who comprehend the true forms of things for the benefit of all below, and that the body is similarly a device for creating thought in the head for the benefit of the body below.
As a final thought, note that Plato’s republic is nothing like what we consider a republic to be today. People rise based on intelligence and merit, not by voting. Plato was quite opposed to having the people aka “the mob” elect leaders based on popularity. Like Confucius, Plato believed that a system of dictatorship downwards based on merit and achievement was best.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) & The Politics
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Aristotle argues that the ruler/ruled pairing is natural to society and best for preservation. He identifies the ruler with the head and male, and the ruled with the body and female. He says that the subjugation of the woman and slave is in everyone’s best and natural interests. Because a thing is best if it serves one purpose, its natural purpose, there are some who naturally should rule and others who naturally should be ruled. The man rules the wife and children, and the king rules the country. When he says that non-Greeks are natural slaves, keep in mind he had the future Europeans to the North and West in mind far more than the Persians and Egyptians, who he openly admired. He also says that we imagine the gods to have a king and live in similar ways to human beings. Note that he is not arguing that the gods are imaginary (Aristotle was a polytheist) but he is critical, as were many of the great Greek philosophers) of the gods having human form or human passions. Later in this section he says that gods are by nature entirely self-sufficient as they are immortal and do not need to eat.
He says that several people (in ruler/ruled pairings) make up the village, and several villages make up the state. This allows people to do far more than survive. It allows people to live the good life and maximize the following of their natural purposes. They can be self-sufficient as a whole. He famously says, “man is by nature a political animal”. This does not mean that people collect into villages and cities to be happy, but rather that they collect because it is natural and best for them to do so to be what they are. Happiness is not the purpose of human life for Aristotle. Rather, truth (figuring out the way things are) is the purpose of human life and the city as a whole.
Aristotle believes that humans alone have speech and therefore are the only animal that can know truth and justice. Elsewhere he argues that this is because humans (more specifically, the males of the superior peoples) have the highest level of mind/soul and other animals (including women and slaves) do not possess this potential/faculty. The human alone can see that the whole is more than the part, and so the city matters more than the village, the village matters more than the family, and the family matters more than the individual.
In book 2, Aristotle says we must examine the constitutions of many sorts of states to see which one is the most just. Note that when Aristotle says “constitution” he is not referring to a document but to the structure or form of the state. The name of the American document follows this language, but we think of a document today when we hear the word, unlike Aristotle who did not live in a time when societies were based on rule by document. British Conservatives like Burke argued that America would fail if it did not have a king because a state could not be ruled by a piece of paper.
Aristotle criticizes his teacher Plato for arguing that property and family should be held in common. As the translator correctly points out, Plato only suggests this for the guardians and philosophers, not necessarily for the common people (though he does not proscribe it for them either). He argues that people should not share property or family in common. Very similar to the Confucians such as Mencius arguing against the Moists and universal love, Aristotle argues that if we shared everything and everyone in common people would not care about anything in particular and this would lead to the ruin of the state, and that we see people naturally caring about their own family and possessions than they do about things shared in common. This is odd, because he is also arguing that the state is superior to the village etc. precisely because it is the whole and the common.
For property, Aristotle believes that generosity and sharing should be voluntary and not forced. This means that Plato is wrong to suggest the guardians share everything by law. He argues that the present way of practice, holding property and family privately, is natural and beneficial compared to Plato’s radical and revolutionary suggestions in the republic. Note that Plato is very similar to communism in this regard as we will see with the Communist Manifesto, and Aristotle’s objections are very similar to objections to Communism today. Aristotle argues that there must be a balance of plurality and unity such that unity does not eradicate plurality.
Plato (427-347 BCE) & The Republic
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or “Broad” because he had a wide figure. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide “breadth” of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court (remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time).
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means “porch”, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world knowledge), when in fact the Library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul (3 layers in their places). Thus, the Good is proper order of the elements (perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology). The Timaeus, which is supposed to be the discussion the day after the Republic, has a student of Socrates named Timaeus lecture on the cosmos, showing Plato’s particular views on cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city. One should order the self and order the city the way the cosmos are ordered. Both are supposed to have been written about 360 BCE.
As the Republic opens, Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice at a social gathering (read: wine party). Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’. Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. Remember the politics of the time- Many tyrants came and fell, one by one.
Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a caste system, with a three-fold division. This division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being.
Head is fire/reason/rulers,
Heart/chest is air/spirit/police,
Hands/Stomach is earth/desire/workers.
The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls. Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil to be ordered from below.
Socrates argues (in reading) that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. He argues that we will lie to the people and tell them a Phoenician story, which is that the classes are based on metals. The police and philosophers are made of silver and gold, so they are suited to be put above the others.(Why lie? Because the common will not understand philosophy, Plato’s system…this corresponds to the cave, where most will never leave, and need puppets to see anything).
All is sacrificed for the common good: no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart.
Socrates argues (and the interlocutors naively agree as simple yes men) that if they separate out the police and educate them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole. The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it: elevating priests as a class- he also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order. The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire.
The Allegory/Analogy/Story of the Cave describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher/king beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority.
Everyone is chained in a cave, watching shadows of puppets/models carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight. The seeker first sees real things outside of the cave, and realizes that the puppet/models were just copies of the real things. Then the seeker can get adjusted and see that the sun is the cause of all these things, and that the world of the cave is a poor copy of the world outside the cave. This is the realization of the forms and then the all/light/reason/consciousness that produces the forms which are copied in the cave below. This is opinion to belief (cave) to knowledge to reason (outside). Notice that the city is a device for creating philosophers who comprehend the true forms of things for the benefit of all below, and that the body is similarly a device for creating thought in the head for the benefit of the body below.
As a final thought, note that Plato’s republic is nothing like what we consider a republic to be today. People rise based on intelligence and merit, not by voting. Plato was quite opposed to having the people aka “the mob” elect leaders based on popularity. Like Confucius, Plato believed that a system of dictatorship downwards based on merit and achievement was best.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) & The Politics
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Aristotle argues that the ruler/ruled pairing is natural to society and best for preservation. He identifies the ruler with the head and male, and the ruled with the body and female. He says that the subjugation of the woman and slave is in everyone’s best and natural interests. Because a thing is best if it serves one purpose, its natural purpose, there are some who naturally should rule and others who naturally should be ruled. The man rules the wife and children, and the king rules the country. When he says that non-Greeks are natural slaves, keep in mind he had the future Europeans to the North and West in mind far more than the Persians and Egyptians, who he openly admired. He also says that we imagine the gods to have a king and live in similar ways to human beings. Note that he is not arguing that the gods are imaginary (Aristotle was a polytheist) but he is critical, as were many of the great Greek philosophers) of the gods having human form or human passions. Later in this section he says that gods are by nature entirely self-sufficient as they are immortal and do not need to eat.
He says that several people (in ruler/ruled pairings) make up the village, and several villages make up the state. This allows people to do far more than survive. It allows people to live the good life and maximize the following of their natural purposes. They can be self-sufficient as a whole. He famously says, “man is by nature a political animal”. This does not mean that people collect into villages and cities to be happy, but rather that they collect because it is natural and best for them to do so to be what they are. Happiness is not the purpose of human life for Aristotle. Rather, truth (figuring out the way things are) is the purpose of human life and the city as a whole.
Aristotle believes that humans alone have speech and therefore are the only animal that can know truth and justice. Elsewhere he argues that this is because humans (more specifically, the males of the superior peoples) have the highest level of mind/soul and other animals (including women and slaves) do not possess this potential/faculty. The human alone can see that the whole is more than the part, and so the city matters more than the village, the village matters more than the family, and the family matters more than the individual.
In book 2, Aristotle says we must examine the constitutions of many sorts of states to see which one is the most just. Note that when Aristotle says “constitution” he is not referring to a document but to the structure or form of the state. The name of the American document follows this language, but we think of a document today when we hear the word, unlike Aristotle who did not live in a time when societies were based on rule by document. British Conservatives like Burke argued that America would fail if it did not have a king because a state could not be ruled by a piece of paper.
Aristotle criticizes his teacher Plato for arguing that property and family should be held in common. As the translator correctly points out, Plato only suggests this for the guardians and philosophers, not necessarily for the common people (though he does not proscribe it for them either). He argues that people should not share property or family in common. Very similar to the Confucians such as Mencius arguing against the Moists and universal love, Aristotle argues that if we shared everything and everyone in common people would not care about anything in particular and this would lead to the ruin of the state, and that we see people naturally caring about their own family and possessions than they do about things shared in common. This is odd, because he is also arguing that the state is superior to the village etc. precisely because it is the whole and the common.
For property, Aristotle believes that generosity and sharing should be voluntary and not forced. This means that Plato is wrong to suggest the guardians share everything by law. He argues that the present way of practice, holding property and family privately, is natural and beneficial compared to Plato’s radical and revolutionary suggestions in the republic. Note that Plato is very similar to communism in this regard as we will see with the Communist Manifesto, and Aristotle’s objections are very similar to objections to Communism today. Aristotle argues that there must be a balance of plurality and unity such that unity does not eradicate plurality.
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