Modern Political Philosophy Quiz

philibusters

Active Member
Can you match the following four modern (Post medieval) political philosophers: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rosseau, and Locke. I'll post answer tomorrow.

1. Individuals outside society have no community ties to persons who are not family and friends. Thus might makes right in societies without centralized authority and no individual is completely safe or can count on stability. To avoid this situations, individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.

2. Man was at his most altrustic before government. Government tends to be artificial, it often creates more injustice than justice. The injustices government creates happen because government is by definition artificial, its not based on natural rights, but on arbitrary legal rights creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires. The best government is the government governed by the general will. The general will is democratic in nature, but is not simply the rule of the majority (where the majority can trod on the rights of the minority. Rather the general will protects certain individual rights in addition to having democratic elements.

3. There are certain political goods, of which three are specially important: national independence, security, and a well-ordered constitution. The best constitution is one which apportions legal rights among prince, nobles, and people in proportion to their real power, for under such a constitution successful revolutions are difficult and therefore stability and prosperity is possible. However, it is futile to pursue a political purpose by methods that are bound to fail. Just because your "ends" are good, does not mean you will succeed unless your "means" are also good. The question of means can be treated in a purely scientific manner without regard to the goodness or badness of the ends.

4. Humans are generally good, but they can also be naturally greedy and violent. In a society without government, and everyone had a natural right to defend his “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions." Government are formed by the explicit or implicit consent of individuals because governments further prosperity. Without government, the amount of wealth a man can achieve is limited to what he can keep in his immediate possession. A just gov't is formed by the consent of the people to allow greater economic efficiency. In addition to allowing for greater economic efficiency a second role of a just government is to protect individual rights like the right to freedom and to own property.
 

philibusters

Active Member
3 is Machiavelli


:shrug:

That is correct---I made that one harder by summarizing his book the Discourses which is similar though less famous than his book the Prince. He wrote the Prince as a gift for the tyrant who was controlling Venice at the time to try to gain that Prince's favor and to secure an important position in his government thus he emphasized his favorite ends like national independence, constitution, and stability less and focused more on the means of successful politics. That failed (in the sense he didn't get the position he wanted) and in the Discourses he gave a more balance review of both the proper means (tactics like propaganda) for achieving ends, but also which ends he thought just.
 
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GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
That is correct---


for years a good friend of mind said I was a bit Machiavellian in my thinking

I was always :confused: who ???

I eventually [ many yrs ago now] bought a book that combined all the 'works'

The Prince, Discourses, and Letters .... good stuff



.... a prince is advised to, dispose of, preceding Rulers, of any newly acquired territory, while shocking on the outset, the time of confusion and dislike or hatred for the new ruler, will be less then if the former rule is in exile somewhere, and the citizens, pine away for his return, them just getting over the loss .... and moving on







:buddies:
 
If we hadn't already identified Machiavelli as (3), I'd have little chance of getting them all matched correctly. But with only 3 matches left to be made, I only need to figure one out correctly to have a 50-50 shot of getting all three - still, I'm mostly guessing.

When I think of Locke I think of Jefferson, and (4) sounds the most like Jefferson, so I'm going to match Locke to (4). Rosseau strikes me as more philosophical than Hobbes for some reason, as does (1) in comparison to (2), so I'll match Rosseau to (1) and Hobbes to (2). If I got them it was luck, if I didn't it was a stupid quiz. :lol:
 

mamatutu

mama to two
I think it is:
1. Hobbes
2. Rousseau
3. Already answered
4. Locke

Thanks for the brain workout! Crossing my fingers! :smile:
 

philibusters

Active Member
If we hadn't already identified Machiavelli as (3), I'd have little chance of getting them all matched correctly. But with only 3 matches left to be made, I only need to figure one out correctly to have a 50-50 shot of getting all three - still, I'm mostly guessing.

When I think of Locke I think of Jefferson, and (4) sounds the most like Jefferson, so I'm going to match Locke to (4). Rosseau strikes me as more philosophical than Hobbes for some reason, as does (1) in comparison to (2), so I'll match Rosseau to (1) and Hobbes to (2). If I got them it was luck, if I didn't it was a stupid quiz. :lol:

Machiavelli was the only one of the four philosophers who origins of political theory are not rooted in social contract.

Hobbes is the earliest of them and number 1 is the social contract in its simplest form. Number 2 and 4 are developments of the social contract theories with a few more bells and whistles. Rosseau was writing the lastest of the writers. He was a contemporary of our founding fathers as he passed away after the American Revolution started and a decade before the French Revolution. The fact that he wrote later in time is probably why he has more of a democratic element than Hobbes who wrote during the English Civil War. Locke definitely sounds a lot like Thomas Jefferson and was probably the biggest most influential of the modern philosphers on the founding fathers. Hobbes was too removed having written in an era when absolute monarchs still seemed feasible--and Rosseau was probably a little to contemporary so that his ideas had not been fully accepted to the extent Locke was.

If I had to pick my favorite I would go with Machiavelli. Out of the four he is the only one who is truly empiricalist, his thoughts are only based on his experiences and the experiences of others he had read about. Whereas the other 3 were more rationalists in that they imagined humans before centralized government (and they were in disagreement about human society before government) and tried to r logic to figure out how the current governments came to be on a step by step basis(the social contract). In some ways that rationalists mindset is not that different from medieval thinkers who started with some biblical event and try to logically derive legitimate authority from that biblical event. The only difference was instead of appealing to the bible as the starting event, the modern philosophers used humans first organizing complex societies as the initial starting event from which to make their deductions.

That said its hard to summarize philosophers in one paragraph and re-reading my summaries it is not at all obvious that Locke and Rosseau had the social contract as their basis of their beliefs, even though they did. I more described their modifications to Hobbes, the new bells and whistles they added to the social contract theory.
 
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Larry Gude

Strung Out
It's interesting applying their reasoning and ideas to today's political reality.

Hobbes enormous flaw is that, somehow, a centralized authority is going to protect you, act in YOUR interest, do what's best for you if only you'll surrender some of your rights. What happens is the state acts in it's own interests at your expense so, you are in a position where you damn well better get you some friends to make yourself matter to the state. He said his mother gave birth to twins, himself and fear. In him we see today the DHS, the idea that you can never have too much state and, among we, the people, support for security of above ALL else.

In Rousseau we see a nice summary of the founders, government should do basic, core but, limited things and butt out most of the details. Here is a guy who was born into a decent life and had actual concern for those below him in station in life and worry of too much power above.
It's too bad he didn't live to see Washington give up the power of presidency after two terms, living up to the great American idea that those ideas are more important than any one man. He would have personally detested Obama and been terrified of Bush.

Machiavelli is perfect for a bunch of people on these forums; ideas are meaningless. It's all about what you can get done. It's all about exercising power. He would love the way things are today; the rich and powerful are...rich and powerful. And, if you can figure a way to get rich and powerful, you deserve it never mind how you did it.

In Locke we see perhaps the intellectual godfather of Rousseau. Having a background as a physician, a successful one, this guy was a great thinker and observer and able to apply reasoned thought. I'm not sure what would appall him more; Obamacare or the state protected monopolies in health-care Obama seeks to take charge of.

We want for far more of Locke and Rousseau today and FAR less Machiavelli and Hobbes.

Really interesting stuff! :buddies:
 

philibusters

Active Member
Machiavelli is perfect for a bunch of people on these forums; ideas are meaningless. It's all about what you can get done. It's all about exercising power. He would love the way things are today; the rich and powerful are...rich and powerful. And, if you can figure a way to get rich and powerful, you deserve it never mind how you did it.

I disagree with your assessment of Machiavelli.

Machiavelli talked broadly about politics in two categories, 1) ends 2) means. It is true Machiavelli talked about means in a scientific sense. He didn't judge the means by what ends the means were trying to get at, but rather how effective they were in achieving their ends. Thus for example, Machiavelli may have applauded Hitler's Reichstag fire, his purge of the party in, and his breach of faith after Munich as being a very skilled politician and master of picking effective means to pursue his ends.

However, Machiavelli did state his own preferred ends in the discourses. They were 1) National Independence, 2) security, and 3) a well ordered constitution. Machiavelli for example was the first modern writer to talk about checks and balances (in a well ordered Constitution). The idea of checks and balances had existed in antiquity but disappeared in the Middle Ages. Machiavelli is generally considered the first of the modern political theorists and he revives that.

I don't think Machiavelli should be punished because he seperates his discussion of the ends and means. I think that shows he was a pragmatist.

By way of similarity, I am generally not a fan of the Medieval Theorists, thus I am not a huge fan of Thomas of Aquinas. However, the one trait of Aquinas writings I do admire is that he is always stated in advance whether the argument he was making was rooted in reason/logic or in revelation from the bible. He separated those arguments so it was clear how you should be interpreting his arguments. For example, he thought the existence of God could be proven by logic, but that the trinity was a matter of faith. By clearing distinguishing the two types of arguments he avoided a lot of confusion. I think Machiavelli for the most part does the same things with ends and means. Because Machiavelli was willing to consider means exclusively without any consideration of their ends, he has a reputation for being immoral. Its considered immoral to applaud Hitler's tactics or the spreading of mis-informationing (partly because Hitler is considered evil so the ends were evil), but people need to remember, that even if Machiavelli was alive in the 20th century and thought Hitler a masterful politician and appreciated him as such, that doesn't mean he would have approved of Hitler's ends.
 

philibusters

Active Member
I downloaded Hobbs Leviathan from Gutenberg ... not to see if I can chew through the old English prose

Hobbes wrote the Levithian during the English Civil War. A time of great disorder. Thus its probably not a surprise that Hobbes was more worried about anarchy than despotism. As such, he endorses a much stronger centralized gov't than most of us would endorse.

Hobbes starts out slow because he describes an individual. The early sections to modern readers seem kind of boring, but they were remarkable in their day because they are completely free of superstition. For example the first couple pages say that

Sensations are caused by the pressure of objects. Further, our interpretations of the object are not the same as the object itself. For example colors and sounds are not actually part of the object, rather they are how we interpret the object. Hobbes would say a piece of grass is the same object in the dark when you cannot see that it is green as it is in the light when you can see it is green. A modern example would be the millions of pixels on your computer screen. Rather than see a million pixels on your computer screen which one way to see your computer screen, you see the the organization of the pixels--in other words you see letters and words.

He says imagining is a decaying sense. In modern language we would say imagining is either a constructed sense or reconstructed sense. For example if I imagine myself the President then I am totally constructed something new based on previously remembered senses---my memory of me, my memory of the position of the President and so on. If you actually think back to a memory that did happen where there were say 20 people in the room, that is a reconstructed sense and the details are probably wrong as the people were probably not wearing the exact clothing that you remember them wearing (and in that sense remembering is decaying sense because it is not 100% accurate and therefore is decaying).

I'll stop summarizing there, but suffice to say nothing he is saying is that remarkable by current standards but he was writing in in the early 1600's and the fact that he was analytical rather than superstitious is remarkable given that during the middle ages, intuition and sometimes superstition rather than analysis predominated all the major philosophical works even of the better writers. He was the first social contract political theorists and that tended to be the predominate model of political theorists since. However, the covenant as described by Hobbes is not as afterwards in Locke and Rousseau between the citizens and the ruling power; its a covenant made by the citizens with each other to obey such ruling power as the citizens shall choose. When they have chosen their political power or Constitution, the citizens power is at an end. The citizen has no rights except the right to self-preservation and to physical security.
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
I don't think Machiavelli should be punished because he seperates his discussion of the ends and means. I think that shows he was a pragmatist. .

I would suggest then, that, properly understood, you do agree with my assessment of Mach. The entire point, is it not, of a well ordered constitution is specifically to keep tyranny at bay, to keep 'practical' or pragmatic people from doing what they COULD by way of clearly stating what they can not do.

Oppenheimer may have not been a fan of the bomb but, he made it so other men could use it. Machiavelli may have been of the noblest intentions in all things but;

Machiavellianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Machiavellianism (or machiavellian mask) is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct", deriving from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince) and other works. The word has a similar use in modern psychology where it describes one of the dark triad personalities, characterised by a duplicitous interpersonal style associated with cynical beliefs and pragmatic morality.[1] "Machiavellian" (and variants) as a word became very popular in the late 16th century in English, though "Machiavellianism" itself is first cited by the Oxford English Dictionary from 1626.



Now, I freely admit to not being a scholar on him and am perfectly happy to entertain argument that what you are actually saying is that he didn't deserve, or earn, the moniker. Further, in trying to communicate more fully what I mean is that we should reject the behavior, Machiavellian, whether he is at fault or not, as we would reject a child molester. Will struck a chord with me when he argued that statecraft is soul-craft and Machiavellianism is, in my view, the corrupter of ideas and, thus, the soul of a given piece of legislation; what can be done v. what should be done and, in closing, I would argue more than anything else, what is wrong with us today is that we only concern ourselves with what CAN be done and not with what SHOULD be done; again, the very thing a constitution is meant to battle.

A great conversation you've started here. :buddies:
 

philibusters

Active Member
I would suggest then, that, properly understood, you do agree with my assessment of Mach.

I think your assessment focused on Machiavelli's focus on the means to achieving ends. That is what he is most famous for, treating political tactics as a science of sorts.

The entire point, is it not, of a well ordered constitution is specifically to keep tyranny at bay, to keep 'practical' or pragmatic people from doing what they COULD by way of clearly stating what they can not do.

To use Machiavelli's thinking, your ends is "to keep tyranny at bay" and your means is a Constitution that "clearly states what they (politicians) COULD do by way of clearly stating what they cannot do"

Machiavelli's principle ends were social cohesion, stability, and national indepedence. Like you one of his means was the use of well ordered constitution but he had less of a emphasize about keeping tyranny at bay. Rather than stating what leaders can and cannot do, Machiavelli believed the best way a Constitution could produce social cohesion, stability, and ultimately prosperity is that the Constitution should reflect how power was actually distributed in society. If the Constitution reflected how power was actually distributed in society the Constitution would be very hard to overthrow.

Further, in trying to communicate more fully what I mean is that we should reject the behavior, Machiavellian, whether he is at fault or not, as we would reject a child molester.

Reject what behavior. That is the thing, Machiavelli analyzed all means used to accomplish the ends. If making substantive arguments is an effective means to reach an end and a politician achieved their ends by making substantive arguments, I think Machiavelli would be impressed. He would also have been impressed by Hitler's masterful tactics because he was also so successful. Your quote says Machiavellian means "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct" but that is just saying being astute in statecraft. Machiavelli treated means in a scientific way. For example, Machiavelli would probably think that the scientific method could be used to analyze political tactics about which tactics work and which tactics don't work.


Will struck a chord with me when he argued that statecraft is soul-craft

I have never read George Will's book so I am not sure what the exact chord that struck you is

and Machiavellianism is, in my view, the corrupter of ideas

I don't see how Machiavellianism even as that term is used is the corrupter of ideas.

Lets say your hypothetical goal is to ban peanut butter. In our hypothetical world you oppose peanut butter because you know anybody who eats it dies 10 years earlier than they would otherwise. In our hypothetical world, that is fact is correct (in real life obviously that is not true of peanut butter)

Machiavellianism would consist of being very astute in using political tactics to get peanut butter banned. Certainly it could be argued that the means don't always justify the means. For example killing almost everybody in the world would not justify banning peanut butter. But being astute and incredibly pragmatic in choosing your political tactics does not mean you have automatically corrupted your original goal.

and, thus, the soul of a given piece of legislation, what can be done v. what should be done

What you think should be done = your idea "ends"
What can be done = realistic "means"

I would argue more than anything else, what is wrong with us today is that we only concern ourselves with what CAN be done and not with what SHOULD be done; again, the very thing a constitution is meant to battle.

In my original post, part of my summary of Machiavelli was "However, it is futile to pursue a political purpose by methods that are bound to fail. Just because your "ends" are good, does not mean you will succeed unless your "means" are also good. The question of means can be treated in a purely scientific manner without regard to the goodness or badness of the ends."

Thus you are in opposition to Machiavelli on this point in that part of Machiavelli's philosophy is that "it is futile to pursue a political purpose by methods that bound to fail. (By the way that summary of Machiavelli in the original post was from Bertrand Russell, the 1950 Philosophy Nobel Prize winner)

However, where I think you are getting confused is in thinking that just because somebody considers the likelihood of success in achieving their ends, that they are not worried about what should be done. I may believe the federal reserve should be abolished (I don't actually have that belief). Yet I may realize that is unrealistic and instead advocate that the federal reserve be directed to stablize the money supply rather than combating unemployment. Just because I didn't go after my most idea "ends" --abolishing the federal reserve doesn't mean that I completely unconcerned about what should be done. It just means I am being pragmatic.

A great conversation you've started here. :buddies:[/QUOTE]
 
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Larry Gude

Strung Out
He would also have been impressed by Hitler's masterful tactics because he was also so successful. ]

In my view, there is little 'masterful' about brute force. Hitler was clever early on but, once he got his foot in the door and knew it, then 'mastery' went out the door and raw fear and brutality ruled the day which is why so many of his generals considered killing him.

We see this all the time, the, pardon the use, Machiavellian way we praise people such as Carville or Rove because they won, ergo, they must have done something smart or pragmatic. Machiavellian, as we understand it today, is in winning and losing, not in how one plays the game. Perhaps he would have been impressed with Hitler at some point but, people like Hitler throw out well ordered constitutions the moment they become impediments AND they have the raw power to do so.
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
I thought the advice in Il Prince, was all about playing the game, RE my earlier commentary

I will defer to you because my knowledge of all these folks is rather cursory.

That said, again, about Obama, if Mach was more about 'playing the game' rather than winning and losing, what we know of Obama is he hates the game and considers it beneath him whereas a Machiavellian would, correct me if I am wrong, be VERY interested in the game such as a Clinton. He, Obama, wants what he wants and doesn't care how.
 
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