epe study notes

Thomas Hobbes

“artificial perfection of reason, gotten by long study, observation, and experience, and not of every man’s natural reason”

Thomas Hobbes

“It is not wisdom, but authority that makes a law.”

Thomas Hobbes

“That the reason which is the life of the law, should be not natural, but artificial, I cannot conceive.”

Thomas Hobbes

“And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”

Thomas Hobbes

“From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope From in the attaining of our Ends”

Thomas Hobbes

“Laws are of no power to protect them, without a Sword in the hands of a man, or men, to cause those laws to be put in execution. The liberty of a subject, lyeth therefore only in those things, which in regulating their actions, the sovereign hath predetermined: such as is the Liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with one another, to choose their own abroad, their own diet, their own trade of life, and institute their children as they themselves think fit”

Thomas Hobbes

Davies

“The laws enacted by prince or parliament may grow obsolete, but custom must always be perfectly up to date, since if it had proved inadequate to the problems of the present age the people would have simply abandoned it”

Davies

“a custom doth never become a Law to bind the people until it hath been tried and approved time out of mind… for if it had been found inconvenient at any time, it had been used no longer”

Matthew Hale

“For instance it is reasonable for me to prefer a law made by a hundred or 200 persons of age wisdom experience and interest before a law excogitated by my self that it may be a simple unexperienced young man, though I discern better the reason of that law that I have thought of then the reason of the law of those wise men.”

Smith

“The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the effect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary cause and effect of the greatest public prosperity.”

David Hume

“Habit soon consolidates what other principles of human nature had imperfectly founded; and men, once accustomed to obedience, never think of departing from that path, in which they and their ancestors have constantly trod, and to which they are confined by so many urgent and visible motives.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“human beings will be “forced to be free”

Edmund Burke

 “Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it,—and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.”

Edmund Burke

“What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.”

Edmund Burke

• The right to rebel

• Little platoons  

• The composition and qualities of members the National Assembly (Tiers État)? (Hint: country clowns.)

• Burke’s notion of equality

Edmund Burke

“Society is indeed a contract”

Edmund Burke

“the age of chivalry is gone”

Edmund Burke

“If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willing to own to ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full as much as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They, too, may decay with their natural protecting principles.”

Edmund Burke

“An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is, however, sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces and put together, at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels and springs and balances and counteracting and cooperating powers.”

Thomas Paine

Who says that Burke “pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird”?

Custom

• Organic growth

• Good and beneficial

• Useful

• Unwritten

• Immemorial; time out of mind

• Wisdom + experience

• Collective wisdom, wisdom of the many 

• Distinctive to particular community 

• Adaptation

• Gradual reform

• A posteriori

• English garden

• “democracy of the dead” - respect past generations (also ties to Burke)

Common Law

• Judge-made

• Based on precedent

• Artificial reading 

Reason

• Unusual

• Timeless

• Applicable all times + places

• Individual 

• Custom gets in way of reason 

• Not contingent of history, experience

• Symmetry 

• Proportion

• A priori

• French garden

Thomas Hobbes

• State of nature

• War of all against all

• Solitary poor, nasty, brutish, short 

• Human equality 

• First natural law: seek peace and follow it 

• Social contract

How does Thomas Hobbes interpret law?

Either command of sovereign or command of reason

Thomas Hobbes

• Equality in the SON

• Fear of war of all against all 

• Social contract individualism 

• Leviathan → sovereignty

  • Reflects the people’s interests

• Authoritarian; allows some liberties

• Solitary poor nasty brutish and short

• NR to self-preservation

• Human brings in most natural, uncultured state

John Locke’s On Property

• Property → mix labor with resources 

• Without spoilage – lockean premise

• Self-interest + common stock of mankind 

• Money → inequality 

• Enlarge possessions 

Robert Filmer

• Divine right of kings → paternal authority in Bible 

• Desire of liberty → first cause of the fall of Adam 

• Against power of multitudes

• No right to rebel 

• Monarchy w magna carta

  • Authority before liberty 

David Hume

• SC → historical 

• Consent: weak basis for authority 

• Some don’t truly have consent 

• Usurpation + conquest

David Hume

• Pol. communities: habit, obedience

• Natural groupings to meet needs 

• Right to rebel = vague 

• As necessity, not choice 

• No line demarcation 

Proto-liberal

• Self-interest → common good (aggregation of individuals)

• Dout commerce (Montesquieu)

• Against divine right of kings 

  • Political absolutism 

• Against arbitrary power 

  • Inherited norms 

  • Paternal authority 

  • Traditional hierarchies 

• Corporations (church, etc) 

• Tabula rasa 

Proto-conservative

• Political absolutism/ arbitrary power 

• Puritan radicalism 

• Enlightenment rationalism 

Richard Hooker

• Defense of Elizabethan settlement 

• Organic hierarchical unity 

• Church-state integration 

• Gradual reform 

• Man potentially perfect 

• Limits of individual reason 

Richard Hooker

• Law from

  • Medieval (Aquinas)

  • Aristotle: man naturally social 

  • English constitutional experience

  • Historical collective reason + wisdom

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• No original sin

• Natural goodness

• Amour propre– vanity, self esteem 

• Amour de soi – self-love in the state of nature 

• Civil society→ corrupts us 

• No partial societies 

• “Forced to be free”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• General Will

  • Absolute

  • Indivisible 

  • Inalienable 

French Revolution

• Enlightenment 

• Age of reason 

• Ancien regime 

  • Depleted treasury 

  • Royal debt 

  • famines , shortages droughts

  • High grain prices 

  • Unequal system of taxation 

  • Largely exempted clergy, nobility 

• clergy , nobility → oppressive

  • Special privileges 

  • Disproportionate political power 

Abbé Sieyès

• Power to the people, democracy

• Clergy → 1st Estate

• Nobility → 2nd est

  • 1st and second were arbitrary, oppressive, priveliged, exempt from most taxes

• Commons → 3rd estate

• The third estate is everything 

• The nation is the source of everything, all legality and will always be legal 

• Popular sovereignty

• Reason

• Social contract

• State of nature 

Abbé Sieyès

• 3 requests

  • 3rd estate representation by the third estate

  • = # of reps for the third estate to both the clergy and the nobility 

  • Voted counted by heads not orders

• form National Assembly

Condorcet

• reason>prejudice

• Commerce 

• Spread of enlightenment values 

• Scientific laws → laws of human nature 

• No limit to man’s hopes 

• Social insurance, public education 

  • State welfare

Louis de Bonald

• Marriage → procreation + nurturing of child; indissoluable 

• Divorce is conspiracy against child

• Divorce should not be like commercial contract 

  • More common among commercial people

Joseph de Maistre

• Against rousseau

• Nature and art are inseparable

Edmund Burke & Glorious Revolution

• recovery of inherited rights

  • Preservation

  • Continuity

  • Rights of englishmen

Edmund Burke’s definition of Third estate membership

• Inexperienced, lack of prudence, moderation, judgment, restraint 

• Lack of propertied interest in the land 

• Primogeniture → estate to first born son 

Edmund Burke

• Government was not mad in virtue of natural rights 

• “Real rights of men” → equal rights but not to equal things, rights in a short of middle

• Dangers of imposing equality on diverse society

• Little platoon

Edmund Burke

• Collected reason

  • Collective wisdom 

  • Custom

• Conservatism, transmission, improvement

• Historical circumstance (a posteriori)

• “Manly, moral, regulated liberty”

Edmund Burke’s “natural rights”

• Natural rights” (a priori)

  • Too vague , too abstract

  • Divorced from history/inheritance 

  • Leads to political and social instability

  • Dangers of beginning anew (tabula rasa)

  • Leads to people claiming they have a right to everything

  • Impractical → you would call a farmer or a physician for food, not a professor of metaphysics 

Edmund Burke’s dangers of natural rights

• Ahistorical, vague, abstract, ever expanding rights claimed 

• Socially disruptive, natural → society 

• Beginning anew (tabula rasa)

• Gov not made based on natural rights 

• Based in utility, convenience, practical ways to structure society 

• Abstract rights to food or medicine are irrelevant 

• Call the farmer or physician not the professor of metaphysics

Thomas Hobbes’s 3 reasons for fights

Diffidence, glory and competition

Thomas Hobbes’s 3 reasons for invasions

For gains, for safety, for reputation

One characteristic associated with the English garden is X, while one characteristic associated with the French garden is Y:

Spontaneous growth; geometrical proportion.

According to Ryan, one main difference between liberalism and libertarianism is:

Liberals believe government can be used to promote good ends, while libertarians believe government is mostly an unnecessarily evil.

According to Locke, people have a right to resume their original liberty when X; according to Smith, it is not from the benevolence of the butcher that we expect food but from the butcher’s Y:

The legislature reduces the people to slavery using arbitrary power; own interest. 

• As discussed in class and in the readings, X was not one of Hume’s criticisms of social contract theory; and Hooker’s conception of change is captured by statement Y.

• The theory denied the principle of universal equality in the state of nature; people should attempt to both conserve and reform institutions. 

According to Rousseau, man is X; man in the state of nature does not have Y; and the sovereign is Z.

Man is naturally good; speech; indivisible. 

The second claim of the Third Estate (the commoners), according to the Abbé Sieyès, is X; and one article of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man is Y.

The deputies of the Third Estate should be equal to the number of those in the two privileged orders; men are born and remain free and equal. 

As discussed in class, one contemporary example of the “partial societies” Rousseau criticizes is X; according to Condorcet, the progress of science and civilization, prior experience, and the development of human understanding and its faculties demonstrate that Y.

Home-schooled children; there are no natural limits to man’s hopes. 

According to Robespierre, the first article of the decree establishing the Cult of the Supreme Being was X; according to Maistre in Against Rousseau, there has never been a Rousseauian state of nature because there was never a time when Y:

The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being; there was no human art.

According to Maistre in Considerations on France, he has never met X; according to de Bonald in On Divorce/Summation of the Divorce Question, the reason for marriage is Y.

Man; the production of children

According to Burke, which was not one of the principles Richard Price claimed was established as a result of the Glorious Revolution?

To inherit English common law

According to Burke, the first principle of public affections is:

To love our little platoons

According to Burke’s idea of the “real rights of men,” men have:

Equal rights but not to equal things

Locke’s State of Nature

Free, equal and independent

Hobbe’s State of Nature

Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short

Rousseau’s State of Nature

Man is good in his essence, independent with no social associations, men does not know children

Abbé Sieyès

“The nation is prior to everything. It is the source of everything. Its will is always legal; indeed it is the law itself. Prior to and above the nation, there is only natural law.”

Condorcet

Hopes for Future: “The destruction of inequality between different nations; the progress of equality in one and hte same nation; and lastly, the real improvement of man”

Condorcet

In a word, will not men be continually verging towards that state, in which all will pofſefs the requisite knowledge for conducting themselves in the common affairs of life by their own reason, and of maintaining that reason uncontaminated by prejudices

Condorcet

Nature has fixed no limit to our hopes

Joseph de Maistre

Constitutive acts or fundamental written laws are never more than declaratory statements 

Joseph de Maistre

“No nation can give itself liberty if it is not already free… If imprudent men overstep these limits with reckless reforms, the nation will lose what rights it had without attaining those it hopes for.”

Joseph de Maistre

“There has never been a free nation that did not have in its natural constitution seeds of liberty as old as itself,”

Joseph de Maistre

“Given the population, the mores, the religion, the geographic situation, the political circumstances, the wealth, the good and the bad qualities of a particular nation, to find the laws that suit it.”

Joseph de Maistre

“Follow this reasoning, and you will see that it is an abuse to cook an egg. As soon as one opposes human art to nature, one does not know when to stop…as everything is artificial in man in his quality as an intelligent and perfectible being, it follows that in denying him everything that comes from art, one denies him everything”

Joseph de Maistre

“Therefore government is not a matter of choice. It is even the result of the nature of things: it is impossible that man be what he is and that he not be governed, for a being both social and evil must be under the yoke.”

Joseph de Maistre

“Society which the man enters with authority, the woman with dignity; which the man leaves with all his authority, but the woman cannot leave with all her dignity:”

Edmund Burke

“All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off”

Edmund Burke

“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but a mere animal and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views is to be regarded as romance and folly”

Edmund Burke

“We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter into with any particular person or number of persons amongst mankind, depends upon those prior obligations.”

Edmund Burke

“A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large people rightly constituted.”

Edmund Burke

“Your masters reject the duties of this vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty, as not founded in the social compact, and not binding according to the rights of men; because the relation is not, of course, the result of free election,—never so on the side of the children, not always on the part of the parents”

Filmer’s Divine Right of Kings

• Paternal authority in the bible translated to political communities 

• Historical point that all king like figure leading

• Moral: liberty leads to license

• Reaching for the forbidden fruit 

• Scripture, history and moral argument that without a king there would be disorder 

Richard Hooker

• Defend the queen v puritan attacks 

  • Dont want just the puritan approach of one type of religion 

  • Expressed through custom and institutions, how the church uses

• Moral unity for people of the national church

  • Locke and jefferson against this 

• Cosmelogically ordered hierarchy of the universe 

  • Unified whole