PHIL 253 Midterm

Direct/Pure Democracy

A system where every citizen of a small society votes directly on laws and assembles to run the government in person.

• James Madison viewed this an inherently unstable, turbuent, and dangerous to individual rights

  • No protection from factions

  • Tyranny of the majority

  • Instability and disorder

Representative Demoracy (“Republicanism” in Madison’s terminology)

A superior alternative to a direct democracy because elected representatives can refine public views and control the dangers of majority factions.

• A system where the public’s views are passed through an elected body of governmental representatives who refine and enlarge public policy rather than letting citizens vote directly.

Division of Labor

• Plato’s Republic

• Each person does one specific job suited to their natural abilities and exchange their goods for another good to survive

• Specialization ensures that essential societal tasks are performed with high quality and maximum efficiency

• 3 Classes: Producers/Workers, Soldiers, and Rulers (Philosopher-Kings)

Electoral College

• Alexander Hamilton Federalist 68

  • Worried about the popular vote making a bad decision in choosing the President of the United States

• Small and independent group of informed and capable citizens who choose a qualified president, acting as a safeguard against corruption, foreign influence, and the unstable passions of the general public

• A more qualified person could decide the correct/right person to vote for the president at their own discretion

Factions

• James Madison Federalist 10

• A group of citizens united by a common passion or interest that goes against the right of others or the permanent interests of the community

• Remove factions by:

  • Removing the causes

  • Controling the effects

• Remove causes by:

  • Destroying liberty

  • Making everyone have the same opinions, passions, and interests

• Control factions by:

  • A large, extended repubic elects representatives who refine public views and includes many diverse groups, beliefs, and economic interests

    • Divide into classes

    • Consisting less than a majority

Federalism

A compound republic where power is divded between the national government and state governments to protect individual liberty and prevent tyranny

• Federalist 51: The power surrendered by the people is first divided between 2 distinct governments (state and federal), and then the portion allotted to each is subdivided among separate branches (executive, legislative, and judicial)

• Federalist 10: Best defense against the destructive power of political factions

The Great Law of Peace

• Constitution of the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee Confederacy

• Established a framework for unity, justice, and consensus governance among the nations of the confederation

• Influenced the US Constitution

Similarities between the Great Law of Peace and the US Constitution

• Checks and Balances

• Representative elective

• Federalism and Separation of Powers

  • Constitution that lists rules and regulation that all nations must abide by, but they are still diverse to pursue the actions they want

• Method of impeachment (through Clan Mother)

Differences between the Great Law of Peace and the US Constitution

• Article 73 establishes property rights built upon communal stewardship rather than individual private property

• Demanded consensus rather than majority rule

• No separation of church and state

Hobbes’ view of the fundamental purpose of government

To provide safety and security, such that individuals can safely pursue their private goals and aspirations

Locke’s view of the fundamental purpose of government

To provide a fundamental protection of property, such that individuals and societies can begin to accumulate wealth

Plato’s view of the fundamental purpose of government

To create social harmony by establishing justice within a society

Locke’s critique of absolutism

You can escape the state of nature and still be in a state of war because of an absolute sovcereign that is acting in an unjust or selfish way (demagog)

• Absolute monarchy lacks the consent of the governed, places the ruler above the law, and functions as an illegitimate state of war rather than a true civil society

• We need an absolute sovereignty that applies the rule of law

Locke’s “enough and as good” proviso

• Limits the labor theory of property to what people can effectively use in the state of nature

• must leave “enough and as good” for others

• Assuming scarcity in the state of nature

• Equal opportunity

• Same quality of a good as another

• Take more than we can use and let it rot → we have done a wrong

• We cannot do this rationalization with intellectual property → an idea doesn’t disappear when we consume it

  • People will stop developing and producing, thereby creating scarcity and thus not advancing society

• If we move beyond just specialixing in substance, then we can move society forward in advancements, technologies, and knowledge

Locke’s labor theory of property

Common property + Individual labor = Private property

• Even in the state of nature, we own our own bodies and the labors our bodies are capable of

• What you work for is yours because you use your own labor to produce it

• EX: If you exert labor upon an apple tree, the apple you pull from the tree with your own labor is now your property

Locke’s labor theory of value

Human labor creates the vast majority of economic value in natural resources and justifies an individual’s right to private propety

• More labor = more value

Liberalism

• Committed to the values of freedom and equality

• Explains government authority through the idea of a social contract in which consent to be governed is the source of legitimacy

Plato’s allegory of the cave

• Cave = realm of desire of material things

• People are chained inside an underground cave since childhood, forced to face a blank wall

• A fire behind them casts shadows on the wall form passing objects carried by unseen puppeteers. The prisoners believe these shadows are the absolute truth and reality

• One prisoner escapes, ascends out of the cave into the painful, blinding sunlight, and gradually realizes that the outdoor world represents true reality and existence

• When the freed prisoner returns to the cave to free the others, his eyes struggle with the dim light, and th eremaining prisoners mock or threaten him, refusing to believe his stories of the outside world

Plato’s critique of democracy

Viewed democracy as an unstable, irrational system that inevitably degrades into chaos and tyranny

• Governing is a specialized craft that requires lifelong training, wisdom, and virtue.

• Believed democracy appeals to short-term desires, personal pleasure, and unguided freedom rather than long-term reason and justice

• Because citizens lack expertise, they are easily swayed by charismatic speakers who use emotional manipulation and flattery rather than truth

• Freedom can be destabalizing, leading to diversity, where people cannot understand each other well

• Excessive freedom in a democracy breeds lawlessness and anarchy, which terrifies the public into welcoming a demagog who promises order

Plato’s definition of justice

Social harmony

• All pieces are functioning in a way to make a properous and functioning society

• Every class has a different role to plat to make society running and functioning without interfering with the work of others

Pleonexia and its role in driving social conflict (Plato)

• Desire, greed, covetousness

  • Fundamental desire for more than we need

• Because there is scarcity, the insatiable desire for luxury and more forces a city to seize its neighbors’ lands - root cause of war and imperial overreach

The Problem of Sovereignty (Hobbes)

The sovereign power must be absolute. If sovereignty is limited or divided, the problem of the state of nature re-emerges.

• How to estabish an absolute and undivided central authority that can prevent human beings from descending into the violent chaos of the “state of nature”

Rule of Law

• Solution to the problem of Sovereignty

• Everyone, including the government, is bound by the same pubic laws

  • No one is above the law

  • No one has total, unchecked power

Separation of Powers

A constitutional design that divides state government responsibilites into distinct branches to prevent the concentration of power ad protect individual liberty

• Checks and Balances

State of Nature according to Hobbes

A state of absolute freedom in the absence of law or political order. Life in this state is “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short”

• War of all against all

  • Because we are fundamentally equal, we have absolute freedom.

  • Especially in instaces of scarcity, people will do whatever it takes to survive (“survival of the fittest”), thus creating chaos.

  • No mechanism to enforce rules will create an unstable society

• Equality → freedom to pursue what we want to pursue

• Scarcity → our desires come into conflict because of limited resources and people wanting the same thing

• Lack of Security → no authority to appeal to bring consequence to one who steals, etc.

State of Nature according to Locke

• Obliges every human ought to not harm their life, health, liberty, or possessions

• People are rational and have morals

• We are all rational beings and not savage

  • We have a natural morality

    • We all know it it inherently wrong to kill each other

    • We have a basic understanding or morality

State of Nature Similarities

Used as a foundational thought experiment to examine human existence without formal government, building theories around social contract to escape its risks.

Social Contract according to Hobbes

An agreement to set aside absolute freedom in exchange for a more limited set of freedoms to be enjoyed under the security of law.

• There is a “sovereign power” (the government enforces the social contract

  • “Bonds of words are too weak” → there are no consequences or punishments to stop people from breaking their promises

  • There is a need of a contract and a power to enforce the contract, who can enact consequences if the contract is broken

Social Contract according to Locke

People agree to form a government and give up minor freedoms so an impartial authority can protect their natural rights to life, liberty, and property

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Ben Franklin

“labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world…” (26)

John Locke

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…’

The Declaration of Independence

“a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority…united by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of others citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

James Madison, Federalist 10

“It may…be thought that there was never such a time nor condition of war as this…but there are many places where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America…have no government at all, and live this day in that brutish manner.”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathon

“There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty…yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of
the conveniences we enjoy”

John Locke, Second Treatise

“The soil of the earth from one end of the land to the other is the property of the people who inhabit it. By birthright the Ongwehonweh (Original Beings) are the
owners of the soil which they own and occupy and none other may hold it.”

The Great Law of Peace

“But what if Plato is right about the importance of the philosopher for the flourishing city and wrong about the role she or he should occupy there? What if instead of a few philosopher-kings magnanimously steering the unruly mob, we focused on building a democracy full of philosopher folks.”

Megan Zwart, Forget Philosopher Kings