The Beginnings of Social Theory: Smith, Locke, and Hegel

The Beginnings of Social Theory: Smith, Locke, and Hegel

Seating Chart

  • Class Participants:

    • Makenna Watson

    • Ryan Weintraub

    • Samuel Westerfield

    • Logan Wigley

    • Alexandra Yates

    • Vaiden Squiller

    • Elijah St John

    • Brooke Sullivan

    • Richard Toney

    • Emya Upshaw

    • Kimmy Wang

    • Katherine Michlovich

    • Madelyn Miles

    • Kate Moore

    • CJ Nunnally

    • Mani Powell

    • Megan Rydberg

    • Wyatt Levins

    • Emily Lopes

    • Nolan Macklin

    • Carlton Madden Jr

    • Jessica Mattox

    • Fernanda Meza

    • Gaby Iliev

    • Shaurya Jha

    • Kierstyn Keller-Thomas

    • Casey Kibe

    • Julia Kucera

    • Gerrick Kung

    • John Gentry

    • Nana Ama Gyamfi

    • Eric Hammons

    • Mary Rose Hokanson

    • Julia Hoyer

    • Rene Hubble

    • Kailyn Delaney

    • Ashlyn Denny

    • Jamarius Dinkins

    • Mya Dodson

    • Alyssa Etter

    • Miriam Frederick

    • Tobi Ajuwon

    • Boubacar Balde

    • Andija Bes

    • Grace Camden

    • Dawan Davis

    • Eli Day

Pop Quiz #1

  • Key Question: Hegel argues that history is progress toward what end?

The Scientific Revolution

  • Period: Began in the 15th and 16th centuries.

  • Focus: Development of new tools for empirical investigation of the world.

  • Key Question: What was the scientific revolution a revolution against?

Example: Ptolemaic Astronomy

  • Claudius Ptolemy: A Roman astronomer promoted by the Catholic Church.

    • Central Questions:

    • If God created the universe, what is at the center?

    • What is the geometrically perfect shape?

  • Assessment of Ptolemaic System: While "pretty accurate," the system was ultimately "totally wrong."

The Enlightenment

  • Overview: An European social and philosophical movement that coalesced in the 1700s.

  • Key Figures:

    • Rene Descartes: Wrote Discourse on Method.

    • Central Argument: Aims to root out all “opinions which had formerly been able to slip into my belief without being introduced there by reason.” (Descartes, 181)

    • Immanuel Kant: Wrote “What is Enlightenment?”

    • Definition of Enlightenment:
      "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.” (Kant, 1)

    • Key Notion: An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding into such a condition that it cannot extend its knowledge and purify itself of errors.

  • Condorcet: Authored “The Perfectibility of Man.”

    • Claim: There are no bounds fixed to the improvement of human faculties, and the progress of this perfectibility has no limit other than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us. (Condorcet, 388)

The Spread of “Science”

  • Key Argument from the Scientific Revolution: Advocates for the empirical study of nature without prior commitments.

  • Key Argument from the Enlightenment: Calls to abandon prejudices and apply reason in all areas of decision-making.

  • Consideration: Can there be a science of society? Why or why not?

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

  • Context: A member of the “Scottish Enlightenment.”

  • Historical Role: Known as the “father of capitalism.”

  • Key Economic Concepts Developed:

    • Free markets

    • Division of labor

Basic Economic Questions

  1. What does it mean for a market to be free?

  2. What does it mean for labor to be divided?

Free Markets

  • Definition: An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.

  • Key Questions:

    • Why is this supposed to be effective?

    • Example: The housing market.

    • What would a “free market” for housing look like?

    • What are some of the ways housing markets are not “free”?

Division of Labor

  • Example: Adam Smith’s Pin Makers

    • If 10 skilled artisans can each make 20 pins per day, they collectively produce 200 pins in a day.

    • If 10 unskilled laborers are given divided tasks, they can produce 4,800 pins per day.

    • Questions: What would be done with 4,800 pins? 24,000 in a week? 1,248,000 a year?

John Locke (1632-1704)

  • Background: English philosopher and doctor studied at Oxford. Known as the father of British Empiricism.

  • Major Areas of Focus: Epistemology and political philosophy.

The Origins of Private Property

  • Key Work: Locke’s Two Treatises of Government

    • Seeks to establish “natural rights.”

  • Assessment of Pre-Political Society:

    • What were people like before government?

    • “…a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature…” (Locke, 395)

    • “…a state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal…” (Locke, 395)

  • Critical Questioning: Has this ideal state ever existed? What is the purpose of this thought experiment?

The Creation of Private Property

  • Process: Private property is created from the state of nature through individual labor and work which results in ownership.

    • “God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate. And the condition of human life, which requires labor and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.” (Locke, 399)

  • Examples of Ownership Creation:

    • “…the grass my horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore I have dug in any place where I have a right to them in common with others, becomes my property without the assignation or consent of anybody.” (Locke, 398)

  • Key Assertion: “…every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his.” (Locke, 397)

Conditions for Appropriation

  • Fundamental Principle: This work can be appropriated because it does not harm others where “there was still enough and as good left.” (Locke, 398)

  • Critical Questions: Is there still enough left? What would it take for Locke’s ideal views on ownership and civic society to be relevant in contemporary contexts?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

  • Introduction: German philosopher who contributed significantly to political philosophy, religion, and epistemology.

The Long Arc of History

  • Key Questions:

    • Does history have a direction?

    • Does history have a destination?

  • Key Works: The Phenomenology of Spirit and Elements of the Philosophy of Right

    • Argue that historical eras progress toward a final goal.

    • “The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.” (Hegel, 11)

The Consciousness of Freedom

  • Connection to Social Engagement: Consciousness arises through social interactions.

  • Understanding Self-Consciousness:

    • “…self consciousness can only develop in a context of social interaction. A child growing up in total isolation from all other self-conscious beings would never develop mentally beyond the level of mere consciousness, for self-consciousness grows out of social life.” (Hegel, 59)

Discussion on Hegel

  • Tobi A.: Commented on how Hegel reflects that true freedom cannot be achieved without critical reflection. Hegel asserts that freedom is not solely established through habits and traditions; deliberate critical reflection is necessary to form genuine freedom. Hegel emphasizes that actions driven by habit do not result from conscious choice but are responses influenced by external social forces.

The Master/Slave Dialectic

  • Influential Concept: Discussed in the Phenomenology.

  • Abstract Discussion: Examines how self-consciousness develops through confrontation between two consciousnesses.

  • Outcomes:

    • The struggle for recognition leads to one becoming the “master” who dictates reality, while the other becomes the “slave.”

    • The master consumes the products of the slave's labor, gaining consciousness but not self-consciousness.

    • The slave, through labor, transforms the world and achieves an objective consciousness, thus engaging in a significant historical role.

  • Impact: Both the historical development and the Master/Slave dialectic profoundly influenced Karl Marx.

The Spread of Freedom

  • Historical Overview: In the ancient world, freedom was typically held by the sovereign, who made all decisions.

  • Greek City-States: Citizens began identifying with their communities for the common good but were still guided by oracles rather than reason.

  • Emergence of Christianity: Emphasized the spiritual identity of all humans and opposed slavery, yet power remained centralized in the Church.

  • The Reformation: A pivotal split from the Catholic Church that embedded reason and spirituality within individuals, albeit in an “other-worldly” sense.

  • Key Historical Event: The French Revolution symbolized the realization of universal spirituality.