Political Philosophy Review

Justice

• Started with the question of what justice is.
• Remember the cartoon of the little fish being eaten by a bigger fish.
• The big fish says, "The world is just because I get to eat you."
• This is the opposite of what we think of as justice.
• It's a kind of natural argument or survival of the fittest argument.
• Justice seeks to move beyond such an idea to ensure the flourishing life of all members of a society.
• Justice exists when people get what they deserve.
• They get their due, what's owed to them.
• Quotes about justice:
  • Cicero: giving each their due.
  • Emperor Justinian: the constant and perpetual will to render each his due.
• How do we determine what is due to people?
• What do people deserve?
• What makes someone deserving?
• Is it merit, or is it simply the fact of being human?
• Do you have to earn it?
• Justice should not be arbitrary but deliberate.
• It is constant and perpetual will to render each his due.

Plato

• For Plato, justice is basically each doing what they're born to do in a society.
• When that happens, you have tranquility, harmony and justice.
• The three castes:
  • Workers or producers
  • Military, auxiliaries
  • Guardians, rulers
• Guardians:
  • At the top but they couldn't earn any money.
  • They had their families shared.
  • It was a communal kind of life.
  • They were the philosopher kings.
  • Only those with enough moral training are fit to rule.
  • They're fit to rule because they can't be manipulated or bought.
• The result of this system is that more plentiful and better quality goods are more easily produced.
• If each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited.
• Naturally-born with either gold, silver, or bronze.
• Does it at the right time and is released from having to do any of the others.
• The virtues associated with these casts:
  • Guardians: wisdom
  • Auxiliaries: courage
  • Workers: moderation
• Justice appears when all of these virtues are working together in harmony and the state is thus healthy.
• The Tripartite state mirrors the tripartite human soul.
• He begins by discussing justice in the largest sphere of society.
• He thinks it's easy to start there before moving to the individual.
• The three parts of the soul:
  • Reason
  • Appetites
  • Spirit
• Virtues associated with each part:
  • Reason: wisdom
  • Spirit: courage
  • Appetite: moderation

Aristotle

• Thinks that we are a political animal.
• We are naturally inclined to pursue happiness and to live in communities.
• Because it is only through living in communities or the city-state society, etc.
• That we are able to live the eudaimonic life. Flourishing.
• Eudaimonic, best translated as a flourishing life.
• The state's purpose is to enable and develop moral and intellectual excellence.
• To cultivate virtue and justice and to create and prosecute laws that enable harmony and stability.
• The polis comes into being naturally for Aristotle.
• This is a natural emergence for the sake of living, but it remains in existence for the sake of living well.
• The whole purpose of the just state is to enable its citizens to live well.
• It also enables man to engage in public life, and an intellectual life of debate and governance, again, that is only the citizen.
• The man with property are citizens, not slaves and not women.
• All citizens should at some time rule and at other times be ruled.
• Aristotle is not looking for an ideal state as such.
• He was more amenable to political change than Plato was.
• He did a lot of research, in his time, looking around at the types of states that existed.
• He saw that there was probably a correct version and a deviant version of three types of governance.
  • One ruler:
    • Correct version: monarchy, a kingship
    • Deviant version: tyranny.
  • Few rulers:
    • Good form: aristocracy, where the best rule
    • Deviant form: oligarchy, where the wealthy will take over
  • Many rulers:
    • Correct version: polity
    • Deviant version: democracy (ruled by everyone, meaning not just the best)
• Constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct.
• Any of these, the correct versions are all looking out for the common good and just without qualification.
• Whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers are deviant and unjust because they involve despotic rule, which is inappropriate for a community of free persons.
• The just state promotes the common good, not the self-interest of its rulers.
• It promotes and enables through education and public life, citizens to develop an excellence of character, to attain a noble flourishing life of virtue and intellect.
• Aristotle concept of justice is meritorious.
• The just state has laws that are established through virtuous reason, with those laws being the ultimate ruler.
• The just state provides its citizens with all their fundamental needs, education, security, economic wellbeing.

Aquinas

• Was very much influenced by Aristotle.
• Aristotle had been lost to the ancient world, his writings had been lost, but they reappear just before Aquinas' time, having been translated centuries earlier by Arabic people.
• Like Aristotle, for Aquinas, the common good is a primary goal of the just state, but so too is eternal salvation.
• Aquinas is a Christian, and so a massive change from the time of Aquinas, uh sorry, um, Aristotle and Plato.
• Christianity has become dominant.
• The laws are there to ensure a peaceful and harmonious life for the people and to enable a virtuous life lived according to the desire of God.
• For Aquinas, the church is just as important as the state.
• Except in cases of just war.
• It is wrong to intentionally kill another person, according to Aquinas, but what if a person is attacking me and threatening my life?
• It seems morally permissible for me to kill in self-defense, so in light of all of this, because, um, one of the things you must not do is kill an innocent person or kill a person.
• Doctrine of double effect.
  • There are 4 conditions from Joseph Mangan.
  • A person may illicitly or legally perform an action that he foresees will produce a good effect and a bad effect, provided that four conditions are verified.
    • That the action in itself from its very object be good, or at least indifferent.
    • That the good effect and not the evil effect be intended
    • That the good effect not be produced by means of the evil effect
    • That there be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect.
• The doctrine of double effect comes into use when it comes to things like euthanasia.
  • Doctor is giving a lot of morphine and can see that there's the good effect and the intention is the good effect to take away your pain. But there's a reasonably foreseeable bad effect ah of your death. The
  • Intention= good, death allowable.
  • Intention= bad, death not allowable.
• What should the rules of engagement in war be, and what
• Just war:
  • When is it right to go to war?
  • What should be the rules of engagement in war?
  • What is the right way to end the war?
• Just ad bellum = When is it right to go to war?
• For Aquinas, there are 33, conditions.
  • First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. It has to be a recognised authority.
  • Second, a just cause is a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault
  • Third, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention. so that they intend the advancement of good or the avoidance of evil, so a just authority, just cause, and good intention.
• Contemporary versions of just war?
  • A just war must be declared by a legitimate authority.
  • It must have a just cause, so for example, defence of one's country, it is right to go to war. defense of another's country.
  • A just war must be declared and prosecuted with the right intention. Those 1st 3 are from Aquinas.
  • There must be strong probability of success.
  • The good obtained must be proportional to the harm done.
  • War must be a last resort.

Hobbes & locke

• Hobbs state of nature. One of the most famous aspects of political philosophy, uh, Hobbs's, um, view of human nature and the state of nature.
• Hobbs: obtain two absolutely certain postulates of human nature. One, the postulate of human greed by which man insists upon his own private use of common property. The other, the postulate of natural reason by which each man strives to avoid violent death.
• Man is greedy and rational.
• Self-serving, self-interested.
• This is at base, before civilization, before we um learn how to live with others.
• It'd be a very competitive state of being.
• There'd be no police, there's no law, there's no morality, nothing yet has been invented. Remember this is a though experiment
• Humans are creatures of desire, so we would all be after goods, let's say, in the state of nature, food, clothing, material things.
• Many goods are inevitably scarce, resources are finite.
• The state of nature is marked by incessant competition.
• We're each as greedy as each other.
• Incessant competition breeds mistrust.
• The state of nature breeds mistrust because I know that you're just like me, greedy, self- serving, self-interested, You would murder me.
• With a weapon, defensive strategies leave me under-resourced, I end up depleting my resources.
• So that in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition, secondly, dividence, mistrust, and thirdly, glory.
• The smartest thing for me to do is to kill off my neighbour at the first opportunity.
• Kill or be killed in a state of nature.
• Without any law, without any governance, this is what Hobbs thought, this is how Hobbs thought we would live because of our nature.
• Life is gonna be uh brutal and short.
• Because we are rational, we will follow prudential principles. prudence means um practical, practically wise.
• He systematises and selects relevant prudential principles, calling them laws of nature.
  • The first law is to seek peace wherever there is hope of peace.
  • The second law is to be prepared to give up certain freedoms for the sake of that peace.
  • The third law is to abide by one's covenants.
• Those born into civil society inherit morality.
• Every body has to surrender basic liberties, like the right the freedom to kill.
• The key here to escaping the state of nature is for everyone to give up freedom to a sovereign, can't be conditional.
• The state is the one to define right and wrong, it's not natural law.
• Morality doesn't exist in nature, is brought by the state.
• John Locke thought that we have these rights, he have natural rights to life, liberty, and property and health.
• All natural resources are shared in common, humans have a natural right to property, and this comes about when we mix our labour with natural resources. with 3 provisos. one may only appropriate as much as one can use before it spoils, you must not take. To waste. One must leave enough and as good as for others, and may supposedly only appropriate property through one's own labour.
• The state of nature was um in fact a state of liberty, not a state of war but disputes are not easily resolved as beyond natural law there is no legal consensus, also each individual acts as judge, and that lead to the problem of possible bias and conflict, and there are not protection systems to property maintained.
• Therefore, the government is only there to protect the natural rights to life, liberty, health, and property.
• There are two forms of power, legislative power, and executive power.

Liberalism

• 5 key features:
  • Individualism
  • Freedom
  • Reason
  • Justice and Toleration
• Mill's harm principle: autonomous adult is free to do whatever they want, as long as no harm to others.
• No paternalism!
• Against Paternalism
  • For Democracy rights of women
• A just state is one where the least advantaged are the most well off.

Robert Nozick

• The minimal state does not provide any positive social services such as healthcare, education, or access to basic necessities. Any expansion beyond these functions of the government, such as redistributive taxation or welfare infringes upon individual rights by coercively reallocating resources wich equates to forced labour. It's against tax. If someone has no health care tough luck. This is the correct from of society.
• Any state that tries to redistribute wealth or enforce fairness violates individual freedoms and no the veil of ignorance does not matter, is simply not a legitimate way to approach justice. We do not need the veil because individual rights reign supreme and people are entitle to make free rational decisions.
• Criticizes Rawles approach: Fails to respect individual rights. Violates someones entitlement to owning holdings. No pattern.
• Famous Wilt Chamberlain argument.
  • Each agreed to pay him extra.
  • Chamberlain then can sell his ticket sales or distribute
• Any government needs to butt out.
• He thinks you shouldn’t rebel against bad ruler.

Axle Honneth

• 3 spheres of recognition:
  • Private sphere - self confidence
    • Disrespect : violation of body
  • Legal sphere: self respect
    • Disrespect: being denied Legal rights
  • Social sphere: self esteem
    • Disrespect: marginalisation
• Types cultural diversity:
  • Sub-cultural, do not seek to change society
  • Perspectival, seek to change society
  • Communal.