SS

Class Notes

09/10:

The Principle Which Gives Occasion

  • “it is not from thte benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” “We address ourselves, not to their humanity but their self-love”

Invisible Hand

  • Smith opposed interventions of state meant to maximize wealth of nation

  • Why?

  • Maximization of wealth is achieved naturally by pursuit of private self-interest inherent to capitalist enterprise

  • Each individual’s effort to maximize private gain is lead by an invisible hand to promote the public interest

Masters and Workers

  • Private ownership and means of production changes relationship between worker and their production

  • Before, “the whole produce of laboring belongs to the laborer”

  • Now they get a wage

  • Smith sees the relationship between masters and laborers as a kind of contract

  • But Master generally has the upper hand

Mary Wollstonecraft - Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

  • Vindication → response to Edmund Burke’s “Reflections of the Revolutions in France” (1790) - defense of monarchy, aristocracy, property, and hereditary succession, and traditionalism (“Prejudice”)

  • Draws on the authority of natural law and its relation not only to rights but to virtues (duties)

  • Counterposes artifice and custom to nature and reason

Virtue

  • Society preoccupied with rank, wealth, acquisition of property, and conspicuous display is morally bankrupt

  • People assume virtue follows from one’s station rather than their duty

  • Interrogates women’s conventional roles, the constraints of propriety, and subordination to men

  • Denies the natural rights to women

  • MW → focus on duties - none (i.e., women) can perform duties whose natural rights and capacity for reason are not respected

09/08:

Jean Jacques Rousseau Contd.

  • The Social Contract

    • Individuals do not submit to a single individual but to the collective

    • General Will (Volonte Generale) - individual voluntarily submits themselves to the General Will

    • In giving themselves to the GW, nothing is sacrificed

    • Its an obligation that preserves the freedom and equality of each individual

    • GW - emodies only those elements taht protect the equality and freedom of each individual

    • Each individual is sovereign - come together to preserv sovereignty (popular sovereignty)

  • Societies are Conventional

    • “The social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions”

    • Government, civil society, etc. also conventional, not natural - thus, can change

Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations

  • Moral Philosophy

    • Rejects foundational accounts of morality

    • Instead mroal questions are imminent to human experience and specific situations

    • Non-reductive - balances multiple aspects of actions, not just motives or consequences

    • One way moral faculties can be corrupted is by imposition of systems or principles external to everyday experiences of moral judgement

  • Wealth of Nations

    • Why do some societies prosper and otehrs do not?

    • Question of source of value

    • Smith challenges two dominant perspectives:

      • Mercantilism - Wealth measured by amount o money or gold possessed - trade surpluses - lead to protectionist policies

      • Physiocracy - only agriculture ( or mining) produced net surplus of wealth ( beyond subsistence)

    • Smith → Wealth (or value) supplied by labor or productivity of labor

  • Division of Labor

    • “The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor…seems to have been the effcects of the division of labor”

    • DoL maximizes productivity by

      • ꜛSkill through repetition

      • ꜜWaste of time - ꜛEfficiency

      • ꜛFamiliarity of tasks → innovation of technology

  • Contd.

    • All of society benefits - “Universal opulence…extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people”

    • “Every workman ahs a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for”

    • Every worker produces a surplus that they trade for part of the surplus of other workers → results in state of plenty for all to enjoy

  • The Principle Which Gives Occasion

    • Human propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another

    • Humans depend on one another to satisfy their needs and wants

    • It is not through the benevolence of others but from appealing to the self-interets (self-love) of others

    • Differences in talent are not the cause but the effect of DoL

09/03:

possible idea for paper proposal: Look for the correlation Video games and School shootings; school shootings and the different responses based upon the shooters race

Hobbes

  • Background

    • “Nature hath made men so equall” - No natural hierarchy or order of things

    • Equality of ability and hope - of egoistic passions and desires

    • Humans are rational - each can connive best means to achieve self-interested ends

  • Summum Bonum

    • Idea of organizing political community around the greatest good made no sense to Hobbes

    • No agreement over what was the greatest good

    • Society can only be oriented around a summum malum, or greatest evil - fear of violent death

  • The Naturall Condition

    • Desire the same thing? → Enemies

    • Mere self-defense is inadequate - must over-power the other → precipitates “ware” of each against all

    • No pleasure - source of “griefe” - leads to constant fear and threat of harm - life becomes “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”

    • Also - society can achieve nothing - no industry, science, culture, etc.

  • contd.

    • No law exists under such conditions

    • Thus, no passions, desires or actions are in themselves a sin

    • Notions of right/wrong, justice/injustice make no sense

    • Neither do notions of propriety, dominion, mine, and thine

    • Criminal acts only exists when there are laws that proscribe these acts

    • Thus, these qualities are products of association - or society

  • Naturall Lawes

    • Liberty to preserve one’s own life - how accomplished?

    • Will to power

    • Collective agreement to abandon right to all things and accept limits to liberty

    • Must cede multiplicity of wills to a single, dominant will - a sovereign power

    • Multitude united in one person or assembly → Common - Wealth

    • Representative

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • State of (Human) Nature

    • Rousseau → humans in Hobbes’ state of nature possess characteristics (aggressiveness, selfishness, etc.) that can only be the result of society

    • Humans obey one law: self preservation - they pursue self preservation in isolation and in indifference to others

    • Humans exist in state of balance between their needs and resources in immediate environment

  • Contd.

    • Humans are “isolated, timid, peaceful, mute, and without the foresight to worry about what the future will bring:

    • Human’s generally good - governed by self-interest (preservation) - love of self

    • Also, pity - humans have imaginations are capable of compassion

    • Reason arises in state of society - emphasizes sentiment

  • Origin of Society

    • Growth of human race, adversity and scarcity disturbed the balance

    • Humans had to come together to coordinate efforts - formed families and larger collectives

    • Then language, knowledge, culture

    • No inequality yet

    • There was vanity and envy but also love, loyalty, and desire to please

  • Contd.

    • Cultivation of plants, domestication of animals, division of labor lead to inequality

    • Some prosper more than others, accumulate wealth, pass it down to children

    • Rich come to dominate the poor - resentment grows - some poor acquiesce - others fight back - potential for violent conflict

    • Laws are passed to benefit all (but really the rich) → political society is born

08/27: Origins

The Enlightenment

  • Questioning of authority:

    • Politically - Who rules?

    • Epistemologically (How do we know things) - what are the grounds of legitimate knowledge

    • Inseparable questions

  • Reason and Authority:

    • Dominant sources of authority - Tradition, Monarchy, the Church - Questioned

    • Traditional justifications of government (e.g. Divine Right) Repudiated

    • New basis of authority → Human Reason

  • Reason and Freedom:

    • Humans achieve autonomy through the use of reason

    • Individual is self-governing - freedom is achieved through the exercise of reason

    • Individuals should use their reason to achieve political freedom and social progress

    • Immanuel Kant

Natural Law

  • “Law of Nature”

  • Universal moral principles inherent in human nature and the natural order

  • Laws ought to serve as basis for human laws and social institutions

Scientific Reason

  • Another Question about authority: what are the grounds of legitamate knowledge?

  • Not Church dogma, monarchy, tradition, or superstition, but reason - scientific rationality

  • in His 1784 essay “What is Enlightenment?” Immanuel Kant sez sapere aude! (“Dare to Know!”)

  • Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

    • Observation and experience are the grounds of legitimate knowledge

      • Basically democratizes knowledge

    • Established tradition of empiricism

  • Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

    • Methodological skepticism - rejects any idea that can be doubted

    • Only thing that cannot be doubted is the fact of doubting (or thought) - so, thought exists - something must be doing the thinking (“me”) - conclusion: “I think, therefore I am”

    • Establishes tradition of rationalism