Politics and the
Enlightenment
Mark Philp
A Lecture in Three Parts - and
a bit:
 Theorizing
about the responsibility of
Government
 Models of government and politics
 What is happening to the state?
The bit:
 Classes: The Burke/Paine Controversy
1. Responsibilities of
government
 Social
contract tradition
 Natural law
 Duties of Christian king
 Civic humanism/republicanism
 Utility and welfare
 Comparative political analysisMontesquieu
I. John Locke: on
claims to absolute
power
As if when Men quitting the State
of Nature entered into Society,
they agreed that all of them but
one, should be under the restraint
of Laws, but that he should still
retain all the Liberty of the State of
Nature, increased with Power and
made licentious with Impunity. This
is to think that Men are so foolish
that they take care to avoid what
Mischiefs may be done to them
by Pole-Cats, or Foxes, but are
content, nay think it safety, to be
devoured by Lions . II T 93
Locke on contract
 Horizontal
contract: i.e. Between equals,
not between subject and sovereign
 To establish civil society – a community
agreeing together to accept a common
interpretation of the law of nature
 Relationship between ‘society’ – the true
legislature – and government is fiduciary
 Violations of trust are violations of right
and justify resistance
Natural law basis:
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‘The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to
govern it, which obliges every one: and Reason,
which is that Law, teaches all mankind, who will
but consult it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his
Life, Health, Liberty or Possessions. For men being
all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and
infinitely wise Maker; All the Servants of one
Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his order
and about his business, they are his Property,
whose Workmanship they are, made to last during
his, not one another’s Pleasure.’ 2nd T, II, 6,11-15
Locke’s Ethica B m/s
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‘The origin and foundation of all law is
dependency. A dependent intelligent being
is under the power and direction and
dominion of him on whom he depends and
must be for the ends appointed him by that
superior being. If man were independent he
could have no law but his own will no end but
himself. He would be a god to himself and the
satisfaction of his own will the sole measure
and end of all his actions.’
Natural Law traditions
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John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf,
Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes
Variable relationship between rights and duties
Hobbes – right prior to law – self-preservation underpins
natural laws as theorems of prudence
Locke law/duty prior to right – we have rights against others
to prevent their interference in the exercise of our prior duty
to serve God.
The grounding of natural law and natural rights changes
over time – from God-given, to our social nature, to a set of
causal generalisations about how human beings are – but
not in a way that creates a consensus – many of these
issues remain blurred – and are reworked and repeated in
the debate on France and the Burke (Hobbesian)
exchange with Paine (Lockeian)
Fenelon:
Telemachus 1699
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The education of a Christian king – derived from
Aristotle, Cicero – ancient virtue – responsibility to
protect and defend the people, to provide them
with order and security, and the virtue of
moderation
Mentor to Telemachus: ‘You were born hard and
haughty; your heart was touched only by your own
interest and convenience; but you have at last
become a man, and by the experience of your own
misfortunes, you have learned to sympathize with
others. Without such compassion, there is no good
nature, virtue, nor capacity for the government of
mankind.’ (Implicitly to Louis XIV)
Huge after-life – across Europe – most translated
book in Arabic in 18th/19th century
Civic humanism/republicanism
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Citizen virtue
Balanced powers – from Polybius/Machiavelli
Anti-commerce/luxury
Anti-imperial
Civic religion
Discourse of corruption and immanent
decline
Montesquieu – virtue and love of equality
Salus populi suprema lex esto ("Let the good
of the people be the supreme law“)
Oath of the Horatii (1785) –
Jacques Louis David
David (1789): The Lictors bring
to Brutus the bodies of his sons
Commerce and utility
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Civilisation
Non-martial discourse
Acceptance of trade and commerce as softening manners
Acceptance of individual interests, coupled with socialisation
through sentiment, sympathy, imagination
All government rests on opinion/utility
Acceptance of Smith’s adage: ‘It is not from the 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 to their self-love, and never talk to them
of our own necessities, but of their advantages.’
And ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for
merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy
against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is
impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which
either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or
justice’
Montesquieu: classification
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England: A republic masquerading as a
monarchy
monarchy – society driven by honour,
inequality of ranks, king rules through
intermediary institutions
republic – aristocracy and moderation
democracy and virtue
virtue = love of one’s country/love of equality
Separation of powers – or mixed government
Commercial republic aimed at freedom
II. Practical Politics – what
concepts did people work
with
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Regime distinctions – one, few, and many
Reality of monarchy – rarity of republics
Dutch, Swiss, Venice
Absolutism of many Enlightenment thinkers
English exceptionalism and mixed
government (rise of influence of Britain after
Blenheim 1704)
Oriental despotism and its dangers
The belief in rational solutions, and an
enlightened king/elite – so no room for
‘politics’
Machiavelli: All states…have been either republics or
principalities
Republicanism
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End is the common
good
Anti-faction – seen as
corrupting
Republican
conundrum
Legislator and
aristocratic republics
Limited relevance
Monarchy
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Divine sanction
End of rule is good of
the people/state
Court politics seen as
faction
Monarch as legislator
Alliance between
enlightenment and
absolutism
What did politics mean?
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Struggle to gain and hold power against others
Machiavellianism
Party, faction, and court intrigue - conflicting
interests that vie for dominance – a zero-sum
game
Centrality of bargaining and corruption – nonideal, unprincipled
Disturbs the state and the maintenance of order
Only gradual acceptance of party – but on a
mixed government model, in the name of liberty
Britain
France
America
Enlightenment project of a
science of government
Emphasis on
Objectivity
Public good
Rational solutions
Often centralist
Sub-genre of corrupting influences
Early 19th C:
To replace the government of
men by the administration of
things – St Simon and Marx
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No sense of politics as an on-going, agonistic
process of working out differences through
compromise and negotiation – and no sense
of politics as a necessary condition for
freedom
Closer to technocratic model – rulers knowing
best – but then the issue becomes how to
avoid rule turning to tyranny
People’s thinking about the nature of rule
needs contextualising in relation to the
concurrent 18th C processes of state-building
Jeremy Bentham
1748-1832
politics
 Genuine
question as to whether it has an
accepted role (even today)
 Assumes that there are fundamental
disagreements, that one side beats other
sides, and that the beating is legitimate.
 What could enable that?
procedures seen as legitimately trump
outcomes
perfect procedures v pure procedures
III. State-Building
 Enlightenment
sees the emergence of
centralised, fiscal-military states (i.e., that
fight wars and tax ), and impose order
internally, and defend its interests vis a vis
other states
 Most centred around the Court: if they
have representative institutions, these
have usually lesser significance – except
UK (and then only gradually)
The State as a
Roaming vs stationary bandit
(Mancur Olson, Power and Prosperity, 2000)
Roaming
 Predatory
 Maximizes
extraction
 Short time horizons
 Dominance
entirely a function
of effective
coercion
Stationary
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Concerned to
optimize return over
the long term
Longer term time
horizons
Investment to
increase return
Move from violence
to more efficient and
consensual forms of
rule and legitimation
Enlightenment states as
stationary bandits
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Period of almost constant war
States had to finance that through tax and loans
Also needed to ensure that they had the capacity for the
reproduction of materials of war – ships, uniforms, weapons
And that they had access to armies – either standing
armies, mercenaries, or, later, conscription
War making necessarily became state making!
By the later18th C most European states had effectively
monopolized the legitimate use of violence in their
territories
But these are mostly limited states – concerned to tax,
spend, fight wars, and pursue dynastic and foreign policy
objectives in Europe’ complex balance of power.
Montesquieu/Hirschman
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Checking great acts of policy
‘since the introduction of ‘letters of exchange’ ‘princes
have had to govern themselves more wisely that they
themselves would have thought, for it turned out that great
acts of authority were so clumsy that experience itself has
made known that only goodness of government brings
prosperity. One has begun to be cured of
Machiavellianism…what were formerly called coups d’etat
would, at present, apart from their horror, be only
imprudences. And, happily, men are in a situation such
that, though their passions inspire in them the thought of
being wicked, they nonetheless have an interest in not
being so.’ L’Esprit des Lois XX, 21
(A O Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests)
Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, Barry R Weingast,
Violence and Social Orders: A conceptual Framework for
Interpreting Recorded Human History (2009)
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Basic Distinction between Natural States and
Open Access Societies
Natural states use the political system to regulate
economic activity, create rents, control violence,
and establish social cooperation. They come in
three forms – fragile, basic and mature
Open access societies: ie: societies in which open
entry to politics and economics provides the
regulatory mechanisms for the society.
18th C states might best be thought of as moving
from basic to mature, rather than from natural to
open access.
Modern commercial empires
and their governments
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Can’t be republics
Need spirit of liberty for the protection of
commerce
Perfectly compatible with absolute or
autocratic rule – if that is reasoned and
guided by the public good
England as an exception in European state
system
America as an immature state
Empire as driven by trade and economic
growth – less concern with colonising
IV – the ‘Bit’:
The Debate on France
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Anglo vs US model in France
Character of generational sovereignty
Stability and order vs innovation
Mob rule vs tyranny or despotism
Organic interests vs factions
Problem of equality – those unequal in one
respect want to be unequal in all; those equal
in one respect want equality in all – from
careers open to talent to equality of property
Debate/Controversy/War
on the French Revolution
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Not just (if at all) an intellectual exchange
Practical struggle for the allegiance of the elite
into which a much wider public is drawn
Contributions need to be read for ideas, but also
for rhetorical strategies, performances, challenges,
and offering new scripts
Breaks open the public sphere, erases the
boundaries between spheres of politics and public
discussion, and makes wider public legitimation a
recurrent component of politics – which means
the fiscal-military state begins to widen its remit.
But the material is slippery! And is meant to be!
Arthur O’Connor, 1798
1.
The pomp of courts and pride of kings
I prize above all earthly things;
I love my country; the king
Above all men his praise I sing:
The royal banners are displayed,
And may success the standard aid
2.
I fain would banish far from hence
The Rights of Man and Common Sense
Confusion to his odious reign
That foe to princes, Thomas Paine!
Defeat and ruin seize the cause
Of France, its liberties and laws