POL I Political Theory
Stories, Documents and Incidents
2011
Quick Definition story 1 noun an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment: an adventure story | I'm going to tell you a story. • a plot or storyline: the novel has a good story. • a piece of gossip; a rumour: there have been lots of stories going ...
(From The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised) in English Dictionaries &
Thesauruses)
Myth – story presented as historical fact dealing with gods, culture or past heroes. Often religious in nature. Myth = sacred story.
Political myth – is an ideologically marked account of past, present or future political events, based on certain values.

Not personal, but collective stories, myths, that embody stereotypes, political truths
 which have/had powerful political impact
 on policy documents, theories, philosophies
 needed to be understood to interpret events, incidents.
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Stories of this course:
1.
Hobbes’s
Leviathan
: “Before humans formed society they lived in a state of nature. Then they entered the social contract …”
2.
“South Africa’s Constitution is one of the most progressive in the whole world …”
3.
“The Tutsi are of Hamitic origin; they are semi-white and thus have the right to oppress black Hutu – which explains why the latter slaughtered 800 000 of them in 100 days.
4.
“If we just let the market do its own thing, an invisible hand will organise things to everybody’s benefit”
5.
“I am because we are”.
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First story
Story : The Social Contract
 First telling: Book II of Plato’s Republic
(358e)
“And now for my first heading, the nature and origin of justice. What they say is that it is according to nature a good thing to inflict wrong or injury, and a bad thing to suffer it, but that the disadvantages of suffering it exceed the advantages of inflicting it; after a taste of both, therefore, men decide that, as they can’t evade the one and achieve the other, it will pay to make a compact with each other by which they forego both. They accordingly proceed to make laws and mutual agreements, and what the law lays down they call lawful and right.
This is the origin and nature of justice. It lies between what is most desirable, to do wrong and avoid punishment, and what is most undesirable, to suffer wrong without being able to get redress; justice lies between these two and is accepted not as being good in itself, but as having a relative value due to our inability to do wrong”.
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
Contract disappeared. Replaced by Kings and
Divine Rule. Returns after ‘death of God’
(Enlightenment) c.17
th century.

John Locke, Thomas Hobbes: starting understanding all over again. Use contract to explain origins of civil society, the state.

Hobbes: rationalist, not empiricist.
 Rationalist: knowledge as “building”.
Philosophy = laying foundations.

Result: not historical, but constitutive causes of the state.
Question, then: “given a collection of men without government, how might we imagine that they would rationally have decided to construct such a thing?”
Answer:

Social contract: method = fiction, thought experiment.

Four elements or building blocks:
1.
State of nature
2.
Intervention
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3.
Contract/authority
4.
Return of the “state of nature”
Example of possible “return of state of nature”:

We arm ourselves at night.

Looting during power outages

Degeneration into civil war.

Relation between sovereign states.

Solutions?

Contract
Reading : Main points of Ryan reading (Reader):
A. Politics as science (pp 208-216):
1. Rationalist project: foundational, certainty.
2. Political science vs. political prudence
3. Prudence = experience = prudential (p212)
4. Science – hypothetical, general = Sapientia
5. Model? To be the Euclid of politics.
6. Euclid (Elements) – Hobbes – demonstrable truths.
7. Conclusion (1): The Leviathan “sets out what rational individuals must do if they are to form a political society; it does not predict what they will do.”
8. Conclusion (2): Society = artifact, not natural.
Contract : “I authorise and give up my right of governing myself, to the Man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that you give your Right to him, and Authorise all his
Actions in like manner”
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B. Politics as artifice (pp216-225):
1. Story: life in the state of nature is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”
2. Hobbesian versus Aristotelian politics:
 teleology or artifice? Attraction to the good or aversion to death? Political animals or reluctantly induced?

Natural hierarchy or equality? (p217)
C. Rationalist re-imagining of origin of society:
(I) the state of nature (pp217-225)
1.
Various opinions re history
2.
Co-operative (Locke), innocence (Rousseau); vicious (Hobbes).
3.
Hobbes (p219) rational, self-interested, driven by desire, equal, vulnerable. ANXIOUS !!
4.
Resulting causes of war: (p220)

Competition: scarcity, competition
 diffidence/anticipation: first and second strike TERROR!! And pre-emptive strikes
 vainglory/envy: envy as the measure of value
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D. Rational re-imagining of origin of society (II) the way out.
1.
The three theorems (axioms) or “laws” of nature
2.
Definition (p222): a precept or general rule discovered by reason which compels us to do what is constructive and forbids us to do what is destructive of our own life and well-being.
3.
The three theorems:

One of our desires is peace, harmony, accumulation of stuff

I can have that if I give up the right to take/destroy yours;

For this to work we need to stick to the agreement. Needed: a Sword to enforce the Word. (Leviathan).
4.
Result: the contract and quasi-absolute rule
E. The paradoxes of reason a. The paradox of authority (pp226). b. State of nature in society (pp229)
Essay topic: Lay out the Hobbesian theoretical framework and discuss the nature of our rights, duties and what freedom there is for resistance within it.
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