Notes from all of the lectures of History Of Political Thought for the English track bachelor of political science in the first year - everything from the slides is included plus what was added during the lecture itself. I completed the course with an 8 and I am specializing in political theory as ...
(08/02/22)
Who should rule?
- “The people”, democracy. This because they constitute the state (they perhaps are
sovereign)
- “The Elderly”, experimented, safe-guard tradition, risk averse.
- “The King/Queen”, constitutes the state (sovereign), very simple mechanism of
decision whois in charge (dynasty), birth-right, decisive, luck sanctified by God,
Nature or Tradition
- “The Elect(ed)” (preisdent/cabinet), excludes the incompetent and the impopular,
gives a choice to the people and minimizes coordination costs
- “The Party”, on the side of history, decisive, organized around a common aim,
intellectual avant-garde
There are other options:
“Expert rule”: Epistemocracy. It presupposes that ruling is a craft, a skill that can be taught or
can be intuitive, a skill that requires knowledge and competence.
PLATO:
Most influential theorizer for epistemocracy. He was an Athenian philosopher and aristocrat,
wrote mostly dialogues, where Socrates, Plato’s teacher was most often the main speaker: is
Socrates merely echoing Plato, or is Socrates an actual separate figure?
Socrates was put to death by the Athenian jury for corrupting the youth, Plato wrote apologia
di Socrate.
After leaving and then coming back to Athens, Plato founded a major educational institution
that would last 300 years: the Academy.
Athens: it was a so-called direct or popular democracy.
● Athenians did not choose representatives: limited to free male citizens (children,
women, slaves, resident foreigners excluded). They met in a regular assembly
(ekklesia), where all men could participate, vote (by raising hand) and speak freely
(isegoria).
● For important/urgent matters (such as war) they would refer to a council (boule),
which was composed of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot (sortition) and who
served for one year. The council set the agenda for the assembly, oversaw athenian
bureaucracy, and was the main jury/judge in trials (Unitary state - in the 17th century
there was a very strong revolution in theorization of the separation of power, but the
idea proposed by Montesquieu was already exposed by the historian Polybius)
● Many magistrates and important civil servants were also chosen by lot.
● To be able to do so, they subsidized the poor. Athens was still an empire, they
extrapolated wealth from subject populations and the poor.
History of Athens:
● Spartans and Athenians united to fight the Persian expansion
● Perikles created the Delian league, where partners paid the Athenians to fight in their
place: it was voluntary, but it became a DE FACTO empire, Athens controlled the
navy, the junior partners paid tribute to Athens. Athens fundamentally dominated the
eastern mediterranean.
● Peloponnesian War (Plague and defeat by sparta)
, ● Leadership of the thirty tyrants, led by Critias, a student of Socrates.
● Socrates, as retaliation, is convicted to death after the return of democracy (399)
● Decline of athens and greek city-states, with Athens defeated by Philip 1 (338)
Ship of State analogy close reading analysis:
In democracy
Ship-owner = The People
The unruly sailors are ambitious politicians (generally drawn from upper-classes [elites])
10 Claims:
1. Democracy causes dissensus
2. Self-rule generates overconfidence
3. Most ambitious would-be-rules lack expertise (the ones who want it the most are
probably the least fit for the job)
4. And deny the very existence of political expertise
5. They threaten or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority
6. The desire of the ambtious to rule leads to (6.b) murderous conflict
7. The elites incite (oligarchic) revolutions and steal property
8. With demagogues in control there is much rudderless pleasures
9. The people are susceptible to flattery and demagogues
10. The masses call demagogues “skilled”
Considerations:
For Plato direct democracy generates lack of consensus and conflict because everyone has
a say (1,6) and the ambitious have interest in fostering conflict and dissensus, they will use
the flattery of the people in order to enrich themselves
- That everyone wants to be in control is implausible
- Even so, for Socrates’ argument to work it just needs that at least the rich people
want to be in control (plausible)
Plato seems to have thought that the practice of direct democracy revealed the (undesirable)
FACT of value-pluralism, that there is no unitariety in values and interests, but value-
pluralism is imperative to democratic life, it is an inherent conflict.
- Consequence of the product of diversity and inconsistency of human desires and
appetites (8), so if you want people to agree you need to educate and train their
passions and appetites, thus the lack of regulation of these is a clear consequence of
the commercial democracy (i.e. a lot of sea commerce) in Athens. Athens actually
had little infrastructure for education.
- Weber thought instead that value-pluralism is a modern phenomenon created by the
division of labor
The idea that self rule always generates overconfidence in all the would-be rulers is probably
too strong: there ARE risk-averse people.
- But that rich and successful people when ruling, without external constraint (other
states’ power) are overconfident is not altogether implausible. Plato would have been
able to point to the disastrous expedition of athenians to Syracuse
- On 5: Plato would point at the trial and execution of his mentor, Socrates. But his
case was more so an exception rather than the rule, their executions were a lot less
common than other city-states.
,Demagogues and direct democracy:
Demagogue: leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in
order to gain power
Demagogues undermine the hierarchy of values where goodness and expertise are
important to introduce a “reign of falsity”.
● A demagogue can persuade the masses that his ersatz/fake-political craft is, in fact,
the real thing.
● The rejection of political expertise [3-4] is bad enough, but the embrace of the
demagogue’s fake-skill as the real thing corrupts -- presumably by undermining
trust and by generating confusion about what it is -- the very idea of political
expertise.
● The true skill of a demagogue (sophist/rhetoric/populist) consists in overturning
pre-existing opinions.
● The demagogue's true danger: he undermines the habits of thought and reasonable
expectations (by making everybody complicit in a reign of falsity).
These are the 2-3 key concepts and arguments of this plato paragraph:
- Disorder
- Reign of false
- Disorder
In Plato: if the True/Expertise rules, society will be harmonious and unified, not a place of
conflict
Plato relies on empirical facts and predictions about how direct democracy behaves in
practice: he takes for granted the reader will recognize it because they live in one (Athens).
In the Republic he will explain his psychological, sociological views and his fear of human
nature. He explains these political consequences by relying on the readers’ knowledge of
Athenian history.
He presupposes a series of normative commitments:
a. Order and Unity, political harmony are desirable in politics
b. Truthful politics is desirable in politics
In politics we should pursue the good (order and unity), which can be known by those with
expertise. This causes his famous argument of philosopher rule, as they are the experts of
this field (philosopher-kings)
Normative: value judgements (living up to a standard)
Four theoretical problems of Epistemocracy:
1. On what (objective) ground is somebody thought of as qualified to lead?
a. what skills/competences/knowledge is required
b. Much of the Republic is then devoted to explaining how philosopher-kings
must be educated
2. Who gets to decide who rules and who monitors the admission (their decision)?
, a. In the Republic, the experts/rules self-select, which requires a strong public
ethos (personality/care/nature) and ability to select (and breed (yikes eugenics))
for competence
3. Even if 1-2 can be met, why think the ruling experts will be accepted by the rest?
4. Will the experts rule fairly?
ARISTOTLE
Plato’s student
Mentor of Alexander the Great
Founded the lyceum
Created the word politics itself (“affairs of the cities” i.e. polis)
Did not love democracy, but saw some good things in it:
“Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are
equal absolutely (for they suppose that because they are all alike free they are equal
absolutely)...and then the democrats claim as being equal to participate in all things in equal
shares...it is thought to be democratic for the offices to be assigned by lot...and
democratic for them not to have a property-qualification.” —Aristotle, Politics, Books IV-V (re-
ordered)
● Associates elections with oligarchies/aristocracies (who have limited franchise based
on property/wealth)
○ Only much later are elections thought democratic
● Basic democratic idea: [since when it comes to politics], nobody is better than
anybody else everybody has equal right to participate and rule politically
● [But that’s impractical as state grows;]
○ Lottery is fairest way to go
Challenges to Sortition (today)
- Inexperienced legislators, magistrates and judges
- Suboptimal performance,
- Vulnerable to bureaucratic control and outside influence such as lobbying and
experts
- Statistical problems: to create a truly representative sample, in a modern size the
sample has to become a lot bigger, becoming self-undermining, to solve the issue of
representing all the different realities
(10/02/22)
Plato’s Republic
The debate discusses what is justice, until it becomes more so Socrates’ monologue
He proposes that we need to create a model of just city to understand how should a just
person be - this because in a city, the relations among the parts are more clearly visible than
in the individual (“A heuristic to make visible justice in the individual”)
The two cities are thus explicit models
- Assumes that macro and micro are similar or even identical, that there is an
analogy: moreover, Socrates claims that the macro is composed of micro level, the
state composed by the individual. So, methodologically, Plato assumes that qualities
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