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Summary History of Political Thought: Lecture notes (hopt)
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Extensive summary of all the hopt lectures. I had an end-grade of 7.7 for this course. Good luck studying!
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History of Political Thought - Lecture notesWeek 1
Lecture 1:
- Who should rule?
- Plato expert rule?
- Aristotle on lotteries/sortition
- What is political theory
Who should rule?
● Some answers:
- The people (they constitute the state)
- The elderly (experienced, safe-guard tradition, risk averse)
- The king
- The elect(ed) (president/cabinet, excludes the incompetent, gives a choice to
the people)
- The party
● Expert rule or epistemocracy
- Presupposes that ruling is a craft/skill or requires knowledge (or competence)
- Let the experts rule → anti-democratic?
- Plato
Plato
● 428-347 b.c, Athens
● Mostly wrote Dialogues
- Most of which feature his teacher, Socrates, as a lead character
- Socrates was put to death by an Athenian jury for “corrupting the youth”
● He founded The Academy which lasted for 300 years
● Would be a teacher of the ruler/tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysis II
Athens
● It was a so-called direct or popular democracy
- Limited to free males (about 30.000 people) → it excluded women, children,
slaves, and foreign residents
- Met in a regular assembly (ekklēsia) → all men could participate, vote by
raising a hand, and speak freely (isegoria)
- Isegoria meant you could say almost whatever you wanted, Socrates was the
only philosopher that was put to death → but it shows there was a limit to the
free speech
- For imperant/urgent matter (war) there was the Boulē or concil, which was
composed of 500 citizens who were chosen by lot (sortition) and served for
one year → many magistrates (important civil servants) who also chosen by
lot
, - The council set the agenda for the assembly and oversaw the Athenian
bureaucracy; it was the main jury/judges in trials (unitary state)
● Athens history
- 492-449: leading part of a coalition with Sparta in the wars that defeated
Persians
- 478 ff: Athens became leader of Delian league (perikles)
- Voluntary, but it became a de facto Athenian empire
- Athens controlled the navy
- The junior partners paid tribute to the Athens → became wealthy
- 310-303: Peloponnesian War: Plague and defeat —> Sparta wins
- 404/3: Thirty Tyrants terrorize Athens led by Critias (a student of Socrates,
and the people of Athens want payback when the tyrants are chased out) →
convicted to death after the return of democracy
- 338: Athens defeated by Philip 1
● In a democracy the shop-owner = the people → so, the unruly sailors are ambitious
politicians (generally drawn from upper class politicians)
● At least ten Platonic criticism of popular democracy
1. Democracy → dissensus
2. Self-rule generates overconfidence
3. Most ambitious would-be-rules lack expertise
4. And deny the very existence of political expertise
5. They treated or kill anybody who claims intellectual superiority
6. The desire of ambitious to rule → murderous conflict
7. The elites incite (oligarchic) revolutions and steal property
8. With demagogues in control there is much rudderless pleasure
9. The people are susceptible to flattery and demagogues (go for the person who
promises the most)
10. The masses call demagogues skilled
, ● Some evaluative comments:
- Disorder and disunity (1, 5-8)
- Reign of false (2-4, 9-10)
- In Plato: the truth/truth is harmonious
● Plato's critique of popular democracy relies on empirical facts and predictions about
how direct democracy behaves
- He explains these psychological commitments in Republic
- He explains these political consequences in rest of Republic and can rely on
his readers knowledge of Athenian history
● He relies on normative (value judgments) commitments
- Order and unity
- Political desireability of truthful politics
● = experts should rule
Four theoretical problems for Epistemocay
1. On what (objective) grounds is somebody thought qualified to lead
, - What skills/competence/knowledge is required?
- Much of the Republic devoted to explaining the education of
philosopher-kings
2. Who gets to decide and who monitors the admission
- In the Republic the experts self-select → this requires a strong public ethos
and ability to select and breed 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 382-322 B.C
His thinking:
Associate elections with
oligarchies/aristocracies (who have limited
franchises based on property/wealth)
Nobody is better than anybody else, and
everyone has the equal right to participate →
when a state grows bigger it is impractical
→ lottery is the fairest way to go!
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