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Samenvatting - Introduction to the History of Political Ideologies
- Établissement
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
summary of the book+powerpoint+class summarizes every viewpoint of every thinker mentioned
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History of political ideologiesChapter 1: the unraveling of the medieval order
1. Scientific progress and the gradual emancipation of politics
→ challenged the complex medieval order
→ threatened the teachings of the church
European renaissance
→ various changes in politics, economics, place of Christianity, thinking about
man and society who impacted western-European societies very slowly but soon
the entire world
→ origin: Italy 14th C, spread to Europe
→ gradual demise of the feudal system
→ emergence of new economic relations, to the conquest of new lands and
continents through the progression of seafaring, to the development of new
scientific insights (Copernicus...), and the introduction of knowledge from other
continents (compass, gunpowder...).
Leonardo Da Vinci
→ born in Florence, primarily a traditional city
→ embodied transition from a tradition-oriented attitude to an empirical-oriented
attitude
→ The bigotry and idolization of the past gradually gave way to a belief in the present and
future of humanity.
→ growth of scientific method: the study of nature
→ “He looked at her (nature, sz) with two passions: a passion for the exact, which
turned him to mathematics, and a passion for the actual, which urged him to
experiment. These two strands, the logical and the experimental, have remained
the two sinews of the scientific method ever since.”
→ political power in Italy: divided into city-states
→ city-states run by aristocracies, not just aristocracies by birth but also highly
successful bankers and merchants
→ money earned through trade formed the core of power of Italian cities
→ borrowing money became a necessity because the merchant and trader could
not handle the cost of sending stuff overseas. Result: banker became a more
respectable job
1
,→ search for products to be traded and markets to sell the products
→ A divided Italy would make the products too expensive 🡪 solution: mercantilism
Policy of mercantilism
→ the sovereign had the task of developing the nation’s income
(= The economic practice by which governments used their economies to augment state
power at the expense of other countries)
→ slow process of secularization
→ Developing the nation’s income is the sovereign’s (leader, ruler) task
→ The sovereign has to develop a policy that favors (long distance) trade
→ foreign trade & plunder of the wealth of subjugated countries led to the
triumph of the absolute states
Nicollo Machiavelli
→ broke with traditional mirrors for princes that advised the ruler how to behave
as godly leader
→ not interested in describing moral or honorouble behavior or how a society
should be led but in factuality of how a society was concretely governed and how
people behaved
Traditional mirrors for princes* Il principles mirror for princes
Prescriptive: Descriptive:
→ advice for ruler: how to behave as (politics as an art away from morality and
godly leader religion)
→ what is moral behaviour?
→ what ideals should a polity strive for → describe the real, not the ideal face
face of the sovereign
Monarch presented with an idealized mirror → mirror reflected something the
sovereign didn’t want to see
*mirror for princes= Medieval literary genre in which political ideas are expressed in the form
of advice to a ruler/ prince
→ rejecting morality as a basis of reflection on politics
→ relied on empiricism: knowledge came from experience
→ human nature is universal
→ human nature is good and bad at the same time but ruler should assume
human nature is bad
→ Crucial to Machiavelli’s approach was the scientific method which sought to
focus on the essence of politics and not its contextual manifestation
Vision of religion
→ anticlerical
→ religion shouldn't play an overarching role in society
→ secularization (division of church and state)
→ no antireligious feelings (state is more important than church)
2
,→ saw religion as social element (it connects people)
Critiques on church, the way it’s organized and on the clergy, but NOT on religion itself
2 The church stopped Italy from a unification: it divided Italy in pieces
critiques:
Decadence of the Church 🡪 Clergy were sinners according to the morality of
the Christian morality
🡪 the church is untrue to its founding principles
La raison d’Etat (= reason of state) (= justification for a nation’s foreign policy on the basis
that the nation’s own interests are primary)
→ People need to look for institutions to make the state powerful
→ (!Machiavelli didn’t really make a distinction between state and ruler)
→ The state has legitimacy to use violence
People’s army
→The state needs a reliable army, and army that relies on people that fight for their own
interest, the state and how it functions (🡪 NOT for a reward)
→ an army that was willing to fight because it had something to lose and not an
army made up of mercenaries who fought only for their reward.
Legitimacy of the state
→ people don’t want freedom but security
→ certainty meant first and foremost order but above all the inviolability of
private property
→ a population tolerates any regime, even a dictatorship, as long as its private
property (including women and children) was not touched
→It’s better for the leader to try to be loved and rule by consensus, BUT one
should better fear the ruler, than love the ruler 🡪 love depends on men, fear depends
on the leader and his leadership
Popular Machiavelism
→ the end justifies the means
By separating politics from morality, Machiavelli made possible a secularization of politics
but at the same time drew attention to the cynicism of political life.
Thomas More
Book Utopia
→ describes the social and economic devastation of the british countryside
3
, → describes island (positive mirror of England) based on common ownership, no
trade based on money= private accumulation of wealth that More saw as cause
of misery didnt exist here
Enclosure movement
→ traditional farming based on communal management of land with open fields
changed to a system of private ownership of farmland separated by fences
→ consequences: farmers deprived of livelyhood
Vision on religion
→ desire for a christian medieval order
Vision on economy
→ ideal for a society where money had to place
→ unacceptable growing of inequality because of capitalism
→ prices based on demand is repugnant
No revolutionary
could not or did not translate this into reforms or changes in reality.
2. The end of Catholic hegemony: reformation and counterreformation
Luther
→ came in contact with the intellectual and theological conflict between
scholastics and humanists
→ opposed scholastic, dogmatic reasoning but not anti-religious
→ critique on corruption of the church
Rebellion against the church
→ chocked by decadent lifestyles of the priests and bishops
→ protest: Luther nailed 95 theses of indulgences to the church on all saints day
→ why? Indulgences (the remission by God of punishments for sins committed: financial
pay) is commercialization of the church, which undermines faith itself
The money that the church made with the indulgences was for the enrichment of the church
itself
Religious liberation of man
→ creation of a direct link between man and God without the intervention of an
ecclesiastical institution
4
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