Plato: The State and the Soul

The Republic

The most comprehensive statement of Plato's mature philosophical views appears

in (The Republic), an extended treatment of the most fundamental principles
for the conduct of human life. Using the character "Socrates" as a fictional
spokesman, Plato considers the nature and value of justice and the other virtues as
they appear both in the structure of society as a whole and in the personality of an
individual human being. This naturally leads to discussions of human nature, the
achievement of knowledge, the distinction between appearance and reality, the
components of an effective education, and the foundations of morality.

Because it covers so many issues, The Republic can be read in several different
ways: as a treatise on political theory and practice, as a pedagogical handbook, or as a
defence of ethical conduct, for example. Although we'll take notice of each of these
features along the way, our primary focus in what follows will be on the
basic metaphysical and epistemological issues, foundational questions about who we
are, what is real, and about how we know it. Read in this fashion, the dialogue as a
whole invites us to share in Plato's vision of our place within the ultimate structure of
reality.

What is Justice?

Book I of The Republic appears to be a Socratic dialogue on the nature

of justice (Gk. [dikaisun]). As always, the goal of the discussion is to
discover the genuine nature of the subject at hand, but the process involves the
proposal, criticism, and rejection of several inadequate attempts at defining what
justice really is.

The elderly, wealthy Cephalus suggests that justice involves nothing more than
telling the truth and repaying one's debts. But Socrates points out that in certain
(admittedly unusual) circumstances, following these simple rules without exception
could produce disastrous results. (Republic 331c) Returning a borrowed weapon to an
insane friend, for example, would be an instance of following the rule but would not
seem to be an instance of just action. The presentation of a counter-example of this
sort tends to show that the proposed definition of justice is incorrect, since its
application does not correspond with our ordinary notion of justice.

In an effort to avoid such difficulties, Polemarchus offers a refinement of the

definition by proposing that justice means "giving to each what is owed." The new
definition codifies formally our deeply-entrenched practice of seeking always to help
our friends and harm our enemies. This evades the earlier counter-example, since the
just act of refusing to return the borrowed weapon would clearly benefit one's friend.
But Socrates points out that harsh treatment of our enemies is only likely to render
them even more unjust than they already are. (Republic 335d) Since, as we saw in
the Phaedo, opposites invariably exclude each other, the production of injustice could
never be an element within the character of true justice; so this definition, too, must be
mistaken.

The Privilege of Power

At this point in the dialogue, Plato introduces Thrasymachus the sophist, another
fictionalized portrait of an historical personality. After impatiently dismissing what
has gone before, Thrasymachus recommends that we regard justice as the advantage
of the stronger; those in positions of power simply use their might to decree what shall
be right. This, too, expresses a fairly common (if somewhat pessimistic) view of the
facts about social organization.

But of course Socrates has other ideas. For one thing, if the ruling party mistakenly
legislates to its own disadvantage, justice will require the rest of us to perform the
(apparently) contradictory feat of both doing what they decree and also doing what is
best for them. More significantly, Socrates argues that the best ruler must always be
someone who knows how to rule, someone who understands ruling as a craft. But
since crafts of any sort invariably aim to produce some external goal (Gk.
[tlos]), good practitioners of each craft always act for the sake of that goal, never in
their own interest alone. Thus, good rulers, like good shepherds, must try to do what is
best for those who have been entrusted to them, rather than seeking their own welfare.
(Republic 342e)

Beaten down by the force of Socratic questioning, Thrasymachus lashes out bitterly
and then shifts the focus of the debate completely. If Socrates does happen to be right
about the nature of justice, he declares, then it follows that a life devoted to injustice is
be more to one's advantage than a life devoted to justice. Surely anyone would prefer
to profit by committing an act of injustice against another than to suffer as the victim
of an act of injustice committed by someone else. ("Do unto others before they do
unto you.") Thus, according to Thrasymachus, injustice is better than justice.

Some preliminary answers come immediately to mind: the personal rewards to be

gained from performing a job well are commonly distinct from its intrinsic aims; just
people are rightly regarded as superior to unjust people in intelligence and character;
every society believes that justice (as conceived in that society) is morally obligatory;
and justice is the proper virtue (Gk. [aret]) of the human soul. But if Socrates
himself might have been satisfied with responses of this sort, Plato the philosophical
writer was not. There must be an answer that derives more fundamentally from the
nature of reality.

Is Justice Better than Injustice?

When Thrasymachus falls silent, other characters from the dialogue continue to
pursue the central questions: what is justice, how can we achieve it, and what is its
value? Not everyone will agree that justice should be defended as worthwhile for its
own sake, rather than for the extrinsic advantages that may result from its practice.

It helps to have a concrete example in mind. So Glaucon recounts the story of

Gyges, the shepherd who discovered a ring that rendered him invisible and
immediately embarked on a life of crime with perfect impunity. The point is to
suggest that human beingsgiven an opportunity to do so without being caught and
therefore without suffering any punishment or loss of good reputationwould
naturally choose a life of injustice, in order to maximize their own interests.

Adeimantus narrows the discussion even further by pointing out that the personal
benefits of having a good reputation are often acquired by anyone who merely appears
to act justly, whether or not that person really does so. (Republic 363a) This suggests
the possibility of achieving the greatest possible advantage by having it both ways: act
unjustly while preserving the outward appearance of being just, instead of acting
justly while risking the outward appearance of injustice. In order to demonstrate once
and for all that justice really is valuable for its own sake alone, Platomust show that a
life of the second sort is superior to a life of the first sort.

Thrasymachus, Glaucon, and Adeimantus have given voice to a fundamental issue

at the heart of any effort to improve human conduct by appealing to the principles
of moral philosophy. If what I am morally required to do can (in some circumstances)
be different from what I would choose do for my own benefit, then why should I be
moral? Plato wrote the remainder of The Republic in an attempt to provide an
adequate, satisfying answer to this question.

After Book I, the entire dialogue is pervaded by an extended analogy between the
justice of individual human beings and the that of an entire society or city-state. Since
the crucial elements of justice may be easier to observe on the larger scale
(Republic 369a), Plato began with a detailed analysis of the formation, structure, and
organization of an ideal state before applying its results to a description of personal
life.

Why We Form a Society

 Imagining their likely origins in the prehistorical past, Plato argued that societies
are invariably formed for a particular purpose. Individual human beings are not self-
sufficient; no one working alone can acquire all of the genuine necessities of life. In
order to resolve this difficulty, we gather together into communities for the mutual
achievement of our common goals. This succeeds because we can work more
efficiently if each of us specializes in the practice of a specific craft: I make all of the
shoes; you grow all of the vegetables; she does all of the carpentry; etc. Thus, Plato
held that separation of functions and specialization of labor are the keys to the
establishment of a worthwhile society.

The result of this original impulse is a society composed of many individuals,

organized into distinct classes (clothiers, farmers, builders, etc.) according to the value
of their role in providing some component part of the common good. But the smooth
operation of the whole society will require some additional services that become
necessary only because of the creation of the social organization itselfthe
adjudication of disputes among members and the defense of the city against external
attacks, for example. Therefore, carrying the principle of specialization one step
further, Plato proposed the establishment of an additional class of citizens,
the guardians who are responsible for management of the society itself.

In fact, Plato held that effective social life requires guardians of two distinct sorts:
there must be both soldiers whose function is to defend the state against external
enemies and to enforce its laws, and rulers who resolve disagreements among citizens
and make decisions about public policy. The guardians collectively, then, are those
individuals whose special craft is just the task of governance itself.

Training the Guardians

In order to fulfill their proper functions, these people will have to be special human
beings indeed. Plato hinted early on that one of their most evident characteristics will
be a temperamental inclination toward philosophical thinking. As we've already seen
in the Apology and in the Phaedo, it is the philosopher above all others who excels at
investigating serious questions about human life and at judging what is true and best.
But how are personal qualities of this sort to be fostered and developed in an
appropriate number of individual citizens? (Republic 376d)

The answer, Plato believed, was to rely upon the value of a good education.
(Remember, he operated his own school at Athens!) We'll have an opportunity to
consider his notions about higher education later, but his plan for the elementary
education of guardians for the ideal state appears in Book III. Its central concern is an
emphasis on achieving the proper balance of many disparate componentsphysical
training and musical performance along with basic intellectual development.
 One notable feature of this method of raising children is Plato's demand for strict
censorship of literary materials, especially poetry and drama. He argued that early
absorption in fictional accounts can dull an person's ability to make accurate
judgments regarding matters of fact and that excessive participation in dramatic
recitations might encourage some people to emulate the worst behavior of the tragic
heros. (Republic 395c) Worst of all, excessive attention to fictional contexts may lead
to a kind of self-deception, in which individuals are ignorant of the truth about their
own natures as human beings. (Republic 382b) Thus, on Plato's view, it is vital for a
society to exercise strict control over the content of everything that children read, see,
or hear. As we will later notice, Aristotle had very different ideas.

Training of the sort described here (and later) is intended only for those children
who will eventually become the guardians of the state. Their performance at this level
of education properly determines both whether they are qualified to do so and, if so,
whether each of them deserves to be a ruler or a soldier. A society should design its
educational system as a means to distinguish among future citizens whose functions
will differ and to provide training appropriate to the abilities of each.

Divisions of the State

The principle of specialization thus leads to a stratified society. Plato believed that
the ideal state comprises members of three distinct classes: rulers, soldiers, and the
people. Although he officially maintained that membership in the guardian classes
should be based solely upon the possession of appropriate skills, Plato presumed that
future guardians will typically be the offspring of those who presently hold similar
positions of honor. If citizens express any dissatisfaction with the roles to which they
are assigned, he proposed that they be told the "useful falsehood" that human beings
(like the metals gold, silver, and bronze) possess different natures that fit each of them
to a particular function within the operation of the society as a whole. (Republic 415a)

Notice that this myth (Gk. [mythos]) cuts both ways. It can certainly be used
as a method of social control, by encouraging ordinary people to accept their position
at the bottom of the heap, subject to governance by the higher classes. But Plato also
held that the myth justifies severe restrictions on the life of the guardians: since they
are already gifted with superior natures, they have no need for wealth or other external
rewards. In fact, Plato held that guardians should own no private property, should live
and eat together at government expense, and should earn no salary greater than
necessary to supply their most basic needs. Under this regime, no one will have any
venal motive for seeking a position of leadership, and those who are chosen to be
guardians will govern solely from a concern to seek the welfare of the state in what is
best for all of its citizens.
 Having developed a general description of the structure of an ideal society, Plato
maintained that the proper functions performed by its disparate classes, working
together for the common good, provide a ready account of the need to develop
significant social qualities or virtues.

Since the rulers are responsible for making decisions according to which
the entire city will be governed, they must have the virtue
of wisdom (Gk. [sopha]), the capacity to comprehend reality and to
make impartial judgments about it.

Soldiers charged with the defense of the city against external and internal
enemies, on the other hand, need the virtue of courage (Gk.
[andreia]), the willingness to carry out their orders in the face of danger
without regard for personal risk.

The rest of the people in the city must follow its leaders instead of
pursuing their private interests, so they must exhibit the virtue
of moderation (Gk. [sophrosn]), the subordination of
personal desires to a higher purpose.

When each of these classes performs its own role appropriately and does not try to
take over the function of any other class, Plato held, the entire city as a whole will
operate smoothly, exhibiting the harmony that is genuine justice. (Republic 433e)

We can therefore understand all of the cardinal virtues by considering how each is
embodied in the organization of an ideal city.

Rulers
Wise Decisions

Soldiers
Courageous Actions

Farmers, Merchants, and other People

(Moderated Desires)

Justice itself is not the exclusive responsibility of any one class of citizens, but
emerges from the harmonious interrelationship of each component of the society with
every other. Next we'll see how Plato applied this conception of the virtues to the lives
of individual human beings.

The Virtues in Human Souls

Remember that the basic plan of the Republic is to draw a systematic analogy
between the operation of society as a whole and the life of any individual human
being. So Plato supposed that people exhibit the same features, perform the same
functions, and embody the same virtues that city-states do. Applying the analogy in
this way presumes that each of us, like the state, is a complex whole made up of
several distinct parts, each of which has its own proper role. But Plato argued that
there is ample evidence of this in our everyday experience. When faced with choices
about what to do, we commonly feel the tug of contrary impulses drawing us in
different directions at once, and the most natural explanation for this phenomenon is
to distinguish between distinct elements of our selves. (Republic 436b)

Thus, the analogy holds. In addition to the physical body, which corresponds to the
land, buildings, and other material resources of a city, Plato held that every human
being includes threesouls (Gk. [psych]) that correspond to the three classes of
citizen within the state, each of them contributing in its own way to the successful
operation of the whole person.

The rational soul (mind or intellect) is the thinking portion within each of
us, which discerns what is real and not merely apparent, judges what is
true and what is false, and wisely makes the rational decisions in
accordance with which human life is most properly lived.

The spirited soul (will or volition), on the other hand, is the active
portion; its function is to carry out the dictates of reason in practical
life, courageously doing whatever the intellect has determined to be best.

Finally, the appetitive soul (emotion or desire) is the portion of each of us

that wants and feels many things, most of which must be deferred in the
face of rational pursuits if we are to achieve a salutary degree of self-
control.

In the Phaedrus, Plato presented this theory even more graphically, comparing the
rational soul to a charioteer whose vehicle is drawn by two horses, one powerful but
unruly (desire) and the other disciplined and obedient (will).
 On Plato's view, then, an human being is properly said to be just when the three
souls perform their proper functions in harmony with each other, working in
consonance for the good of the person as a whole.

Rational Soul (Thinking)

Wisdom

Spirited Soul (Willing)

Courage

Appetitive Soul (Feeling)

Moderation

As in a well-organized state, the justice of an individual human being emerges only

from the interrelationship among its separate components. (Republic 443d)

Plato's account of a tripartite division within the self has exerted an enormous
influence on the philosophy of human nature in the Western tradition. Although few
philosophers whole-heartedly adopt his hypostasization of three distinct souls, nearly
everyone acknowledges some differentiation among the functions of thinking, willing,
and feeling. (Even in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's quest depends upon the cooperation
of her three friendsScarecrow, Lion, and Tin Woodsmaneach of whom
exemplifies one of the three aspects of human nature.) Perhaps any adequate view of
human life requires some explanation or account (Gk. [logos]) of how we
incorporate intellect, volition, and desire in the whole of our existence.

In the context of his larger argument, Plato's theory of human nature provides the
foundation for another answer to the question of why justice is better than injustice.
On the view developed here, true justice is a kind of good health, attainable only
through the harmonious cooperative effort of the three souls. In an unjust person, on
the other hand, the disparate parts are in perpetual turmoil, merely coexisting with
each other in an unhealthy, poorly-functioning, dis-integrated personality. Plato
developed this theme in greater detail in the final books of The Republic.

Plato: Education and the Value of Justice

Men and Women

 As an account of political organization on the larger scale, Plato's defense of an
aristocratic government was unlikely to win broad approval in democratic Athens. He
used the characters Glaucon and Adeimantus to voice practical objections against the
plan. They are especially concerned (as Plato's Athenian contemporaries may well
have been) with some of its provisions for the guardian class, including the
participation of both men and women, the elimination of families, and the education
of children.

Most fifth-century Greeks, like many twentieth-century Americans, supposed that

natural differences between males and females of the human species entail a
significant differentiation of their proper social roles. Although Plato granted that men
and women are different in height, strength, and similar qualities, he noted that these
differences are not universal; that is, for example, although it may be true that most
men are taller than most women, there are certainly some women who are taller than
many men. What is more, he denied that there is any systematic difference between
men and women with respect to the abilities relevant to guardianshipthe capacity to
understand reality and make reasonable judgments about it. (Republic 454d) Thus,
Plato maintained that prospective guardians, both male and female, should receive the
same education and be assigned to the same vital functions within the society.

In addition, Plato believed that the interests of the state are best preserved if
children are raised and educated by the society as a whole, rather than by their
biological parents. So he proposed a simple (if startlingly unfamiliar) scheme for the
breeding, nurturing, and training of children in the guardian class. (Note that the same
children who are not permitted to watch and listen to "dangerous" art are encouraged
to witness first-hand the violence of war.) The presumed pleasures of family life, Plato
held, are among the benefits that the higher classes of a society must be prepared to
forego.

Philosopher / Kings

A general objection to the impracticability of the entire enterprise remains. Even if

we are persuaded that Plato's aristocracy is the ideal way to structure a city-state, is
there any possibility that it will actually be implemented in a human society? Of
course there is a sense in which it doesn't matter; what ought to be is more significant
for Plato than what is, and philosophers generally are concerned with a truth that
transcends the facts of everyday life.
 But Plato also believed that an ideal state, embodying the highest and best
capabilities of human social life, can really be achieved, if the right people are put in
charge. Since the key to the success of the whole is the wisdom of the rulers who
make decisions for the entire city, Plato held that the perfect society will occur only
when kings become philosophers or philosophers are made kings. (Republic 473d)

Only those with a philosophical temperament, Plato supposed, are competent to

judge betweenwhat merely seems to be the case and what really is, between the
misleading, transient appearances of sensible objects and the the permanent reality of
unchanging, abstract forms. Thus, the theory offorms is central to Plato's philosophy
once again: the philosophers who think about such things are not idle dreamers, but
the true realists in a society. It is precisely their detachment from the realm of sensory
images that renders them capable of making accurate judgments about the most
important issues of human life.

Thus, despite prevalent public skepticism about philosophers, it is to them that an

ideal society must turn for the wisdom to conduct its affairs properly. But
philosophers are made, not born. So we need to examine the program of education by
means of which Plato supposed that the future philosopher-kings can acquire the
knowledge necessary for their function as decision-makers for the society as a whole.

The Strucure of Human Knowledge

Since an ideal society will be ruled by those of its citizens who are most aware of
what really matters, it is vital to consider how that society can best raise and educate
its philosophers. Platosupposed that under the usual haphazard methods of
childrearing, accidents of birth often restrict the opportunities for personal
development, faulty upbringing prevents most people from achieving everything of
which they are capable, and the promise of easy fame or wealth distracts some of the
most able young people from the rigors of intellectual pursuits. But he believed that
those with the greatest abilitythat is, people with a natural disposition fit for
philosophical studymust receive the best education, engaging in a regimen of
mental discipline that grows more strict with every passing year of their lives.

The highest goal in all of education, Plato believed, is knowledge of the Good; that
is, not merely an awareness of particular benefits and pleasures, but acquaintance with
the Form itself. Just as the sun provides illumination by means of which we are able to
perceive everything in the visual world, he argued, so the Form of the Good provides
the ultimate standard by means of which we can apprehend the reality of everything
that has value. (Republic 508e) Objects are worthwhile to the extent that they
participate in this crucial form.

So, too, our apprehension of reality occurs in different degrees, depending upon the
nature of the objects with which it is concerned in each case. Thus, there is a
fundamental difference between the mere opinion (Gk. [dxa]) we can have
regarding the visible realm of sensible objects and the
genuine knowledge (Gk. [epistm]) we can have of the invisible realm of
the Forms themselves. In fact, Plato held that each of these has two distinct varieties,
so that we can picture the entire array of human cognition as a line divided
proportionately into four segments. (Republic509d)

At the lowest level of reality are shadows, pictures, and other images, with respect
to whichimagination (Gk. [eiksia]) or conjecture is the appropriate degree of
awareness, although it provides only the most primitive and unreliable opinions.

The visible realm also contains ordinary physical objects, and our perception of
them provides the basis for belief (Gk. [pstis]), the most accurate possible
conception of the nature and relationship of temporal things.

Moving upward into the intelligible realm, we first become acquainted with the
relatively simple Forms of numbers, shapes, and other mathematical entities; we can
achieve systematic knowledge of these objects through a disciplined application of
the understanding (Gk. [dinoia]).

Finally, at the highest level of all, are the more significant Formstrue Equality,
Beauty, Truth, and of course the Good itself. These permanent objects of knowledge
are directly apprehended byintuition (Gk. [nsis]), the fundamental capacity
of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality.

The Allegory of the Cave

Plato recognized that the picture of the Divided Line may be difficult for many of
us to understand. Although it accurately represents the different levels of reality and
corresponding degrees of knowledge, there is a sense in which one cannot appreciate
its full significance without first having achieved the highest level. So, for the benefit
of those of us who are still learning but would like to grasp what he is talking about,
Plato offered a simpler story in which each of the same structural components appears
in a way that we can all comprehend at our own level. This is the Allegory of the
Cave.

Suppose that there is a group of human beings who have lived their entire lives
trapped in a subterranean chamber lit by a large fire behind them. Chained in place,
these cave-dwellers can see nothing but shadows (of their own bodies and of other
things) projected on a flat wall in front of them. Some of these people will be content
to do no more than notice the play of light and shadow, while the more clever among
them will become highly skilled observers of the patterns that most regularly occur. In
both cases, however, they cannot truly comprehend what they see, since they are
prevented from grasping its true source and nature. (Republic 514a)

Now suppose that one of these human beings manages to break the chains, climb
through the torturous passage to the surface, and escape the cave. With eyes
accustomed only to the dim light of the former habitation, this individual will at first
be blinded by the brightness of the surface world, able to look only upon the shadows
and reflections of the real world. But after some time and effort, the former cave-
dweller will become able to appreciate the full variety of the newly-discovered world,
looking at trees, mountains, and (eventually) the sun itself.

Finally, suppose that this escapee returns to the cave, trying to persuade its
inhabitants that there is another, better, more real world than the one in which they
have so long been content to dwell. They are unlikely to be impressed by the pleas of
this extraordinary individual, Plato noted, especially since their former companion,
having travelled to the bright surface world, is now inept and clumsy in the dim realm
of the cave. Nevertheless, it would have been in the best interest of these residents of
the cave to entrust their lives to the one enlightened member of their company, whose
acquaintance with other things is a unique qualification for genuine knowledge.

Plato seriously intended this allegory as a representation of the state of ordinary

human existence. We, like the people raised in a cave, are trapped in a world of
impermanence and partiality, the realm of sensible objects. Entranced by the particular
and immediate experiences these things provide, we are unlikely to appreciate the
declarations of philosophers, the few among us who, like the escapee, have made the
effort to achieve eternal knowledge of the permanent forms. But, like them, it would
serve us best if we were to follow this guidance, discipline our own minds, and seek
an accurate understanding of the highest objects of human contemplation.

An Educational Program

Having already described the elementary education and physical training that
properly occupy the first twenty years of the life of prospective
guardians, Plato applied his account of the structure of human knowledge in order to
prescribe the disciplined pursuit of their higher education.

It naturally begins with mathematics, the vital first step in learning to turn away
from the realm of sensible particulars to the transcendent forms of reality. Arithmetic
provides for the preliminary development of abstract concepts, but Plato held that
geometry is especially valuable for its careful attention to the eternal forms. Study of
the (mathematical, not observational) disciplines of astronomy and harmonics
encourage the further development of the skills of abstract thinking and proportional
reasoning.

Only after completing this thorough mathematical foundation are the future rulers
of the city prepared to begin their study of philosophy, systematizing their grasp of
mathematical truth, learning to recognize and eliminate all of their presuppositions,
and grounding all genuine knowledge firmly on the foundation of their intuitive grasp
of the reality of the Forms. Finally, an extended period of apprenticeship will help
them to learn how to apply everything they have learned to the decisions necessary for
the welfare of the city as a whole. Only in their fifties will the best philosophers
among them be fit to rule over their fellow-citizens.

Kinds of State or Person

In order to explain the distinction between justice and injustice more

fully, Plato devoted much of the remainder of The Republic to a detailed discussion of
five different kinds of government (and, by analogy, five different kinds of person),
ranked in order from best to worst:

A society organized in the ideally efficient way Plato has already described is said
to have anaristocratic government. Similarly, an aristocratic person is one
whose rational, spirited, and appetitive souls work together properly. Such
governments and people are the most genuine examples of true justice at the social
and personal levels.

In a defective timocratic society, on the other hand, the courageous soldiers have
usurped for themselves the privilege of making decisions that properly belongs only to
its better-educated rulers. A timocratic person is therefore someone who is more
concerned with belligerently defending personal honor than with wisely choosing
what is truly best.

In an oligarchic government, both classes of guardian have been pressed into the
service of a ruling group comprising a few powerful and wealthy citizens. By analogy,
an oligarchic personality is someone whose every thought and action is devoted to the
self-indulgent goal of amassing greater wealth.

Even more disastrously, a democratic government holds out the promise of

equality for all of its citizens but delivers only the anarchy of an unruly mob, each of
whose members is interested only in the pursuit of private interests. The parallel case
of a democratic person is someone who is utterly controlled by desires,
acknowledging no bounds of taste or virtue in the perpetual effort to achieve the
momentary satisfaction that pleasure provides.

Finally, the tyrranic society is one in which a single individual has gained control
over the mob, restoring order io place of anarchy, but serving only personal welfare
instead of the interests of the whole city. A tyrranic person, then, must be one whose
entire life is focussed upon the satisfaction of a single desire at the expense of
everything else that truly matters. Governments and people of this last variety are
most perfectly unjust, even though they may appear to be well-organized and
effective.

Although Plato presents these five types of government or person as if there is a

natural progression from each to the next, his chief concern is to exhibit the relative
degree of justice achieved by each. The most perfect contrast between justice and
injustice arises in a comparison between the aristocratic and the tyrranic instances.

Justice is Better than Injustice

Thus, we are finally prepared to understand the full force of Plato's answer to
the original challenge of showing that justice is superior to injustice. He offered three
arguments, each of which is designed to demonstrate the intrinsic merits of being a
just person.

First, Plato noted that the just life of an aristocratic person arises from an effortless
harmony among internal elements of the soul, while the unjust life of a tyrranic person
can maintain its characteristic imbalance only by the exertion of an enormous effort.
Thus, it is simply easier to be just than to be unjust. (Republic 580a) This argument
makes sense even independently of Plato's larger theory; it is a generalized version of
the fairly common notion that it is easier to be honest than to keep track of the truth
along with a number of false stories about it.

Second, Plato claimed that tyrranic individuals can appreciate only pleasures of the
body, monetary profits, and the benefits of favorable public reputation, all of which
are by their nature transitory. Aristocratic people, on the other hand, can accept these
things in moderation but also transcend them in order to enjoy the delights of
intellectual achievement through direct acquaintance with the immutable Forms.
(Republic 583a) This argument relies more heavily upon adoption of Plato's entire
theory of human nature, as developed in The Republic and other dialogues; it is likely
to influence only those who have already experienced the full range of intellectual
advantages for themselves.

Finally, Plato resorted to myth (just as he had at the close of the Phaedo by
imagining that justice will be rewarded with steady progression in a series of lives
hereafter. This "Myth of Er" isn't philosophical argument at all. Even if it were
literally true and demonstrable that the just are rewarded in the afterlife, that would be
only an extrinsic motive for being just, not a proof of its intrinsic value.

Although it is a masterly treatment of human nature and politics, The Republic was
not Plato's only discussion of these significant issues. His dialogue Gorgias includes
an eloquent appeal on behalf of the life of justice and personal non-violence in all
things. The Statesman devotes extended attention to the practical matter of securing
effective government under the less-than-ideal conditions most of us commonly face.
And the unfinished (Laws) is a lengthy analysis of the history of Athenian
political life.
Platos Theories: Theory of Justice,
Education and Communism
by Sunil Tanwar Plato

Platos Theories: Theory of Justice, Education and Communism!

Justice the Most Important Part of Republic:

The concept of justice occupies the most important part of Platos The Republic. Sabine
says: The theory of the state in The Republic culminates in the conception of justice.
He has treated justice as the bond which holds a society together. Hence it is the true
principle of social life. The Republic deals with the bond and true principle of social life.

The purpose of The Republic is to ensure justice. The failure will invariably disintegrate
the whole society. The philosopher king will take every care to establish justice. That is
why The Republic is called a treatise concerning justice By elaborating the doctrine of
Justice Plato wanted to combat the false notions which the Sophists spread. Ideal state
is the highest manifestation of morality, goodness and idealism and, naturally, in such a
state justice cannot be relegated to an inferior position.

Rather, it holds the highest position in the state. Different social classes are combined
by the bond of justice and this makes the ideal state a perfect one.

The purpose of his Republic is not simply to provide peace and order and, at the same
time, protection, but all the opportunities for social interchange which make up the
necessaries and the amenities of civilized existence.

Four Virtues of Good Community:

Plato has analyzed the virtues or nature of a good community. In his view a community
will be called good if it possesses the four cardinal virtues of the Greeks. Plato says that
every nation has its own virtues and the Greeks consider that wisdom, courage,
temperance or self-control and justice are the four virtues. He proceeds to enquire into
the different virtues. Among these four virtues justice is the most important.
The essence of wisdom is good cause or deliberation. Wisdom resides in those persons
who perform the deliberative functions of government. Deliberative faculty is not to be
found in men of large number.

Naturally this quality is treated as rare. Plato says that very small number of men have
the capability to participate in the deliberative function of the state. He thinks that only
the guardians can exercise the deliberative functions and, hence, wisdom is their virtue.

After wisdom comes courage. Plato has defined courage as the power of resisting fear.
Although bravery is not confined to army, it is a fact that battle-ground is the proper
place where it is tested.

That is, bravery is proved only in war. If we want to know whether a state is brave, we
must look at its army. Generally the soldiers through their courageous activities can
protect the integrity and unity of a state.

Elaborating Platos view on courage, Nettleship says that bravery is not in the battlefield
alone, but the preservation under all circumstances of a right opinion. By courage Plato
also means firm belief and conviction. The conviction encourages individual to fight
against injustice and irrationality. In this way, courage establishes justice.

The next virtue of a good community is self-control. Plato has clarified the concept of
self-control in a peculiar way. He has said that there are two parts of the human soul
inferior and superior part.

Self-control implies that the inferior part should be submissive to the superior part. In the
same way, in a state, there are also superior and inferior classes and die latter should
surrender to the former. The submission of the inferior to the superior is not sufficient for
materialization of self- control in the state.

The agreement between the classes is essential. The central idea of the agreement is
who will rule the state and who will obey. That is, Plato wants to emphasize that rule and
subordination both must be based on agreement so that there cannot be any grievance.
Platos self-control, whether it is in the case of state or individual, is a sort of harmony or
symphony.

Definition and Nature of Justice:

In Platos theory to perform the nature-ordained duty is justice. Each class and each
individual will do their duty and none will interfere with others activities. In The Republic,
Plato has made the following observation.. in the case of citizens generally each
individual should be put to the use for which nature intended him, one to one work, and
then every man would do his own business and be one and not many; and the whole
city would be one and not many. Plato wants to say that nature has made some men
physically strong and other men intelligent and wise.

It has also made some men brave. Naturally, one man will be unfit for another mans
job. If we accept this natural phenomenon it is expected that man will cooperate with
nature in all respects. This constitutes the central idea of justice. When this is achieved,
Plato says, justice in the society will start to reside.

Plato has analyzed the concept of justice in wider perspective and for that reason he
has said that justice has full relevance in the state. In The Republic we find And a state
was thought by us to be just when the three classes in the state severally did their own
business and also thought to be temperate, valiant and wise. Like individuals, classes
will also not interfere with each other. This is justice. Plato has assertively said that in
the good state this must be found. Platos theory of justice is another name of
specialisation.

Interpreting Platos theory of justice from the background of specialisation Barker says
Justice is simply the specialization it is simply the will to fulfil the duties of ones
station and not to meddle with the duties of another station and its habitation is
therefore in the mind of every citizen who does his duty in his appointed place.

Plato in his The Republic has said that justice demands that each man shall do his own
business and to that business only to which he is best adapted. Meddlesomeness and
interference, according to Plato, breed great injustice.

Again, he says, just actions cause justice and unjust actions cause injustice. All these
observations about justice prove one thingspecialisation is the central idea of justice.

We have already noted that Plato strongly advocated justice to prevent any civil
dissension and discord among the several classes and individuals. He thought that if
each class were engaged in performing its own duty ordained by nature, then there
should not arise any be no ground for dissatisfaction.
It was his belief that absence of specialisation was the prime cause of disunity among
the citizenswith the advent of specialisation selfish aspiration for government office
and meddling with others functions would disappear.

Justice is Quality of Both Individual and State:

Plato did not use the word justice in any legal sense. Nor did he attach any legal
significance to the term. Like courage, self-control, and wisdom, justice is a virtue. All
these four virtues constitute the moral goodness of the ideal state. Again, this moral
goodness is the virtue of both the individual and the state.

The logical form, therefore, of justice is moral goodness. Individual and the state are not
separate entities. Both require justice. Individual and the state are connected by justice
or moral goodness and not by any legal act. Platos theory of justice rules out the
possibility of interference of law.

Plato has further said that there are three elements of soulreason, spirit and appetite.
Goodness is identified with justice in relation to these three elements of soul. In the
same way we can say that the goodness of the community is identified with the justice
in relation to the members of the state.

Architectonic Nature of Justice:

The architectonic nature of justice accounts for that element of restraint which is the
first thing apparent in it. Just as the authority of the architect touches the subordinate
craftsmen as a restrictive force, curbing the exuberance of their production, confining
their scope and limiting their freedom in the interest of the design as a whole, so justice
operates as a restraint upon a mans particular capacity, withholding him from many
things which he has both the desire and the ability to do.

In Platos theory of ideal state there are several virtues or excellences and justice is one
of them. But it plays the role of an architect.

That is, it is architectonic in relation to other excellences. Michael Foster has illustrated
the point in the following way. A carpenter with a high degree of finesse manufactures a
door. But the excellence of the door is not to be judged in isolation. The other parts of
the building are to be duly considered while analyzing and estimating the design and
beauty of the building.

The design and dimension of the door must be in harmony with other features of the
building. The carpenter cannot do this job; it is the architects job. Architects skill has
not special department, but it is present in all departments. Justice, in Platos opinion,
plays the role of an architect. It acts as a control office upon the capacities of the
individual.

Justice in Political Arena:

Justice is not simply a moral goodness of human virtue, it has also political value. It is a
quality that enables man to enter into relation with other fellow citizens, and this relation
forms human society which is the subject-matter of political science.

Justice teaches every individual to practise self-control. It prevents many from doing
those acts which are harmful to other members of the society. Self-restraint is,
therefore, essential for any political society.

While analysing justice the following observation has been made by a critic. Justice is,
for Plato, at once a part of human virtue and the bond which joins men together in state.
It is an identical quality which makes man good and which makes him social. This
identification is the first and fundamental principle of Platos political philosophy.

Sophists admitted the political value of justice, but they denied its human value, that is,
it is a moral goodness. It was a great drawback on the part of the Sophists. Justice or
morality to the Sophists was essential for the formation of political society.

Sophists refusal to accept it as a human value has not been approved by Plato.
Analysing from this angle we can say that Platos theory of justice is a comprehensive
and perfect concept.

Criticism:

Critics have criticised Platos famous theory of justice from various angler. He
enunciated the doctrine of specialisation as a vital precondition of justice and harmony
of society. But it is unfortunate that he has not uttered a single word about the conflict or
disagreement among the members of the same class or among the different classes.
Only among the gods there may not be any disagreement, but it is unthinkable to
assume that people will never enter into conflict. If conflict arises who will resolve it
Plato maintains silence on this issue. Plato was a philosopher of outstanding stature. He
might have made provision for the settlement of disputes.

There can be harmony in the body politic if all the categories of persons and classes
can practise self-control and adhere to their own appointed business. Without self-
control justice can never be achieved. But self-control is a moral principle and not a
legal one. If people fail to practise it, that will create problem. Legal provisions are
necessary. Barker saysthe justice of whom Plato speaks is not really justice at all.

It is an indwelling spirit; but it does not issue in a concrete jus and still less in any law.
Law is one thing and morality is another. The one is concerned with the external rules
the other with the ideas which lie behind rules and the ideals which lie behind order
Plato has blurred the distinction and confused the boundary which lies between the
moral duty and legal obligations. It may be emphasized that, without legal force, moral
duty may not always find fruition.

Platos concept of justice has another drawback. The guardian class endowed with
wisdom will predominate over the entire society. It is a very common experience that the
persons or class controlling the administrative affairs of the state will ultimately establish
hegemony over the entire society.

In Platos view, subordination of one class to another is the cause of unity and integrity.
But our idea is quite different. Equal share in the affairs of the state is the potent factor
for removing grievances and, hence, materializes unity.

In Platos theory of justice there is no special or separate importance of the individual.

He is not an isolated self, but part of the whole order and the order is the ideal state.
The individual is not a whole and even he cannot claim that the whole is the state.

Plato has given no scope to the individual of thinking in his own way. In the vast order of
the state the individual cannot have separate identity. Individual is completely merged
with the state.

Theory of Education:
Importance of Education:

If we imagine that the whole structure of ideal state is supported by three great pillars,
then we should say that education is one such pillar. The other two are justice and
communism. But it has been held by some renowned critics of Platos philosophy that,
to Plato, education was more important than communism.

For education, says Sabine, is the positive means by which the ruler can shape
human nature in the right direction to produce a harmonious state. Communism is
regarded as a negative way. It simply hinders the hindrance which the ideal state faces.
But the purpose of education is to build up the character, behaviour and outlook of the
individuals highly suitable for the ideal state. Rousseau has said that Platos Republic is
the greatest book on education that has ever been written.

Platos theory or idea of education is regarded by many as a mental medicine. Its

purpose is to remove the evil and malady from mind. It reforms the mind and broadens
the whole outlook. Wrong ways of life are arrested by education.

That is why education has been given priority over communism. Education helps man
and, more particularly, his soul to be fully and properly acquainted with the environment.
Plato has never treated the individual as an isolated entity. He is part of the state or
environment. How to adjust with the environment is imparted by education.

From the just-mentioned point we can draw an inference. In the entire Greek thought-
system, including Platos, education is regarded as a social process. With the help of
education units of society learn to think of social consciousness and fulfil social
obligation. Justice demands that every man must discharge his appointed function.

But how he will do it, justice cannot enlighten. Education teaches man how and in what
manner an individual will perform his function. Naturally, as Platonic ideal state can
never be complete with justice, so also the case of education.

Plato on Education:

Plato sees education from the teleological point of view. He says that whenever human
mind acts, it acts purposely. Its activities are, again, based on reason. Plato is not
prepared to accept that mind or soul acts without any purpose.
Rational action can never be purposeless. To what extent mind will act rationally and
purposefully that considerably depends upon education. Education teaches man and his
mind to act with a definite purpose. So education can be considered teleologically.

Plato thought of a state-controlled education. Education controlled by private persons

could not serve real purpose. We have already seen that the chief aim of education is to
materialize the well-being and harmony of the state and, to fulfil this mission, education
must be controlled by the state.

In Platos mind there was an idea of compulsory education system which we today see
in many modern states. Sabine says that state-directed education scheme of Plato is
perhaps the most important innovation.

The primary object of education, Plato says, is to turn the eye, which the soul already
possesses, to the light. The message which Plato conveys in this metaphor is that the
whole function of education is not to put knowledge into the soul, but to bring out the
best things that are latent in the soul.

Plato thinks that human soul is responsive to its environments. But how it will respond,
education teaches that, soul is sometimes ill-nurtured and ill-trained and education
places it on a proper footing.

If the purpose of education is the development of soul, Plato proceeds to say that the
growth of the soul can be divided into two stagesearly stage and later stage.
According to Plato, education of the young is important.

In The Republic he saysthe beginning is the most important part of any work,
especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the
character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.

Younger people should be taught mythological stories treating of the divine nature
whose very essence is to be good and true. God is the manifestation of good and truth
and mythology containing the stories of God should be taught. From the very childhood
young people should be well-acquainted with good and truth. Education for the young
will present heroic nature in its true and good form.
The reason will be presented in the guise of beauty and rhythm. The young will learn
art, literature and rudiments of science and figures. The attainment of eighteen years
will qualify them to learn gymnastics whose purpose is to fit the young citizens for
military and other duties which require a strong and healthy physique.

Let us now discuss the education of the second stage. When people will be mature,
they will be taught science and philosophy. In Platos belief only a mature brain is
capable of understanding these two subjects. The purpose of learning science and
philosophy is to produce a guardian class or, more particularly, statesmen and rulers.

If we go through the Platonic system of education, we shall find that both the stages are
chiefly meant for the guardian class. The purpose of the first stage is to train the young
people for military services.

Emotions, spirit and courage all will develop in the mind of the young people. Grown up
people, Plato believed, were capable of military services efficiently. But for the ruler and
statesman a different training is necessary. The grown up people of guardian class will
receive the education of science and philosophy.

Importance of Gymnastics and Music:

In Platonic model of politics justice, education, and communism all correspond to the
concept of ideal state. The absence of one of these will make the state incomplete.

Similarly, the character and mind of the individual will be so built up as to suit the state.
Remembering this fundamental idea Plato has sketched the scheme of education. His
emphasis on music and gymnastics has been highly appreciated by many.

Plato has said that gymnastics will train the body and music the mind. Both modes of
training are really intended to serve a moral purpose; both are means to the formation of
character.

Plato proceeds to note that although gymnastics aims at improving the body, it also
helps healthy development of mind. It is, of course, in an indirect way. The impact of
music upon mind is direct. The implication is for an ideal state that type of individual is
required whose mind and bodies are fully and in a balance way developed.
Good and robust health of a people builds up a strong foundation of ambitious military
services, as well as it is an asset of the nation. In The Republic, Plato has disapproved
of making doctors, because they would only encourage diseases.

Proper gymnastics make people sound and healthy and stop appearance of all sorts of
ailments. Plato believed that music created an artistic appeal and rhythm in the mind of
the young men.

This makes advent of righteousness easier. By music Plato meant particularly the study
and interpretation of masterpieces of poetry, as well as singing and playing the lyre. The
rhythm and diction of poetry, the sounds of musical instruments, the shapes and colours
of plastic arts appeal to youth themselves.

Higher Education:

Undoubtedly the most original as well as the most characteristic proposal in The
Republic is the system of higher educationsays Sabine. The purpose of higher
education is to train the guardians and this will be given to a selected number of
students between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. In Platos scheme of higher
education the study of mathematics occupies a very vital place.

The mathematical studies were serious. In his curriculum of higher education Plato gave
almost highest position to mathematics. That is why Greece produced a large number of
geniuses in mathematics. Plato believed that the mathematical studies were connected
with philosophy.

In his opinion the units of arithmetic are not concrete counters presented by the senses;
they are abstractions of the intelligence. Only with the help of the study of arithmetic the
intelligence can be sharpened and this helps attainment of pure truth.

Besides mathematics Plato recommended the study of geometry, astronomy and logic.
The study of geometry makes easier the Idea of the Good (Republic). Plato speaks of
studying everything philosophically.

When student is studying a subject he must remember the concept The idea of the
Good. If any student fails to grasp the idea of philosophy, he will be eliminated.
The interest in philosophy is the first and foremost qualification of the higher education.
Plato believed that this interest would not arise in early age and that is why he
recommended higher education for mature age only.

The students must spend a part of their time in the study of pure philosophy. The study
of philosophy was essential -for a person to be king.

Evaluation:

Platos theory of education is fascinatingly modern in many respects. His scheme of

higher education is really innovating. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, we
fully realize the importance of science. But about twenty four centuries ago Plato
prescribed the study of science for grown up people.

The study of science which includes mathematics and astronomy makes mind scientific
and exact and it prepares a field for an introduction to the study of philosophy and the
study of philosophy is essential for the philosopher-king.

Today, in many countries, education has become a state controlled subject. But it is
surprising that Plato thought the same thing. He did not want to leave education to
private management.

An important subject like education should never remain in the hands of private
persons. In Platos realisation these persons will utilize education for furtherance of
narrow and parochial interest and the greater objectives of state will be neglected.

Plato realised that the purpose of education is the balanced growth of both mind and
bodymens sana in corpore sanohealthy mind in healthy body. Only adequate
emphasis on both gymnastics and music can ascertain the balanced growth of both
mind and body. Even today there is no scope to dispute with Plato in this regard. If one
is neglected the other is likely to be affected.

Communism:

Psychological and Historical Basis of Communism of Property:

It is said that Platos theory of communism is based on psychology. Let us see how
Plato established his view. We know that Plato has divided the soul into three parts
reason, spirit and appetite.

In his opinion if reason and spirit are to discharge their functions and to attain justice,
then they must keep themselves away from appetite. Domination of appetite is a great
hindrance to the purification and goodness of the soul. Similarly, in the ideal state, there
are three classesthe ruling class, military class and farmers.

If the former two classes are guided by economic motive, then there will be gross
negligence of duty on the part of these two classes and that will erode justice. Plato, for
this reason, had prescribed the introduction of communism for these two classes.

Only communism could enable the rulers and soldiers to devote their entire energy and
enthusiasm to the cause of the state and in this way justice could be achieved. A
communistic life, in the sense of a life divested of economic motive, is thus necessarily
connected with and necessarily issues from, the proper position in the state of the two-
higher elements of mind Plato believed that the absence of communism would invite
appetite. But justice demands that these three will discharge functions separately.

To Plato justice was not external, but internal. It was the result of habit. Mind must
acquire true habit. But habit depends upon the material conditions. That is how mind will
act and react that will be decided by the material conditions of society. Communism in
property will make mens mind fully suitable for the attainment of justice.

Many of the political ideas of Plato can be traced to his predecessors and the theory of
communism is not an exception. In ancient Greek society which existed before Plato
there was a form of communism in land. Land was held in common in many tribal
societies. But subsequently land came to be divided among individuals and the authority
of the state manipulated and supervised this division.

At the time of Pythagoras and Pythagoreans there were traces of communism. Friends
goods were common goodsthis was the motto at the time of Pythagoras.

Communism as Stated in Republic:

In The Republic Plato saysTrue education will have the greatest tendency to civilize
and humanize the rulers and the soldiers in their relation to one another and to those
who are under their protection.

Not only their education but their habitations, and all that belongs to them, should be
such as will neither impair their virtue as guardians nor tempt them to prey upon the
other citizens.

None of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely
necessary; neither should they have a private house. Their provisions should be only
such as are required by trained warriors.

They should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay enough to meet the
expenses of the year and no moreand they will go to mess and live together like
soldiers in a camp. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their
own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies
and tyrants instead of allies of other citizens, hating and being hated, plotting and being
plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of
external enemies. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our state be
ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for our guardians
concerning their houses and all other matters?

Interpretation of Platos Idea:

We have quoted above what Plato has said of communism of property in The Republic.
It requires clarification.

Barker says that his arguments of communism in property are ethical. We know that
Plato has always adhered to the organic concept which means that the individual is an
inseparable part of the state.

Similarly, the self, is an integral part of the whole order. Individual has no scope to
satisfy his personal and selfish desires by remaining away from the whole social order.

If he is engaged in satisfying personal ambition or desires that would be quite unethical

on his part. Fulfillment of selfish desires does not find place in Platos thought-system.
Plato believed that personal property was a potent instrument to satisfy desires and it
clears the way for the appearance of negligence of duty and also of corruption in all its
manifestations.

By advocating communism in property Plato wanted to materialize the divorce between

economic power and political power. Plato apprehended that the combination of two
powers in a single hand would lead to corruption in the ideal state, and this
apprehension had factual basis.

Plato saw that in the contemporary states the union of these two powers was the source
of corruption and mismanagement. If a ruler exercises two powers simultaneously he
will forget wisdom. This idea urged Plato to recommend the introduction of communism
for the guardian class.

Advocating communism of property for the ruling class Plato wanted to set up an
example which would be unique in all respects. To shoulder the responsibility of
government is not an ordinary function; rather, it is an extraordinary duty.

Persons carrying out this extraordinary duty are also not ordinary persons. They belong
to guardian class and the king is philosopher. A philosopher is an exceptional person.
Hence he should be guided by certain exceptional or unique regulations. Communism
of property is one such unique regulation.

Barker has emphasized another interpretation of Platos communism. It is better to put

the matter in his own words: Platonic communism is ascetic; and just for that reason it
is also aristocratic. It is the way of surrender; and it is a surrender imposed upon the
best and only on the best

The rulers will have to forego the personal comfort emanating from the ownership of
private property. They will have to forget the attraction for private property. Only very few
persons will embrace communism and in that sense it is aristocratic.

Since it is aristocratic it is also political. Only the governing class comes under the
purview of communism. Its purpose is to make suitable certain people for governmental
job.

Communism in Wives:
If the purpose of Platos community of property is to create a congenial atmosphere for
the rulers which will enable them to devote their time and energy completely to the
administration and progress of the state, then we will say half of the purpose is
achieved. Because temptation or distraction will still remain.

If property is abolished and family remains as before, people will be encouraged to

acquire it, since without property family cannot be maintained. Plato understood it fully
and he strongly recommended the community of wives as well as children and his
discussion on this subject in The Republic occupies much larger space.

In ancient Greek society the family life was private. Women were confined to home.
Men met at market-places and assembled at other areas. The functions of women were
to look after the domestic chores and to procreate children.

They had no freedom and led a very secluded life. Women were not allowed to meet
men other than their husbands and to participate in the affairs of the state. This
seclusion of women from social life, Plato thought, was absolutely inimical to the unity of
state.

In prescribing the community of wives Plato wanted to serve two purposes. To

emancipate the women from the bonds of family life and to reform the time-old system
of marriage. In Platos view it was an urgent task to free the women so that they could
invest their energy to the all-round progress of the state.

In other words, he wanted to bring the family within the ambit of the ideal state by
reforming and transforming it in accordance with the ideals of the body-politic.
Confinement of the women within the four walls of the family deprived the state of their
valuable services.

In order to import the services of women into the state Plato prescribed the community
of wives. His theory is based on eugenic and moral grounds. The implication of the first
is both men and women guardians will live in barracks like soldiers and discharge their
duties in common.

Best and healthy men and women guardians will cohabit and their children will naturally
be healthy. Plato thought that healthy children would be the best assets for the ideal
state. Again, for the benefit of the state, the sexual life of both men and women
guardians would be regulated.

Plato assumes that as a result of the community of wives, the parentage of the children
will remain unknown not only to their parents but also to the society. All the boys and
girls will be brothers and sisters. In such a situation a deeper sense of unity and
patriotism will grow in their minds.

In The Republic Plato has said There cannot be any greater evil than discord or
distraction and plurality. Again, there cannot be any greater good than the bond of
unity. There is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains.

In Platos view to think separately and do separately and not to think of the interests of
the ideal state is immoral. So, for the sake of the ideal state, feeling of unity must be
encouraged and it should be nurtured from the very childhood.

Evaluation:

We have briefly stated Platos theory of Communism and also its various aspects. Now
it is high time to throw light upon its dark and bright sides.

Platos communism has been criticized as half Communism due to the fact that it is
not the Communism of the whole society, but of the half society. He has prescribed
communistic way of life only for rulers and soldiers and not for other classes or sections
of society. He believed that non-communistic way of life (i.e., ownership of private
property and accumulation of wealth) by guardians and soldiers would invite corruption
among the members of these two classes. But the prescription of communism for about
half of the society will divide it into two partsone half will be deprived of the benefits of
private property and accumulation of wealth, and the other half will enjoy the benefits.

Such a division of society, the critics observe, will frustrate the noble and lofty purpose
of communism. Plato believed that ownership of private property would create
dissension among the members of society which might not be ideal for an ideal state. .

If this argument is accepted (for the sake of argument of course) we are of opinion that
any sort of private property is always harmful. It is not true that it is harmful for any
particular class and harmless for another class.
It is said that Plato gave top priority to the idea of unity of state and he believed that
there could be no greater good than unity. Ernest Barker does not agree with Plato. He
saysHe pushed the organic conception too far.

Plato laid excessive faith on the organic concept of state. But the experience teaches us
that there cannot be solid state of unity among all the sections of society. Various
sections of society will try to mould their lives in their own ways and for greater welfare
and benefit of society that variety must be accepted. For the sake of artificial unity
diversity cannot be sacrificed.

Every section of society has its own will and this demands that only through the
institution of private property each section will be able to translate it will into reality. But
by prescribing the abolition of private property Plato wanted to abolish the will of a part
of society.

Another criticism which has been levelled against the concept of communism
enunciated in The Republic is that the state is composed of various parts, and family is
an important part of the state. But by suggesting that no family for guardian and soldier
classes Plato had practically inflicted injustice upon these two classes and it is irony that
this prescription is in the name of justice.

The state is no doubt the supreme political organization and aims at supreme good. But
this cannot cover all aspects of human life. Even a state cannot fulfil all the objectives of
an individual.

Family has a definite and purposeful role in society and this should be allowed to play
the race. If it is forced to discontinue, human life will be barren. Man can develop the
finer and artistic objectives through the institutions of family and private property and, if
these are abolished, the development of these qualities will be in critical position.

It is unfortunate that a genius like Plato dismally failed to realize the good effects of
family and private property. Unlimited property is no doubt harmful, but a limited amount
of private property is always admissible. Even the 1982 Constitution of China
recognizes private property.
We shall now turn to the brighter aspects of Platos theory of Communism. Maxey, the
renowned interpreter of Western political thought, makes the following observation
about Platos theory of Communism:

Virtually all socialistic and communistic thought has its roots in Plato. Were he alive
today Plato would be the reddest of Reds and would no doubt hasten to Russia with the
same expectant enthusiasm he displayed in answering the call of the ancient tyrant of
Syracuse.

Another critic has saidThe ideal state of Plato and that of Russian communists have
many elements in common, both regard private property as the sole source of evil, both
would eliminate wealth and poverty, both favour a collective education of children,
exempted from paternal care, both regard art and literature only as a means of state
education, both would control science and ideology in the interests of the state.

It is interesting to note that more than two thousand three hundred years ago Plato
realized that private property and accumulation of wealth were the chief sources of
discord and corruption in society. The right to property as a fundamental right of Indian
Constitution was abolished by the 44th amendment.

For proper evaluation and judgment of Platos concept of communism we are to go back
to Platos time and to understand Platos political philosophy in the real perspective.
There is no doubt that he wanted to establish a corruption-free and discord-free society
which is called the ideal state.

He believed that if the guardians and soldiers were engaged in the management of
private property the whole interest of the body-politic will be adversely affected. For this
reason he prescribed that these two classes of people would receive from the general
store of the society what is absolutely required.

We think that there may be some sort of utopianism in such conception but it is
absolutely in consonance with his whole political philosophy.

As to the communism of wife and children it may naively be observed that he always
wanted the emancipation of women from the obligation of day to day life. He thought
that it is the duty of the state to assume the responsibility of rearing and educating the
children and for that reason he recommended communism in wives and children.
We have said that Platos theory of communism should not be separated from his whole
philosophy and this centres on the lofty concept of the ideal state. In Republic he has
saidour aim in founding the state was not disproportionate happiness of any one
class, but the greatest happiness of the whole.

He thought that through the establishment of communism the greatest happiness of the
whole state would be achieved. We may not agree with the view of Plato but we must
say that there are certain clear and definite reasons in his concept of communism.

He was not in a position to grant coexistence of opulence and poverty because in his
judgment this is harmful for the state as a whole. We conclude that there is ample logic
in his theory of Communism.

Aristotle and Plato were philosophers in ancient Greece who critically studied matters of ethics,
science, politics, and more. Though many more of Plato's works survived the centuries, Aristotle's
contributions have arguably been more influential, particularly when it comes to science and logical
reasoning. While both philosophers' works are considered less theoretically valuable in modern
times, they continue to have great historical value.

Notable The Golden mean, Reason, Theory of Forms, Platonic

ideas Logic, Biology, Passion idealism, Platonic realism,
hyperuranion, metaxy,
khra

Main Politics, Metaphysics, Rhetoric, art, literature,

interest Science, Logic, Ethics epistemology, justice,
s virtue, politics, education,
family, militarism

Date of 384 BC 428/427 or 424/423 BCE

Birth

Place of Stageira, Chalcidice Athens

Birth

Influenc Alexander the Great, Al- Aristotle, Augustine,

ed Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Neoplatonism, Cicero,
 Albertus Magnus,
Maimonides Copernicus,
Galileo Galilei, Ptolemy, St.
Thomas Aquinas, Ayn Rand,
and most of Islamic
philosophy, Christian
philosophy, Western
philosophy and Science in
general
Plutarch, Stoicism, Anselm,
Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz,
Mill, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Arendt, Gadamer, Russell
and countless other
western philosophers and
theologians

Influenc Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Socrates, Homer, Hesiod,

ed by Heraclitus Aristophanes, Aesop,
Protagoras, Parmenides,
Pythagoras, Heraclitus,
Orphism

Contents: Aristotle vs Plato

1 Influence of Aristotle vs. Plato

2 The Works of Aristotle and Plato

3 Differences in Contributions

o 3.1 In Philosophy

o 3.2 In Ethics

o 3.3 In Science

o 3.4 In Political Theory

4 Modern Appraisal of Aristotle and Plato

5 Personal Backgrounds of Aristotle and Plato

6 References

Influence of Aristotle vs. Plato

Plato influenced Aristotle, just as Socrates influenced Plato. But each man's influence moved in different
areas after their deaths. Plato became the primary Greek philosopher based on his ties to Socrates and
Aristotle and the presence of his works, which were used until his academy closed in 529 A.D.; his works
were then copied throughout Europe. For centuries, classical education assigned Plato's works as required
reading, and The Republic was the premier work on political theory until the 19th century, admired not only
for its views, but also for its elegant prose.

Aristotle and his works became the basis for the both religion and science, especially through the Middle
Ages. In religion, Aristotelian ethics were the basis for St. Thomas Aquinas' works that forged Christian
thought on free will and the role of virtue. Aristotle's scientific observations were considered the last word
in knowledge until about the 16th century, when Renaissance thought challenged and eventually replaced
much of it. Even so, Aristotle's empirical approach based on observation, hypothesis and direct experience
(experimentation) is at least part of the basis for scientific activity in nearly every field of study.

The Works of Aristotle and Plato

Whereas most of Plato's works have survived through the centuries, roughly 80% of what Aristotle wrote
has been lost. He is said to have written almost 200 treatises on an array of subjects, but only 31 have
survived. Some of his other works are referenced or alluded to by contemporary scholars, but the original
material is gone.

What remains of Aristotle's works are primarily lecture notes and teaching aids, draft-level material that
lacks the polish of "finished" publications. Even so, these works influenced philosophy, ethics, biology,
physics, astronomy, medicine, politics, and religion for many centuries. His most important works, copied
hundreds of times by hand throughout ancient and medieval times, were titled: Physics; De Anima (On the
Soul); Metaphysics; Politics; and Poetics. These and several other treatises were collected in what was called
the Corpus Aristotelicum and often served as the basis for hundreds of private and teaching libraries up to
the 19th century.

Plato's works can be roughly divided into three periods. His early period featured much of what is known
about Socrates, with Plato taking the role of the dutiful student who keeps his tutor's ideas alive. Most of
these works are written in the form of dialogues, using the Socratic Method (asking questions to explore
concepts and knowledge) as the basis for teaching. Plato's The Apology, where he discusses the trial of
execution and his teacher, is included in this period.

Plato's second or middle period is comprised of works where he explores morality and virtue in
individuals and society. He presents lengthy discussions on justice, wisdom, courage, as well as the duality
of power and responsibility. Plato's most famous work,The Republic, which was his vision of a utopian
society, was written during this period.

The third period of Plato's writings mainly discusses the role of arts, along with morality and ethics. Plato
challenges himself and his ideas in this period , exploring his own conclusions with self-debate. The end
result is his philosophy of idealism, wherein the truest essence of things occurs in thought, not reality.
In The Theory of Forms and other works, Plato states that only ideas are constant, that the world perceived by
senses is deceptive and changeable.
Differences in Contributions

In Philosophy

Plato believed that concepts had a universal form, an ideal form, which leads to his idealistic philosophy.
Aristotle believed that universal forms were not necessarily attached to each object or concept, and that
each instance of an object or a concept had to be analyzed on its own. This viewpoint leads to Aristotelian
Empiricism. For Plato, thought experiments and reasoning would be enough to "prove" a concept or
establish the qualities of an object, but Aristotle dismissed this in favor of direct observation and
experience.

In logic, Plato was more inclined to use inductive reasoning, whereas Aristotle useddeductive reasoning.
The syllogism, a basic unit of logic (if A = B, and B = C, then A = C), was developed by Aristotle.

Both Aristotle and Plato believed thoughts were superior to the senses. However, whereas Plato believed
the senses could fool a person, Aristotle stated that the senses were needed in order to properly determine
reality.

An example of this difference is the allegory of the cave, created by Plato. To him, the world was like a cave,
and a person would only see shadows cast from the outside light, so the only reality would be thoughts. To
the Aristotelian method, the obvious solution is to walk out of the cave and experience what is casting light
and shadows directly, rather than relying solely on indirect or internal experiences.

In Ethics

The link between Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is most obvious when it comes to their views on ethics. Plato
was Socratic in his belief that knowledge is virtue, in and of itself. This means that to know the good is to
do the good, i.e., that knowing the right thing to do will lead to one automatically doing the right thing;
this implied that virtue could be taught by teaching someone right from wrong, good from evil. Aristotle
stated that knowing what was right was not enough, that one had to choose to act in the proper manner
in essence, to create the habit of doing good. This definition placed Aristotelian ethics on a practical plane,
rather than the theoretical one espoused by Socrates and Plato.

For Socrates and Plato, wisdom is the basic virtue and with it, one can unify all virtues into a whole.
Aristotle believed that wisdom was virtuous, but that achieving virtue was neither automatic nor did it
grant any unification (acquiring) of other virtues. To Aristotle, wisdom was a goal achieved only after
effort, and unless a person chose to think and act wisely, other virtues would remain out of reach.

Socrates believed that happiness could be achieved without virtue, but that this happiness was base and
animalistic. Plato stated that virtue was sufficient for happiness, that there was no such thing as "moral
luck" to grant rewards. Aristotle believed that virtue was necessary for happiness, but insufficient by itself,
needing adequate social constructs to help a virtuous person feel satisfaction and contentment. It is worth
noting that Greek views on these issues were more attuned to Aristotle's views than either to Plato's or
Socrates' during their lifetimes.
In Science

Plato's contributions to science, as that of most other Greek philosophers, were dwarfed by Aristotle's. Plato
did write about mathematics, geometry, and physics, but his work was more exploratory in concept than
actually applicable. Some of his writings touch on biology and astronomy, but few of his efforts truly
expanded the body of knowledge at the time.

On the other hand, Aristotle, among a few others, is considered to be one of the first true scientists. He
created an early version of the scientific method to observe the universe and draw conclusions based on his
observations. Though his method has been modified over time, the general process remains the same. He
contributed new concepts in math, physics and geometry, though much of his work was basically
extensions or explanations of emerging ideas rather than insights. His observations in zoology and botany
led him to classify all types of life, an effort that reigned as the basic biology system for centuries. Even
though Aristotle's classification system has been replaced, much of his method remains in use in modern
nomenclature. His astronomical treatises argued for stars separate from the sun, but remained geocentric,
an idea that would take Copernicus would later overthrow.

In other fields of study, such as medicine and geology, Aristotle brought new ideas and observations, and
though many of his ideas were later discarded, they served to open lines of inquiry for others to explore.

In Political Theory

Plato felt that the individual should subsume his or her interests to that of society in order to achieve a
perfect from of government. His Republic described a utopian society where each of the three classes
(philosophers, warriors, and workers) had its role, and governance was kept in the hands of those deemed
best qualified for that responsibility, those of the "Philosopher Rulers." The tone and viewpoint is that of an
elite taking care of the less capable, but unlike the Spartan oligarchy that Plato fought against, the Republic
would follow a more philosophical and less martial path.

Aristotle saw the basic political unit as the city (polis), which took precedence over the family, which in turn
took precedence over the individual. Aristotle said that man was a political animal by nature and thus
could not avoid the challenges of politics. In his view, politics functions more as an organism than as a
machine, and the role of the poliswas not justice or economic stability, but to create a space where its people
could live a good life and perform beautiful acts. Although eschewing a utopian solution or large-scale
constructs (such as nations or empires), Aristotle moved beyond political theory to become the first political
scientist, observing political processes in order to formulate improvements.

Modern Appraisal of Aristotle and Plato

Though Plato and Aristotle have become directly linked to philosophy and the height of Greek culture,
their works are studied less now, and much of what they stated has been either discarded or set aside in
favor of new information and theories. For an example of theory espoused by Aristotle and Plato that is no
longer considered valid, watch the video below regarding Plato and Aristotle's opinions on slavery.
To many historians and scientists, Aristotle was an obstacle to scientific progress because his works were
deemed so complete that no one challenged them. The adherence to using Aristotle as "the final word" on
many subjects curtailed true observation and experimentation, a fault that lies not with Aristotle, but with
the use of his works.

Among Islamic scholars, Aristotle is "the First Teacher," and many of his recovered works may have been
lost if not for Arabic translations of the original Greek treatises. It may be that Plato and Aristotle are now
more starting points on analytical paths than endpoints; however, many continue to read their works even
today.

Personal Backgrounds of Aristotle and Plato

Plato was born around 424 B.C. His father was Ariston, descended from kings in Athens and Messenia, and
his mother, Perictione, was related to the great Greek statesman, Solon. Plato was given the name
Aristocles, a family name, and adopted Plato (meaning "broad" and "strong") later when he was a wrestler.
As was typical of upper middle-class families of the time, Plato was educated by tutors, exploring a wide
range of topics centered largely on philosophy, what would now be called ethics.

He became a student of Socrates, but his studies with the Greek master were interrupted by
the Peloponnesian War, which pit Athens against Sparta. Plato fought as a soldier between 409 and 404 B.C.
He left Athens when the city was defeated and its democracy was replaced by a Spartan oligarchy. He
considered returning to Athens to pursue a career in politics when the oligarchy was overthrown, but the
execution of Socrates in 399 B.C. changed his mind.

For over 12 years, Plato traveled throughout the Mediterranean region and Egypt studying mathematics,
geometry, astronomy, and religion. In about 385 B.C., Plato founded his academy, which is often suggested
to have been the first university in history. He would preside over it until his death around 348 B.C.

Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose," was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira, a town in northern
Greece. His father was Nicomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. Tutored privately
as all aristocratic children were, Aristotle trained first in medicine. Considered to be a brilliant student, in
367 B.C. he was sent to Athens to study philosophy with Plato. He stayed at Plato's Academy until about
347 B.C.

Although his time at the academy was productive, Aristotle opposed some of Plato's teachings and may
have challenged the Master openly. When Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the academy, so
he left to pursue his own studies. After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent time traveling and studying in Asia
Minor (what is now Turkey) and its islands.

At the request of Philip of Macedon, he returned to Macedonia in 338 B.C. to tutorAlexander the Great, and
two other future kings, Ptolemy and Cassander. Aristotle took full charge of Alexander's education and is
considered to be the source of Alexander's push to conquer Eastern empires. After Alexander conquered
Athens, Aristotle returned to that city and set up a school of his own, known as the Lyceum. It spawned
what was called the "Peripatetic School," for their habit of walking around as part of their lectures and
 discussions. When Alexander died, Athens took arms and overthrew its Macedonian conquerors. Because
of his close ties to Macedonia, Aristotle's situation became dangerous. Seeking to avoid the same fate as
Socrates, Aristotle emigrated to the island of Euboea. He died there in 322 B.C.

Political agreements and disagreements between Plato and Aristotle

Plato is regarded as the first writer of political philosophy, and Aristotle is recognized as the first
political scientist. These two men were great political thinkers. There are a lot of differences
between the two even though Aristotle was a great student of Plato. They each had ideas of how
to improve existing societies during their individual lifetimes. It is necessary to look at several
areas of each theory to seek the difference in each. There are some similarities too, but first we
will discuss the differences.

The main focus of Plato is a perfect society. He creates a blueprint for a utopian society, in his
book The Republic, out of his disdain for the tension of political life.Plato sought to cure the
afflictions of both human society and human personality. Essentially what Plato wants to achieve
is a perfect society.

Aristotle, unlike Plato, is not concerned with perfecting society. He just wants to improve on the
existing one. Rather than produce a blueprint for the perfect society, Aristotle suggested, in his
work, The Politics, that the society itself should reach for the best possible system that could be
attained .Aristotle looks to the ideals which are expressed in the laws,customs,and public opinion
of the people of the actual states;these are the materials which politics must respect ,work
with,and seek to improve.In short,all that has to be done is to try to improve on the existing one.

Plato's utopia consists of three distinct classes:the producers,the auxiliaries and the rulers or
guardians. The Guardians are to be wise and good rulers. The guardians are to be placed in a
position in which they are absolute rulers. They are supposed to be the select few who know
what is best for society.

Aristotle puts a high value on moderatio.He finds the polity,which is a mean between oligarchy
and democracy ,as the most workable system of government.The polity is the rule of those with
property ,as in oligarchy,but the property qualification is low ,so that the majority of the citizens
have a share in government,as in democracy.The polity is in effect ruled by a large middle
class;it will provide ,Aristotle believes,a stable,well-administered foundation for the state,since
this class is composed of equals and similars of moderate means,who are most likely to follow
the rational principles.

Aristotle rejects the political absolutism of Plato,even though the despots are philosophers
kings.For Aristotle a good society is one in which the constitution is sovereign and the relation
between the ruler to ruled is that of freemen,who are morally equal.

Aristotle also rejects Platos radical ablition of private property and the family for the ruling
class.Aristotle supports the institution of family.

Aristotles fundamental oposition to Platos theory is that it constructs an unattainable

,speculative ideal with which it undertakes a criticism of existin states.Aristotle rejects the
political theory expressed in Platos Republic on the ground that it is too speculative,too
utopian,too far removed from the actual city states and their forms of government.There is so
much of Plato's utopia that is undefined and it is carried to extremes that no human being could
ever fulfill its requirements.

But there are major areas of agreement between Plato and Aristotle on political theory.Like
Plato ,Aristotle views the atate as having a moral end or purpose:the highest possible moral
development and happiness if its citizens.Also,like Plato,Aristotle regards the state as having
primacy over the family and over the individuals.The state is a self-sufficient whole,wherears the
family and the individual have no self-sufficiency but are only parts dependent upon the social
life of the state.It is only in the state that the virtues of the individual are developed and
functional and the good life,the life of happiness ,can be lived.Aristotle also initially follows
Platos classification of types of government into three good and three bad states according to the
number of the rulers.

They both had well thought out ideas and plans on how to build a better society. Both Aristotle
and Plato have had a tremendous impact on political scientists of today. Aristotle helped to
develope some democratic ideas. In conclusion these men were great thinkers. Their opinions on
society and its functions were quite different, but they both had the same intention, to build a
better way of life for the societies they lived in and for the societies that would come to be in the
future.

Aristotles Theory of State: Nature, Function, Criticism

and Thought
by Sunil Tanwar Aristotle

Aristotles Theory of State: Nature, Function, Criticism and Thought!

Nature of Polis or State:

In Aristotles own words:

Our own observation tells us that every polis is a community (or association) of persons formed with a view to some

good purpose. I say good because in their actions all men do in fact aim at what they think good.

Clearly then all communities aim at some good, that one which is the supreme and embraces all others will have also

as its aim the supreme good. That is the community which we call polis (or State) and that type of community we call

political.

Let us now see what the definition wants to emphasize. According to Aristotle, the state is a community of persons.

Every community has certain purpose and that purpose is good. As a community the state has a purpose, and that

purpose is also good.

But the state is not an ordinary community. It is the highest of all communities and naturally its purpose shall be the

highest or supreme. It is thus evident that like all associations the state is an association. But its purpose is different

from that of other associations. Again, it is not an ordinary association. It enjoys the highest rank or position in the

society or social structure.

As a typical biologist, Aristotle has analyzed the nature of state by dividing it into several components. He has said

that we are accustomed to analyze other composite things till they can be subdivided no further, let us in the same

way examine the state and its component parts. The application of natural method reveals that the state is natural or

exists by nature.

In the analysis of the natural method we find the application of physic and nomos. Physic implies growth, nature and

fundamental reality. The meaning of nomos is man-made, convention and custom. Aristotle says that the state is

characterized by natural growth. But, during its different stages of progress, man-made laws and conventions have

intervened.

The Greek word Koinonia means both community and association. Although, according to sociologists, there is a

subtle difference between community and association we shall use the words here in the same sense and also

interchangeably.

It is true that man is, by nature, a self-interest seeking animal and he does not hesitate to oppose the fulfillment of

others interests. So the law, justice, institutions and conventions which are made by man may be evil. But Aristotle

does not accept it.

He is of opinion that laws and conventions are basically good and man has made them to serve their beneficial

objectives. To sum up, the state has developed naturally. It must not be treated as a result on contract or human

contrivance. Men have made laws, institutions and conventions for their own benefit and these have facilitated and

enriched the functioning of the state.

If the state is a natural development there are definitely several stages. What are the stages? Aristotle begins his

argument by saying that the first stage of the state is the household.

The union between male and female constitutes the basis of family. Again, the union between male and female is

essential for reproduction, since each is powerless without the other.

This is not a matter of choice, but the result of desire implanted by nature and this desire is to be found in all animals.

Family includes other components such as slave, ox, and plough. Without these components a family cannot
maintain its own physical existence. In Aristotles definition: This association of persons, established according to the

law of nature and continuing day after day, is the household.

The household is the simplest form of association and meets the simplest necessities. But mans necessities are

various and naturally it is beyond the capacity of the family to meet those demands.

Several families have formed a village to fulfil the greater demands and necessities. It generally comes into being

through the processes of nature. The village, although higher than the family, cannot cope with the growing demands

of its members.

When several villages are conglomerated that gives rise to a Polis or State: The final association formed of several

villages is the city or state. For all practical purposes the process is now complete., self-sufficiency has been reached

and so, while it started as a means of securing life itself, it is now in position to secure the good life(Aristotle).

Aristotle observes that besides securing life itself, it has also a greater purpose, i.e., to secure a good life. Elsewhere

he has said that common interest is a factor in bringing men together, since the interest of all contributes to the good

life of each. The good life is indeed the chief end of the stateboth corporately and individually.

For Aristotle the nature of everything is not its first but its final condition. And the process of growth towards it is also

described as nature. The city-state is a perfectly natural form of association, as the earlier associations from which it

sprang were natural. This association is the end of those others and its nature is itself an end.

The state is natural not simply because it is the final stage of historical evolution, but because it alone meets all the

needs of man, it is alone self-sufficient.

Neither household nor village is self-sufficient. They could meet only a part of mans necessities. In his Politics we

find two types of self-sufficiencyself-sufficiency in the necessities of day-to-day life and self-sufficiency in the need

for good life.

Aristotles idea of the fulfillment of necessities of life is not to be detached from the conception of the attainment of

ethical values. We have already noted that, according to Aristotle, for the sake of good life the exercise of both ethical

and intellectual virtues is very much essential and the former requires the easy availability of sufficient amount of

external goods. Only the state with an adequate size and sufficient population can ensure the smooth supply of

external goods.

In Aristotles view, man seeks to satisfy his physical or material demands to attain good life. Any institution or

community other than polis is insufficient. Therefore, the membership of polis is essential.
Man is by Nature a Political Animal:

It is now clear that the state is a natural form of organization and by nature man has become the member of the state.

Therefore, both state and individuals as its members are natural. Aristotle does not stop here. Continuing his logic he

has said that man is by nature a political animal.

The term political animal means an animal that lives in polis or state or polis. Nature has inspired and encouraged

man to be a part of the state. Aristotle believed that it was not possible for man to live outside the state.

It is the state that fulfils all his requirements. If out of ill luck no man can get the membership of polis he will come

down to the level of sub-man. On the other hand, if anybody refuses to live in a state he may be regarded as a

superman.

It is the nature of man to live in a state. Aristotle says that, nature does nothing without purpose, and for the purpose

of making man a political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech

and other good qualities.

The implication of the term political animal is man is reasonable and with the power of reason he can distinguish

between good and bad; right and wrong; just and unjust. Reasonability is the basis, according to Aristotle, of sharing

a common view in the matters that makes a household or city.

The meaning of the term as a member of the polis or state is to be abundantly found in different ethical and political

writings of Aristotle. He was also, record shows, interested in life sciences and extensively studied them. In his

zoological works, he also used the term political animal. Aristotle has said that gregariousness is to be found both in

man and other animals.

But the fundamental difference is man possesses consciousness and reasonability while other animals do not have

these features. Politicality of man enables him to form organisation and also pursue a good life.

Aristotles analysis of state and individuals as its members is based on stark logic. This is possible due to the fact that

Aristotle had sufficient knowledge on various branches of science. He was a man of great reason.

Organic Character of State:

A mere glance over Aristotles theory of state drives home an important point that it is organic in naturewhich

means that the state is a compounded whole. He has made distinction between aggregate and whole.
The former means that different parts of a thing are juxtaposed together to make a unit. By their juxtaposition the

parts make a unity. But the whole means a different thing.

The polis or state is a whole. The state has several parts. But when they are put together the unity will mean a

different matter. The state is not an aggregate of individuals. Its members are not atomized individuals related to one

another only by the fact that they inhabit the same territory.

When the individuals form a whole they share a joint activity, and, at the same time, lose their separateness. Again, if

the parts are separated from the whole, they will be useless. This is the organic theory of state.

Aristotle has saidthe city or state has priority over the household and over any individual. For the whole must be

prior to the parts. Separate hand or foot from the whole body and they will no longer be hand or foot.

An individual is not fully self-sufficient after separation. To put it in other words, only the membership of state makes

him self-sufficient and helps him fulfil his ambition and also to be moral and virtuous.

The morality and virtuousness are the characteristics of man only. When man reaches the stage of full development

he automatically becomes a member of a polis and a separation between man and polis will degenerate the former to

the level of beast.

If man is an integral part of the state, can it be said that he is completely blended with it? Aristotles answer is a

categorical no. He never thinks of a mixture. Although man is a part of the whole, he will stand in the same

relationship to the whole as other parts. It implies that the individual will be able to keep his separate identity intact.

His state is a compound in which original parts are still discernible. In the state the individuals will perform different

functions, but these functions are complementary.

That is, each person is dependent upon the other. By advocating that the membership of the polis does not obliterate

the separate identity of man and group, Aristotle has acknowledged the plurality of parts composing the state.

On this point he has criticized Plato who advocated communism to do away with all sorts of differences. Aristotle

does not think that by obliterating the differences the state will be a concrete and complete whole.

Individual and State:

The city or state has priority over the household and over any individual among us. This observation of Aristotle has

encouraged the critics to frame a charge that he has deliberately subordinated the individual to the all-powerful

wishes of the state.

Although he acknowledged the separate existence of the individual, he did not think that the individual would not have

separate ideal, morality and goodness from those of the state.

The individual, according to Aristotle, can achieve these qualities only through the membership of and subordination

to the state. He cannot have rights and liberties apart from the state or against the state.

The individual, although not merged with the state, is completely dependent upon the state for pursuit of his moral

and ethical objectives. Aristotle holds that without the membership of the state the lofty ideals of individuals will

remain unrealized.

But the individuals dependence upon or subordination to the state is an issue of great controversy. Now let us

analyze the matter from a different angle. If the objective of the state is to help the individual to pursue his own

personal interest and objectives, then the state is subordinate to the individual.

For example, if the individual thinks that his personal protection must get priority and it is the duty of the state to help

him, then the opinion of the individual will get priority over that of the state.

No question of compromise can arise in respect of personal protection. But if the purpose of the individual is to help

the polis in achieving the common good, then the opinion of the state will always dominate and the individual must

submit to the state.

Attainment of common good may or may not include private benefit. Whatever may be the case, the individuals

interest cannot claim special treatment. He must sacrifice himself for the sake of the common good embodied in the

state.

The state imagined by Aristotle is the highest manifestation of morality, ideal, ethics and values, and all these are

beyond all sorts of fragmentation. Since the individual is rational and his interest does not exhaust in performing

certain political activities, he wants to attain the above-mentioned values and ideals and only the membership of the

state can help him.

Aristotle is nurtured in Greek philosophy which always thinks of the community as a whole. Like all ancient Greeks,

he has never thought actively about the rights and obligations of man. To all Greek philosophers, the attainment of

the common good was the sole purpose of any polis. The view of the individual cannot get precedence over that of

the state.

In this respect we may say that Aristotle subordinates individuals to the state, if we mean that, in balancing the claims

of the individuals and the state, he favours the state more and individuals less. Although this was the view of Greek

philosophers, the same thing is to be found in the democratic institutions of modern times.
The democratic institution of ostracism by which individuals could be banished without being convicted of any formal

charge provides a good example of the general Greek view of the legitimate power of the group over the individual.

A Totalitarian State:

From the conceptionthe individual is subordinate to the stateanother aspect of Aristotelian theory of state is

derived, it is: his state is totalitarian or authoritarian. The very simple meaning of totalitarianism is that the state

assumes the full responsibility of the all-round development of the individual.

It does not recognize the initiative to be adopted by the individual considering his own advantages and

disadvantages, and also the role of various social and political institutions in moulding the character of the individual.

Determination of goals and the methods of their attainment will also be decided by the state. In a word, in the

authoritarian view, the state is all-powerful.

Critics have called Aristotles theory of state simply totalitarian. Why? A modicum of democratic value suggests that

the individual should have full freedom to pursue his goals independently. As member of different social organizations

he can take their help.

At best he can expect that, as the supreme organization, the state can hinder the hindrances which stand on his way

to the attainment of success. But under no circumstances the state will assume the whole responsibility.

If we look at the Aristotelian theory of state, we shall find that there is hardly any scope for the individual to think in his

own way and to do something independently.

The state, according to Aristotle, is all-embracing and it leaves no room for the individuals freedom. The morality of

the state and that of the individual do not stand apart. So also ethics and idealism.

Since the state is the highest association, it is quite capable of shouldering the responsibility of expounding and

enriching the moral and ideal values to which the individual aspires.

So the individual must be subordinate to the state and not the reverse. If the reverse is accepted then the authority of

the state as the supreme organisation will be thrown in the air, and the non-existence of the state will imply the non-

fulfillment of the goals. Again, this is unacceptable. Hence, the subordination of the individual to the state is a fait

accompli.
This type of subordination of individual to the statewhich may also be described as totalitarian, authoritarian or

paternalisticis certainly endorsed by Aristotle. He thinks that people want to be happy and their happiness is

required to be maximum.

This is possible only if the state takes initiative in making legislation and controlling the entire educational system.

That is, the state-controlled education and state-sponsored laws are the only weapons of attaining happiness. The

state is the only authority of all the enterprises and the individual has no choice. There is no alternative but

subordination.

His concept of organic theory of state is also a powerful hint of totalitarianism. In an animal body the parts have no

importance away from the whole. Although this is true, yet the same cannot hold good for the relationship between

the individual and the state.

The state is essential for the individual no doubt, but it cannot claim to embrace all the aspects of his life. .Only in

totalitarianism the state is for the individuals and not vice versa.

The state can fulfil a part of human demands but not all the demands. For complete satisfaction and happiness, the

individual seeks the membership of different organizations. Aristotelian state cannot tolerate this.

It is absolutely unintelligible how a political association can make all its inhabitants moral, ethical and ideal single-

handedly. It is both physically impossible and morally unjustifiable. No person or organization can take the absolute

guardianship of all individuals.

Aristotles polis is a community and not an association, because men value it for its own sake and not just as a

means to the fulfillment of separate individual ends. If this is the nature of Aristotles polis, the individual finds no

honourable position in the state.

He is simply a machine to help the state. Again, individual cannot claim any special treatment. All are treated

identically. Totalitarianism does not recognize differences. Individual is rational if he unconditionally surrenders to the

state. Defiance is tantamount to irrationality. We, therefore, observe that his theory is totalitarian.

Functions of State:

Aristotle has not elaborately analyzed the different functions of the state. The reason is unknown to us.
He has not viewed the state from an ordinary point of view. The state is not simply a pact of mutual protection or an

agreement to exchange goods and services.

If certain people assemble together and enter into a pact to materialize commercial interests and mutual protection

and for that purpose form an association that cannot be called a state.

In ancient Greece there were many such associations but they were not worthy of being called a state. The state is

more than a contractual society and its function is not to help its members to gain few commercial and economic

benefits. Its purpose is to attain virtue. If it fails in this sphere it will be an alliance.

The state is intended to enable all, in their households and their kingships, to live well, meaning by that a full and

satisfying life. The citizens and inhabitants will not have a satisfying life if they have not established a relationship

among themselves through marriages and brotherhoods.

So, mere formation of associations does not make a state. In the words of Aristotle the political association which we

call a state exists not simply for the purpose of living together, but for the sake of noble actions. Those who do noble

deeds are therefore contributing to the quality of the political association.

What Aristotle wants to say is that the objective of the state is to make the life of the individual noble and happy. This

is the most important function. But the state must also look after the security and general welfare of its citizens. It, of

course, comes under secondary functions.

His theory of the function of the state is quite different from that of Locke. The purpose of Lockes contract is to

establish a civil society and the primary function of the civil society is the preservation of rights of its members against

the infringement by others. Every individual has a right to his life, liberty and property which he could not exercise and

enjoy in the state of nature.

The state will ensure rights through the use of force. Any violation of rights and misappropriation of property shall be

prevented by the state alone. The state, in Lockes view, is the manifestation of combined strength and force.

It is the legal right of the individual to claim that their rights, liberties and property are to be protected and, at the same

time, it is the legal as well as moral duty of the state to fulfil this demand.

But nowhere has Locke written of ennoblement of the citizens life. Here lies the fundamental difference between

Locke and Aristotle. A real state is concerned with both outward and inward actions of man. If the state makes itself

busy only with the outward actions, it will do only half of its functions.
Aristotle has emphasized upon education. Education is the most powerful weapon of making men good or of training

them to virtue. Education can be impacted by the institutions set up by the state.

On this point Aristotle follows Plato very strictly. The object of institutions should be to train men to goodness, not only

to intellectual, but to moral and physical, excellence.

The state should be the school of citizens. The state in Aristotles theory is a reformatory. Why the state is entrusted

with this task he has not vividly discussed. Our opinion is, since the state is the supreme organization it is entitled to

look after the interests of all men in a balanced way which no other association or institution can do. The outlook of

church or any other religious institution is highly biased. These organizations or institutions cannot maintain discipline

in education.

Criticism of Aristotles Theory of State:

Aristotles theory of state has been variously criticized. The first criticism against his theory of state is it is totalitarian

in character. His concept of the state is all- embracing. The individuals in his state have no separate status. They are

completely merged with the state. Its organic nature reveals the totalitarian feature.

If the individuals are separated from the state they will lose their importance as the separated parts of human or

animal body lose their activity. Critics are of view that this contention of Aristotle about the relationship between the

state and individuals is unacceptable.

Secondly, in Aristotles theory of state, associations or communities have no separate importance or position. The

state or polis embraces all other communities. They owe their existence to the state. It means that all the

communities are merged in the body of the state.

It implies that the polis has absolute control over all communities. He observesall forms of community are like

parts of political community. It is now quite obvious that both the individuals and the community are integral parts of

the polis. This view of state is anti-democratic. We do not regard individuals or associations as mere appendix parts

of the state. In modern times, the community plays the important part in the field of developing the personality of

individuals.

Thirdly, it is not true that the state or polis is the greatest manifestation of supreme good. It aims at some good no

doubt but not the supreme good. By supreme good he means complete human good, the good life of all members of

the polis as distinct from the lesser goods or partial welfare of the individuals.
In real life, the state in no capacity can mould or determine the character of individuals in an absolute way. The state

has a role, but it shares with numerous other communities. By denying giving importance to the community he has

done injustice to it.

When he says that the polis is the manifestation of supreme good he wants to assert that it is an institution of

supreme authority. The state, in practical life, is never the holder of supreme authority.

Although Aristotle does not talk about sovereignty in its absolute sense, his analysis indicates that he had developed

a fascination about absolute nature of sovereignty. The absolutist character of a state is always inimical to the

balanced development of human personality.

In spite of these criticisms something need to be said in support of his concept. According to Aristotle the state is not

the product of any contract. It is natural. This does not mean that man has no role behind the creation of the state.

The evolution of mans consciousness and intelligence has helped the creation of state.

It has not been made by certain individuals all on a sudden. Efforts of centuries lie behind the creation of a state. This

is the evolutionary theory of state. It is also called the scientific theory.

Family, community and stateall are perfectly natural. We all agree with this contention of Aristotle. Even modern

thinkers are of opinion that the state is the final form as a political organization.

Theory of Sovereignty:

First of all, sovereign power may be vested in the people as a whole. But this possibility has not been approved by

him on the ground that numerical majority may create injustice in the state. Majority people will be inclined to

distribute the property of the rich among themselves. Although this act is justified by law it is unjust.

A tyrant may use force against the interest and wishes of the majority. But force cannot be the permanent feature of

the state. Nor has it any moral basis. The third alternative suggested by Aristotle is that few wealthy persons may be

allowed to exercise the sovereign power. Here again the greedy wealthy persons with the help of absolute power will

plunder the property and wealth of many.

This is unjust. In the fourth place, the good should rule. In that case, only the good will dominates the majority and the

latter will be deprived of access to state authority. The fifth alternative, that one man, the best, should rule, is no

better, by making the number of rulers fewer we still leave larger numbers without official standing.
The Greek philosopher has solved the problem by saying that the sovereign power shall be vested in the hands of the

people in general and not in the hands of few men. It may be that every one of the many is wise and capable of

ruling.

But when all people assemble together and take decision collectively, their decision is much better and wiser than the

decision of a single wise man. For where there are many people, each has some share of goodness and intelligence.

That is why the general public is better judge of works of music and poetry.

But Aristotle is not satisfied with this solution. Although the collective judgment is wiser than the individual judgment,

the fact remains that the inferior will rule the superior.

Aristotle apprehended such a possibility and there was reason behind such apprehension. In many city-states there

was popular sovereignty which could not function properly.

In ultimate analysis, laws must govern the society and guide the behaviour of all men and officers. But where the laws

are not rightly framed, people individually and collectively will rule.

Laws, framed according to the constitution, are right and just. Therefore, first of all, the constitution must be of the

right type and any deviation will be unjust. Aristotle was aware of the consequences of the rigidity of law. It may result

in injustice. But more injustice will appear from other methods.

THE PRINCE
Niccol Machiavelli

Important Quotations Explained

1.
At this point one may note that men must be either pampered or annihilated. They avenge light offenses; they cannot avenge
severe ones; hence, the harm one does to a man must be such as to obviate any fear of revenge.

This passage from Chapter III is an example of logical reasoning conspicuously devoid of ethical
considerations. A prince must realize that he has two options: benevolence and destruction. Because the
latter option will cause resentment among the people, he should choose it only if he is absolutely sure
there will be no ill consequencesthat the destruction he incurs will eliminate or disable any parties that
might seek to revenge themselves against him. Feelings of pity or compassion are meaningless. Self-
interest and self-protection are in this case the motivating factors and are to be pursued ruthlessly.

2.
[P]eople are by nature changeable. It is easy to persuade them about some particular matter, but it is hard to hold them to that
persuasion. Hence it is necessary to provide that when they no longer believe, they can be forced to believe.

This passage from Chapter VI is an example of Machiavellis use of assumptions about human nature to
justify political action. This quotation follows a formula used throughout The Prince: because people are
X, a prince must always do Y. Whereas Machiavelli laces his historical points with a wealth of evidence
and detail, he tends not to provide significant explanations for many broad statements he makes about
human nature. We may assume that when Machiavelli writes a statement such as people are by nature
changeable, he is uttering a belief generally accepted in sixteenth-century Florentine society.

3.
A prince must have no other objective, no other thought, nor take up any profession but that of war, its methods and its discipline,
for that is the only art expected of a ruler. And it is of such great value that it not only keeps hereditary princes in power, but often
raises men of lowly condition to that rank.

This quote from Chapter XIV highlights warcraft as both an academic discipline that can be studied
through historical examples and as a matter of practical experience. For Machiavelli, all affairs of
government are viewed through a military lens, because the ultimate goal of a government is self-
preservation; military defenseembracing ideas of strategy, diplomacy, and geographyis the means by
which governments preserve themselves. Machiavelli does not conceive of the prince as a man skilled in
many disciplines, but rather as one whose sole responsibility is to ensure the stability of the state that he
governs.

4.
Only the expenditure of ones own resources is harmful; and, indeed, nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does. The more it is
indulged, the fewer are the means to indulge it further. As a consequence, a prince becomes poor and contemptible or, to escape
poverty, becomes rapacious and hateful. Of all the things he must guard against, hatred and contempt come first, and liberality
leads to both. Therefore it is better to have a name for miserliness, which breeds disgrace without hatred, than, in pursuing a name
for liberality, to resort to rapacity, which breeds both disgrace and hatred.

This passage from Chapter XVI illustrates Machiavellis attitude toward virtue and statecraft. Machiavelli
advises the prince to disregard the principles of virtue when acting on behalf of his state. Instead, while it
is desirable for a prince to act virtuously when he can, he should never let perceptions of virtue interfere
with statecraft. Even though generosity seems admirable, it is ultimately detrimental to the state, and
therefore should be avoided. A prince will never be hated for lack of virtue, he will be hated only if he fails
in his duty to maintain the state. Virtuous action, in that it often promotes self-sacrifice, often conflicts with
that duty.

5.
Here a question arises: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is, of course, that it would be best to
be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being
feared than in being loved. . . . Love endures by a bond which men, being scoundrels, may break whenever it serves their
advantage to do so; but fear is supported by the dread of pain, which is ever present.

This passage from Chapter XVII contains perhaps the most famous of Machiavellis statements. Often,
his argument that it is better to be feared than loved is taken at face value to suggest that The Prince is a
handbook for dictators and tyrants. But a closer reading reveals that Machiavellis argument is a logical
extension of his assessments of human nature and virtue. In the first place, people will become disloyal if
circumstances warrant. In the second, the princes ultimate goal is to maintain the state, which requires
the obedience of the people. From these two points, it follows that between benevolence and cruelty, the
latter is the more reliable. Machiavelli never advocates the use of cruelty for its own sake, only in the
interests of the ultimate end of statecraft.

THE PRINCE
Niccol Machiavelli

Overview

Machiavelli composed The Prince as a practical guide for ruling (though some scholars argue that the
book was intended as a satire and essentially a guide on how not to rule). This goal is evident from the
very beginning, the dedication of the book to Lorenzo de Medici, the ruler of Florence. The Prince is not
particularly theoretical or abstract; its prose is simple and its logic straightforward. These traits underscore
Machiavellis desire to provide practical, easily understandable advice.

The first two chapters describe the books scope. The Prince is concerned with autocratic regimes, not
with republican regimes. The first chapter defines the various types of principalities and princes; in doing
so, it constructs an outline for the rest of the book. Chapter III comprehensively describes how to maintain
composite principalitiesthat is, principalities that are newly created or annexed from another power, so
that the prince is not familiar to the people he rules. Chapter III also introduces the books main concerns
power politics, warcraft, and popular goodwillin an encapsulated form.
Chapters IV through XIV constitute the heart of the book. Machiavelli offers practical advice on a variety
of matters, including the advantages and disadvantages that attend various routes to power, how to
acquire and hold new states, how to deal with internal insurrection, how to make alliances, and how to
maintain a strong military. Implicit in these chapters are Machiavellis views regarding free will, human
nature, and ethics, but these ideas do not manifest themselves explicitly as topics of discussion until later.

Chapters XV to XXIII focus on the qualities of the prince himself. Broadly speaking, this discussion is
guided by Machiavellis underlying view that lofty ideals translate into bad government. This premise is
especially true with respect to personal virtue. Certain virtues may be admired for their own sake, but for a
prince to act in accordance with virtue is often detrimental to the state. Similarly, certain vices may be
frowned upon, but vicious actions are sometimes indispensable to the good of the state. Machiavelli
combines this line of reasoning with another: the theme that obtaining the goodwill of the populace is the
best way to maintain power. Thus, the appearance of virtue may be more important than true virtue, which
may be seen as a liability.

The final sections of The Prince link the book to a specific historical context: Italys disunity. Machiavelli
sets down his account and explanation of the failure of past Italian rulers and concludes with an
impassioned plea to the future rulers of the nation. Machiavelli asserts the belief that only Lorenzo de
Medici, to whom the book is dedicated, can restore Italys honor and pride.

THE PRINCE
Niccol Machiavelli

Themes

Statesmanship & Warcraft

Machiavelli believes that good laws follow naturally from a good military. His famous statement that the
presence of sound military forces indicates the presence of sound laws describes the relationship
between developing states and war in The Prince.Machiavelli reverses the conventional understanding of
war as a necessary, but not definitive, element of the development of states, and instead asserts that
successful war is the very foundation upon which all states are built. Much of The Prince is devoted to
describing exactly what it means to conduct a good war: how to effectively fortify a city, how to treat
subjects in newly acquired territories, and how to prevent domestic insurrection that would distract from a
successful war. But Machiavellis description of war encompasses more than just the direct use of military
forceit comprises international diplomacy, domestic politics, tactical strategy, geographic mastery, and
historical analysis. Within the context of Machiavellis Italywhen cities were constantly threatened by
neighboring principalities and the area had suffered through power struggles for many yearshis method
of viewing almost all affairs of state through a military lens was a timely innovation in political thinking.

Goodwill & Hatred

To remain in power, a prince must avoid the hatred of his people. It is not necessary for him to be loved; in
fact, it is often better for him to be feared. Being hated, however, can cause a princes downfall. This
assertion might seem incompatible with Machiavellis statements on the utility of cruelty, but Machiavelli
advocates the use of cruelty only insofar as it does not compromise the long-term goodwill of the people.
The peoples goodwill is always the best defense against both domestic insurrection and foreign
aggression. Machiavelli warns princes against doing things that might result in hatred, such as the
confiscation of property or the dissolution of traditional institutions. Even installations that are normally
valued for military use, such as fortresses, should be judged primarily on their potential to garner support
for the prince. Indeed, only when he is absolutely sure that the people who hate him will never be able to
rise against him can a prince cease to worry about incurring the hatred of any of his subjects. Ultimately,
however, obtaining the goodwill of the people has little or nothing to do with a desire for the overall
happiness of the populace. Rather, goodwill is a political instrument to ensure the stability of the princes
reign.

Free Will

Machiavelli often uses the words prowess and fortune to describe two distinct ways in which a prince
can come to power. Prowess refers to an individuals talents, while fortune implies chance or luck. Part
of Machiavellis aim in writing The Prince is to investigate how much of a princes success or failure is
caused by his own free will and how much is determined by nature or the environment in which he lives.
Machiavelli applies this question specifically to the failure of past Italian princes. In Chapter XXV,
Machiavelli discusses the role of fortune in determining human affairs. He attempts to compromise
between free will and determinism by arguing that fortune controls half of human actions and leaves the
other half to free will. However, Machiavelli also argues that through foresighta quality that he
champions throughout the bookpeople can shield themselves against fortunes vicissitudes. Thus,
Machiavelli can be described as confident in the power of human beings to shape their destinies to a
degree, but equally confident that human control over events is never absolute.

Virtue
Machiavelli defines virtues as qualities that are praised by others, such as generosity, compassion, and
piety. He argues that a prince should always try to appear virtuous, but that acting virtuously for virtues
sake can prove detrimental to the principality. A prince should not necessarily avoid vices such as cruelty
or dishonesty if employing them will benefit the state. Cruelty and other vices should not be pursued for
their own sake, just as virtue should not be pursued for its own sake: virtues and vices should be
conceived as means to an end. Every action the prince takes must be considered in light of its effect on
the state, not in terms of its intrinsic moral value.

Human Nature

Love endures by a bond which men, being scoundrels, may break whenever it serves their advantage to
do so; but fear is supported by the dread of pain, which is ever present.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

Machiavelli asserts that a number of traits are inherent in human nature. People are generally self-
interested, although their affection for others can be won and lost. They are content and happy so long
they are not victims of something terrible. They may be trustworthy in prosperous times, but they will
quickly turn selfish, deceitful, and profit-driven in times of adversity. People admire honor, generosity,
courage, and piety in others, but most of them do not exhibit these virtues themselves. Ambition is
commonly found among those who have achieved some power, but most common people are satisfied
with the status quo and therefore do not yearn for increased status. People will naturally feel a sense of
obligation after receiving a favor or service, and this bond is usually not easily broken. Nevertheless,
loyalties are won and lost, and goodwill is never absolute. Such statements about human nature are often
offered up as justifications for the books advice to princes. While Machiavelli backs up his political
arguments with concrete historical evidence, his statements about society and human nature sometimes
have the character of assumptions rather than observations.

THE PRINCE
Niccol Machiavelli

Study Questions & Essay Topics

Study Questions

1.

How does Machiavelli view human nature?

Machiavelli differs from the many political theorists who offer conceptions of a natural state, a presocial
condition arising solely from human instinct and character. But while Machiavelli never puts forth a vision
of what society would be like without civil government, he nonetheless presents a coherent, although not
particularly comprehensive, vision of human nature.

Machiavelli mentions explicitly a number of traits innate among humans. People are generally self-
interested, although their affections for others can be won and lost. They remain content and happy so
long they avoid affliction or oppression. They might be trustworthy in prosperous times, but they can turn
selfish, deceitful, and profit-driven in adverse times. They admire honor, generosity, courage, and piety in
others, but most do not harbor these virtues. Ambition lies among those who have achieved some power,
but most common people are satisfied with the way things are and therefore do not yearn to improve on
the status quo. People will naturally feel obligated after receiving a favor or service, and this bond is
usually not broken capriciously. Nevertheless, loyalties are won and lost, and goodwill is never absolute.

These statements about human nature often serve as justification for much of Machiavellis advice to
princes. For example, a prince should never trust mercenary leaders because they, like most leaders, are
overly ambitious. At the same time, while many of Machiavellis remarks on the subject seem reasonable,
most are assumptions not grounded in evidence or popular notions and can easily be criticized. For
example, a Hobbesian might argue that Machiavelli puts too much faith in peoples ability to remain
content in the absence of government force. A related issue to explore, then, might be the extent to which
Machiavellis political theory relies too heavily on any single, possibly fallacious depiction of human
nature.

2.

Is Machiavellis book evil? What role does virtue play in Macchiavellis state?

Some of the advice to rulers found in The Princemost famously, the defense of cruelty toward subjects
has led to criticism that Machiavellis book is evil or amoral. Moreover, the explicit separation of politics
from ethics and metaphysics seems to indicate that there is no role for any kind of virtue in Machiavellis
state.

However, Machiavelli never advocates cruelty or other vices for their own sake. He advocates them only
in the interests of safeguarding the state, which, in Machiavellis view, is a kind of ultimate good in its own
right. Nor does he advocate that virtue should be shunned for its own sake. Indeed, Machiavelli states
several times that when it is in the interests of the state, a prince must strive to act virtuously. But virtue
should never take precedence over the state. Thus, generosity, which might be admired by others, is
actually detrimental to the future prosperity of the state. It is for this reason alone that a prince should
avoid it.

Machiavellis conception of virtue as defined in The Prince is not quite the same as that of classical
theorists. Whereas Aristotle and others defined virtue in relation to some highest good, Machiavelli
settles for a much more simplistic definition: that which receives the praise of others. Thus, generosity is a
virtue, in the Machiavellian sense, only because other people praise it.

3.

Compare and contrast the different ways in which a prince can rise to power.

According to Machiavelli, there are four main ways a prince can come into power. The first way is through
prowess, meaning personal skill and ability. The second is through fortune, meaning good luck or the
charity of friends. The third way is through crime, such as through a coup, conspiracy, or assassination.
The fourth way is constitutional, meaning through the official support of either nobles or common people.

The most important comparison to be made is that between prowess and fortune. Obtaining a state
through prowess is clearly more demanding than benefiting from simple good luck. But a prince gifted
with his own prowess is possessed of a strong foundation to maintain that rule, whereas fortune is
unpredictable and may lead as easily to a princes deposition as it had to his rise. Thus, maintaining rule
is much easier when a prince has used his own skill. Because the maintenance of rule is most important
to Machiavelli, he concludes that prowess is a better route to become a prince.

A second comparison might be made between criminal and constitutional means of achieving power.
Here, the main point of difference is not the skill and experience of the prince but popular attitudes toward
the prince. A prince who comes to power through crime runs the greatest risk because he may be forced
to commit some cruelty toward his subjects, endangering himself by breeding hatred and resentment
among the populace. A constitutional prince, however, comes to power with the support of either the
nobles or commoners, and his job consists mainly of keeping the unsupportive group satisfied with his
rule.

To sum up, prowess is to be preferred over fortune because prowess leads to a more effective ruler who
is likely to garner lasting glory. Constitutional princes are preferable to criminal princes not only because
they are more effective, but also because a criminal prince can achieve nothing other than power. A
constitutional prince can achieve both power and glory.

Suggested Essay Topics

1. What are Machiavellis views regarding free will? Can historical events be shaped by individuals, or are
they the consequence of fortune and circumstance?

2. In Discourses on Livy (1517), Machiavelli argues that the purpose of politics is to promote a common
good. How does this statement relate to the ideas Machiavelli presents in The Prince?

3. Do you agree with Machiavellis thesis that stability and power are the only qualities that matter in the
evaluation of governments? If not, what else matters?

4. Discuss class conflict in The Prince and its relationship to successful government.

5. Discuss The Princes historical context. In what ways do the arguments and examples of the The
Prince reflect that context?

6. Discuss the form, tone, and rhetoric of The Prince. Does Machiavellis choice in this area lead to a
persuasive argument? Why or why not?

7. How much of The Prince is relevant to contemporary society in an age when monarchies no longer are
the primary form of government?

Book Summary
Bookmark this page

The Prince is an extended analysis of how to acquire and maintain political power. It includes 26 chapters and an
opening dedication to Lorenzo de Medici. The dedication declares Machiavelli's intention to discuss in plain language
the conduct of great men and the principles of princely government. He does so in hope of pleasing and enlightening
the Medici family.

The book's 26 chapters can be divided into four sections: Chapters 1-11 discuss the different types of principalities or
states, Chapters 12-14 discuss the different types of armies and the proper conduct of a prince as military leader,
Chapters 15-23 discuss the character and behavior of the prince, and Chapters 24-26 discuss Italy's desperate
political situation. The final chapter is a plea for the Medici family to supply the prince who will lead Italy out of
humiliation.

The types of principalities

Machiavelli lists four types of principalities:

Hereditary principalities, which are inherited by the ruler

 Mixed principalities, territories that are annexed to the ruler's existing territories
New principalities, which may be acquired by several methods: by one's own power, by the power of others,
by criminal acts or extreme cruelty, or by the will of the people (civic principalities)
Ecclesiastical principalities, namely the Papal States belonging to the Catholic church
The types of armies

A prince must always pay close attention to military affairs if he wants to remain in power. Machiavelli lists four types
of armies:

Mercenaries or hired soldiers, which are dangerous and unreliable

Auxiliaries, troops that are loaned to you by other rulersalso dangerous and unreliable
Native troops, composed of one's own citizens or subjectsby far the most desirable kind
Mixed troops, a combination of native troops and mercenaries or auxiliariesstill less desirable than a
completely native army
The character and behavior of the prince

Machiavelli recommends the following character and behavior for princes:

It is better to be stingy than generous.

It is better to be cruel than merciful.
It is better to break promises if keeping them would be against one's interests.
Princes must avoid making themselves hated and despised; the goodwill of the people is a better defense
than any fortress.
Princes should undertake great projects to enhance their reputation.
Princes should choose wise advisors and avoid flatterers.
Italy's political situation

Machiavelli outlines and recommends the following:

The rulers of Italy have lost their states by ignoring the political and military principles Machiavelli
enumerates.
Fortune controls half of human affairs, but free will controls the rest, leaving the prince free to act. However,
few princes can adapt their actions to the times.
The final chapter is an exhortation to the Medici family to follow Machiavelli's principles and thereby free Italy
from foreign domination.

Nasty, brutish, and short:

the dangerous world of
Thomas Hobbes
Posted on April 5, 2013 by History In An Hour
There are many phrases which have remained in popular use but whose
original context, and sometimes author, has been forgotten. A good
example is the stark depiction of life being nasty, brutish and short.
Only recently this phrase was evoked to describe the likely career path
of modern football managers. The man who coined it was correctly
identified as the 17 century English political philosopher Thomas
th

Hobbes, but what was the historical context in which it was made? It
was the English Civil War. Simon Court explains.

Thomas Hobbes was writing during the

turbulent years of the 1640s and early 1650s which saw a bloody military
conflict between the Royalist supporters of King Charles I and his
Parliamentarian opponents; the defeat of the King and his trial and execution,
and the imposition of a Commonwealth in which the monarchy and the House of
Lords was abolished. Whilst not directly engaged in this political upheaval
Hobbes was horrified by it, and he sought to show in his political theory how the
catastrophe of the civil war could have been avoided, and how future conflicts
could be averted.

A state of nature

Hobbes had been developing his political thought throughout the 1640s but it
received its most famous (indeed notorious) articulation in 1651, two years after
the execution of Charles I, in his work Leviathan. Hobbes central idea is
wonderfully simple. He contemplates what life would be like for people if they
were not organised under a sovereign political power. He looks at them in this
state of nature and sees that they are driven by a common passion: a desire to
be superior to others for the dual purpose of self-gratification and self-
protection. This is of course impossible to achieve: all men cannot dominate
each other. So they find themselves in perpetual conflict with a restless anxiety
about the future. It is a bleak world where there is:

continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.

How do men escape this predicament? Hobbes tells us that the only way is for
them to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one
assembly of men. Entering into this contract forces people to keep their
promises and act in a trustworthy manner because they know that to defect
from it will be met with punishment from the sovereign power. It is only by
vesting all political power in the hands of one political body that men can be
assured a peaceful life.

Absolute sovereign

Hobbes theory stands out as a highly radical, and indeed unique, justification
for the imposition of absolute government. In voluntarily conferring upon one
body all power to rule over them, people recognise that the sovereign not only
makes the law, but is itself above the law. Its powers are therefore unlimited,
except in one respect: given that the absolute sovereign has been created to
protect its people from each other or foreign dangers, it follows that if it fails in
that task the people are entitled to resist it, and even replace it with another
body who is capable protecting them.

Whilst in theory Hobbes absolutist view of government could apply to an

assembly as much as to a single monarch, in practice he was an ardent
supporter of the institution of the English monarchy, during the reigns of both
Charles I and his son, Charles II. Hobbes saw no legitimacy in the
Parliamentarian overthrow and execution of the king in 1649: for Hobbes the
people were not in sufficient danger from either themselves or foreigners to
justify such an act. The resulting instability during the 1650s while Parliament
attempted to establish a form of republican government (ending as it did in
abject failure when Oliver Cromwell felt compelled to dismiss Parliament and
rule personally as Lord Protector), further convinced Hobbes of the necessity to
restore Charles II as monarch in 1660.

Disorder coming
Given the radical nature of his political views, it is perhaps unsurprising that
Hobbes felt on a number of occasions that his own life was in danger of being
nasty, brutish, and short. In the spring of 1640 he had published his first work
on politics called The Elements of Law, which was widely read and in which he
forcefully defended regal power. Yet in November that year Charles I was forced
to recall the Long Parliament and was denounced by its leader John Pym. This
was rapidly followed by the impeachment of one of Charles key allies, the Earl
of Strafford, by the House of Commons (see my piece Politics, Protestantism and
Personality: the Causes of the English Civil War). Hobbes, who later recalled that
he feared a disorder coming, immediately fled to France.

Yet even in self imposed exile Hobbes faced hostility. By 1646 Charles I had
effectively lost the war and his son, Prince Charles, was forced to join his mother
Henrietta-Maria in Paris. Hobbes was also in Paris and secured the appointment
as a tutor in mathematics to the sixteen-year-old Prince. Tellingly, Hobbes was
forbidden to teach the Prince politics and when, in 1647, his book De Cive was
published with an inscription describing Hobbes, without his consent, as
Academic Tutor to His Serene Highness the Prince of Wales, Hobbes realised
the danger of the Princes name being associated with a political theory which
offends the opinions of almost everyone.

Immutable decrees

For Hobbes theory was not only rejected by the Parliamentarians, it was also
viewed suspiciously by the Royalists. This was because Hobbes rejected the
divine right of kings theory which formed the basis of orthodox Royalist
thinking. As expressed by Charles I himself, a king must rule his people like a
father and, like a father, his authority is founded on the immutable decrees of
Almighty GodThese are the Divine Right of Kings and are ordained by the
Almighty. For Charles the king was accountable only to God, not to his people,
for it is not the place of the subject to question the royal prerogative.

But as we have seen, Hobbes does not base political authority on God; instead
he argues that sovereign power is man-made, and as such it can be conferred
upon an assembly of as much as one monarch. Also the people can
legitimately usurp the sovereign if it fails to protect them. Unsurprisingly,
orthodox Royalists were unnerved by this view and when in 1651 Hobbes
presented a copy of Leviathan to Prince Charles in Paris he was subsequently
forbidden to come to Court.

Heresy
Partly motivated by this rejection, Hobbes returned to England in 1652 and led a
relatively obscure life at Chatsworth House under the patronage of the Earl of
Devonshire. Yet his political views continued to be widely denounced, and this
was coupled with accusations that Hobbes was an atheist. Hobbes was critical of
the established clergy throughout his life, and he criticised the notion that the
church should be independent of the political sovereign, whether though
allowing people to be ruled by Rome, a Presbyterian minister, or private
conscience.

When in 1666 the House of Commons introduced

a bill against atheism and profaneness and ordered a Parliamentary Committee
to review the contents of Leviathan, Hobbes was fearful that he could be
charged with heresy but Charles II protected him from any punishment.
However, Hobbes would never again be allowed to publish in England on
political or religious matters. Recognising the inflammatory content of Hobbes
writing to the end, Charles II refused Hobbes permission to publish Behemoth,
his work on the English Civil War, for fear of its reception.

Ironically, and despite a number of scary moments, Hobbes lived to the age of
ninety one years, dying in 1679. Yet his description of a dangerous world where
life is nasty, brutish, and short remains with us, whether related to the perils of
football management or otherwise.
 Hobbes, Locke and the State of Nature
CLEON CATSAM BIS , MAY 19 2008, 170 56 VI EWS

THIS CONTENT WAS WRITTEN BY A STUDENT AND A SSE SSED AS PA RT OF A UNIVERSIT Y DEGREE. E-IR PUBLI SHES STUDENT
ES SAYS & DISS ERTATIONS TO ALLOW OUR RE ADERS TO BROADEN THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS POSSI BLE WHEN
ANSWERING SIMI LA R QUESTIONS IN THEIR OWN STUDIE S.

Discuss the Characteristics of Lockes Man in the State of Nature and Thereafter Compare or Contrast them with
the Characteristics Described by any other Republican Theorist

The State of Nature is a useful philosophical model which allows social contract theorists to present their understanding of
human nature and offer a justification for the erection of government. John Locke and Thomas Hobbes have both submitted
competing versions of such a state in Two Treatises of Government and Leviathan respectively, and they arrive at very
different conclusions. An evaluation of their conception of pre-societal man accounts in large part for the divergence in their
views on what form a Commonwealth should assume and what powers it should be endowed with. This essay will analyze
Lockes man in the state of nature and subsequently juxtapose it with Hobbes in an effort to shed light on the differences
between two of the great 17th century thinkers.

Locke uses the state of nature as the starting point for his second, and most salient, Treatise. This is a condition where there
is for men a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit,
within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the Will of any other man. [1] From this
very first sentence, it is evident that Locke follows in the Natural Law tradition which states that men inherently have a moral
sense which restricts them from engaging in certain acts. By virtue of being children of God, we know what is right and
wrong and by extension what is lawful, and we can therefore resolve conflicts fairly consistently. As a result, for Locke, the
state of nature is not a state of License because man has not Liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any Creature in his
Possession, but where some nobler use, than its bare Preservation calls for it. [2] Reason teaches us that we ought not to
harm one another in life, health, liberty or possessions, and that in fact we have an active obligation to others, much as
Cicero had earlier contended. At the same time, we all have a right to punish the transgressors of [the Law of
Nature][3] and as such we are all executioners of natural law. However, man is disposed to be partial in his own case and
therefore act as a biased judge. This is indeed one of the great shortcomings in Lockes state of nature. The other two
failings are the absence of protection of property rights and the inclusion of irrationals. Nevertheless, it is crucial that man
has united even in the absence of government. In all, such a state is inconvenient for man, but not altogether corrupt, and it
is characterized by tolerance, reason and equality.

By contrast, Hobbes vision of the state of nature is far grimmer. He rejects that man has an innate and inviolable moral
compass directing his actions, and suggests instead that man is but a bundle of passions and that he behaves on the basis
of desires and aversions. This quintessentially materialistic and prudential reading of the human condition is radical in the
history of political thought and is certainly in disagreement with Cicero and Locke. Self-interest is the dominant theme in
Hobbes man, as his ultimate objective is to secure as many pleasures as possible (the ultimate one being self-preservation)
and to avoid pain and aversions (most importantly a violent death) with no regard for others. We have no conception of right
and wrong we need a namer of terms to dictate this to us. The state of nature is therefore not immoral, but rather amoral.
There is no justice or property, only rational egoism. We use scientific reasoning, the deduction through if/then experience,
to achieve the greatest utility, yet we can never be safe to enjoy it. In this lawless, pre-societal condition, there is license and
absolute positive liberty. Here, every man has a Right to every thing; even one anothers body. And therefore, as long as this
naturall Right of every man endureth, there can be no security to any man. [4] Men quarrel mainly as a result of
Competition, Diffidence and Glory and force and fraud are the two cardinal virtues. In fact, such a condition rapidly
degenerates into a warre of every man against every man where ones life is ultimately solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and
short.[5] While Hobbes employs Laws of Nature in his argumentation, they are not ubiquitously binding, but apply only
when ones life is secure. In principle, we are all inclined to abide by them, but in practice the need for self-preservation takes
precedence. Hobbes must therefore not be confused for a Natural Law theorist. Man, because of his natural equality, is not
secure in the state of nature and he is in fact not achieving his potential. Unlike in Locke, we are unable to form a civil society
and we remain a collection of individual, irreconcilable, wills. We require a third party to unite our wills. The state of nature is
thus a dangerous, uncooperative place and we are eager to escape it.

These divergent representations of the state of nature naturally produce different justifications for the erection of government
and accord different functions and powers to the state. Locke believes that man escapes the state of nature in search of an
impartial umpire to apply the law of nature and to protect ones estate. In entering Political Society, therefore, man forfeits
only his Executive Power of the Law of Nature, not his life, liberty or property. We agree with other men to join and unite into
a community for comfortable, safe and peaceable living. Seeing as we are already capable of uniting our wills, we do not
require an omnipotent Sovereign to be our representer. Instead, we simply need someone who can maintain, not create, the
law. The law is merely the enforcement of the law of nature and we, as members of the society, must approve them. Locke
argues that rights come from laws, while obligations come from nature. This creates a fiduciary power, accountable to the
people, that rests on majoritarian popular consent. Law, rather than force, is the basis for government, and peace is not
desirable at any and all costs. Locke clarifies that rebellion is permissible when the government subverts the ends for which
it is established, and indicates that is it possible that someone is better off rejecting a particular civil government and
returning to the state of nature before electing a new government. As a further safeguard to protect the people, Locke
implements a separation of powers. For Locke, an absolute monarch that can violate the law of nature is not able to elevate
the people above the state of nature. It appears that he is advancing a minimalist form of government with most of the
activity occurring in the market place. Lockes pre-societal man, endowed with an understanding of the law of nature, does
not need a powerful government to educate him and keep him in check. Instead, he needs a reliable bureaucratic
mechanism to responsibly apply the law in accordance with popular will.

Conversely, the Hobbesian man could never survive in such an institutional setup. Hobbes reading of human nature would
not allow anything but a coercive government, because without it, we would simply disregard the laws of nature and apply
our right of nature. For Hobbes, like Machiavelli, persuasion alone is insufficient to oblige men to perform their obligations.
We consequently transfer the securing of our right of nature and the capacity of self-government to a Sovereign and
voluntarily subject ourselves to positive legislation. The finall Cause, End, or Designe of men (who naturally love Liberty,
and Dominion over others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, (in which wee see them live in
Commonwealths,) is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby. [6] We essentially say to
each other I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this
condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner,[7] and in this fashion, a multitude
of men are made one person by co-authoring the acts of their Representer. The state creates civil society. By virtue of
authoring the actions of the Sovereign, we adopt them as our own and can therefore offer no resistance, since that we would
be going against our own will and would be irrational. Any abuse of power is simple the price of peace. A Sovereign can now
enact legislation that forbids acting upon ones Passions (which in themselves do not constitute a sin) insofar as they injure
or disadvantage someone else. This will allow subjects to follow the Laws of Nature, which they are inclined to do even in the
State of Warre. Unlike with Locke, the Sovereign makesthe laws with the intention of enforcing the contracts we made with
one another and punishing non-performance. Force, not law, is the basis for government. This is a paternalistic system
geared at protecting the state and ensuring peace and stability. There is no separation of powers: the Sovereign controls
civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers. Our freedom lies only where the law has nothing to say (ie, negative liberty).
Unlike with Locke, we have no obligations, and law only limits our rights. Cooperation would lead to chaos what we have
instead is a negative Golden Rule. Because of our passions, our lack of a moral sense and our self-interest, we cannot
ensure our survival with anything short of an all-powerful Sovereign who will lay down the law and (hopefully) work for the
Common Good as he interprets it.

From the above analysis, it is manifest that Locke and Hobbes disagree on very core questions on human nature. One sees
man as fundamentally good with an innate morality while the other sees man as a self-interested and unrestrained creature.
These initial assessments have ponderable implications on the form of government each theorist recommends and lead to
further disputes. Locke believes that the arrangement should protect the people and be subservient to it, Hobbes believes
the state deserves protection. Locke wants its functions limited to the essentials, Hobbes wants as far-reaching powers as
possible for his Leviathan. Locke views the law as a means of enforcing the dictates of nature, Hobbes views it as a means
of enforcing contracts. Locke considers government as a vehicle for maintaining human nature, Hobbes regards it as a
means for counteracting it. These positions are entirely irreconcilable. However, each thinker is internally consistent, and the
form of government proposed is the logical conclusion of his pre-societal man. In classifying todays world, it appears that we
have adopted a more Hobbesian attitude, with the state being more of a master and less of a judge.

Locke versus Hobbes

by jamesd@echeque.com

Locke and Hobbes were both social contract theorists, and both natural law theorists
(Natural law in the sense of Saint Thomas Aquinas, not Natural law in the sense of
Newton), but there the resemblance ends. All other natural law theorists assumed that
man was by nature a social animal. Hobbes assumed otherwise, thus his conclusions
are strikingly different from those of other natural law theorists. In addition to his
unconventional conclusions about natural law, Hobbes was infamous for producing
numerous similarly unconventional results in physics and mathematics. The leading
English mathematician of that era, in the pages of the Proceedings of the Royal
Academy, called Hobbes a lunatic for his claim to have squared the circle.
 Premises
Issue Locke Hobbes

Man is not by nature a

social animal, society
Human Man is by nature a social
could not exist except
nature animal.
by the power of the
state.

The state In the state of nature men no society; and which

of nature mostly kept their promises is worst of all, continual
and honored their fear, and danger of
obligations, and, though violent death; and the
insecure, it was mostly life of man, solitary,
peaceful, good, and poor, nasty, brutish, and
pleasant. He quotes the short.
American frontier and
Soldania as examples of
people in the state of
nature, where property
rights and (for the most
part) peace existed.
Princes are in a state of
nature with regard to each
other. Rome and Venice
were in a state of nature
shortly before they were
officially founded. In any
place where it is socially
acceptable to oneself
punish wrongdoings done
against you, for example
on the American frontier,
 people are in a state of
nature. Though such
places and times are
insecure, violent conflicts
are often ended by the
forcible imposition of a
just peace on evil doers,
and peace is normal.

Humans know what is
right and wrong, and are
capable of knowing what
is lawful and unlawful well
enough to resolve
conflicts. In particular, and
Knowledge
most importantly, they are
of natural
capable of telling the
law
difference between what
is theirs and what belongs
to someone else.
Regrettably they do not
always act in accordance
with this knowledge.
Our knowledge of
objective, true answers
on such questions is so
feeble, so slight and
imperfect as to be
mostly worthless in
resolving practical
disputes. In a state of
nature people cannot
know what is theirs and
what is someone elses.
Property exists solely by
the will of the state,
thus in a state of nature
men are condemned to
endless violent conflict.
In practice morality is
for the most part merely
a command by some
person or group or God,
and law merely the
momentary will of the
ruler.

Epistemolo The gap between our It is the naming, that

gy ideas and words about the makes it so. Sometimes
world, and the world itself, Hobbes comes close to
 is large and difficult, but
still, if one man calls
something good, while
another man calls it evil,
the deed or man referred
to still has real qualities of
good or evil, the the Stalinist position
categories exist in the that truth itself is
world regardless of our merely the will of the
names for them, and if ruler.
one mans word does not
correspond to another
mans word, this a problem
of communication, not
fundamental arbitrariness
in reality.

Men cannot know good

Peace is the norm, and
should be the norm. We
can and should live
together in peace by
Conflict
refraining from molesting
each others property and
persons, and for the most
part we do.
and evil, and in
consequence can only
live in peace together
by subjection to the
absolute power of a
common master, and
therefore there can be
no peace between
kings. Peace between
states is merely war by
other means.
 Conclusions
Issue Locke
We give up our right to
ourselves exact
retribution for crimes in
return for impartial justice
The Social backed by overwhelming
Contract force. We retain the right
to life and liberty, and
gain the right to just,
impartial protection of our
property
If a ruler seeks absolute
power, if he acts both as
judge and participant in
Violation
disputes, he puts himself
of the
in a state of war with his
social
subjects and we have the
contract
right and the duty to kill
such rulers and their
servants.
Civil Civil society precedes the
Society state, both morally and
historically. Society
creates order and grants
the state legitimacy.
Hobbes
If you shut up and do as
you are told, you have
the right not to be killed,
and you do not even have
the right not to be killed,
for no matter what the
Sovereign does, it does
not constitute violation of
the contract.
No right to rebel. there
can happen no breach of
covenant on the part of
the sovereign; and
consequently none of his
subjects, by any pretence
of forfeiture, can be freed
from his subjection. The
rulers will defines good
and evil for his subjects.
The King can do no
wrong, because lawful
and unlawful, good and
evil, are merely
commands, merely the
will of the ruler.
Civil society is the
application of force by the
state to uphold contracts
and so forth. Civil society
is a creation of the state.
 What most modern
people would call civil
society is jostling,
pointless conflict and
pursuit of selfish ends
that a good government
should suppress.

You conceded your rights

Men have rights by their
Rights to the government, in
nature
return for your life

Whatever the state does

The only important role of
Role of
the state is to ensure that
the State
justice is seen to be done
is just by definition. All of
society is a direct
creation of the state, and
a reflection of the will of
the ruler.

Authorization is
meaningless, except that
the authorization gives us
reason to believe that the
use of force is just. If
The concept of just use of
authorization does not
Authorize force is meaningless or
give us such confidence,
d use of cannot be known. Just
perhaps because the state
force use of force is whatever
itself is a party to the
force is authorized
dispute, or because of
past lawless acts and
abuses by the state, then
we are back in a state of
nature.
The Grolier encyclopedia contrasts Locke and Hobbes as follows:

Lockes considerable importance in political thought is better known. As the first

systematic theorist of the philosophy of liberalism, Locke exercised enormous
influence in both England and America. In his Two Treatises of Government (1690),
Locke set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of its
citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the rightand sometimes
the dutyto withdraw their support and even to rebel. Locke opposed Thomas
Hobbess view that the original state of nature was nasty, brutish, and short, and that
individuals through a social contract surrenderedfor the sake of self-preservation
their rights [...]

Locke addressed Hobbess claim that the state of nature was the state of war, though
he attribute this claim to some men not to Hobbes. He refuted it by pointing to
existing and real historical examples of people in a state of nature. For this purpose he
regarded any people who are not subject to a common judge to resolve disputes,
people who may legitimately take action to themselves punish wrong doers, as in a
state of nature.

Second treatise, Section 14

It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were, there any men in such
a state of Nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all
princes and rulers of independent governments all through the world are in a state of
Nature, it is plain the world never was, nor never will be, without numbers of men in
that state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether they
are, or are not, in league with others; for it is not every compact that puts an end to the
state of Nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter
into one community, and make one body politic; other promises and compacts men
may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of Nature. The promises and
bargains for truck, etc., between the two men in Soldania, in or between a Swiss and
an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a
state of Nature in reference to one another for truth, and keeping of faith belongs to
men as men, and not as members of society.

Second treatise, Section 17, 18, 19

And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does
thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a
declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would
get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had
got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to
have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is
against the right of my freedom- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is
the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to
my preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he
who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me.
He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in
that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else,
that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society
would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth
must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked
on as in a state of war.

This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief who has not in the least hurt him, nor
declared any design upon his life, any farther than by the use of force, so to get him in
his power as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using
force, where he has no right to get me into his power, let his pretense be what it will, I
have no reason to suppose that he who would take away my liberty would not, when
he had me in his power, take away everything else. And, therefore, it is lawful for me
to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me- i.e., kill him if I
can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself whoever introduces a state of
war, and is aggressor in it.

And here we have the plain difference between the state of Nature and the state of
war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant as a state of peace,
goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation; and a state of enmity, malice, violence
and mutual destruction are one from another. Men living together according to reason
without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is
properly the state of Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person
of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the
state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even
against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject. Thus, a thief whom
I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may
kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was
made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present
force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defense and the
right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to
appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where
the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men
in a state of Nature; force without right upon a manSRC="s person makes a state of
war both where there is, and is not, a common judge.

Hobbes, on the contrary, asserts that without subjection to a common power, men are
necessarily at war:

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep
them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as
is of every man, against every man.

In on this issue, and also on the meaning of civil society, Hobbess position is the
same as the fascist position: Peace is actually war in disguise. This is why Hobbes
argued that corporations should be suppressed and replaced by the direct exercise of
state power. This is why Hitler thought that declaring war on America was merely a
meaningless trivial symbol.

It was not merely a symbol. Peace is not merely maneuvering preparatory to predatory
attack.

Unlike the communists and the fascists Hobbes had no specific concrete plan for
suppressing competition and the pursuit of conflicting goals, and he might well have
disapproved of the details of the fascists plans, but he clearly regarded their objectives
as a desirable and popular part of any good state

Locke was the seventeenth century precursor of classic liberalism, and Hobbes was
the seventeenth century precursor of modern totalitarianism, particularly fascism.

Hobbes argued that what we today call civil society should exist only by the power of
the state, and to the extent that it existed independent of the state, for example private
associations, corporations, and political discussion, it should be suppressed. This
measure is the distinctive characteristic of modern totalitarianism, both communist
and fascist, though Hobbess reasoning in favor of this measure is fascist, rather than
communist.

Chapter 29 of Hobbess Leviathan:

For men, as they become at last weary of irregular jostling and hewing one another,
and desire with all their hearts to conform themselves into one firm and lasting
edifice
[...]
I observe the diseases of a Commonwealth that proceed from the poison of seditious
doctrines, whereof one is that every private man is judge of good and evil actions.
[...]
Another infirmity of a Commonwealth is the immoderate greatness of a town, when it
is able to furnish out of its own circuit the number and expense of a great army; as
also the great number of corporations, which are as it were many lesser
Commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural
man. To may be added, liberty of disputing against absolute power by pretenders to
political prudence; which though bred for the most part in the lees of the people, yet
animated by false doctrines are perpetually meddling with the fundamental laws, to
the molestation of the Commonwealth, like the little worms which physicians call
ascarides.

Hobbess theory has far more in common with fascism, than it does with Lockes
theory. To say that they were both social contract theorists is like saying that Adam
Smith believed in the labor theory of value and Karl Marx believed in the labor theory
of value, therefor Smith was a Marxist or Marx was a Smithian.

Lockes social contract had as much in common with Hobbess social contract as
Ricardos labor theory of value had with Marxs labor theory of value.

Fascism is largely corporatism, indeed many fascists argued that fascism simply was
corporatism, that race theory was irrelevant. Certainly Mussolini and Franco held this
view. Corporatism derives from one body (corpora=body), not from corporation.
Same metaphor as Hobbess Leviathan, and the cover of Hobbess book, and, in the
case of fascism, the same rationale. The race, the nation, the folk, or whatever, are to
be welded into a single entity, by the application of whatever force necessary
Hobbes favored unlimited power for the state, and he favored it for the purpose of
ending all conflict and contention. He saw all non-state society as simply bad
happenings that should be suppressed.

If people go about their material lives freely they will come in conflict, and Hobbes
regards it as the duty of the state to prevent such conflict.

Locke argues that government is legitimate, but only legitimate in so far as it acts
within the limits of this implied contract.

Like any unwritten contract, it is not at all clear just what precisely the limits of
Lockes contract are, and Locke clearly considered that his contract could stretch a
long way, but is equally clear that modern twentieth century governments are
substantially breaking it, for the majority of disputes that an ordinary citizen finds
himself involved in are disputes with the state, and in these disputes, for example with
the IRS, the state acts as judge in its own cause, a clear violation of the Lockean
contract. A state cannot be as large and intrusive as modern states are without finding
it necessary to substantially violate Lockes implied contract in many ways.

Lockes contract was for a judge. Hobbess contract was for a master. While in some
situations the distinction between these two roles may be fuzzy, it is clear that vast
majority of people today encounter the state in the role of master, rather than judge,
thus the modern state is far more Hobbesian than Lockean, though it is still very far
from the absolutist government that Hobbes commended.

TheSocialContractandConstitutionalRepublics
Copyright1994,2007ConstitutionSociety.Maybecopiedwithattributionfornoncommercialpurposes.

Between1787and1791theFramersoftheU.S.Constitutionestablishedasystemofgovernmentuponprinciples
thathadbeendiscussedandpartiallyimplementedinmanycountriesoverthecourseofseveralcenturies,butnever
beforeinsuchapureandcompletedesign,whichwecallaconstitutionalrepublic.Sincethen,thedesignhasoften
beenimitated,butimportantprincipleshaveoftenbeenignoredinthoseimitations,withtheresultthattheir
governmentsfallshortofbeingtruerepublicsortrulyconstitutional.Althoughtheseprinciplesarediscussedincivics
books,thetreatmentofthemthereisoftenlessthansatisfactory.Thisessaywillattempttoremedysomeofthe
deficienciesofthosetreatments.

TheSocialContractandGovernment

Thefundamentalbasisforgovernmentandlawinthissystemistheconceptofthesocialcontract,accordingtowhich
humanbeingsbeginasindividualsinastateofnature,andcreateasocietybyestablishingacontractwherebythey
agreetolivetogetherinharmonyfortheirmutualbenefit,afterwhichtheyaresaidtoliveinastateofsociety.This
contractinvolvestheretainingofcertainnaturalrights,anacceptanceofrestrictionsofcertainliberties,the
assumptionofcertainduties,andthepoolingofcertainpowerstobeexercisedcollectively.

The social contract is very simple. It has only two basic terms: (1) mutual defense
of rights; and (2) mutual decision by deliberative assembly. There are no
agents, no officials, that persist from one deliberative assembly to another. The
duties of the social contract are militia. There may be customs that persist from
assembly to assembly, such as customs for due notice, parliamentary procedure,
judicial due process, and enforcement of court orders by militia. This second term
could be called the constitution of society, but it precedes a constitution of
government and should not be confused with it.

There is also a constitution of nature that precedes both the constitution of society
and the constitution of government. It is also convenient to speak of a constitution
of the state that follows the constitution of society and precedes the constitution of
government. It arises after a society is created (by adopting the social contract),
and after it acquires exclusive dominion over a well-defined territory. That is when
we get things like a right to remain at and to return to one's birthplace, which
makes no sense for a society with no territory (such as nomads).

ROUSSEAU'S "GENERAL WILL"

AND WELL-ORDERED SOCIETY

by Edward W. Younkins

The belief that man, by nature, is good was espoused by the French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778). He believed that people in the state of nature were innocent and at their best and that they were
corrupted by the unnaturalness of civilization. In the state of nature, people lived entirely for themselves,
possessed an absolute independence, and were content.
 According to Rousseau, in the state of nature, people tended to be isolated, war was absent, and their
desires were minimal and circumscribed (i.e., commensurate with their basic survival needs). People did not have
the drive to acquire more possessions. There was plenty to go around, an absence of reliance on others, and no
real need for extensive social interaction. However, there did exist an unreflective sympathy and general
compassion toward others that was indiscriminate and not based on merits.

In the state of nature egoism was absent and compassion was present. Rousseau saw compassion for the
undeserving in particular and for mankind in general to be the greatest of the virtues. He regarded contempt of
another, which could lead to hurt feelings, as a vice and as always bad. Rousseau wanted no one's feelings to be
hurt. He felt that a proper society had no place for blame, criticism, judgment, comparison with others, and the
distinction of worth among men. He said it was wrong to recognize distinctions because this makes people
unequal. It was worse to be affronted than to be injured. What mattered to Rousseau was a person's good
intentions rather than his achievements or outer appearances.

Rousseau proclaimed the natural goodness of man and believed that one man by nature is just as good as
any other. For Rousseau, a man could be just without virtue and good without effort. According to Rousseau, man
in the state of nature was free, wise, and good and the laws of nature were benevolent. It follows that it was
civilization that enslaved and corrupted man and made him unnatural. Because in the order of nature all men
were equal, it also follows that distinction and differentiation among men are the products of culture and
civilization. Because man is by nature a saint, it must be the corrupting influence of society that is responsible for
the misconduct of the individual.

Corruption by Civilization: The Origin of Inequality

The fundamental problem for Rousseau is not nature or man but instead is social institutions. Rousseau's
view is that society corrupts the pure individual. Arguing that men are not inherently constrained by human nature,
Rousseau claims that men are limited and corrupted by social arrangements. Conceiving of freedom as an
absolute, independent of any natural limitations, Rousseau disavows the world of nature and its inherent laws,
constraints, and regulations.

Rousseau held that reason had its opportunity but had failed, claiming that the act of reflection is contrary
to nature. Rousseau asserts that man's natural goodness has been depraved by the progress he has made and
the knowledge he has acquired. He proceeded to attack the Age of Reason by emphasizing feeling, the opposite
of reason, as the key to reality and the future. His thought thereby foreshadowed and gave impetus to the
Romantic Movement.

Rousseau assigned primacy to instinct, emotion, intuition, feelings, and passion. He believed that these
could provide better insights into what is good and real than could reason. Rousseau thus minimized reason and
differences in the moral worth of individuals. He failed to realize that freedom is meaningless in the absence of
reason. He did not grasp that reason connects the moral subject to the world of values.

Rousseau observed that although life was peaceful in the state of nature, people were unfulfilled. They
needed to interact in order to find actualization. Evil, greed, and selfishness emerged as human society began to
develop. As people formed social institutions, they developed vices. One such institution was private property that
encouraged avarice and self-interest. Rousseau viewed private property as a destructive, impulsive, and
egotistical institution that rewarded greed and luck. Civil society thus was born when people began fencing off
their property, claiming that it was theirs, and finding that other people agreed with them.
 Depravity is due to the corruption of man's essence by civilization. For
Rousseau, civil society resulted from the degeneration of a basically good state of
nature. Man's problems arose because of civil society. He believed that the state of
nature changed because it was internally unstable. For example, because talents
were not distributed equally among persons, the balance that existed in the state of
nature was disturbed and with inequality came conflicting interests. The more
talented, able, and intelligent people brought about advances in science, technology,
commerce, and so on. Because people simply are born with certain natural
endowments, a person cannot be praised for having talent or blamed for not having
it. Rousseau saw talent as naturally leading to achievement. Inequality developed as
some people produced more and earned more. He failed to acknowledge the
importance of motivation, industry, and volitional use of one's reason and other
potentialities.

The perspective of many of today's environmentalists can be traced back to Rousseau who believed that
the more men deviated from the state of nature, the worse off they would be. Espousing the belief that all
degenerates in men's hands, Rousseau taught that men would be free, wise, and good in the state of nature and
that instinct and emotion, when not distorted by the unnatural limitations of civilization, are nature's voices and
instructions to the good life. Rousseau's "noble savage" stands in direction opposition to the man of culture.

People were no longer isolated and began to depend on each other. Those who just happen to have talents
create new products and the desire for them. Buyers and sellers depend on each other but these dependencies
are unequal because of the existence of a pyramid of ability. Rousseau contends that, as a result, the talented
acquire property and become ambitious. All, including those without talent, become competitive, rivalrous,
jealous, power-hungry, prestige seeking, and desirous for superiority over others. Civil society transforms men
from isolated beings with limited wants into the warlike creatures found in a Hobbesian state of nature. For
Rousseau, civil society is a state of war.

Rousseau maintains that people did not have the right to rise above subsistence without everyone's
consent. Everything changed as civil society developed, but permission was not given for things to change. He
contends that it is wrong to change the condition of all without asking. Rousseau is distressed that some people
become relatively poorer without having lost anything. Not only are their feelings hurt, their right to stagnate has
been violated. The poor, weak, and indolent did not want to change, but things around them changed, forcing
them to steal or receive subsistence from the rich.

Rousseau thought private property to be the source of social ills. He considered that private ownership of
property tended to corrupt men and destroy their character and regarded the man without property (i.e., the noble
savage) to be the freest. Although he did not actually support the abolition of private property, he believed that
private property should be minimal and should be distributed equally among the members of the society.

Rousseau anticipated the need for the state to minimize private property. He wanted the property of the
state to be as great and powerful as possible, and that of the citizens to be as small and weak as possible. With
private property being so limited, the state would need to apply very little force in order to lead the people.

"The idea of the general will is at the heart of Rousseau's philosophy.

The general will is not the will of the majority. Rather, it is the will of the
political organism that he sees as an entity with a life of its own."
 Rousseau says that it is impossible to go back to the state of primitive natural man. He says that men need
to be governed as they now are and that any future change in human nature will come later as a result of re-
education to indoctrinate individuals to believe that the public interest is their personal interest.

A New Social Contract

Rousseau advocates a new corrective social contract as a blueprint through which a proper society can be
built. He says that we should seek unanimous agreement with respect to a new social contract that eliminates the
problem of dependence on one another while permitting each person to obey only himself and to remain as free
as before. This can be accomplished through total alienation of each associate to the whole community. He calls
for a total merger in which each individual gives up his right to control his life in exchange for an equal voice in
setting the ground rules of society. Rousseau appeals to people to surrender their individual rights to a new moral
and collective body with one will.

The public person formed by social contract, the republic, has a will he calls the "general will." What it wills
is the true interest of what everyone wants whether they realize it or not. When you are forced to obey it, you
really are obeying yourself, the true and free you.

According to Rousseau's theory of social contract, people leave an anarchic state of nature by voluntarily
transferring their personal rights to the community in return for security of life and property. He argues that people
should form a society to which they would completely surrender themselves. By giving up their rights, they
actually create a new entity in the form of a public person that would be directed by a general will. When people
join the community, they are voluntarily agreeing to comply with the general will of the community.

The General Will

The idea of the general will is at the heart of Rousseau's philosophy. The general will is not the will of the
majority. Rather, it is the will of the political organism that he sees as an entity with a life of its own. The general
will is an additional will, somehow distinct from and other than any individual will or group of individual wills. The
general will is, by some means, endowed with goodness and wisdom surpassing the beneficence and wisdom of
any person or collection of persons. Society is coordinated and unified by the general will.

Rousseau believed that this general will actually exist and that it demands the unqualified obedience of
every individual. He held that there is only one general will and, consequently, only one supreme good and a
single overriding goal toward which a community must aim. The general will is always a force of the good and the
just. It is independent, totally sovereign, infallible, and inviolable.

The result is that all powers, persons, and their rights are under the control and direction of the entire
community. This means that no one can do anything without the consent of all. Everyone is totally dependent on
everybody for all aspects of their lives. Such universal dependency eliminates the possibility of independent
individual achievement. In addition, when the individual joins society in order to escape death or starvation, he
can be a sacrificial victim ready to give up his life for others. Life is a gift made conditional by the state.

All power is transferred to a central authority or sovereign that is the total community. Major decisions are
made by a vote by all in what Rousseau calls a plebiscite that is something like a town meeting without the
benefit of debate. A legislator proposes laws but does not decide on them. The legislator is a person or an
intellectual elite body that works out carefully worded alternatives, brings people together, and has people vote
with the results binding on all. The authority of the legislator derives from his superior insight, charisma, virtue,
and mysticism. The legislator words the propositions of the plebiscite so that the "right" decision will result. The
right decisions are those that change human nature. The unlimited power of the state is made to appear
legitimate by the apparent consent of the majority.

Between plebiscites, the government (i.e., the bureaucracy) governs by decree. The government interprets
the laws and settles each case based on the perceived merits. Both executive and judicial, the government is a
bureaucracy with huge discretionary powers. The legislator is over and above this bureaucracy. In a total
democracy, the real government is the bureaucracy that applies the law to day-to-day situations.

Rousseau was an advocate of the ancient idea of the omnipotence of the lawgiver. Rulers are in some way
attuned to the dictates of the general will and able to incorporate these dictates into specific laws. No one can
challenge these laws because their source is the wise and beneficent general will. Rousseau permits no
disobedience of the general will once its decisions have been made. Man's will must be subordinated and he
must abide by the general will even though he thinks he disagrees with it. The person who "disagrees" with the
general will must be mistaken.

According to Rousseau, each person wants to be good and therefore would want to obey the general will. It
follows that when a person disagrees with the general will, he would actually be acting contrary to his own basic
desires and that it would be proper to use force to attain his agreement with the general will. The general will
reflects the real will of each member of society. By definition, the general will is always right. The general will is
the overriding good to which each person is willing to sacrifice all other goods, including all particular private wills.

The "good citizen" assigns to society's laws a goodness and wisdom exceeding his own goodness and
wisdom. It is therefore quite possible to have a conflict between what a person thinks that he wills and that which
he truly wills. The good citizen is able to identify his own will with the general will.

If the general will is supreme, then citizens are free only to obey in equal servitude. People who refuse to
comply with the general will can be forced to comply. If people want to be good, the rulers can make them be
good. Rousseau thus viewed the political community as the proper means for liberating men from their mistaken
perceptions and from the conflicts and corruptions of society.

Rousseau's idea of the general will is related to the organic concept of the state as not merely real but
more real than the individuals who live within its bounds. What matters is the whole of which the individual is a
part. The individual person and his own ideas, values, and goals mean nothing. By regarding human beings as
means to higher ends, rather than an end in themselves, Rousseau greatly contributed to the intellectual
collectivization of man. It was a small step to Hegel's contention that the general will is the will of the state and
that the state is the earthly manifestation of the Absolute. Furthermore, there was an easy transition from Hegel's
political philosophy to the totalitarian systems of Marx and Hitler.

Rulers who followed Rousseau's philosophy were able to demonstrate a vibrant but deceptive
humanitarianism. They expressed love for humanity while at the same time crushing those who disagreed with
the general will. For example, during the French Revolution, individuals like Robespierre were given enormous
power to express the general will. Of course, dictators like Robespierre turned the general will into an expression
of their own wills. Likewise, today when politicians refer to the good or aim of society, they are almost always
referring to the good or aim of an individual or collection of individuals who want to impose their own vision upon
others.

On Education from Nature

 Rousseau maintained that the state must control all schooling because the objective of schooling is to
develop citizens who want only what the community (i.e., the general will) wants. Because mankind was infinitely
perfectible, human failings could be eradicated by education.

Rousseau wants to mold and socialize the individual through universal public education. He wants to make
men more docile and to believe that when they are obeying the law they are only obeying themselves. According
to Rousseau, obeying the law is always in one's own interest the interest of one's higher self, not the self who
wants to be made an exception.

In Rousseau's educational system, a child would explore nature and its requirements in order to learn what
he needs to know. The child would have a tutor who would secretly devise situations in which nature would teach
what the tutor wants it to teach. Believing he was free, the student would equate his will, with his mentor's will.
This would serve to condition him to equate his own true will with the general will.

Rousseau, like Plato before him and Mann and Dewey after him, believed in the perfectibility of man
provided that he was educated so that he could not want to do evil. In Emile, Rousseau portrays the ideal
education in the story of a child, who, free from the restrictions of an adult's will, is able to study nature and thus
learn what he needs to know. However, Emile has an enlightened tutor, whose purpose is to secretly manufacture
the conditions under which nature will teach the student what the tutor wants the student to learn. Through the
tutor's disguised intentions, the student, by equating his own will with the will of his tutor, is conditioned to identify
his own will with the general will.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (17121778)

Themes, Arguments, and Ideas

The Necessity of Freedom

In his work, Rousseau addresses freedom more than any other problem of political philosophy and aims
to explain how man in the state of nature is blessed with an enviable total freedom. This freedom is total
for two reasons. First, natural man is physically free because he is not constrained by a repressive state
apparatus or dominated by his fellow men. Second, he is psychologically and spiritually free because he
is not enslaved to any of the artificial needs that characterize modern society. This second sense of
freedom, the freedom from need, makes up a particularly insightful and revolutionary component of
Rousseaus philosophy. Rousseau believed modern mans enslavement to his own needs was
responsible for all sorts of societal ills, from exploitation and domination of others to poor self-esteem and
depression.
Rousseau believed that good government must have the freedom of all its citizens as its most
fundamental objective.The Social Contract in particular is Rousseaus attempt to imagine the form of
government that best affirms the individual freedom of all its citizens, with certain constraints inherent to a
complex, modern, civil society. Rousseau acknowledged that as long as property and laws exist, people
can never be as entirely free in modern society as they are in the state of nature, a point later echoed by
Marx and many other Communist and anarchist social philosophers. Nonetheless, Rousseau strongly
believed in the existence of certain principles of government that, if enacted, can afford the members of
society a level of freedom that at least approximates the freedom enjoyed in the state of nature.
In TheSocial Contract and his other works of political philosophy, Rousseau is devoted to outlining these
principles and how they may be given expression in a functional modern state.

Defining the Natural and the State of Nature

For Rousseau to succeed in determining which societal institutions and structures contradict mans
natural goodness and freedom, he must first define the natural. Rousseau strips away all the ideas that
centuries of development have imposed on the true nature of man and concludes that many of the ideas
we take for granted, such as property, law, and moral inequality, actually have no basis in nature. For
Rousseau, modern society generally compares unfavorably to the state of nature.

As Rousseau discusses in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract, the state of nature is the
hypothetical, prehistoric place and time where human beings live uncorrupted by society. The most
important characteristic of the state of nature is that people have complete physical freedom and are at
liberty to do essentially as they wish. That said, the state of nature also carries the drawback that human
beings have not yet discovered rationality or morality. In different works, Rousseau alternately
emphasizes the benefits and shortfalls of the state of nature, but by and large he reveres it for the
physical freedom it grants people, allowing them to be unencumbered by the coercive influence of the
state and society. In this regard, Rousseaus conception of the state of nature is entirely more positive
than Hobbess conception of the same idea, as Hobbes, who originated the term, viewed the state of
nature as essentially a state of war and savagery. This difference in definition indicates the two
philosophers differing views of human nature, which Rousseau viewed as essentially good and Hobbes
as essentially base and brutal. Finally, Rousseau acknowledged that although we can never return to the
state of nature, understanding it is essential for societys members to more fully realize their natural
goodness.

The Danger of Need

Rousseau includes an analysis of human need as one element in his comparison of modern society and
the state of nature. According to Rousseau, needs result from the passions, which make people desire
an object or activity. In the state of nature, human needs are strictly limited to those things that ensure
survival and reproduction, including food, sleep, and sex. By contrast, as cooperation and division of labor
develop in modern society, the needs of men multiply to include many nonessential things, such as
friends, entertainment, and luxury goods. As time goes by and these sorts of needs increasingly become
a part of everyday life, they become necessities. Although many of these needs are initially pleasurable
and even good for human beings, men in modern society eventually become slaves to these superfluous
needs, and the whole of society is bound together and shaped by their pursuit. As such, unnecessary
needs are the foundation of modern moral inequality, in that the pursuit of needs inevitably means that
some will be forced to work to fulfill the needs of others and some will dominate their fellows when in a
position to do so.

Rousseaus conception of need, and especially the more artificial types that dominate modern society, are
a particularly applicable element of his philosophy for the present time. Given the immense wealth that
exists in a country such as the United States and the extent to which consumerism is the driving force
behind its economy, Rousseaus insights should provoke reflection for anyone concerned about the ways
the American culture nurtures a population of people increasingly enslaved by artificial needs.

The Possibility of Authenticity in Modern Life

Linked to Rousseaus general attempt to understand how modern life differs from life in the state of nature
is his particular focus on the question of how authentic the life of man is in modern society. Byauthentic,
Rousseau essentially means how closely the life of modern man reflects the positive attributes of his
natural self. Not surprisingly, Rousseau feels that people in modern society generally live quite inauthentic
lives.

In the state of nature, man is free to simply attend to his own natural needs and has few occasions to
interact with other people. He can simply be, while modern man must often appear as much as be so
as to deviously realize his ridiculous needs.

The entire system of artificial needs that governs the life of civil society makes authenticity or truth in the
dealings of people with one another almost impossible. Since individuals are always trying to deceive
and/or dominate their fellow citizens to realize their own individual needs, they rarely act in an authentic
way toward their fellow human beings. Even more damningly, the fact that modern people organize their
lives around artificial needs means that they are inauthentic and untrue to themselves as well. To
Rousseaus mind, the origin of civil society itself can be traced to an act of deception, when one man
invented the notion of private property by enclosing a piece of land and convincing his simple neighbors
this is mine, while having no truthful basis whatsoever to do so. Given this fact, the modern society that
has sprung forth from this act can be nothing but inauthentic to the core.

The Unnaturalness of Inequality

For Rousseau, the questions of why and how human beings are naturally equal and unequal, if they are
unequal at all, are fundamental to his larger philosophical enquiry. To form his critique of modern societys
problems, he must show that many of the forms of inequality endemic to society are in fact not natural
and can therefore be remedied. His conclusions and larger line of reasoning in this argument are laid out
in the Discourse on Inequality, but the basic thrust of his argument is that human inequality as we know it
does not exist in the state of nature. In fact, the only kind of natural inequality, according to Rousseau, is
the physical inequality that exists among men in the state of nature who may be more or less able to
provide for themselves according to their physical attributes.

Accordingly, all the inequalities we recognize in modern society are characterized by the existence of
different classes or the domination and exploitation of some people by others. Rousseau terms these
kinds of inequalities moral inequalities, and he devotes much of his political philosophy to identifying the
ways in which a just government can seek to overturn them. In general, Rousseaus meditations on
inequality, as well as his radical assertion of the notion that all men are by-and-large equal in their natural
state, were important inspirations for both the American and French Revolutions.

The General Will and the Common Good

Perhaps the most difficult and quasi-metaphysical concept in Rousseaus political philosophy is the
principle of the general will. As Rousseau explains, the general will is the will of the sovereign, or all the
people together, that aims at the common goodwhat is best for the state as a whole. Although each
individual may have his or her own particular will that expresses what is good for him or her, in a healthy
state, where people correctly value the collective good of all over their own personal good, the
amalgamation of all particular wills, the will of all, is equivalent to the general will. In a state where the
vulgarities of private interest prevail over the common interests of the collective, the will of all can be
something quite different from the general will. The most concrete manifestation of the general will in a
healthy state comes in the form of law. To Rousseau, laws should always record what the people
collectively desire (the general will) and should always be universally applicable to all members of the
state. Further, they should exist to ensure that peoples individual freedom is upheld, thereby
guaranteeing that people remain loyal to the sovereign at all times.

Rousseaus abstract conception of the general will raises some difficult questions. The first is, how can we
know that the will of all is really equivalent with the common good? The second is, assuming that the
general will is existent and can be expressed in laws, what are the institutions that can accurately gauge
and codify the general will at any given time? Tackling these complex dilemmas occupied a large portion
of Rousseaus political thought, and he attempts to answer them in The Social Contract, among other
places.

The Idea of Collective Sovereignty

Until Rousseaus time, the sovereign in any given state was regarded as the central authority in that
society, responsible for enacting and enforcing all laws. Most often, the sovereign took the form of an
authoritative monarch who possessed absolute dominion over his or her subjects. In Rousseaus work,
however, sovereignty takes on a different meaning, as sovereignty is said to reside in all the people of the
society as a collective. The people, as a sovereign entity, express their sovereignty through their general
will and must never have their sovereignty abrogated by anyone or anything outside their collective self.
In this regard, sovereignty is not identified with the government but is instead opposed against it. The
governments function is thus only to enforce and respect the sovereign will of the people and in no way
seek to repress or dominate the general will.

The Social Contract Tradition: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau

ABSTRACT: The classical contract tradition of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau have enjoyed such fame
and acceptance as being basic to the development of liberal democratic theory and practice that it would
be heretical for any scholar, especially one from the fringes, to critique. But the contract tradition poses
challenges that must be given the flux in the contemporary socio-political universe that at once impels
extreme nationalism and unavoidable globalism. This becomes all the more important not in order to
dislodge the primacy of loyalty and reverence to this tradition but from another perspective which hopes to
encourage that the anchorage of disclosure be implemented. The contract tradition makes
pronouncements on what is natural and what is nonnatural. It offers what many have contended are
rigorous arguments for these pronouncements that are "intuitive," "empirical," "logical," "psychological,"
"moral," "religio-metaphysical." What I offer in this essay is a challenge from the outside. I ask: 1) on what
empirical data are the material presuppositions of contractarianism built? 2) what is the epistemological
foundation of contractarianism? 3) is contractarianism not derivable from any other form of sociological
presupposition except that of the state of nature? 4) does any human know a "state of nature"? 5) given
the answers to the above questions, to what extent are the legal and moral foundations of
contractarianism sacrosanct? I attempt to answer these questions in what can only be a sketch, but my
answers suggest that it is very presumptuous of contractarianist to suppose that they have captured the
only logically valid basis of democratic practice universally.

Introduction

The classical social contract tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau have, in spite of their variation in
themes and emphases, enjoyed such fame and acceptance as being basic to the development of liberal
democratic theory and practice that it would be almost heresy for any scholar, especially one from the
fringes or margins of mainstream (socio-political) philosophical academia, to post frontal, side, arial, rear
or sub-surface attack and critique. But the social contract tradition poses challenges that must be
accepted on various counts, with new insights and interpretations, given the fluxed reality in contemporary
socio-political universe that at once impels extreme nationalism and unavoidable globalism. This becomes
all the more important, not simply in order to dislodge the primacy of the loyalty and the reverence of
devotion from the followers of this tradition as well as its most virulent critics, but from another perspective
which hopes to, if possible, encourage that the anchorage of disclosure be completely implemented -
derobing the ideological king of Western political theory for critical anatomical examination.

The hallowed social contract tradition makes certain unusual pronouncements regarding what is natural,
what is non-natural and what is merely contrived by humans. It supposes that these unsubstantiated
pronouncements are valid and offers what many have contended are rigorous "intuitive", "empirical",
"logical", "psychological", "moral", "religio-metaphysical" and other forms of arguments for its assertions
regarding contractarianism. Seminal contemporary contributions to the further entrenchment of the
intellectual place of the tradition in Western and non-Western political discourse, either by way of
affirmation or through coherent critiques have been Rawls, Wolff, Raphael, McBride, etc. I do not intend to
go over grounds that they have effectively and efficiently covered, as such a task cannot devolve on me,
given the fact that their perspectives bear a verisimilitude with that of the original authors of the
contractarianism discussed here, a progeny that I disclaim.

What I offer in this essay is a challenge from the outside. As an outsider who shares no patrimony to the
mystique of social contractarianism, I am of the considered opinion that the time is ripe to ask a number of
pertinent endogenous and exogenous questions, namely: a) on what empirical data are the material
presuppositions of social contractarianism built? b) what are the epistemological and methodological
foundations of social contractarianism? c) is social contractarianism not derivable from any other form of
sociological presupposition except that of state of nature? d) does any human know a state of nature? Or
framed variantly, can any human conjecture a true state of nature? e) given the answers to the above
questions, to what extent are the legal and moral foundations of social contractarianism sacrosanct?

I attempt to answer these questions in what can only be a sketch, as time and space (of a World
Congress of Philosophy) constraints preclude a longer presentation, but my answers suggest that it is
very presumptuous of the social contractarians (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau; and by extension, those
who have embraced the tradition lock, stock and barrel) to suppose that they have captured the basis of
social contract and, hence, provide the only logically valid account of 'democratic practice' universally. The
challenge has the effect of calling for care in understanding the internal turmoil that 'democratic practice',
that is, Western democracy, have persistently generated over the centuries, but especially in this century
as humanity turns into the next millennium in another couple of years.

One final note is apposite in this introduction. I have deliberately elected to speak here of 'democratic
practice' and of Western democracy. I have not indicated whether liberal or otherwise. This is because, as
a bystander to the American political system - a system acclaimed to be the best case of democratic
practice in contemporary human polity - I am miffed by the cantankerousness of its principal players
(especially the legislators in their ability to vainly pillory the American Presidency for political gain), the
freedom without responsibility of the populace and the "holier than thou, I see you today, I am blind
tomorrow" foreign policy of official Washington. If I were to qualify 'democratic practice' as I have observed
the American system negate the ideals of liberalism, I will not use 'liberal', because of the odium it has
generated in its real life American situation, I will prefer to request for "disciplined" democratic practice.

Thomas Hobbes' Leviatha

In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1651) executes one of the most poignant statements of the Western
cultural psyche, an understanding of the moving force behind the evolution and development of culture in
the West, without which there would have been unimaginable suffering and destruction, that is, the right to
private property. This has resulted in the postulation by Hobbes of what he called the social contract, the
state of nature, or the sovereign as the arbiter, the superior power that holds in check the mutual
antagonism and the destructive self annihilative war that Western human nature involuntarily, instinctively
and compulsively engenders. As Hobbes states,

Again, men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping companies, where there
is no power able to over-awe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the
same rate he sets upon himself; and upon all signs of contempt, or undervaluing, naturally endeavours,
as far as he dare (which amongst them have no common power to keep them in quiet, is far enough to
make them destroy each other), to extort a greater value from his contemners, by damage, and from
others by example (p. 264. Emphasis mine in italics).

When Hobbes indicates that each man looks to have "his companion should value him at the same rate
he sets upon himself", we note that it dramatically inverts the Kantian Categorical Imperative and the
Golden Rule of the Christ. While the Kantian principle will have it that we act such that the rule of our
action can become a universal law, that is, we should act such that the maxim of our action or the
example of the intent and content of our behaviour, may be legislated for humanity because of the
justness and moral probity and other regarding nature of such act, and while similarly the position of the
Christ would be that we love others as we love ourselves, on the contrary the Western Hobbesian position
speaks to our valuing ourselves alone and demanding that others respect this value. It enshrines an
egoistic individualism, without a parallel in previous human history, that pervades the Western psyche, an
individualism that craves respect without wishing to give same to others their full due except under duress
or threat of calamity by an overarching third party; in fact, as is obvious from the Western Hobbesian
understanding of human nature, the 'other' person is conceived in oppositional terms - an enemy that
must be contained, subjugated or destroyed.

Hoobes identifies three causes of strife in the state of nature as: (a) competition, which causes the
invasion of others for gain; (b) diffidence, which causes invasion for safety; and (c) glory, which causes
invasion for the maintenance of reputation and defense of the same among their kindred, their friends,
their nation, their profession, or their name (p. 264). He argues that when humans lived in a state of
nature, life was full of misery:

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time when men lived without a common power to keep them all in
awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every
man ... on society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (p. 264-265. Emphasis in the italics mine).

In Hobbes' reasoning, it is clear that the sovereign occupies the position that Deity occupies in
monotheistic religious schemes. The sovreign is the law giver (as is drilled into unsuspecting Christian
youth in patriarch Moses' decalogue and the Christ's Sermon on the Mount), the upholder of such laws
that he deems fit to give and the watchdog over the obedience of such laws as he gives. Without the
sovreign, Hobbes is of the opinion that there would be no right or wrong, no justice or injustice, no
common values and every act would be permitted for there would be no liberty or commodious living. He
says,

The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to
commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient
articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles, are they, which otherwise
are called the Laws of Nature ... (p. 266).

He went on to elaborate with care the distinction between 'right of nature', and 'law of nature' and the
nature of the 'contracts' deriving therefrom. But the contracts emanating from the law of nature, which is
only a euphemism for the protection of self-interest or self-preservation, becomes void unless there be a
sovereign, a 'common power' to monitor obedience of the (egocentered and otherless) contracts so
formed by striking fear of punitive expedition greater than the benefits derivable from breaking a covenant
into the hearts of those who would have tried to break their sides of the contract; thereby creating
injustice, which is no more than the not performance of covenant (see pp. 268-269). In this regard,
Hobbes says,

The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of
foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure to them in such sort, as that by their own
industry, and the fruits of the earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to confer all
their power of strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that they reduce all their wills, by
plurality of voices, unto one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or assembly of men, to
bear their person ... as if every man should say to every man. I authorize and give up my right of
governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to
him, to authorize all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united, is called a
COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or father, to speak
more reverently, of the mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defense (p.
271).

For Hobbes, then, many consequences, contractual rights, duties and obligations flow from this pact.
Some of these are a) that all prior covenants contrary to this new one are voided by the new one; b) that
the sovereign cannot do wrong to his subjects or be so accused (as the mortal god) because volenti non
fit injuria; c) that the Leviathan cannot be committed to die, and d) he alone can institute what opinions
and doctrines are conducive to peace, as he has acquired the collective wisdom of the people who
agreed to appoint him.

We may observe here that the Hobbesian social contract ultimately ends in a dictatorship of the
Leviathan. Consequently, Hobbes' contractarianism ends in a cul de sac - a dead end as a theory of
political organization. We shall examine this further presently, for now, let us turn our attention to the
second of our trio contractarians, John Locke.

John Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government

John Locke was, in my own judgement, one of the most civilized of the intellectuals of his time. His Two
Treatises of Civil Government are great testimonials to his intellectual genius and integrity. He started
Book 1 with a consideration of the rationality of slavery, and Sir Robert Filmer's apologia for
totalitarianism. He concluded, contrary to the general trend of the period, that both slavery and
totalitarianism were inconceivable debasements of human nature and rationality. Locke carefully
examined the views of Sir Robert, and raised fundamental questions regarding the religious, moral,
political, economic, cultural and natural grounds for the supposition that humans were destined to either
divine rulership from Patriarch Adam or, for that matter, from either parentage, conquest or necessity. In
Book II, titled "An Essay Concerning The True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government", Locke
advanced his ideas concerning the true origin of the state and that of political authority in society. While
Hobbes postulated a state of nature in which there was perpetual war between contending individuals for
the scarce resources available, and the state as the only possible check on the rancour that is innate to
human nature, Locke understood human nature as one of,

perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit,
within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man
(p. 118).

The state of nature that Locke describes is one of "equality, wherein all power and jurisdiction is
reciprocal, no one having more than another" (p. 118), it is clearly not a state of "license", it is a state in
which "reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it" (p. 119). Locke went further
to discuss what constitutes a serious theory of punishment, based on reason and derivable from law of
nature that unconditionally binds humans everywhere.

Compared with Hobbes, it is obvious that Locke was almost an incurable optimist, regarding human
nature and the goodness and rationality innate to that nature. Locke then argues that humans get out of
the state of nature through the voluntary choice of entering a compact, contract or consent of association
with other humans for the procurement of the facilities of life which would have been beyond their reach
had they gone solo (p. 124). But one cannot contribute what one does not have, and one of the powers
that humans lack is that of taking the life of oneself or that of the other. Thus, when thieves or enemies
attack one, the only justification for the use of force that may ensue in death to an aggressor, according to
Locke, is only for the purpose of self preservation, so that irreparable damage or mischief may not be
done to oneself in the unlikely event that civil society fails to ensure the protection of one's life (p. 126).
For this reason, according to Locke, one cannot, even in the extreme situation of social aberration called
slavery, enter into any compact that does not ensure personal safety or promote one's happiness (pp.
127-128).

While one may grant Locke the above with the proviso that it apply to matured humans who have the full
understanding of the responsibilities to the self and to others that attend the freedom that they can claim
under the Lockean system, it is important that we note that a crude interpretation that ahistorically
attributes this freedom to all humans will be errant. It is not obvious the level of freedom that infants can
appreciate or properly claim. If we are ready to treat some offenses as originating from minors and meet
out corrective measures rather that punishment, then we would be indicating that minors need assistance
to mature and be responsible adults. (This notion is seriously abridged in the Western world as painfully
illustrated by the consequential events of misplaced education and a culture a-drift in the USA and other
Western societies where children discipline is thrown overboard, creating a culture bred of state of nature
theory inured in extreme liberalism and fattened on extreme individualism weighing more on the side of
superficial children rights and less on responsible child-rearing, forgetting that before children become
responsible adults there must be responsive and responsible parenting).

One other minor digression is indicated here. To be very charitable to Locke, one would have to suppose
that he was most probably thinking of peonage, not Western slavery when he asseverated that systems
that promote personal safety and happiness override other matters. If one does not use this principle of
charity, taking Locke in the most favourable reading, one will not be able to understand the failure on the
part of Locke to see the evilness of the type of slavery that took place in the New World, by contrast to
systems of "slavery" in various other traditional societies except the West. In various traditional systems of
servitude, except in Ancient Greece, the human rights of the serves were not denied and the barest
essentials of safety and happiness were instituted. In Ancient Greece, as in Trans-Atlantic slavery, the
humans involved (that is, the slave owners, the slave masters and the slaves) were not humans: the slave
owners were property owning sub-human animals of the state of nature construct, the slave masters were
sub-human despots with terrible complexes only assuaged by tyranny over the defenseless slaves while
the slaves were sub-human as they were property, to be treated anyway their owners saw fit or unfit.
Hence, Locke was either too ignorant or too civil to understand the Western psyche regarding the
enslaved "other", and his theory of state was also too civil for his associates - especially those who have
found his theories more handy in explaining government and state.

Locke provides a very detailed examination of the origin of civil government; for he examined the fact that
children and infants are not forced to remain in the commonwealth, except for as long as they are minors.
In providing the contractarian account of the origin of the state and government, Locke says,

Men being, as has been seen, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of his
(her) estate and subject to the political power of another without his (her) own consent, which is done by
agreeing with other men (women), to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and
peaceable living, one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security
against any that are not of it (p. 164. Parenthesis mine).

While this statement by Locke may not have been recorded in history for direct verification by posterity for
accuracy, it is important that we note that this is Locke's understanding of the origin of civil government.
The notion of estate indicates property, which is common to other contract theorists, but his notion of
estate does not cover property rights in other human beings, such as Western slavery mentioned above.
To doubt this, or to think otherwise, would, for Locke, tantamount to embracing false theories and
doctrines.

Jean Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract

Jean Jacques Rousseau started the Social Contract with the assertion of the natural freedom of human
beings at birth. This freedom is innate, inalienable and basic. It is common to all of humanity. But
somehow humans find themselves in chains, in a state of alienated freedom or in a state of contrived
unfreedom. Humans lose the natural freedom with which they were born and they are left with only a
semblance of the real thing. He says,

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still
remains a greater slave than they. (p. 181)

He was concerned about how this change came about. In trying to unravel the causes of the change,
Rousseau took account of diverse factors. The first that he noticed is force (p. 181). Force, for Rousseau,
means compulsion. And compulsion means making a person or people do things against his/her or their
will. This, he argues, is unnatural; and if a person or people voluntarily obey such force, one cannot
complain; while if they resist such force, it is better still; and, to regain their freedom is infinitely better still.
All the process of establishing the system under which members of the society shall live constitute the
process of determining the social order (p. 182), and the social order is not a natural order; it is devised by
humans in society. In my view, Rousseau is correct in regard to the fact that social order is not natural to
the extent that it involves the creation of a complex social milieu with complicated educational and
sustenance mechanisms that civil society entails. However, it seems to me that Rousseau is flagrantly
mistaken in supposing that humans are born free. For the human fetus is a peculiar anomaly which is
indefinitely attached to its progeny and parentage through physical, genetic, economic and social forces,
first through the umbilical cord, second through provision of first life sustaining facilities without which the
infant is doomed to certain death, and lastly through skill forming and culture providing education which
makes independence possible for the individual that emerges from years of parental and community
nurture and environmental care. It is this singular fact which makes the transmission of cultures and
survival of societies a serious possibility, and further, it is this factor of gradual inheritance of
independence and learning through apprenticeship to take care of the young which make Rousseau's
position valid in his fear of how social order could arise out of force and be maintained by force.

If the process of establishing the social order is determined through the use of superior force, Rousseau
would be amazed as to the type of sustenance the arrangement would have and whether it would endure.
For, according to Rousseau, force cannot establish right, and the wish of the strongest can only subsist for
as long as the strongest remains the strongest. Immediately the position is reversed, or whenever there is
the possibility of disobedience without penalty, the obligation, out of need to avoid untoward
consequences, to obey the dictates of the force, vanishes, for force does not create right (p. 185):

The most ancient of societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family; and even so the children
remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need
ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children (are), released from the obedience they owe to the
father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If the
remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily, and the family itself is then maintained
only by convention (p. 182. Italics and parenthesis mine).

We may immediately note two things in passing here. First, Rousseau spoke of father and son or children
because he wrote during a period when there was no gender consciousness that would have informed
discourse in a patriarchal, male dominated society in which he lived. This, I believe, accounts for why he
speaks as if when the child is born to a father the child is born by the father. The second thing craving our
notation is this: Rousseau conjectures that humans were born naturally free which we mentioned earlier.
But the fact is that infants were not born naturally free, as they remain attached to their mothers through
the umbilical cord and remain dependent, as he observed, for a long time after birth for what he called
preservation, sustenance and protection. Since we have commented above on the natural unfreedom of
the infant, it remains only to insist here that it may be that the same reason that accounted for the gender
bias of his discourse indirectly informs the inability of Rousseau to see that infants (the human young
generally) were never born free. The recognition of this factor would be momentous toward a proper
understanding of what educational attitude would be beneficial to society! More will be said on this later,
time and space permitting.

For Rousseau, the second factor that leads people into unions, apart from force, as noted earlier, is self-
preservation. It is this need for self-preservation which makes the child voluntarily relinquish his freedom
to his father, in return for care, provision, and protection. The members of the family alienate their liberty
(equality and freedom which they possess in their natural states as human beings) only for their own
advantage to the head of the family who is their father (p. 182). This deliberate alienation of liberty,
freedom and equality by members of the family is repaid by the love that the father has for members of
the family. This love, going by Rousseau's understanding of the relationship, is also not an altruistic one; it
derives from self-interest, as the father derives pleasure and satisfaction from leading and commanding
the family. In the cases of the state, for Rousseau, since there is no immediate filial relationship to
engender love for the followers or members of the community and society, the chief derives pleasure from
commanding the people.

The third factor that leads people to association, according to Rousseau, are conventions. By convention,
Rousseau understands the first original gathering and agreement process by which a people become, so
to say, a people. This he calls an original unanimity, on one occasion at least, which, by inference, gives
the majority the right to lead the minority electorally (p. 190). But this convention is also a product of
expedience, and it is a contrivance that comes about from the necessity to maximize the innate individual
self-interest intrinsic to the Western psyche, using the greater pool of force available to more people. This
is in contrast with each person trying to accomplish similar objectives separately and at cross purposes. It
is also a fiat that may lose its force because of any individual violation of its clauses due to any unilateral
minimal modification, without the consent of the persons who have entered into the compact, thereby
returning to each the original conventional liberty they had voluntarily renounced in the hope of a greater
liberty derivable from the common pool of greater protection that derives from the commonwealth.

Thus, Rousseau says, in chapter 6 on " The Social Compact" (I wish to quote at length from the passage
to allow Rousseau to speak for himself here), that,

I suppose men to have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the
state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each
individual for his maintenance in that state. That primitive condition can then subsist no longer, and
human race would perish unless it changed its manner of existence.

But, as men cannot engender new forces, but only unite and direct existing ones, they have no other
means of preserving themselves than the formation, by aggregation, of a sum of forces great enough to
overcome the resistance. These they have to bring into play by means of a single motive power, and
cause to act in concert.

The sum of forces can arise only where several persons come together: but, as the forces and liberty of
each man are the chief instrument of his self-preservation, how can he pledge them without harming his
own interests, and neglecting the care he owes to himself? This difficulty, in its bearing on my present
subject, may be stated in the following terms:

'The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force
the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey
himself alone, and remain as free as before'. This is the fundamental problem of which the social contract
provides the solution (pp. 190-191).

The important consequence of the contract so ordained by each man with the other man is the creation of
the sovereign. The sovereign, in Rousseau's reasoning, is not a person, but an authority. It is not even an
aristocratic group, but an aggregation of the individual voices and wills of the contracting members of the
society. Because of this, the sovereign cannot become law unto itself in a way that people in the state has
not deign it fit to be the individual and several recipient of the benefits derivable thereof. Thus,

Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will,
and in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an individual part of the whole.

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a
corporate and a collective body, composed of as many as the assembly contains voters, and receiving
from this act of unity, its common identity, its life, and its will (p. 192).

The social contract, once formed, engenders minor inconvenience for those who may not realize that it is
in their interest to be obedient to its authority. It involves the possibility of coercion, where 'renegades' are
'forced to be free' or forced to obey the laws that they have freely made for their self-protection (p. 195).
This is not an evil as such, for it prevents the greater evil of individuals fending for themselves and failing
in the process, ending up with the greater inconvenience of having to live in the state of nature. Through
the aggregation of the individual wills there emerges the collective will which is stronger and more able to
effectively and efficiently guarantee the individual rights that would otherwise have been threatened
because of individual incapacity to protect their rights on their own.

The appeal of this theory, like the creation story found in the Genesis consists first and foremost in its
intuitive appeal, conceptual simplicity and theoretical elegance. In fact, the social contract theories have
captured the imagination of all many, becoming almost as divine as the system of Euclid in Western
scholarship. And one cannot but be impressed by the acuity and perspicacity of the trio contractarians
that we have examined here. But the genius that provided the impetus to the development of this type of
democratic construct has not gone without serious challenge from various directions. Before we conclude
this discussion, we will examine some of the criticisms of the social contract theory - both the endogenous
types that have suggested complete rejection of the theory and those endogenous ones that have
suggested emendations to remove the weak points of the theory.

Criticisms of Contractarianism

The usual criticisms of contractarianism have been endogenous to Western cultural orientation and,
because of that, have not been audacious enough to challenge the fundamental assumptions of
contractarianism. Some of the criticisms have, in fact, been anticipated by the contractarians. For
example, the criticism that the state of nature was never a historical reality experienced by humans was
carefully discussed by John Locke, who, perhaps, was the most intellectually robust of the three classical
contractarians we have discussed in this essay. His response was that the history of human society
makes clear determination difficult for the historicity or non-historicity of the postulated compact. In a
sense, the admission that this contract was never supposed to have been a real life one deflates the
seriousness of the critique, but nevertheless, it is clear that after admitting that the compact was not a
historical one, one still finds that contract theorists still use their postulate to warrant the sovereign and the
allegiance people are supposed to owe to state authority as "constituted authority".

Another, similar but not the same, criticism has been the argument that the "social contract" indicated in
the contractarian theory is simply a hypothetical one, designed as an analogical apologia to justify the
legitimacy of democratic principles and practice on which Western societies have sought to found
governmental systems and nothing more. But then, it is suggested by the critic, this hypothetical
methodology is prospectively stretched too far as if it were a factual reality, thus creating the logical gap
between the intention and the actual outcome of discourse. Hobbes and Rousseau are partly guilty of this
error, but it is clear that what the contractarians were doing was more important than mere hypothesizing.
They were concerned with the justification, more than the mere historical origin, of government.

It has also been argued that the government that is derivable from the contractarian contraption is not
uniformly the same; that Hobbes derives a Leviathan dictator, Locke a state that is shot through with
democratic principles that surpasses the mere legalisms of contractarianism; while Rousseau came up
with a state that indicates minor incongruities of forcing dissenting members to be free, even against the
wishes of these 'recalcitrant' members. One way of assuaging the implications of this particular criticism is
to look at the historical factors that led to the development of these contrasting contract approaches by
each of the contractarians. These are complex social, historical and intellectual issues beyond the scope
of this present discussion, and as such, could be addressed in another study by people competent in
these intellectual areas.
The contractarians all suppose that the state of nature is one in which human nature tends only toward
negative expressions. This is very much similar to the understanding of human nature found the Christian
religion where the negation of the good in human personality, albeit through the sinister artifice of the
Serpent typified as the Great Fall of Patriarch Adam and Mother Eve from Divine Grace, leads to the
projection of the good ad infinitum to the supernatural, such that a dependency of humans on the
supernatural becomes inevitable, to counterbalance the inherent weakness and predatory nature of
humans, and also to bring about redemption and ultimately lead to the realization of the positive that has
been in abeyance, latent and negativised by the negatives in human nature.

In the case of the contractarians, the balance of the negatives in the human socio-political and economic
nature inexorably leads to the creation of the state, a big brother who is permanently breathing down the
necks of the recalcitrant humans who would never have done the right thing unless coerced. Or,
minimally, the state enforces the wiles and ideas of the individual person who needs the enforcer.

By painting the picture of gloom and doom, the stage is perfectly set for the state authority as an
inevitability. But even if we grant this gloomy picture of human nature in its 'natural' state, the inevitability
of the contractarian state as the only possible arbiter is not logically established, as there are societies
that have not, given this picture, gone to the point of setting up state powers as they have remained
stateless societies. Hence, it has been contended, that if the fear of the gloom has not compelled some
societies to statecraft it can only evidence the logical gap in the contractarian argument, namely, that the
gloomy picture painted in which humans in the state of nature are in perpetual grief because of mutual
suspicion, the avarice and covetousness that arise as a result of the natural scarcity of resources and
mutual exclusivity of conflicting needs are not inevitable paths to statecraft.

Upon a careful analysis of the contractarianism of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, it will be seen that there
is no doubt that the position which private property has occupied in Western consciousness has indicated
the contractarian apologia for statecraft as the only means of averting the extinction of humanity through
inordinate greed, dispossessive quest for personal enrichment to the detriment of other equally deserving
humans in the same environment and the mutual self-destruction that would have followed the war of all
against all which is intrinsic to human nature in Western culture.

It is clear that Western culture is built on the position that only the fear of violence and mutual annihilation
impels humans, through passions, to peace. In other words, peace arises out of the recognition of the
futility of the antagonistic war of all against all (omnium bellum contra omnes). On the contrary, the critic
will argue that it is not passion but reason that leads to the human need to contemplate the arrangement
for peace and statecraft; that is, the state as a craft, a contrivance of the highest human genius. This is
evident from the simple fact that passion has no time to contemplate, but only to gratify in whichever way
possible, but only reason can be used in the service of passion to work out the best means of gratifying
the needs that passion forces upon humans.
Also, when Hobbes conjectures that humans place a value upon themselves and desire that others
recognize this value, exerting through force this recognition, if need be, it is clear that Hobbes has
inverted the Kantian Categorical Imperative and the Golden Rule of the Christ. Clearly, it is obvious that
forming a compact with others to pursue the recognition of the store of value one places on oneself only
goes to show that one should place equal value first on the other human, in order to be able to get into a
contractual relation with the other, based on trust. Obviously, the development of concepts of self
valuation, contract formation and trust are not concepts that passion is capable of forming, nor ones which
persons in states of passion can adumbrate. Hence, the conviction, on our part, that the contractarians
did humanity a disservice by enunciating a one-sided notion of human nature. This failure on the part of
the contractarians deliberately creates a fiat, it supposes that there was a point in the human past that
steps were left unadopted to protect the weak and the young in so far as it did not pander to the glory and
psychological gratification of some person(s). Herein lies the weakness of the suggestion that fatherly love
is selfish gratification of base ingratiation and that leadership could not have developed from genuine
need to create a better society for the self, contemporaries and generations unborn.

Finally, the idea of the dependence of infants on parents as arising from the need for self-preservation is
jejune. If the human infant ever has any serious ability to procure self-preservation at all, it is as a
dependent, as the severance of the umbilical cord that unites the infant to the mother is a painful one, as
this cord had always been the means of nurture for the infant in-situ. At birth the dependence is natural,
and no amount of contractarian contraption could will away the dependence of the human infant, unlike
most other animals, on their parents. Saying that the father (one would imagine here that the contractarian
here properly means the mother) derives pleasure (and fulfillment from maternal caring for the infant) for
the service provided, through directing and presiding over the affairs of the family, is not good reason to
warrant the labours that go into the nurture of the human infant. In fact, this is good enough reason to say
that humans were never born free, but only come to acquire freedom in maturity.

Government need not derive from the state of nature

The state of nature theories (and, by extension, theorists) and Western political philosophy (mutantis
mutandis, Western political philosophers) have assumed that the only way for deriving representative,
just, humane, democratic culture and practice is through the formal consent, compact, or contract that the
electoral systems have formalized. In making the assumption, they have undertaken to impose on other
societies a mode of civil government that is not intrinsically indigenous, though not totally alien to their
historical experience and the aspirations that their civilizations have developed over numerous millennia.
In other words, Western intellectuals only conceive of civil society as a means of preserving individuality
while other older societies have seen the individuality has no meaning outside of community.

Thus, while the expedience of electoral practice might be the only 'objective' barometer for clear
measurement of contemporary governmental popularity and legitimacy in the complex arena of
international politics, it is important that the point be made that democratic cultures had developed and
thrived in ancient civilizations outside the West without the acute contentiousness, intrinsic mutual
antagonisms and warring fratricidal destructiveness that is typical of the possessive Western individualist,
whose sense of community is forged only as a matter of self-preservation and not because of the natural
and inescapable innate social inclinations of humans. Not to recognize this fact will tantamount to telling
only one side of the story about human political organization. It will be telling one true story as if it were
the only true story instead of telling that one story as one of the many true stories about the development
of similar phenomena.

In cultures where ownership of property is not the first principle of association, where the recognition of
the existence of others as the crucible within which one's existence is made possible and meaningful is
understood, where there is mutual trust between members of family that transcends that temporary link
forged by incapacity on the part of infants to fend for themselves and the transient obligation of parents
and adults to provide for minors, where, even when there are wants and needs that scarcity may make
difficult not to contend with others to fulfill but such contentiousness are not without the primary
understanding that life is more important and associations and associates more permanent than
immediate material satisfaction and gratification, it will not be difficult to see why deriving good political
cultures from neighbourliness, and, consequently, hypothesizing political cultures that endorse first social
and communal well being as the harbinger of individual and personal well being of members may be a
better alternative and why civil society would have developed and prospered without any prejudice to the
nature and internal peculiarity of Western political history. It is no wonder that civil society developed in
older civilizations of the world before Western civilization was mid-wived by these older civilizations,
especially that of the Nile Valley.

What Is The Hegelian Dialectic?

by Niki F. Raapana and Nordica M. Friedrich

This article was originally published online in December 2002. For years it has been available to the public for free, as an
educational resource. As a result it has been widely distributed with and without our permission. Now we would like to ask that you
do not reproduce this work, as it is copyrighted.

The entire text of What Is The Hegelian Dialectic? has a permanent home in our new book, 2020: Our Common Destiny/The
Anti Communitarian Manifesto (two books in one), available in mass-market paperback or an affordable, downloadable e-book.

The introduction entitled Why study Hegel? is still available here to read for free, for educational purposes.
Introduction: Why study Hegel?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

"... the State 'has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State...
for the right of the world spirit is above all special priveleges.'" -- Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Hegel
in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German philosopher and theologist who wrote The Science of
Logic in 1812. For many historians, Hegel is "perhaps the greatest of the German idealist philosophers."

In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) used Hegel's theory of the dialectic to back up their
economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure.

The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined
solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are
helping to implement the vision for the future.

Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or
defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels' grand design to advance humanity into a
dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can't be introduced unless we all take a side
that will advance the agenda.

The Marxist's global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to stop land grabs, privacy invasions, expanded
domestic police powers, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on
individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. Only then can we be released from the limitations of controlled and guided
thought.

When we understand what motivated Hegel, we can see his influence on all of our destinies. Then we become real players in the
very real game that has been going on for at least 224 years.

Hegelian conflicts steer every political arena on the planet, from the United Nations to the major American politicalparties, all the
way down to local school boards and community councils. Dialogues and consensus-building are primary tools of the dialectic, and
terror and intimidation are also acceptable formats for obtaining the goal.

The ultimate Third Way agenda is world government. Once we get what's really going on, we can cut the strings and move our lives
in original directions outside the confines of the dialectical madness. Focusing on Hegel's and Engel's ultimate agenda, and
avoiding getting caught up in their impenetrable theories of social evolution, gives us the opportunity to think and act our way
toward freedom, justice, and genuine liberty for all.

Today the dialectic is active in every political issue that encourages taking sides. We can see it in environmentalists instigating
conflicts against private property owners, in democrats against republicans, in greens against libertarians, in communists against
socialists, in neo-cons against traditional conservatives, in community activists against individuals, in pro-choice versus pro-life, in
Christians against Muslims, in isolationists versus interventionists, in peace activists against war hawks.

No matter what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences, and leads
everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
 "Hegel's Absolute Idea" chart courtesy of The Calverton School

BENTHAM: THE RATIONAL OF PUNISHMENT

IMMORAL

Bentham used utilitarianism primarily as a measure of the moral rightness of law and of
social mores. He also applied this principle to the acts of individual--though he wrote much
less thereon.

ENLIGHTENMENT

BY JEREMY BENTHAM:

The Rationale of Punishment.

Book I
General Principles
Chapter III
Of the Ends of Punishment
When any act has been committed which is followed, or threatens to be followed, by such effects
as a provident legislator would be anxious to prevent, two wishes naturally and immediately
suggest themselves to his mind: first, to obviate the danger of the like mischief in future: secondly,
to compensate the mischief that has already been done.

The mischief likely to ensue from acts of the like kind may arise from either of two sources,either
the conduct of the party himself who has been the author of the mischief already done, or the
conduct of such other persons as may have adequate motives and sufficient opportunities to do
the like.

Hence the prevention of offenses divides itself into two branches: Particular prevention, which
applies to the delinquent himself; and general prevention, which is applicable to all the members of
the community without exception.

Pain and pleasure are the great springs of human action. When a man perceives or supposes pain
to be the consequence of an act, he is acted upon in such a manner as tends, with a certain force,
to withdraw him, as it were, from the commission of that act. If the apparent magnitude, or rather
value of that pain be greater than the apparent magnitude or value of the pleasure or good he
expects to be the consequence of the act, he will be absolutely prevented from performing it. The
mischief which would have ensued from the act, if performed, will also by that means be
prevented.

With respect to a given individual, the recurrence of an offense may be provided against in three
ways:

By taking from him the physical power of offending.

By taking away the desire of offending.
By making him afraid of offending.

In the first case, the individual can no more commit the offense; in the second, he no longer
desires to commit it; in the third, he may still wish to commit it, but he no longer dares to do it. In
the first case, there is a physical incapacity; in the second, a moral reformation; in the third, there
is intimidation or terror of the law.

General prevention is effected by the denunciation of punishment, and by its application, which,
according to the common expression, serves for an example. The punishment suffered by the
offender presents to every one an example of what he himself will have to suffer if he is guilty of
the same offense..

General prevention ought to be the chief end of punishment, as it is its real justification. If we could
consider an offence which has been committed as an isolated fact, the like of which would never
recur, punishment would be useless. It would be only adding one evil to another. But when we
consider that an unpunished crime leaves the path of crime open not only to the same delinquent,
but also to all those who may have the same motives and opportunities for entering upon it, we
perceive that the punishment inflicted on the individual becomes a source of security to all. That
punishment, which, considered in itself, appeared base and repugnant to all generous sentiments,
is elevated to the first rank of benefits, when it is regarded not as an act of wrath or of vengeance
against a guilty or unfortunate individual who has given way to mischievous inclinations, but as an
indispensable sacrifice to the common safety.

With respect to any particular delinquent, we have seen that punishment has three objects,
incapacitation, reformation, and intimidation. If the crime he has committed is of a kind calculated
to inspire great alarm, as manifesting a very mischievous disposition, it becomes necessary to
take from him the power of committing it again. But if the crime, being less dangerous, only
justifies a transient punishment, and it is possible for the delinquent to return to society, it is proper
that the punishment should possess qualities calculated to reform or to intimidate him.

After having provided for the prevention of future crimes, reparation still remains to be made, as
far as possible, for those which are passed, by bestowing a compensation on the party injured;
that is to say, bestowing a good equal to the evil suffered.

This compensation, founded upon reasons which have been elsewhere developed, does not at
first view appear to belong to the subject of punishments, because it concerns another individual
than the delinquent. But these two ends have a real connexion. There are punishments which
have the double effect of affording compensation to the party injured, and of inflicting a
proportionate suffering on the delinquent; so that these two ends may be effected by a single
operation. This is, in certain cases, the peculiar advantage of pecuniary punishments.

Introduction: Why study Hegel?

"...the State 'has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the
State... for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.'" Author/historian William Shirer,
quoting Georg Hegel in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959, page 144)

In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) used Hegel's theory of the
dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist
thinking affects our entire social and political structure. The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding
our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand
how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping
to implement the vision. When we remain locked into dialectical thinking, we cannot see out of the
box.

Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action.
Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels'
grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to
all these conflicts can't be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The
Marxist's globalagenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to completely stop the privacy
invasions, expanding domestic police powers, land grabs, insane wars against inanimate objects (and
transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the
dialectic. This releases us from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

When we understand what motivated Hegel, we can see his influence on all of our destinies. ... Hegelian
conflicts steer every political arena on the planet, from the United Nations to the major American political
parties, all the way down to local school boards and community councils. Dialogues and consensus-
building are primary tools of the dialectic, and terror and intimidation are also acceptable formats for
obtaining the goal. The ultimate Third Way agenda is world government. Once we get what's really going
on, we can cut the strings and move our lives in original directions outside the confines of the dialectical
madness. Focusing on Hegel's and Engel's ultimate agenda, and avoiding getting caught up in their
impenetrable theories of social evolution, gives us the opportunity to think and act our way toward
freedom, justice, and genuine liberty for all.

Today the dialectic is active in every political issue that encourages taking sides. We can see it in
environmentalists instigating conflicts against private property owners, in democrats against republicans,
in greens against libertarians, in communists against socialists, in neo-cons against traditional
conservatives, in community activists against individuals, in pro-choice versus pro-life, in Christians
against Muslims, in isolationists versus interventionists, in peace activists against war hawks. No matter
what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences,
and leads everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts.

We're definitely not in Kansas anymore.

For a visual concept, see this simple chart [page now deleted] of the Hegelian Dialectic and Marx's
Dialectical Materialism, posted by the Calverton Private School.

Definitions:

Merriam-Webster:

"Dialectic ....the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is
preserved and fulfilled by its opposite... development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism ....any systematic reasoning, exposition,
or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict ...
....the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements."

"Dialectical Materialism ... 1 : the Marxist theory that maintains the material basis of a reality constantly
changing in a dialectical process and the priority of matter over mind."

Wikipedia:

"Hegel's dialectic often appears broken up for convenience into three moments called "thesis" (in the
French historical example, the revolution), "antithesis" (the terror which followed), and "synthesis" (the
constitutional state of free citizens). ... Much Hegel scholarship does not recognize the usefulness of
this triadic classification for shedding light on Hegel's thought. Although Hegel refers to "the two
elemental considerations: first, the idea of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the means for
realising it, i.e. the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity" (thesis and
antithesis) he doesn't use "synthesis" but instead speaks of the "Whole": "We then recognised the
State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these
two elements." ...

"Hegel used this system of dialectics to explain the whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics
and religion, but many modern critics point out that Hegel often seems to gloss over the realities of history
in order to fit it into his dialectical mold....
In the 20th century, Hegel's philosophy underwent a major renaissance. This was due partly to the
rediscovery and reevaluation of him as the philosophical progenitor of Marxism by philosophically oriented
Marxists, partly through a resurgence of the historical perspective that Hegel brought to everything, and
partly through increasing recognition of the importance of his dialectical method. The book that did the
most to reintroduce Hegel into the Marxist canon was perhaps Georg Lukacs's History and Class
Consciousness. This sparked a renewed interest in Hegel reflected in the work of Herbert Marcuse,
Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch....

"Beginning in the 1960's, Anglo-American Hegel scholarship has attempted to challenge the traditional
interpretation of Hegel as offering a metaphysical system." See Popular Occultism

The Hegelian dialectical formula: A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis).

For example: If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom then (C) neither of us can
be free until everyone agrees to be a slave.

The Soviet Union was based on the Hegelian dialectic, as is all Marxist writing. The Soviets didn't give up
their Hegelian reasoning when they supposedly stopped being a communist country. They merely
changed the dialectical language to fit into the modern version of Marxist thinking called
communitarianism. American author Steve Montgomery explores Moscow's adept use of the Hegelian
dialectic in Glasnost-Perestroika: A Model Potemkin Village.

How is it possible to consider a Hegelian argument?

If the ideas, interpretations of experiences, and the sources are all wrong, can a conclusion based on all
these wrong premises be sound? The answer is no. Two false premises do not make a sound conclusion
even if the argument follows the formula. Three, four, five, or six false premises do not all combine to
make a conclusion sound. You must have at least one sound premise to reach a sound conclusion.
Logical mathematical formulas are only the basis for deductive reasoning. Equally important is knowledge
of semantics, or considering the meanings of the words used in the argument. Just because an argument
fits the formula, it does not necessarily make the conclusion sound. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel knew
this when he designed his dialectic.

Hegel is an imperialist con artist who established the principles of dialectical "no-reason." Hegel's dialectic
has allowed globalists to lead simple, capable, freeborn men and women back into the superstitious,
racist and unreasonable age of imperial global dominance. National governments represent people who
are free from imperial controls over private property, trade and production. National governments protect
their workers from imperial slavery by protecting the worker's markets. But if you use Hegel's logical
Marxism, the only way to protect people from slavery is to become the slave trader, just for a while.
Twisted logic is why cons are so successful, and Hegel twisted it in such a way as to be "impenetrable."
Like Hegel and Marx, the best street con knows his spiel has to use logic to bend and distort the story,
and good cons weave their lies on logical mathematical progression. The fallacy is in the language, not in
the math. Detective Phillip Worts' 2001 article Communist Oriented Policing is a nice explanation of
Dialectical Materialism's influence on America.

The communitarian purpose for the Hegelian dialectic

Hegel's theory is basically that mankind is merely a series of constant philosophical conflicts. Hegel was
an idealist who believed that the highest state of mankind can only be attained through constant
ideological conflict and resolution. The rules of the dialectic means mankind can only reach its highest
spiritual consciousness through endless self-perpetuating struggle between ideals, and the eventual
synthesizing of all opposites. Hegel's dialectic taught all conflict takes man to the next spiritual level. But
in the final analysis, this ideology simply justifies conflict and endless war. It is also the reasoning behind
using military power to export an illogical version of freedom and false democratic ideals.

The reason we can call it the justification for modern conflicts and war, with impunity, is because no one
can prove Hegel's theory is true. No matter how many new words they make up to define it, or how many
new theories they come up with to give it validity, we can prove beyond a doubt that it is all false. And, we
can show the final equation in Hegels' Dialectic is:

A: The [your nation goes here] System of Political Economy (List 1841)
B: state controlled world communism
C: state controlled global communitarianism.

The Hegelian dialectic is the ridiculous idea that constant conflict and continual merging of opposite
ideologies, as established by extreme right or left belief systems, will lead spiritual mankind into final
perfection. (Americans understood man's spiritual quests to be outside the realm of government control).
Hegel's brilliance rests in his ability to confuse and obfuscate the true motives of the planners, and
millions of people world-wide have been trying to make sense of why it doesn't work for over 150 years.
But like the AA definition of insanity, the world keeps trying it over and over expecting different results. ...

When Frederick Engels and Karl Marx based their communist theory on Hegel's theory of spiritual
advancement via constant resolution of differences, they based the theory of communism on an unproven
theory.

While Darwin's theory of evolution is still being debated, there's absolutely no proof that societies are
continually evolving. When Engels and Marx later based their communist theory on Lewis Henry Morgan's
theory of anthropology in 1877, they again based the theory of communism on an unprovable theory.

And when Amitai Etzioni used Hegelian reasoning to base the Communitarian Network on a "balance"
between (A) Rights and (B) Responsibilities, he built the entire theory of (C) communitarianism on nothing
but disproven and unprovable unscientific theories....

Already gaining substantial ground against the Americans, British Marxism was bolstered when Charles
Darwin published his theory of human evolution in 1859. Engels, according to modern day scholars,
seized upon Darwin's theory to substantiate communism:

"When Marx read The Origin of Species he wrote to Engels that, 'although it is developed in the crude
English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.' They turned against
what they saw as the social, as opposed to the biological, implications of Darwinism when they realised
that it contained no support for their shibboleth of class oppression. Since they were slippery customers
rather than scientists, they were not likely to relinquish their views just because something did not fit."
(see: Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek, 1912.)

In 1877 Lewis Henry Morgan published Ancient Society, or Researches in Life, Lines of Human Progress
from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. Then the "slippery" Engels seized upon Morgan's work
as the constantly "evolving" basis for the totally unsubstantiated theory of natural social evolution into
utopian world communism....

Hegel's formula has been so successful that in 2003 all U.S. domestic and foreign policy is dominated by
"communitarian thinking," the whole country is living under the new laws, and yet Americans most
affected by "impenetrable" Hegelian laws have never once heard the term used.
Conclusion:

The Hegelian dialectic presupposes the factual basis for the theory of social evolutionary principles, which
coincidentally backed up Marx. Marx's Darwinian theory of the "social evolution of the species," (even
though it has been used for a century to create a vast new scientific community, including eugenics and
socio-economics), does not adhere to the basis for all good scientific research, and appears to exist
mainly to advance itself, and all its sub-socio-scientific arms, as the more moral human science. To the
ACL this means the entire basis for the communitarian solution is based on a false premise, because
there is no FACTUAL basis that "social evolution of the species" exists, based as it is only on Darwinian
and Marxist ideology of man's "natural" evolution towards a British version of utopia.

The London-Marxist platform in 1847 was "to abolish private property." The American Revolution was
based in private property rights. Marxist societies confiscate wealth and promise to "re-distribute it
equally." America promised everyone they could keep and control what was the product of their own labor.
Modern Marxist adherents openly claim they will "rebuild the world," and they train activist "change
agents" to openly support overthrowing the legitimate governments of the world. Since their inception,
Marxist agent provocateurs can be linked to every anarchist assassination and student uprising that
caused chaos to the established European civilization throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern
Americans have succumbed to the conspiracy theory label and will only listen to what the propaganda
machines tell them. Now our people don't believe anyone other than maybe the Arab world "hates our
freedom." Most modern Americans will never know what went wrong with their "great experiment in
democracy."

While the Marxist-communitarian argument has not provided a shred of evidence to prove their utopian
vision, and their synthesis does not match their own projected conclusions of world justice, we are
convinced their argument does in fact substantiate our conclusion, that the entire philosophical dialectical
argument is nothing but a brilliant ruse. We used to call it "a cheap parlor trick" until a responder to this
page wondered how we could call it "cheap" when it's been so successful. And he was right. The
dialectical arguments for human rights, social equity, and world peace and justice are a perfectly designed
diversion in the defeated British Empire's Hegelian-Fabian-Metaphysical-Theosophical Monopoly game.
It's the most successful con job in the history of the modern world. (For a well presented Christian
overview of the con, see American Babylon: Part Five-the Triumph of the Merchants by Peter
Goodgame.)

The communitarian synthesis is the final silent move in a well-designed, quietly implemented plot to re-
make the world into colonies. To us it doesn't matter if there is some form of ancient religion that propels
the plotters, nor does it really matter if it turns out they're aliens (as some suggest). The bottom line is the
Hegelian dialectic sets up the scene for state intervention, confiscation, and redistribution in the U.S., and
this is against our ENTIRE constitutional based society. The Hegelian dialectic is not a conspiracy theory
because the Conspiracy Theory is a fraud. We've all been duped by global elitists who plan to take
totalitarian control of all nation's people, property, and produce. Communitarian Plans exist in every
corner of the world, and nobody at the local level will explain why there's no national legal avenue to
withdraw from the U.N.'s "community" development plans.