The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 76 pps

H. Skolimowski, Polish Analytical Philosophy (London, 1967). J. Wolen´ski, Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov–Warsaw School (Dor- drecht, 1989). political obligation. The sense or fact of being bound to obey the laws of a political community and the commands of its legally constituted officers and/or to act consistently in ways that serve the common good. Principled refusals of obligation can take the form of treason, rebellion, pas- sive resistance or disobedience, and conscientious objec- tion (the last of these is sometimes legally recognized in specific cases; military service is the most common example). How an individual, originally free of all bonds, comes to be obligated is perhaps the central question of liberal political theory. It is usually answered by pointing to some intentional act or presumed show of intention, taken as the political equivalent of a promise. (*Consent.) Just as unreasonable promises (to live as a slave or to com- mit suicide) or promises made under duress or without full understanding are not binding, so with acts of consent: free individuals cannot obligate themselves to obey a dic- tator or a totalitarian regime (the political equivalent of accepting slavery); even more obviously, unfree individ- uals cannot do so: their declarations of commitment have no moral effect at all. Political theorists from other traditions (conservatives, communitarians, rationalists of various sorts) who doubt the liberal starting-point, the reality of original freedom, commonly regard individuals as bound whether they con- sent or not—born bound or objectively constrained. But they too must address the limits of this obligation, arguing either that only regimes of a certain sort (which maintain just social arrangements or support the good life or are, at least, very old) can bind their subjects or that individuals are released from pre-existing obligations by specific acts of tyranny or oppression. It is entirely possible, however, to deny the existence of anything like political obligation. On this view, there are only moral duties, which sometimes require individuals to obey, sometimes to disobey, the laws of the state, some- times to serve, sometimes to refuse to serve, the interests of the community. Since political communities are always morally imperfect, no general obligation is possible; judgement is necessary at every moment. If this is right, then citizenship loses much of its specific moral character. For a citizen, as the term is usually understood, is a person with a particular set of political obligations—to these other people (fellow citizens) and to the community they constitute. Some of the actions that follow from such obligations would still be morally required, but they would now be required of all capable persons. The particu- larist reference, however, might well be immoral, since it deprives non-citizens of equal attention and regard, and hence is required of no one at all. Assuming that there is such a thing as political obliga- tion, it is an interesting question whether it is singular in character: are all obligated persons bound in the same way or to the same degree? Other particularist obligations (to friends or relatives, say) vary in their intensity and reach depending on the nature of the relationship and of the commitments actually made. The test case here is perhaps the resident alien, who is commonly conceived to have some, though not all, of the obligations of a citizen. But what about citizens variously disadvantaged or disengaged or committed elsewhere? Can all citizens be equally bound to vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, and so on, even though they are not equally benefited by these activities and by the acts of state they make possible, and even though they are not equally committed to or equally approving of this political regime and its characteristic works? m.walz. *civil disobedience; equality; political violence. Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critique of Liberal Theory (Chichester, 1979). A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Prince- ton, NJ, 1979). Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citi- zenship (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). political philosophy, history of. Political philosophy evaluates social organization, especially government, from an ethical viewpoint, but also studies the facts about social organization. There are thus two not sharply distin- guishable aspects of political philosophy, and how they ought to be related is a good question: the ethically nor- mative aspect (‘ethics’), and the descriptive-explanatory. Arguably, some close connection between these aspects is necessary for political philosophy to flourish, and the his- tory of political philosophy can be interpreted in this light. Among ethical concepts, *autonomy, or *freedom as rational self-determination, is central, but other concepts, including *justice, *democracy, *rights, and *political obligation, are also fundamental. The important concepts of a political philosophy must be combined coherently into an account of a properly structured and functioning community. In the history of political philosophy, the term ‘community’, or its synonyms or translations, is sometimes prominent, sometimes not, and when used it may have very varying meaning. Political philosophy as such, however, arguably tends to aspire to an account of a appropriately structured and functioning community, with its main constitutive institutions and values. Which institutions are emphasized is one of the interesting vari- ables in the history of political philosophy. Institutional detail, for example, provides an essential framework for interpreting what is meant by autonomy, if that notion plays a role in a political philosophy. Plato’s Republic is the beginning. This colossal work, whose main subject is justice in the individual and the state, contains conceptual analysis crucial for both ethics and descriptive-explanatory inquiry. Plato attempts to define what justice is, first as a matter of individual just action, and eventually as a characteristic of the just indi- vidual and the just society. Plato wishes to show how, for the individual, being just can be a good in itself. In the just individual, the three parts of the psyche are so ordered that reason rules, the ‘spirited’ part of the psyche responds to 730 Polish philosophy reason, and the appetites obey. In the just state, there is a supposedly corresponding clear division of classes among the rulers (qualified as such chiefly by personal capacity, eugenics, careful and lengthy education, life conditions including absence of personal property and of family, and ultimately a knowledge of the Form of the Good), the sol- dier auxiliaries, and the bulk of the population. We should value justice not only for its extrinsic advantages, but also for its own sake, because only when just are we really happy or flourishing. Arguably Plato has a concept of autonomy (and may well be an important contributor to the theory of autonomy) but thinks it is a realistic goal only for the few who are fit to rule, in contrast to some later authors who expand the group whose autonomy ought to be expressed or promoted through politics. Arguably, also, Plato’s approach to political philosophy is weakened by his utopianism and his anti-empirical theory of knowledge, dominated by a certain picture of math- ematical knowledge. Plato’s attack on the arts is another notable feature of his views. It suggests to some modern readers that Plato’s notion of reason ruling in the individ- ual and community downgrades much emotion, espe- cially sympathetic identification across class lines. The arts as institutions in Plato’s community are to be subject to strict state controls. Plato’s political philosophy, although anxious about arts institutions, thus at least pays them the tribute of close attention. Aristotle, Plato’s student, like him insists that the city state ( polis) is higher than the individual. In this sense, community matters more than the individual for Aris- totle, as it did for Plato. Aristotle is often said to be more empirically minded than Plato. His aversion to *utopian- ism, his classification of different sorts of constitutions and states, and other points are often adduced to show that Aristotle emphasizes more than his teacher the descriptive-explanatory component of political philoso- phy. Although this is true, Aristotle’s work in ethics and his politics cannot be understood apart from one another. The point of ethical theory is the improvement of moral education, carried on especially though not exclusively by the polis. The statesman should apply ethical theory to promote happiness (*eudaimonia), an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. The promotion of happiness requires morally educating persons into the appropriate virtues. Arguably Aristotle is a ‘perfectionist’ in politics (who thinks a social system is justified by producing some persons of excellence, rather than by taking account of the flourishing of all). He has been criticized for toleration of slavery and the subordinate status of women, cultural chauvinism (including his low estimation of non-Greek ‘barbarians’), and his acceptance of class divisions. As to autonomy, some think Aristotle lacks the notion. It might be argued, however, that Aristotle’s virtue of practical wisdom (phrone¯sis) comes close to doing some of the work that autonomy does in some later philosophers. The per- son educated into phrone¯sis has a capacity to recognize the relevant principles or reasons in deciding what to do, in relation to happiness or flourishing. Like any virtue or vice, phrone¯sis is in some sense allegedly voluntary, and one deserves praise for it, although this is in some ways puzzling. The virtues and vices in general require a good polis for their development, which suggests that it is not entirely up to the individual whether to become virtuous or vicious. Aristotle never resolves this apparent conflict between ethical assessment and his explanation of how virtue develops. Little will be said about the period between Aristotle and the rise of modernity. This is not for lack of important political philosophy, such as Augustine’s City of God or Aquinas’s extension of Aristotelianism. Perhaps the major issue bequeathed to Western modernity by Augustine and by Aquinas and others from the medieval part of that period is the question of the proper relation between reli- gious authority and political authority. (One way to express this question is to ask for an account of human community that appropriately combines religious and political institutions.) Aquinas in particular expounds views which give human government the role of provid- ing the conditions for attainment of ultimately religious goals. His views allow human government some author- ity, which may, however, be resisted under certain cir- cumstances, when it deviates from its proper function. The question of the proper role of religious and political institutions in a community is still very much alive. Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy might be viewed as an attempt to lay the foundation for what was developing as the modern secular nation state. Hobbes none the less and very logically also discusses various non- governmental institutions supportive of government and fitting into a larger picture of community. The Hobbesian community, however, with its tendency towards individ- ualist egoism, is very far from what some have meant by the notion of community. In his Leviathan Hobbes insists on the importance of avoiding by means of a strong sover- eign the war of all against all of the *state of nature. Given men’s desires, it is rational for them to agree to abide by the laws of a sovereign who provides them with security. Despite Hobbes’s authoritarianism, his work also leads to the thought that if the sovereign does not provide appro- priate protections, the point of abiding by the law is lost. Hobbes is much influenced by materialism and geometric method, as well as by hostility to Catholicism and to indi- vidualistic Puritanism. Some scholars argue that John Locke must not be read as replying directly to Hobbes’s political philosophy, though a more complex Lockean reaction to Hobbes can be acknowledged. In the First Treatise of Government Locke’s target is the patriarchal religious traditionalism of Sir Robert Filmer. Here, and to a lesser extent in the more widely read Second Treatise, religion plays a significant role in Locke’s politics, along with rationality and empiricism. In the Second Treatise Locke holds that ‘Civil Government is the proper Remedy for the Inconveniences of the State of Nature.’ Above all, government is necessary for the pro- tection of a right to property. Locke founds legitimate government on the *consent of the governed, and affirms political philosophy, history of 731 constitutionalism and the right of revolution. Locke might plausibly be read as an expositor of a form of posi- tive freedom, a freedom requiring government and law in order to be realized. A comparison with Rousseau on this point will be instructive. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract has been plaus- ibly interpreted as an attempt to define a form of political organization in which autonomy and political *authority can be reconciled, a state in which there is a moral obliga- tion to obey the law. Rousseau’s work is very much an attempt to picture an appropriately arranged community, with an emphasis on the authoritative state but also with some attention to subordinate institutions such as religion and the family. Rousseau seems to recognize two stages of the social *contract. Presumably in the first stage there is unanimity about the binding authority of majority votes. For this unanimity to be more than a mere contingency, presumably Rousseau thinks that reasons could be given appealing to our capacity for rational self-determination to show why majoritarianism is a decision-making rule to be embraced. On one way of reading Rousseau, he may think a theorem by Condorcet supplies an argument why (under the circumstances Rousseau assumes) we should subsequently prefer majority judgements over individual judgements about the common good. This arguably makes it seem autonomous for an individual to accept the majority’s judgement who subsequently votes on what the law should be (under the circumstances Rousseau describes) and finds himself in a minority. All citizens (males: a very regrettable expression of Rousseau’s sex- ism) vote on whether a law should be passed, sincerely aiming at the common good, with approximate equality of influence on the outcome (presumably one reason for absence of discussion). The effort is to determine the *gen- eral will, which aims at the common good. The general will itself ‘cannot err’. It aims at a law of general form which also furthers the general interest, not mere particu- lar interests. If anyone shows partiality, if factions develop, if economic inequality allows some to buy others or requires some to sell themselves, or other failures occur, the social contract is nullified. Otherwise, the law passed by the majority is morally binding on the citizen who has participated in making it. Direct participation is vital; rep- resentation will not do. Many interpreters have doubted, on numerous grounds, whether Rousseau’s scheme really preserves autonomy. Rousseau is actually pessimistic him- self about the prospects for real-world instances of recon- ciliation of autonomy and authority. In general, Rousseau (although a great psychologist) is not very helpful on the descriptive and explanatory side of political theory, and not very helpful about telling us what to do to promote the main goals of his politics under the refractory circum- stances of actual history. He tends toward scorn of corrupt realities and a sometimes wistful utopianism. For all that, in Rousseau a version of autonomy is at work which has been enormously influential. One sign of this, ironically, is in the seriousness with which influential political leaders (e.g. Robespierre, Bolivar) have taken Rousseau, even when they should have found it difficult to justify their acts on the basis of Rousseau’s ideas. Rousseau’s community has seemed to some so all-encompassing as not to allow adequately for individual conscience, private life, freedom of religion, and political dissidence. Some liberals, in par- ticular, have found the Rousseauian community stifling of individual freedom. A classical expression of *liberalism attempting to find space for individual freedom in a broader community con- text is to be found in John Stuart Mill. Mill combines nor- mative ethics and factual inquiry in his political philosophy and related work. His most frequently read work of explicit political philosophy is probably On Liberty, in which he attempts to distinguish when society has legit- imate authority over the individual and when not. Mill argues that a necessary condition of society’s controlling the individual (through either governmental penalties or the coercive influence of public opinion, which has its own penalties) should be that such control is needed to prevent one individual from harming another or others. This is often called ‘the harm principle’. Mill acknowledges some exceptions in applying this doctrine, which only applies to those in ‘the maturity of their faculties’ (a notion which seems to exclude not only the young, but also, alarmingly, those societies in which ‘the race itself may be considered as in its nonage’). One justification for social control which is mostly ruled out by Mill under normal circumstances is what others often call *‘paternalism’, control of a person for that person’s own good. For society to proceed with the exercise of control, prevention of harm is not sufficient but there must also be violation by one individual of another’s right, or violation of an obligation of the first to the second. On Liberty also includes a defence of liberty of thought and discussion, a plea for individuality, a rejection of religious authority in political matters, and discussion of many specific applications of Mill’s views, in which Mill’s anti-statism emerges. The ultimate moral basis here, as in all of Mill, is the *greatest happiness principle or principle of utility, most clearly defined and defended in Utilitarian- ism. On Mill’s version of the principle, quality as well as quantity of pleasure counts morally, a doctrine that has interesting and probably élitist political implications. Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government deserves close study in conjunction with his other major works. In it, Mill defends the importance of some popular participa- tion in government, but also argues that society needs to choose exceptional political representatives of superior intelligence and morality, and then allow them to choose what is best, voting them out if necessary. Mill’s fears about the tyranny of the majority, so evident in On Liberty, also show up in Considerations in other ways, for example in his argument for special voting procedures to allow for the representation of minorities, and in his argument that extra votes ought to be given to those of superior intelli- gence. It should be added that Mill appears in other works to have become more sympathetic to socialism in his later years, although the exact nature of his commitments is somewhat controversial. Whether compatible with 732 political philosophy, history of *socialism or not, Mill’s emphasis on individual *liberty is only possible in the context of a broader community struc- ture and set of traditions, however open to change Mill wants these to be. Some critics claim that liberal *individu- alism (with its commitments to such institutions as the *market) tends to subvert community, but there is also a sense of community in which the liberal individualist (such as Mill) is simply offering still another sort of account (to be evaluated on its merits) of the properly functioning community. Marx and Engels give a very different, historically dynamic account of society, critical of liberal individual- ism among other rival visions of community. An adequate understanding of Marx requires some acquaintance with Hegel, but we shall not comment on Hegel here except to note that Marx thought of his own work as standing Hegel upon his head. By this, Marx seems to have meant that the Hegelian interpretation of history as primarily a study of leading ideas and their dialectical changes, which explain other institutional changes, needed to be radically revised. For Marx, *historical materialism distinguishes between economic base or infrastructure and superstructure, including non-economic institutions and ideological aspects of the society. Historical materialism depicts changes in the former as, for the most part, the causes of changes in superstructure, including ideological *super- structure. Marx and Engels argue that after the ancient world and feudalism, the economic structures of capital- ism, including its two main antagonistic classes, the bour- geoisie and the proletariat, have come to the fore in world history. Class conflict is a main characteristic of all history, but conflicts between owners of the means of production and wage-earners within the capitalist system are seen as central in this period. Sharpening class conflict and accom- panying contradictions will eventually force a coming to consciousness of class analysis, and eventually (first, they predict, in the more advanced countries) a revolution in which *capitalism is overthrown. They argue that capital- ism is a global system which will exhaust all possibilities by its own logic before falling, a view later elaborated by Lenin. During the transitional ‘dictatorship of the prole- tariat’, it is to be expected that there will be greater cen- tralization of economic and political power in the state, but eventually a ‘withering away of the state’ is to be expected (Engels’s phrase). These changes are meant to occur in some sense in accordance with historical–eco- nomic laws, though the exact nature and status of such laws is a matter of dispute. Marx and Engels want to com- bine description and prediction in various ways that gen- erate interpretative puzzles, but that are a consequence of the desire both to avoid utopianism and to stay consistent with leading historical trends, but also to contribute actively to historical change that the authors consider desirable. Marx and Engels do not necessarily rule out normative ethical and political theory, but given their his- torical materialism, the study of history and economics generally seems to them more important. It has been left to some subsequent Marxists (including some of the Praxis group from what was formerly Yugoslavia) to stress the importance of what Marx and Engels did not entirely over- look, but de-emphasized. Arguably Marx and Engels have a concept of collective autonomy or self-determination which requires for its realization as freedom growth in understanding of historical laws and an ending of the exploitation and domination of some classes by others. In the twentieth century a plethora of political and intel- lectual developments shaped political philosophy. For a long time, after the Russian Revolution and before recent changes, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the main political positions thought by many to be in con- tention were one or another variety of liberalism (includ- ing under this broad category the sort of *‘conservativism’ which argues for a limited state, ‘free markets’, private property, and certain other traditional values) and Marx- ism. This sort of opposition was always over-simplified. Two counter-examples can be mentioned. In the USA John Dewey’s avowedly democratic pragmatism was indebted both to Hegelianism and at times even to aspects of Marxism, but also preserved many features of the legacy of liberalism. Dewey’s respect for scientific method, although tempered in later years, was combined with an interest in normative ‘democratically’ orientated thought of a non-utopian variety. Dewey asserted the importance of a critique of capitalist economic relations even as he tended to remain critical of Marxism. The concept of democratic community, used in a eulogistic way, is very prominent in Dewey. Within the quite distinct, broad and diverse tradition of anarchism, there had developed (over a long period, but especially from William Godwin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon on) a critique of centralized state power along with a critique of capitalism. Anarcho- syndicalism is a notable example. In more recent academic philosophy in the English-speaking world, these bodies of work have had some but rather limited influence. Recent academic political philosophy in English has been mostly a quarrel among liberalisms (well exemplified by the con- trast between John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, with its two principles of justice constructed by an autonomous choice by rational beings in the ‘original position’ behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, and Robert Nozick’s ‘conservative’ (old- liberal), rights-centred (though selectively so), pro-capitalist, minimal-state Anarchy, State, and Utopia) the practical rele- vance of which may have been diminished by recent eco- nomic and political changes. Since the widely proclaimed ‘end of the Cold War’ between capitalism and *commu- nism, with the collapse of Soviet communism and a decline in living-standards in parts of the capitalist world, including some dependent regions, both Marxism and militant free-market capitalism have come to seem to some observers (rightly or wrongly) no longer as straight- forwardly relevant as was once the case. Also, in recent political philosophy, *‘communitarianism’ has come to be a label applied to a variety of views stressing ideas about community and critical of individualist liberalism. Com- munitarians (including Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, and perhaps Michael Walzer) are political philosophy, history of 733 sometimes critical of liberalism, but sometimes are them- selves types of liberals. There may perhaps at other times have been a more assured consensus on which great authors should be included in the canon of ‘Western’ political philosophy, and less suspicion of the very idea of a canon. Feminists, certain minorities in the ‘developed world’, and persons from the ‘underdeveloped world’, among others, have made a compelling case for reassessment of the traditional canon. Then, too, the growth of descriptive and explan- atory studies relevant to political philosophy (not a sudden development, but a tendency with a long history of its own) as well as normative work in other disciplines has complicated study of the history of political philosophy. Subjects such as political science, anthropology, soci- ology, history, jurisprudence, literary studies, and the like sometimes generate work which deserves inclusion in the category of political philosophy. Some of the most inter- esting discussions in political philosophy over the last few decades in the English-speaking world, for example, have involved philosophers who are also legal scholars (say, H. L. A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, and propo- nents of critical legal studies such as Roberto Unger). The idea of autonomy (requiring for its intelligibility some value-laden picture of a community with its main constitutive institutions) has been central in much import- ant Western political philosophy, especially for modernity. Autonomy has been considered a crucial part of human welfare, a focus for describing favoured political institu- tions such as democratic government, and a notion useful in supporting other notions such as political obligation, rights, justice, and the like. Whether the idea of autonomy should survive critique (especially critique from the descriptive-explanatory side of the subject) remains to be seen, but the idea’s defeat would require a radical shift in political perspective. Isaiah Berlin distinguishes negative and positive freedom in politics and opts to support the former as a primary value. (For Benjamin Constant in the nineteenth century, similarly, the liberties of the ancients and the moderns are fundamentally different, and the ancient emphasis on political participation and public life is no longer appropriate in the modern world.) For Berlin, positive freedom (often denominated autonomy) is recog- nizable in many great philosophers, including Plato, Rousseau, and Marx, but allegedly easily leads to totalitar- ian excesses. Arguably, Berlin’s view is exaggerated, and has been effectively criticized by Charles Taylor in his paper ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’. This family of concepts of freedom as autonomy, combined with an institutionally detailed account of community, still has an important potential use for any political philosophy critical of arbitrary political and economic power. e.t.s. *equality; inequality; republicanism; socialism. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958), in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, 1969). D. Boucher and P. Kelly (eds.), Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present (Oxford, 2003). Benjamin Constant, ‘The Liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns’ (1820), in Benjamin Constant: Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge, 1988). Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd edn. (Notre Dame, Ind., 1984). D. D. Raphael, Concepts of Justice (Oxford, 2001). George Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd edn. (New York, 1961). political philosophy, problems of. Political philosophy in Western civilization began as the philosophy of the ancient Greek polis (the Greek word from which ‘political’ is derived). Accordingly, political philosophy in its incep- tion took as its subject how best to govern and to live in a city-state of that day. Its goal was the creation and preser- vation of an ideal society. Although Plato devoted several dialogues to issues of political philosophy, it is his Republic (c.380 bc) that is arguably the most memorable, widely read, and pioneering contribution to the subject. Apart from the question of its actual influence on statecraft, it provided both theorists and practitioners with a model of a political philosophy in which the author undertook to identify a range of problems concerning governance and social order, and then tried to ground their solution on appropriate metaphysical, epistemological, and anthro- pological principles. These solutions in their turn raised questions of educational philosophy, both moral and cognitive, because in the absence of the right sort of educational regimen there is (or so Plato argued) no hope of at least creating (let alone preserving) the ideal society that was the intended purpose or aim of political philosophy. In the centuries after Plato, the problems of political philosophy ceased to focus on the governance of face-to- face societies on the scale of the ancient city-state. Today, especially, it is much larger political units, typically nation- states (with their increasingly global scope) that are the political entities whose structure is under discussion. What might be called the apparent Platonic prejudice in favour of identifying the ideal, possibly even an ideal beyond reach, has been generally subordinated by polit- ical philosophers to what might be called the Kantian prejudice in favour of exploring the presuppositions of the actual as well as the ideal political possibilities. From this perspective, and despite the importance of the Republic, it is Aristotle rather than Plato who provided philosophy with its first genuine political treatise. In his Politics (c.330 bc) Aristotle made no attempt to imitate his teacher’s style of presentation, which was to use imagin- ary dialogues between Socrates and his companions to sketch a portrait of the ideal society, its origin, and the obstacles to its preservation. Instead, Aristotle’s treatise concentrates on stating, defending, and applying the prin- ciples that governments actually as well as ideally rely on. Yet it was not only in style that Aristotle deviated from Plato. On the most fundamental question—what is the nature and structure of the ideal society—they differed radically. Plato argued in the Republic that there is exactly one form of ideal state, its class structure is based on the 734 political philosophy, history of fixed differential capacities of its citizenry, rigidly orches- trated so that each class of persons performs the tasks for which the natural talents of its members best fits them. Aristotle in his Politics is far more tolerant of diverse forms of government and social structure. He saw advantages under the right conditions for allocating governing authority in any of three main ways: monarchy, aristoc- racy, and ‘polity’. (The latter is roughly what we would call constitutional democracy. Plato in the Republic insisted on rule by philosopher-kings.) The problems of political philosophy (in the material mode) that have preoccupied thinkers for the past several centuries are essentially the questions (in the formal mode) concerning political life and institutions. These are what the authors of the great treatises in political philoso- phy since the Reformation and Renaissance have endeav- oured to answer, plus an array of issues and questions to which those answers in their turn have given rise. Thus to identify these problems and some of the major proposed solutions to them, one must quarry in works as diverse as Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), John Locke’s Second Treatise (1690), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762), William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), G. F. W. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1830), J. S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859), T. H. Green’s Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (1895), Friedrich Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty (1960), John Rawls’s Theory of Justice (1972), and Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action (1984, 1987). This is to name but a representative few of the best-known. The problems of political philoso- phy that these philosophers undertake to solve would appear to be divisible, at least provisionally, into three dis- tinct sets differentiated from each other in various ways and subject to solution by different methods. Given the range and complexity of matters that can legitimately be considered relevant to the goals of political philosophy, it is hardly surprising that a vast library exists of attempts to deal with those problems in both abstract theoretical and relatively practical terms. First and foremost, there are problems of political phil- osophy that are essentially conceptual. Thus, Plato opens book 1 of the Republic by asking, What is justice?, and Aris- totle opens book 3 of the Politics by asking, What is a state? Political philosophies will differ from one another as they vary in their starting places, as they provide different con- ceptions of certain central ideas, and as they allot greater or lesser centrality to the values represented by a given concept in their theory. These concepts play a double role: first, they are proper topics of philosophical inquiry in their own right; second, they serve as the building-blocks of any possible political theory. Although there is no canonical set of such concepts, virtually every compre- hensive political philosophy will find it necessary to explain, in order to use effectively, many if not all of the following three dozen concepts: *authority, *autonomy, *citizenship, *coercion, *collective responsibility, *com- munity, *consent, *desert, devolution, *duty, *equality, *fairness, *justice, *law, *liberty, *loyalty, majority rule, *obligation, order, ownership, *power, *property, public interest, *punishment, representation, *rights, slavery, social class, *society, sovereignty, *State, *terrorism, *toleration, *violence, welfare, *well-being. The variety and complexity of these concepts, and the interconnections among them, show that the problems of political philoso- phy overlap, intersect, and merge with the problems of legal, social, economic, ethical, and educational philoso- phy. In so far as the task of political philosophy is thought to be one primarily of analysis and clarification, concep- tual questions will be regarded as fundamental. Some philosophers have gone so far as virtually to iden- tify the problems of political philosophy with all and only the problems that can be settled by conceptual analysis. Notable examples can be found in T. D. Weldon’s Vocabu- lary of Politics (1953), Anthony Quinton’s Political Philoso- phy (1967), and Felix E. Oppenheim’s Political Concepts: A Reconstruction (1981). The self-denying approach manifest in these volumes was mainly a product of the positivistic and linguistic phases of general philosophy in the mid- twentieth century, when all philosophical problems were held to be ‘conceptual’, and the only method of philo- sophical discussion was ‘analytic’. By the end of the cen- tury this approach had few if any adherents. There is no doubt that conceptual questions are central to any pos- sible political philosophy, as they are (or at least have been) to the nature of philosophical problems generally. But as politics itself is a matter of eminently practical importance, its philosophical problems must reflect this fact. The discussion of nothing but conceptual ques- tions—even questions about political concepts—cannot suffice for the task. This brings us to the second category of problems, the normative, in which a philosopher undertakes to state and defend substantive principles that can serve to answer normative questions. Among them are these: What prin- ciples ought to be adopted and enforced such that compli- ance with them will achieve social justice? What principles are used and presupposed in defending a given political practice or institution? Just as there is no established canon of the conceptual issues in political philosophy, so there is no fixed set of normative principles in the workshop of political philosophy. Yet some questions are so central and typical that they arise again and again across the centuries for anyone who reflects on social order and disorder and the lessons they teach about human frailty and aspir- ations. A partial list looks like this: What is the proper scope and role of law in providing conditions for social stability? What forms of coercion to secure compliance with just laws are permissible? Under what conditions, if any, may the citizen violate the law and even forcibly resist its enforcement? What conditions must be satisfied if non- violent resistance to lawful orders are to be justified? Is there any legitimate role for violence against persons or property in a constitutional democracy? Can political terrorism be justified, at least as a last resort? What rights, if any, apart from those provided by the laws of the land, do individuals or groups have? What obligations do individuals have to political philosophy, problems of 735 obey the laws and governments set over them, and what is the source of these obligations? How can political author- ity best be reconciled with individual autonomy? To what extent ought individuals to be left free to bargain with others in acquiring and transferring property, including even property in their own bodies and lives? How should conflicts between social utility (efficiency) and distribu- tive justice (equity) be resolved? Under what conditions, if any, should claims based on the equal worth of all persons prevail over considerations of efficiency? Is a strict merit- ocracy a threat to equality? How free are persons when the options among which they must choose are not all of their own making? What normative principles in general ought to be seen as presupposed by preferred political practices and policies, and how are these principles to be justified? Again, in this more practical arena there are many questions that political philosophy needs to deal with. Standard political philosophies or ideologies, such as anarchism, fascism, totalitarianism, socialism, commu- nism, liberalism (whether in its contractarian, utilitarian, or libertarian versions), and communitarianism are con- stituted by their different answers to these and related questions. In so far as the task of political philosophy is thought to involve justifying a set of political institutions of one sort rather than of another—or, at a minimum, evaluating them—it is the answers to these normative questions that form the core of political philosophy. But how philosophers ought to answer the normative ques- tions of political philosophy admits of no simple answer. This question is itself one of the perennial higher-order problems of political philosophy. In addition to conceptual and normative problems, sys- tematic and comprehensive political thinking also involves various empirical problems. By way of illustra- tion, consider these questions: Which institutions and practices are appropriate to implement the principles of distributive justice? How can the self-interest of governors and other officials be harnessed to serve the interest of the general public? What constitutional mechanisms will pro- vide effective checks on executive power without causing governmental paralysis? Does equality of opportunity require inequality of liberty? Which forms of punish- ment—corporal, incarcerative, pecuniary, etc.—provide the most effective deterrence to crime? What constraints do the best political principles impose on the recourse to punishment? Is a capitalist economy causally related to liberal-democratic political institutions? How plastic is human nature? In raising questions such as these—questions that are at least in part answerable only by empirical inquiry and data from history and the social sciences—we not only approach but actually cross the boundary that divides political philosophy from political science. (We might think of political theory as a third point, along with polit- ical science and political philosophy, the three of which tri- angulate a space subdivided by somewhat vague and elastic boundaries.) Although every classic political philosophy contains views on some empirical questions (they are prominent in Aristotle, rarer in Plato), most philosophers today would argue that to the extent that such questions can be answered only by experiential data, systematic observation, the investigation of practices, statistical methods, and the answers then devoted to describing, predicting, or explaining individual or group behaviour, to precisely that extent the questions are not philosophical at all. For practical political purposes it is constantly necessary to ask and answer such questions, but philosophy has little or nothing to contribute to the answers. Such a convenient and familiar sorting of the problems of political philosophy into conceptual, normative, and empirical categories, however, eventually runs afoul of two difficulties. The lesser is that as the boundaries between concepts, norms, and empirical generalizations are themselves somewhat blurred and uncertain, particu- lar cases will arise—often these are among the most inter- esting cases—where the attempt to keep the problems and their methods of solution precise and distinct from each other will fail. Consider a question such as this, brought to prominence in John Rawls’s Theory of Justice: Would a rational and self-interested person situated behind a veil of ignorance choose some version of the principle of utility as the fundamental principle for the society in which he expects to live? Is this question primarily conceptual or normative? or is it partly empirical? or perhaps a mixture of two or even all three of these? The graver difficulty arises from (in the phrase of W. B. Gallie) the ‘essentially contested’ nature of political con- cepts. Their analysis and interpretation typically is shaped by implicit practical concerns. Or, to put the point another way, the central political concepts are not—and so cannot be used as if they were—merely descriptive and unblem- ished by the ideological concerns of the philosopher who employs them. As a result, what may begin by seeming to be the wholly neutral task of defining or analysing a polit- ical concept will probably end by merging subtly (and per- haps tacitly) with normative considerations. Thus, the image—(and for some, the ideal)—of unbiased, ideologic- ally neutral answers to the problems of political philoso- phy is likely to be elusive at best. It is considerations of this sort that are the first step toward a post-modernist perspective on political theory. Cutting orthogonally across the distinctions among the conceptual, the normative, and the empirical problems of political philosophy is the contrast between pure and applied philosophy and the issues properly belonging to each. For every great treatise in political philosophy, from Hobbes to Rawls, in which conceptual and normative problems in their pure form are addressed to the relative exclusion of empirical and applied issues, there are as many and more essays and books by thinkers hardly less eminent that focus on making first-order political judge- ments, evaluating the prevailing political order, and proposing revisionary (even revolutionary) practices and policies—as evidenced by such classic tracts as Thoman 736 political philosophy, problems of Paine’s Rights of Man (1791–2), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848), J. S. Mill’s The Subjec- tion of Women(1862), Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1906), and R. H. Tawney’s Equality (1931). More recent works written in this vein include F. A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (1944), Karl Popper’s Open Society and its Enemies (1945), Jean-Paul Sartre’s On Genocide (1968), Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975), Michel Foucault’s Discip- line and Punish (1975), Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars (1975), Onora O’Neill’s Faces of Hunger (1986), Amartya Sen’s Inequality Reexamined (1992), and Ted Hon- derich’s After the Terror (2002). In books such as these, philosophers have displayed their interest in evaluating and criticizing substantive political, social, and economic practices and institutions, and they have done so by relying on and invoking principles and ideals not themselves the primary focus of the author’s argumentative or analytic attention. The problems thus addressed are more plaus- ibly viewed, many would argue, as mainly or wholly polit- ical rather than philosophical. Yet it would be a mistake to press this distinction too hard; to do so would be to ignore some of the most interesting and influential contributions philosophers have made to some of the problems that fall on the boundary between political advocacy and applied political philosophy. As the history of political philosophy shows, what inter- ests philosophers is shaped in part by the great issues of the day. These typically provide the fuel not only for political organization and agitation but for political reflection as well. And as these issues change over tine, with the chang- ing material circumstances of life, so do the paramount problems of political philosophy. Thus, ancient writers were concerned to explain how the state emerged from family and tribal units, a problem that political philosophers today are happy to leave to cul- tural and historical anthropology. Late medieval and early modern philosophers focused on the proper division of authority between church and state, the sacred and the secular, another set of issues largely ignored by philoso- phers in recent decades (though there is some possibility that they may return to the agenda because of the increased number of sectarian fundamentalist religious movements world-wide). The explorations, conquests, and colonizations by Europeans of African, Indian, Ameri- can, and Asian peoples four centuries ago provoked philosophers to reflect on the nature of property, free- dom, and rights as these issues became focused in the twin practices of enslaving native peoples and colonizing their territories. With the struggle to promote liberal demo- cratic ideas in Western Europe since the Protestant Reform- ation, problems of political equality versus inequality, of tradition and stability versus liberation and progressive change, or collective versus centralized political decision- making, and of individual autonomy versus communal solidarity came to dominate the concerns of political phil- osophy just as they dominated political debate and polit- ical struggle during the same period. The Industrial Revolution, factory labour, and imperialism of the nine- teenth century forced new sets of problems and new ways of conceptualizing human relations on to the agenda of political philosophy. Such vexed matters as racism, sex- ism, ageism, human population growth, maldistribution of the world’s material resources, and the unremitting assault on the natural environment, are all issues that bedevil governments and provoke partisan disagreement and, accordingly, have begun to find a place on the agenda of political philosophy as well. h.a.b. *morality in political philosophy; social philosophy. Brian Barry, Political Argument (London, 1965). S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters, The Principles of Political Thought (New York, 1965). Adam Finlayson (ed.), Contemporary Political Thought: A Reader and Guide (Edinburgh, 2003). Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (eds.), A Companion to Contem- porary Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1993). Virginia Held, Kai Nielsen, and Charles Parsons (eds.), Philosophy and Political Action (Oxford, 1972). Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1990). Peter Laslett et al. (eds.), Philosophy, Politics, and Society (Oxford, 1956– ). Nomos (New York, 1958– ), various eds., yearbook of the Ameri- can Society of Political and Legal Philosophy. Michael Rosen and Jonathan Wolff (eds.), Political Thought (Oxford, 1999). Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, Ill., 1959). political scepticism. V. S. Naipaul observed that in the late twentieth century the opium of the people was not religion but politics. Naipaul is certainly expressing a widespread and justifiable suspicion after high hopes had been raised about just what politicians and politics can achieve, but this need not amount to political scepticism in any systematic sense. Such scepticism derives from two sources. First, there is the sociological observation, enshrined in public choice theory, that bureaucrats and politicians tend to serve themselves and the interest of their bureaucracies before those of their clients. This would explain recent phenomenal increases of state power, even where governments are ostensibly commit- ted to reducing it. Then, secondly, there are doubts, par- ticularly associated with Hayek and Oakeshott, about whether centrally planned political attempts to achieve results are ever well directed or based on enough inform- ation to make them truly rational. The moral of both these points would seem to be to reduce government as much and as quickly as possible, but with the paradoxical proviso that in most countries it would need a massive political initiative to do so. a.o’h. *conservatism. John Gray, Limited Government (London, 1989). political violence: see violence, political. politics and determinism. Setting aside the special cases of economic and historical determinism, the clearest con- sequences of *determinism in politics are for a cluster of ideas about punishment and reward, in which the concept politics and determinism 737 of *desert is central. Conservative advocates of tougher sentencing are apt to stress the mischievousness and evil of criminals, just as they discount the circumstances and aetiology of criminal behaviour. Tougher punishment, they argue, is what evil men and women deserve. Philoso- phers disagree about the implications of determinism for responsibility and punishment (*compatibilism and incompatibilism), but there is at least one understanding of desert that takes it to follow from actions that are wholly within the power of the agent, and which is there- fore incompatible with determinism. Indeterminism is thus a natural accompaniment to beliefs that some crim- inals are evil out of their own choosing and deserve to be punished for it. The argument about the compatibility of determinism with responsibility and punishment can be viewed, there- fore, as a theoretical counterpart to the political debate about how much weight should be given to social depriv- ation in combating crime. The idea that unequal possession of wealth is more or less deserved is also a recognizable (though not universal) feature of conservative thought. It is argued that since left- wing thought about distribution can be said to be founded on a principle of equality rather than desert, *conser- vatism, by contrast, is especially vulnerable to determin- ism. Desert is less fundamental to conservative thinking about distribution, however, than it is to conservative ideas about crime and punishment: conservatives will more readily acknowledge the role of circumstance and luck in the distribution of property than in the causes of crime. k.m. *historical determinism. D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1975), iii. ii. K. Joseph and J. Sumption, Equality (London, 1979). T. Honderich, A Theory of Determinism (Oxford, 1988). politics and the philosophers. Before the professional- ization of the universities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, political service of one kind or another was the main alternative to the Church as a source of steady income for a good many philosophers. As a result, many have had cause to dabble in politics. From ancient times onwards, however, philosophers have debated whether they should seek to guide their political masters according to their philosophical ideals or whether instead they should adapt their skills to the political requirements of the moment. Plato offered the model for the first view, and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Dionysius I and his successor Dionysius II of Syracuse in Sicily to adopt a code of laws modelled on his political ideas. *Enlighten- ment thinkers also followed this approach, hoping to turn the monarchs of their time into philosopher-kings. Voltaire briefly sought to serve Frederick the Great in this capacity, for example, and Diderot was taken up by Catherine the Great. Bentham’s numerous attempts to get governments to take up his various constitutional schemes and reforms, such as his proposal for an ideal prison based on his Panopticon design, also fits into this line of thinking. In the twentieth century Gentile believed he had persuaded Mussolini that Fascism was the embod- iment of his actualist philosophy, whilst Heidegger tried with rather less success to make similar claims about Nazism, and Lukács and Sartre even more disastrously about Stalinism. However, all these philosophers gener- ally discovered that even when politicians invite their advice they rarely take it, or only do so for as long as it proves convenient, leaving the philosopher looking polit- ically naïve. Machiavelli offers the model for the second view. Superficially this tack seems less honourable, requiring the philosopher to adapt his or her ideals to the prevailing political wind. However, as we have seen, it has generally been the first view that has involved philosophers in being the dupes of tyrants, whereas the second has proved both more democratic and more successful. Locke, for example, acted as medical adviser and ideologist in residence for the Earl of Shaftesbury, and although the initial failure of his patron’s political activities briefly forced him into exile, his services to the Whig cause were ultimately rewarded with a number of government offices. Tom Paine was per- haps the democratic philosopher par excellence, contribut- ing theoretical support to both the American and the French Revolutions, and causing the British government to prosecute and outlaw him for seditious libel in the process. Modern examples include the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, whose philosophy was intimately con- nected to his activity as one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, and Bertrand Russell, who played a major role in the pacifist movement during the First World War and was one of the leading lights of the Cam- paign for Nuclear Disarmament during the 1950s. In general, however, philosophers have found them- selves wavering between these two positions. They have been deeply ambivalent about politics and rarely success- ful at it, perhaps because whilst compromise is a political virtue it is rarely regarded as a philosophical one. Burke’s end-of-poll address to the voters of Bristol, in which he stressed that the duty of the MP was representation rather than delegation, epitomizes the resulting ambivalence of philosophers towards politics. Unsurprisingly, the elect- orate rejected him at the next election, and he sat for the rest of his parliamentary career for a rotten borough in the gift of his patron, Lord Rockingham. J. S. Mill’s parliamen- tary career was not dissimilar. MP for Westminster from 1865 to 1868, he confined his electioneering to telling his electorate that it was unnecessary for him to consult them directly since he undoubtedly knew their own interests better than they themselves. In recent times John Hospers is one of the few philosophers to enter the electoral lists, standing in 1972 as the first Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in the United States—he polled 5,000 votes. r.p.b. M. Cranston, Philosophers and Pamphleteers (Oxford, 1986). J. Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics (New Haven, Conn., 1965). M. Walzer, The Company of Critics (London, 1989). 738 politics and determinism Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525). Italian Aristotelian philosopher who provoked a controversy in 1516 with his treatise De Immortalitate Animae. Defying a decree of the Fifth Lateran Council (1513) which enjoined philosophers to teach that the personal immortality of the soul was demonstrable on rational grounds, he maintained that neither Aristotelian philosophy nor reason provided support for Christian dogma. He claimed to accept the authority of the Church as a matter of faith, but refused to allow such considerations to influence his judgement in the realm of philosophy, whose autonomy he staunchly defended. Despite attempts to convict him of heresy, he was able to hold on to his chair at the University of Bologna. Fearing another uproar, he forbore to publish a treatise in which he explained miracles in terms of astrological influ- ences and other forms of occult causation. j.a.k. M. Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Italian Renais- sance (Padua, 1986). pons asinorum (Latin: asses’ bridge). Proof given of the- orem 5 in book 1 of Euclid’s Elements (concerning the angles of isosceles triangles): inability to follow the proof is supposed to demonstrate stupidity. In medieval times the theorem was described as elefuga, the flight of the miserable (from geometry). The term is sometimes applied to Pythagoras’ theorem, sometimes to a medieval logic teaching aid, and sometimes to any argument sup- posed to separate intellectual sheep from goats. m.c. Popper, Karl (1902–94). British (originally Austrian) philosopher, whose considerable reputation rests on his philosophy of science and his political philosophy. In his early work he was associated with the positivists of the *Vienna Circle, and shared their interest in distinguishing between science and other activities. However, Popper did not think that it was possible to approach that (or any other philosophical problem) by an analysis of language or meaning, nor did he see the success of science in terms of its being more verifiable than, say, ethics or metaphysics. For Popper always took a sceptical Humean stand on *induction, as a result of which he claimed it is impossible to verify or even to confirm a universal scientific theory with any positive degree of probability. What we can do, though, is to disprove a universal theory. While no number of observations in conformity with the hypo- thesis that, say, all planets have elliptical orbits can show that the hypothesis is true or even that tomorrow’s planet will have an elliptical orbit, only one observation of a non-elliptical planetary orbit will refute the hypothesis. Falsification can get a grip where positive proof is ever beyond us; the demarcation between science and non- science lies in the manner in which scientific theories make testable predictions and are given up when they fail their tests. Popper, in contrast to the Logical Positivists, never held that non-scientific activities were meaningless or even intellectually disreputable. What is disreputable is *pseudo-science, which arises when holders of an empirical theory refuse to be deflected by observational disproof or where a supposedly scientific theory never makes any empirical predictions. Popper convicts Marx- ists of the first sin and psychoanalysts of the second, con- trasting them with a true scientist like Einstein. Questions, though, remain. Is it true that scientists always reject their theories when faced with counter- evidence, as Popper says they should? And if the most we can ever do in science is to disprove theories, how do we know which theories to believe and act on? Popper says that we ought to act on those theories which have survived severe testing. His critics, though, find this hard to distinguish from the induction he officially rejects. The themes of human ignorance and the need for crit- ical scrutiny of ideas are also prominent in Popper’s polit- ical philosophy. This is an advocacy of so-called open societies against the pretensions of planners and polit- icians who claim the right to impose their blueprints on the rest of us by virtue of supposed knowledge of the course of history. There can be no such knowledge. History is affected by discoveries we will make in the future, and do not know now. Moreover, any policy, however well- intentioned, has unforeseeable and unintended conse- quences. The only way to overcome our ignorance is to allow those affected by policies to voice their criticisms and for people in a society to be able peacefully and regu- larly to change their rulers. This last right, rather than for- mal democracy, is the mark of the open society, a concept taken for granted in the western Europe, but of increasing interest currently in eastern Europe and South America. In his later years, Popper placed his theory of scientific and political error-seeking within a generalized theory of evolution. He also defended versions of scientific realism, *indeterminism, and *dualism with commendable valour, if not always with great subtlety of argument. a.o’h. *hypothetics-deductive method; Logical Positivism; London philosophy. A. O’Hear, Karl Popper (London, 1980). K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959); tr. of Logik der Forschung (Vienna, 1935). —— The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols. (London, 1945). —— Conjectures and Refutations (London, 1963). —— Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972). popular philosophy. There are three main kinds of popu- lar philosophy: first, general guidance about the conduct of life; secondly, amateur consideration of the standard, technical problems of philosophy; thirdly, philosophical popularization. At the start some recognition should be given to a movement explicitly called ‘popular philosophy’ in mid- and late eighteenth-century Germany. Its leader was Moses Mendelssohn, and it set itself against obscure tech- nicalities and systematic elaboration, in the interests of closeness to experience and usefulness for life. The acqui- sition of imperial authority by Kant soon put an end to this project, and installed a style of German philosophy from which even Christian Wolff would have shrunk. popular philosophy 739 . debated whether they should seek to guide their political masters according to their philosophical ideals or whether instead they should adapt their skills to the political requirements of the moment the ideal society that was the intended purpose or aim of political philosophy. In the centuries after Plato, the problems of political philosophy ceased to focus on the governance of face -to- face. Arguably Plato has a concept of autonomy (and may well be an important contributor to the theory of autonomy) but thinks it is a realistic goal only for the few who are fit to rule, in contrast to some later