What is Political Philosophy?

- The problem of political philosophy is that it does not have an identity.

- Doxa greek: opinion
- Episteme greek: knowledge
- All political action aims at either preservation or change. To preserve is to prevent a
change to the worse. To change, we wish to bring about something better.
THEREFORE, all political action is guided by some thought of better and worse, and
this implies a thought of GOOD.
- The awareness of the good has the character of opinion.
- OPINION: no longer questioned, but questionable.
- KNOWLEDGE: no longer questioned and no longer questionable.
- POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY::SUBJECT MATTER, MANNER OF TREATMENT
- Oaths inevitable accompaniment of passionate speech.
- Philosophy quest for wisdom, universal knowledge, knowledge of the whole.
- Political philosophy attempt to replace opinions about the whole by knowledge of
the whole attempt to replace opinion about the nature of political things by
knowledge of the nature of political things and the right order
- Distinctive trait of the philosopher: he knows that he knows nothing
- The fact that philosophy will never reach the stage of decision does not make it futile
a thorough understanding of it is better than indifference to it.
- Political things must raise a claim to mens obedience, allegiance, decision or
judgment.
- Political thought: reflection and exposition of political ideas (laws and codes), political
philosophy is the relentless effort, an effort continuously in motion to replace opinion
with knowledge (treatise).
- Political theory: concerned with policies
- Political theology: political teachings based on divine revelation. Political philosophy,
however, is limited to what is accessible to the unassisted human mind.
- Political association: is the most comprehensive or the most authoritative association.
Social philosophy, on the other hand, conceives political association as only part of
the society.
- Political and natural sciences are non-philosophical. Scientific political science is
incompatible with political philosophy.
- Assumption has the character of opinions.
- Political goal is ambiguous because its character is comprehensive.
- Today, political philosophy is in a state of putrefaction or decay due to the two
great powers of the modern world: science and history.
- Positivism: Auguste Comte, modern science as the highest form of knowledge.
Separation of facts and values.
- For positivists, moral obtuseness is the necessary condition for scientific analysis.
- Looking at social science without value judgments leads to indifference to any goal,
or nihilism (denial of moral truth).
- Philistinism guided by materialism w/o regards to intellect.
- Four theoretical weaknesses of social science positivism:
- 1. Impossible to study social phenomena without making value judgments

2. Rejection of value judgments is based on the assumption that the conflicts

between different values or value systems are insoluble for human reason
3. Modern science as highest form of knowledge implies a depreciation of prescientific knowledge
4. Positivism necessarily transforms itself into historicism, which in turn ins the
serious antagonist of political philosophy.

CLASSICAL SOLUTION
- The classic was once said to be characterized by noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.
- NATURAL CHARACTER: contradistinction to what is human- guided by nature rather
than by convention, by inherited opinion, tradition, whims.
- Classical is non-traditional, because there was nothing came before it.
- Modern political thought has a derivative character. Abstract towards the concrete.
Abstraction as its starting point, abstract until the end.
- Regime: the political order- the guiding theme of political philosophy. It is the order,
the form, which gives society its character. It is a specific manner of life.
- Classical political philosophy is guided by the question of the best regime.
- Against democracy because it fosters a government by the educated.
MODERN SOLUTIONS
- Classical political philosophers: the goal of political life is virtue
- Order conducive to virtue is the Aristocratic republic
- The classical scheme, according to the modern thinkers, is unrealistic
- Founder of modern political philosophy is Machiavelli, whose work is based on a
critique of religion and a critique of morality.
- Averroism- gave rise to the notion of the three imposters
o According to the modern philosophers, there is something fundamentally
wrong with an approach to politics, which culminates in a utopia. This kind of
regime has an improbable actualization.
o Classical approach is based on the assumption that morality is something
substantial.
o Virtue can only be practiced only within society, so man must be habituated to
virtue by laws, customs, etc.
o Morality creates itself, and according to Machiavelli, the only reason to mold
the malleable man to do good is through institutions with teeth, because man
is not by nature directed toward virtue.
o One must define virtue in terms of the common good.
o Virtue is the sum of habits, which are required for or conducive to this end.
o Virtue is nothing but civic virtue, patriotism or devotion to collective
selfishness.
o The desire for glory is the link between badness and goodness.
o Used Christianity as a model: conquering by virtue of propaganda.
o The enlightenment began with Machiavelli.

One must lower the standards in order to make probable the actualization of
the right or desirable social order or in order to conquer chance- one must
effect a shift of emphasis from moral character to institutions.
o The right order was the Roman republic
o Machiavellis political teaching was a kind of decayed Aristotelianism which
means that it did not demonstrate the untenable character of teleological
natural science.
Hobbes- pivot of Hobbes political teaching is the desire for self-preservation or the
fear of violent death, or power (morally neutral). Leviathan.
Locke- acquisitiveness is his pivot political teaching because he realized that what
man primarily needs for his self-preservation is less a gun than food (taking away the
bloody violence).
Economism is Machiavellianism come of age, which is Montesquieus specialty (trade
and finance is his pivot of political teaching).
o

Rousseau- began the second wave of modernity. Returned to the world of the citizens
from the world of bourgeois (return to classical thought).
o Root of civil society is beyond self-preservation: the absolute beginning, the
feeling of existence.
o Civil society must be so constructed as to make the appeal from positive law
to natural law unnecessary: a civil society properly constructed in accordance
with natural will automatically produce just positive law.
- The third wave of modernity was started by Nietzsche. He says that the
fundamental experience of existence is therefore the experience, not of bliss, but
of suffering, of emptiness, of an abyss. This is directed to the individual, who will
revolutionize their own lives- forming new nobilities capable to rule the planet.