SPP
by Maaike Joustra
1. Machiavelli
1.1. Fortune: the sum of events, circumstances, situations and such that can be profited from by taking action
1.2. Virtue is the ability to profit from these events
1.3. Republicanism: Preference for individual liberty and a mixed constitution with popular institutions tempered by aristocratic leadership.
1.4. "raison d’Etat”, the idea that public interests override personal morality. He claims that morally questionable actions are “good” if they serve public utility.
1.5. Empirical method: examination of past and present events to derive general rules of political behaviour; rejection of priori principles.
1.6. Reason of state: the end(political stability) justifies and even dictates the means (cruelty and deception, if necessary)
1.7. Inductive method: he tried to base his conclusions on the collection and analysis of historical facts. He wanted to compare different approaches to politics throughout history and his present day in order to analyze the differences and conclude what works and what does not and to create historic laws based on the differences.
2. Marx
2.1. Forces of production: how products get produced
2.2. Relations of production: how producing these products relate socially
2.3. Modes of production: social systems, that themselves relate forces to relations of productions
2.4. Commodity: the form taken by the product under capitalism, entailing displacement of use value by exchange value
2.4.1. use value: usefullness
2.4.2. exchange value: exchange ability
2.5. Fetishism of commodities: how commodities take on a "life" of their own under capitalism
2.6. Ideology: a body of thought that is slanted towards one group in society
3. Mill
3.1. Rights are institutionally protected interests, or in the case of moral rights, those interests that ought to be protected by law.
3.2. Individuality: the ideal or good that is derived from a regime of liberty
3.3. Utility: the sum of pleasures over pains
3.3.1. Higher pleasures: those pleasures that an educated and cultivated person would not sacrifice for any amount of sensual pleasures
3.4. The "Harm principle": Mill's doctrine of liberty depends on the view that the only principle to which we should appeal when deciding to prohibit an action is whether it causes to harm another.
3.5. Self regarding actions those actions protected by the realm of personal liberty and for which an individual is exempt from social and polital compulsion
3.6. Act-utilitarianism: the idea that the right action is that which maximizes utility
3.7. Rule-utilitarianism: the idea that the right action is that prescribed by a rule which itself maximizes utility
4. Dewey
5. Kant
5.1. have the courage to think!
6. Hegel
6.1. State, enforcing law, needed because morality alone is not enough.
6.2. Dialectic- get to a conclusion or solution by using contradictions - also applies to the objective/subjective freedom - contradiction which leads to the ultimate idea.
6.3. Objective freedom is freedom from the outside. Not freedom in current state but need of outside.
6.4. Spirit: a term used to designate three levels of reality in his theory 1. The individual human being. (me) 2. A human group that posseses a culture (the group) 3. God (what i should aim for)
6.5. In civil society is kind of morality, more social. Close from Locks account. People could rule themselves in civil society by exchanging goods. Mutual advantages.
6.6. a small microcummunity should have power; the elite
6.7. Will: the practical, active part of the spirit or mind. That which enjoys freedom
6.8. Freedom: the will is free when its ends are "its own", so that it is self-determining. This is when the objective and subjective condition are satisfied.
6.8.1. objective condition: requires that the will reflects on its ends and endorse them on the basis of the given desires and goals
6.8.2. subjective condition: will has to persue the ends and goals that are rational
7. Rousseau
7.1. liberal for his emphasis on personal autonomy.
7.2. “totalitarian” for wanting to impose patriotic virtues
7.3. the state of nature: used as a theoretical device to show the contingency of human development. The prominent motivating factors in the state of nature are self-preservation and pity.
7.4. The social contract:a form of government that, in his eyes, would serve the common good and that would allow us to become morally just and virtuous. Everyone should give up their rights to the community, so that all citizens become the sovereign. Rousseau argues that no one has natural authority over another man, and also that violence does not grant a person a right to the property or person of another. Because of this, the only legimitate authority possible arises from convention.
7.5. "Amour de soi", self-love, this keeps us from harming others.
7.6. "Amour de propre", vanity. In society humans are perverted and become egoïstic, people will start comparing themselves with others and try to impress each other.
7.7. The source of the inequality that exists in modern society is the invention of property.
7.8. denied that there are innate moral or natural laws: if this would be the case, he argues, there would be no need to teach men anything
7.9. particular will: what we want when our judgement is dominated by passion
7.10. the real, or general will: what is reasonable for us to want. This general will reflects the common good, and to go against it is to go against your own real will.
7.11. Christianity made people gullible and easy to opress
7.12. Women are 'weak and passive' compared to men
8. Hobbes
8.1. absolutism: unconditional and unified sovereign authority; no collective right of resistance
8.2. Egoism: individuals motivated by self-interest
8.3. Political obligation: individuals relinquish natural rights with the exeption of the right of self-preservation
8.4. Law: equated with the will of the sovereign.
8.5. The social contract: a contract between subjects creating an absolute government
8.6. sovereignty: absolute, with a preference for monarchy
8.7. The state of nature: war of all against all in which life would be 'solidarity, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
9. Locke
9.1. Equality: everyone in the state is born equal, althought there is some dispute over whether women were included in this conception
9.2. Executive power of the law of nature: no one has any right to exercise power over another and hence everyone has executive power in the state of nature.
9.3. Religious toleration: Catholics have an obligation to Rome while atheists have no foundation for their promises and are therefore dangerous for the state
9.4. Express and tacit consent: the exercise of authority over one person by another can only be effected bu consent, which may be explicit and overt, as in swearing and oath of allegiance, or it may be indicated by the mere fact that a person enjoys the protection of the laws of a country
9.5. Liberty vs. licence: liberty is to act within the constraints of the natural law, whereas licence is to be motivated by passion and passions and may be unfriendly to social life
9.6. Mixing one's labour: mixing one's labour with something is a sign of appropriation (toeeigening) and gives one title to the object
9.7. private property: with the invention of money and the setting up of political society, people are permitted unlimited amount of accumulation of private property
9.7.1. natural right: we all posses natural rights in the state of nature and they are independent of government
9.8. Right to revolution: Lock is an advocate of constitutional power, if government act outside the constitutional constraints, people have the right of resistance "appeal to heaven"
9.9. Social contract: The social contract establishes political soctiety (the state of nature already is social), and a second stage establishes government. If government falls, politcal society remains and new government can be formed
10. Aristotle
10.1. Human nature: man is a social and political animal
10.2. polis: ethical and political sommunity based on commitement to shar values. Because human beings are equal by nature, slavery is justified.
10.3. ethics: the ultimate goal and best life for human beings
10.3.1. eudaimonia: life of virtue
10.3.2. most important virtue is justice
10.4. natural justice: equity and proportional equality
10.5. politics: commitement to constitutionalism, rule of law
11. Plato
11.1. Forms: intelligible, unchanging objects, accessible to the mind but not the senses, which provide the only reliable standards for knowledge and good judgement.
11.1.1. Form of the good: the chief of these, on which the others depend both for their being and their knowability.
11.1.1.1. By looking at the Form of the good, of which he alone has knowledge, philosophers discover the true blueprint for the best society.
11.1.1.1.1. The republic: Philosophers/Kings rule the people who live in the city. Guardians help to control the people.
11.1.1.1.2. Soul is just as republic also devided into three parts: rational (philosophers), spirited (guardians) and appetitive (producers).
11.1.1.1.3. strict cencorship of art, prevents people from being corrupted
12. Habermas
12.1. autonomy: the capacity for freedom or self-governance
12.2. civil society: the broad domain of private associations distuingished from both the polital state and the market economy, in which citizens form "public opions"about their common interest
12.3. Communicative action: social action that is both based on claims about shared interpetation of the world
12.4. Deliberative politics: a view of political process that promotes the search for reasoned agreement about the citizen's common good
12.5. Mutual understanding
12.6. Public sphere: where citizen's debate about different interpetations of the world and it's meaning
13. Foucault
13.1. History of system of thought
13.1.1. distinctive concept of discourse, which he defined in terms of rules governing the production of statements in a given empirical field at a given time.
13.1.1.1. Archaeology of knowledge