SYLLABUS

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 Lesson-1
Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Structure:
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Learning Objectives
1.2 Life and Work of Plato
1.3 Plato’s Theory of Justice
1.4 Theory of Communism
1.4.1 Communism as a Handmaid of Justice
1.4.2 Two 1.0 Introduction
1.1 Learning Objectives
1.2 Life and Work of Plato
1.3 Plato's Theory of Justice
1.4 Theory of Communism
1.4.1 Communism as a Handmaid of Justice
1.4.2 Two Main Forms of Plato's Communism
1.4.3 Partial Application of Plato's Communism
1.4.4 Communism of Property
1.4.5 Communism of Wives
1.4.6 Basis of Plato's Scheme of Communism
1.4.7 Plato's Communism Versus Modern Communism
1.5 Conception of the Philosopher King
1.5.1 Features of Plato's Rule of Philosopgy
1.5.2 Criticism
1.6 Summary
1.7 Check Your Progress
1.8 Glossary
1.9 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises
1.10 Suggested Readings
1.11 Terminal Questions
1.0 Introduction
Greek Political philosophy is one of those ancient political philosophies which the world has been able to preserve.
Its influence on European political institutions is undoubtedly profound and undisputed. It has by now been fully well
established that there were few other equally important contemporary philosophies but as the chance would have
been, other philosophies could not be preserved and as such they could not influence succeeding generations to any
considerable extent, whereas Greek philosophy could. Greek thinkers devoted their attention mainly to the nature of
the state and to man as a political animal. Early Greek Philosophy was developed by Sophists and Socrates. Although
Sophists and Socrates played an important role in the development of political thought in ancient Greece but no one
of them can be described as a systematic political thinker. This title applies very appropriately to Plato. He is the first
Greek philosopher to have written systematic treatises. In this lesson, we will discuss about Plato’s theory of Justice,
and his views on Communism and Philosopher King.
1.1 Learning Objectives
Dear Learner, after studying this lesson, you will be able to:
• Know about the life, works and political philosophy of Plato.
• Analyse Plato’s concept of Justice and.
• Comprehend his views on Communism and Philosopher King.
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1.2 Life and Works of Plato
Plato, whose real name was Aristocles, was born at Athens in 428 B.C., two years after the death of the great
Athenian statesman, Pericles, and about twenty years after the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war which ended in
the humiliation of his native city. He died in 348 B.C. at the age of over eighty years, when Macedonian militarism
was beginning to sweep everything before it. His life thus covers one of the most troubled periods of Greek history.
He witnessed the defeat of Athens in her war against Sparta, the tyrannical rule of reactionary oligarchs, the restoration
of democracy which tried and executed his beloved master Socrates, and the decline of the city state and its traditional
morality. So he lived in the period of political instability. It was because of this political instability that he searched
for those eternal principles of human conduct which could bring happiness to individual and stability to the state.
Plato came under the influence of Socrates in his early youth and remained with him till his execution. The entire
philosophy of Plato revolves round the Socratic doctrine: Virtue is knowledge. His political thought is found mainly
in the ‘Republic’, the ‘Statesman’, and ‘Laws’ though the ‘Apology’ and the ‘Crito’ also deal with the problem of the
relation of the state to the individual. Plato was a deductive thinker, who deduced all his political philosophy from
certain fundamental assumptions.
As regards different aspects or Plato’s philosophy, first of all we would discuss his theory of Justice.
1.3 Plato's Theory of Justice
Plato's political writings were the outcome of his dissatisfaction with the prevailing degenerate conditions in
Athens, his native city- state. The Athenian democracy was on the verge of ruin. It was only a democracy in name.
Actually there was the tyranny of few. Plato found in the contemporary politics, two great and serious flaws which
were, according to him, the cause of this ruin. One was the ubiquity of ignorance masquerading in the guise of
knowledge. The other was the political selfishness of the rulers and the ruled. The first defect was manifested by the
fact that the amateurs instead of the professionals were predominant in Athens. The Athenian democracy seemed only
to mean the right divine of the ignorant to govern wrong. The system of lottery for appointment to public offices was
mainly responsible for this. Any man, whatever his capacity might be appointed to the executive office only by the
sheer chance of lot. The second defect which was even more formidable was the result of the Sophists's, teachings of
the ethics of self-satisfaction. The Sophist taught that the individual was everything and that the state was a mere
means for the fulfillment of his desires. The violent, excessive and gross spirit of individualism induced the citizens
to capture the offices of the state or the better fulfillment of their own selfish purposes, and divided "Athens into two
hostile camps of the rich and the poor, the oppressors and the oppressed."
Evidently, these two factors-amateur meddlesomeness and excessive individualism became Plato's main targets
of attack in the Republic. The attack came in the form of the construction of an ideal state in which "Justice" reigned
supreme. The second title of the Republic i.e. "Concerning Justice" shows the important place which Plato gave to it.
Actually the fundamental issue of the Republic is the discovery of the nature and habitation of Justice.
Before we proofed along with in the search of Justice we must note the following points:
First, that Plato is a deductive thinker who deduces all his political philosophy from certain fundamental
assumptions. Incidentally the most consistent thinker as he is always true to his plan, one cannot accept his premises
and reject his conclusions.
Secondly, one of his fundamental assumptions is the tripartite division of man's mind into Reason, Spirit and
Appetite-and the Corresponding division of society into three classes i.e. the Rulers, the Soldiers and the Farmers.
Thirdly, the father of the Idealist School in Politics and Philosophy as he is, he could conceive of "beauty" without
there being a "beautiful thing", "Universal" carried a greater meaning for him than the "Particular". His indebtedness to
Socrates is evident in this respect.
Fourthly, in another aspect in which Plato was indebted to Socrates was his mater's master-idea that "Virtue is
Knowledge". The latter epigram simply meant that there could be no virtue knowledge.
Fifthly, in his attempt to discover justice, Plato adopts the 'negative approach'. That is he tells us what justice is no.
He firstly refuted the 'Prime Facie' theories of Justice and then gave us his own theory of Justice.
The first theory is that of Traditional morality which considers Justice to be "giving to every man his due." The
latter phrase result in the view that it consists in "doing good to one's friend and evil to enemies." Plato refutes this on
three grounds that (1) One's supposed friends may be friends only in appearance. (2) to do evil to anybody, including
our enemies is inconsistent with the most elementary conception of morality. (3) This view takes into consideration
only the relations between two individuals on the individualistic grounds and ignores the social whole which is the
raison d'etre of any theory of Justice.
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 The second theory is that of Radical morality held by the Sophists. The latter held two propositions ; (1) that
Justice is the interests of the stronger. That is, it identifies justice with potentia. The strongest and surest is to get
what he wants. And as a state the government is the strongest, it will get what it wants. Because if Justice is the interest
of the stronger, the justice for the people will be 'to seek the interest of the ruler." It will be unjust on the part of the
subjects to pursue their own interests.
(2) The second proposition of the Sophists is that injustice is better than justice. Thus Justice consists in obeying
authority were one must, and following one's own interests where one can. The Sophists, individualists as they were,
went to the extremes of gross individualism. It is this gross individualism that Plato wants the Republic to refute. He
wants to show that the self is no isolated unit but part of an order with a station in that order.
But here Plato is satisfied with logically refuting the two propositions of the Sophists. To the first he opposes the
Socratic conception of government as an art. The ruler practices the art of government not in his own interest but to
bring about an improvement in the governed.
To the second proposition Plato replies that justice is always better than injustice and that a just man is wiser,
stronger and happier than an unjust man for he knows his limitations too.
Third theory is that of Pragmatism which tells in part that Justice is an artificial thing, the product of social
convention. This theory is the precursor of the Social Contract Theory. In the state of nature there was no justice, or
state. Many weaklings combined together and create the state. Thus Justice is the child of fear and is based on the
necessity of the weaker and not the interest of the stronger.
The common line of error in all the three Prima Facie theories of Justice that seems to Plato, is that they have all
treated Justice as if were something external, an importation, a convention. Justice, on the other hand, according to
Plato is rooted in the human mind. It is intrinsically, a virtue. It is something internal. Justice does not depend for its
origin upon a chance-convention.
Now a perfect artist as Plato is, he does not out-right give his theory of Justice. Instead of attempting at once an
analysis of the human mind, Plato adopts the method of Large Letters i.e. the method of solving deeper mysteries
with the help of more easily understandable mysteries of similar kind and thus discovers and defines Justice with the
help of his Ideal State. Justice exists both in the state and individual. But in the state it is a bigger and easily visible
form. Accordingly, Plato proposes to consider Justice first as it exists in the state in its broadest form.
In constructing the state from which he proposes to illustrate the nature of the human mind, Plato presupposes a
certain amount of psychology in advance. The state like the human mind is divided in three portions Rulers, Soldiers
and Farmers-representing as it were the three elements of the human mind-Reason, Spirit and Appetite. As has been
pointed out by Barker, "this triplicity of the soul, whatever its source, is the foundation of much of the Republic." This
in part explains the meaning of the oft-quoted line from the Republic that "state is the individual writ large."
In this construction Plato proceeds by a psychological method in the Republic. He takes up each of the three
elements of the human mind beginning with the lowest i.e. Appetite and proceeding to the highest that is Reason and
shows how each of these in its turn contributes its quota towards the creation of the state.
The origin of the state, according to Plato, is to be found in the found of man which can be satisfied only if they
supplement each other. Men have many wants and no man is self-sufficient. Accordingly they take helpers and exchange
with one another. Wherever there is society there is some sort of satisfaction of needs and some exchange of services
for this purpose.
But exchange of services implies another principle of almost equal importance, the Division of Labour and the
specialising of tasks. For if needs are satisfied by exchange, each must have more than he needs of the commodity
which he offers, just as he must have less than he needs of that which he receives. The farmer produces more food he
needs while the shoemaker produces more shoes than he can wear. Hence it is advantageous to both that each should
produce for the other, since both will be better fed and better clothed by working together than by each dividing his
work to make all the various things he needs. This rests, according to Plato, upon two fundamental fact of human
psychology, first different men have different aptitudes so do some kinds of work better than others and second, that
skill is gained only where men apply themselves steadily to the work for which they are naturally fitted.
Upon this brief but exceedingly penetrating analysis of society and of Human Psychology, Plato's further
construction of the state depends.
Thus the construction of the ideal state culminates as it was planned, in the conception of Justice. "Justice is the
bond which holds a society together, a harmonious, union of individuals, each of whom has found his life-work in
accordance with his natural fitness and his training."

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 This is Plato's elaboration of' the Prima Facie definition of justice given by Cephalua i.e. giving to every man his
due." But Plato's interpretation is diametrically opposed to that of Cephalus because the latter was taking in terms of
rights while the former in terms of duties. For what is due to him is that he should be treated as what he is, in the light
of his capacity and his training, while what is due from him is the honest performance of those tasks which the place
accorded him requires.
Plato's Justice is based on three principles of society :-
The first is the principles of non-interference. No class should interfere with the task of other classes. "It shall
concentrate on its own sphere of duty and shall not meddle with the sphere of others." Only then and then only there
can be unity in the state and the society as a whole can benefit by the work of the individuals.
The second is the principle of functional specialisation.
The third is the principle of harmony. Human virtue according to Plato is divided into wisdom, courage, temperance
and Justice. The first three he assigns one to each class. There remains Justice. The task of Justice is to harmonise the
three virtues. The nature of Justice is "architectonic" in relation to other excellences, i.e. is related to them as the
work of the architect or a master- builder in the construction of a house is related to that of masons, joiners, wood
carvers, and sculptors who work under his direction.
The conception of Social Justice (or righteousness) as the fitting by each men of his appointed sphere is the
cardinal conception of the Republic (Barker). The conclusion of the whole matter would seem then to be this that
each person should do his own appointed work in contentment. This in Plato's eyes is Justice, or in other words the
true principle of social life. The Justice of the state is the citizen's sense of duty of his station issuing before the
world in public action.
Such a conception of justice is the final and ultimate answer to the individualism in life and in theory which Plato
combated. The conception postulates a view of the individual as not an isolated but part of an order, intended not to
pursue the pleasures of isolated self but to fill an appointed place in that order. The individual is not a whole but the
state is a whole. The individual is a factor or fraction of it.
Before we attempt any criticism of Plato's conception of Social Justice, we have still to consider his definition of
Justice, in the individual. If the Justice of the state is the due performance of the function by each class, he argues,
then "the justice of the individual (the discovery of which was the purpose of the whole argument, and the reason for
the construction of and consideration of the state will be equally the due performance of function of each part of the
individual mind. The parts of the individual mind represent the principles as the class of the state. So the justice of the
same means that Reason, Spirit and Appetite should keep within the proper bounds. To Plato justice of the individual
is identifiable with virtue of excellence.
Thus Justice is for Plato, at once a part of human virtue and bond which joins men together in states. It is identical
quality which makes man good and which makes him social This identification is first and fundamental principle of
Plato's political philosophy Platonic conception of Justice as applied to the state may be subject to the following
criticism : -
First, to a modern reader Plato's conception of Justice, sound novel and striking for what it omits and for what it
includes. It is in no sense a juristic definition of Justice. It is not enforceable. Some control and devotional self-
abnegation in tire interests of society lie the base of Plato's Justice. These are moral principles having no legal
sanctions behind them. Plato's Justice does not visualise and provide for clash of individual wills and conflicts between
one interest and another.
Secondly, it is not applicable in a modern nation state whose population runs into crores. It is not physically
possible to devide such a large population in three stereo-typed classes and to assign to them fixed functions.
Thirdly, it tries to leave 4/3 of the personality of the individual undeveloped. When the individual possess all the
three elements Reason, Spirit and Appetite he should develop all these faculties. But Plato would confine one class of
individuals to the development of one faculty only. If he belongs to rulers' class he will develop reason only. Similarly
if he belongs to the soldiers' class, he will develop spirit or courage alone. And again, if he belongs to the peasant
class, he will develop the instinct of appetite. This attitude amounts to reducing the individual to 1/3 of his personality.
Fourthly, Plato's justice assigns absolute ruling power to one class i.e. philosophers only. Such a monopoly of
political power in the hands of one class, however, well-trained morally and spiritually is bound to demoralise that
class sooner or later and thus corrupt the state. Lord Acton's statement that Absolute power corrupts absolutely is a
truism which cannot be denied.
Fifthly, such a concept of Justice leads to totalitarianism pure and simple.
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 Sixthly, as Prof. Popper points out that Plato's Justice leads to a class-state in which ruling becomes the privilege
of a particular class. Similarly carrying arms and fighting becomes the prerogative of a particular class. Naturally the
same principle applies to the peasants class which has the monopoly of the production of articles of consumption.
"Plato calls class privilege just while we usually mean by Justice rather the absent of such privilege.
Seventhly and lastly, the individual is reduced to means the state becomes an end in-itself. The individual, according
to Plato exists for the state not vice versa.
Some of the criticism against Plato's Justice can be ruled out if we know actually what the Greeks meant by
Justice. Plato used the Greek word "dikaisune" for Justice which comes very near to the word "morality" or
"righteousness."
When all is said we must remember that Justice is the fundamental principle lying at the root of a well-ordered
society. This is one of Plato's greatest contributions to Social philosophy. Modern thinkers have not forgotten Plato
and still conceive of social morality of which the best formula is "the fulfillment of my station and its duties." Then
again, Plato's Justice bears a good deal of resemblance to Gita's dictum. That is, "it is better to die while doing a duty
assigned to oneself, on the other hand it is dangerous to do a task which is assigned to somebody else."
The following are the elements of truth in Plato's Justice :-
1. It is a true principle of social life.
2. It is an ultimate answer to an extreme individualism.
3. The proper working of three elements-reason, spirit and appetite-in the individual's mind is the sign of a sound
and sane mind.
1.4 Theory of Communism
1.4.1 Communism as a Handmaid of Justice
Like education, Plato's communism was handmaid of his justice. If education was a positive remedy for the
operation of justice in the ideal state, his communism was a negative remedy. Plato had an excessive distrust of
human nature. In spite of so much education and training Plato could not be convince that members of the, ruling and
military class were completely reformed as to work on the altruistic motive. He could not be convinced that education
had accomplished its task. For the remaining task he advocated communism as a sure remedy. Plato is also convinced
that in the face of corrupting influences the rulers and soldiers will be shaken from acting according to those high
ideals on which the very success of the ideal state depended. These corrupting influences, according to Plato, were
family and property. Their continuance in the case of the riding and defending classes, Plato regarded, as essentially
dangerous- So that family and property may not become great impediments in the discharge of their duties, Plato is
never weary of criticizing them in the Republic.
1.4.2 Two Main forms of Plato's Communism
Plato's communism takes two main forms. The first is the abolition of private property which includes everything
house, land or money. The second was the abolition of family, what Prof. G. H. Sabine has characterized as the
abolition of a permanent monogamous marriages system and the substitution of regulated breeding at the behest of
the rulers for the purpose of securing the best possible offspring's. All this was done in the name of justice and here
again spiritual betterment was the ultimate aim. Plato believed that conditions were most favourable for the life of
spirit under a system of communism. Plato's idea of the "life of the spirit" does not carry any mysticism with it. It
does not mean renunciation in any way. It simply mean that certain important type of individuals should cease to be
self-centered and that they should develop such community of feelings which will malt them the real benefactors of
society. They should treat them as a part of that social order whose misfortune was their misfortune and whose
advantage was their advantage. The Platonic system of communism, in this way, invents a new social order, under
which the governing class, surrenders both family and private property and embraces a system of communism
1.4.3 Application of Plato's Communism
Plato's ideal state consists of three different classes on the basis of their natural capacities. The rulers and soldiers
make the guardian class. The third, class of the ideal state includes, all the rest of the people the worker, labours
artisans and clerks etc. Communism in the Republic is meant only for the guardians class, that is, for the rulers and
soldiers, while the persons of the third category are left in possession of their private families, both property and
wives. The unity of the state is to be secured; property and family stand in the way; therefore, property and marriage
must go. Plato's communism therefore has a strictly political purpose.

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1.4.4 Communism of Property
Plato's communism of property is entirely different from modern socialists. There is no mention in the Republic
of the socialisation of all the means of production. Plato is only concerned with the product which is to be partly-
socialised. The guardians who live under a system of communism are distinguished from the rest of the people by
being-partners in property. The members of the ruling classes do not possess any private property. Neither individually
nor collectively do they own a single acre the land and its products are in the hands of the third-class of farmers and
cultivators. They have no houses; they live 'encamped' in the common barracks, which are always open and public.
Plato deprives them of all gold and silver.
They live without house, without land and without money. "But should they ever, acquire homes or lands or money
of their own, they will become house people, and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of
allies of the 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, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of
the safe, will be at hand".
But the pertinent question that arises in this connection is as to what do they live on? The answer is that the
guardians are to live on a salary paid to them in kind by the farming classes according to a regular assessment, a Salary
paid year by year and consisting of such necessaries as will suffice for the year. These necessaries are not to be
divided among the guardians for private consumption, they are to be consumed, like the Spartan system, at common-
tables. Plato's communism, it is obvious, therefore, is a way of asceticism and hence it parts company with modern
socialism. Plato's communism, because it is ascetic, therefore, it is also aristocratic. "It is the way of surrender ; and
it is a surrender imposed on the best, and only on the best. It exists for the sake of the whole society, but not for the
whole society. It exists only for the governing class. In that sense it is a political, and not an economic communism
which Plato preaches. Its aim may be said to be the substitution of a trained and professional government, supported
by a system of regular taxation, for an unprofessional and unpaid government". According to Prof. Sabine, "Plato's
order of ideas is exactly the reverse of that which has mainly animated modern socialist utopias; he does not mean to
use government to equalize wealth, but he equalizes wealth in order to remove a disturbing influence in government"
1.4.5 Communism of Wives
Plato's scheme of communism envisages not only community of property; it also contemplates community of
wives. He regards family affection directed towards particular persons, as another potent rival to the state in competing
for the loyalty of rulers. Plato wished the rulers of his ideal state to be troubled neither by distractions from their
work, nor by temptations to self-interest. He had deprived them of property because the core of it was a distraction,
and the desire for it was a temptation. He also deprives them of private families because he thinks that the very
coming into existence of families will introduce the question of mine' and 'thine'. It will, thus, destroy that corporate
feeling which very basis of the state. Plato wants "that the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children
are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent". Plato's scheme, therefore, is a
system of communism in the sense of common ownership. No guardian will be to say of any wife or child, "She, or he
is mine"; but all guardians will be able to say of all wives and children, "They are ours".
To Plato the home, which is so precious to us, was only a stumbling-block. "Every Englishman's house is his
castle", we say. "Pull down the walls Plato would reply; "they shelter at best a narrow family affection; they harbour at
the worst selfish instincts and stunted capacities. Pull down the walls, and let the free air of a common life blow over
the place where they have been". It is in this way that the home is condemned as a centre extreme selfishness and
exclusiveness. Plato further condemns it as a place where each man dragging any acquisition which he has made into
a separate house of his own, where he has a separate wife and children and private pleasures and pains. It is again
condemned by Plato as a 'place of waste talents and dwarfed powers, where the mind of the wife is wasted on the
service of the tables. These homes will also be dominated by such thing as the flattery of the rich by the poor, and all
the pains and pangs which men experience in bringing up a family, and in finding money to buy necessaries for their
household.
But, by the abolition of the family, it is not to be understood, however, that Plato denies his guardians a normal
sexual life. In order to encourage mating between those best fitted to produce children of the desired quality, the
rulers will arrange periodic festivals for hymeneal purposes, and will the rulers will arrange periodic festivals for
hymeneal purposes, and will authorise on each of these occasions such a number of mating as may be necessary to
help the population of the state at just the right figure. These acts of coition will be sanctified by impressive and holy
ceremonies designed to emphasize the noble purpose of the union and to eliminate all element of lust and obscenity
what more powerful urge to excellence could the ingenuity of man devise".
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 One very pertinent question in this connection needs to be answered. What about those children who will be born
out of such unions? Plato's answer in this connection is very clear. The children born out of such union will be the
property of the state. The children at the time of their birth will be taken to a nursery and will be cared for in common
by the nurse and mothers of the state. Thus no parent will lavish affection upon one child to the exclusion of others,
but will love all children as their own and, instead of being concerned only for the welfare of those of their own blood,
will strive for the happiness and welfare of all. The guardians in the state then will come to be one great family in
which each will regard all others as kinsfolk.
Plato also fixes up a definite age both for women and men at which they will start begetting children. Plato in this
connection suggests that the parents should produce children when they are in the prime of life. But what is the prime
of life? he asks. May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty in a man ? A
woman at 20 years of age may begin to bear children to the state and continue to bear them until forty ; a man may
begin at five-and-twenty, and continue to beget children until he will be fifty-five. Plato says that these years in men
and women ire the prime of physical as well as of intellectual vigor. Any one above or below the prescribed ages, who
takes part in the public hymeneals, should be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing. Such is the scheme of
Plato according to which the guardians of the state are to have their wives and families in common.
1.4.6 Bases of Plato's Scheme of Communism
What is the basis or bases of Plato's scheme of communism? In this ' connection different opinions have been
expressed from different quarters. But, whatever might have been the central idea in the mind of Plato, there is no one
to deny the fact that his scheme of communism serves multifarious ends. According to Prof. R. L. Nettleship, the idea
of common life is the basis of Plato's scheme. The institution of property and family appear to Plato as 'the great
strongholds of selfishness'. There can be no doubt that selfishness has, in fact, found in these two institutions not its
cause but its most pernicious expression. To Plato this, fact seems to prove that in order to bring about a common life
we must cut away these along with all other inducements of selfishness. Writing particularly about the institution of
the family, he says, that "the family is the centre of mean and petty selfishness". The greatest evils in our history have
been due to dynastic interests, which are simply family interests on a large scale. Nowhere does the selfishness of
man come out more obviously than in matters connected with the institution of the family. Some of the noblest things
that have ever been done as well as some of the basest have been associated with the love of man and woman or with
the love of parent and child". The best way to deal with them, therefore, was to abolish them in the case of guardians
that they might not grow to be selfish as to cause an irreparable harm to the state.
To Prof. M. B. Foster the object of Plato's scheme "is to promote the unity of the city by extending to its members
that community of interests and sentiment which unites the members of a single family, Its direct result could only be
to promote such unity among the members of the governing class with one another, since there is no indication that
the system of common families is to be extended to other class in the state.
According to Prof. G. H. Sabine, it was not only the unity of the state which was the aim of Plato, but his abolition
of marriage had a different purpose also. It probably "implied criticism of the position of women in Athens, where
their activities were summed up in keeping the house and rearing of children. To Plato this seemed to deny to the state
the service of half of its potential guardians. From this argument of Prof. Sabine one may be led to believe that Plato
stood for the freedom of women and he was a champion of their rights.
Plato is convinced that women are equally capable of shouldering the responsibilities of the state along with men.
Starting with this very assumption, Plato gives them the right to participate in the political life of the state, a right,
which up to this time, was denied to them. It is a right which, no doubt, involves service. "Yet such service is after all
true freedom : in it woman stands by man's side as his yoke-fellow in the fullness of his life, and by it she attains the
fullness of her own".
Plato's communism of property and wives carries with it a great assumption, "that much can be done to abolish
spiritual evils by the abolition of those material conditions in connection with which they are found, Spiritual 'dieting'
is the first and primary cure in Plato's therapeutics ; but a ruthless surgery of material things is also one of his means.
Because material conditions are concomitant with spiritual evils, they seem to him largely their cause; and since to
abolish' the cause is to abolish the effect, he sets himself to a thorough reform of the material conditions of life. By
compelling men to live under absolutely different conditions in the material and external organization of their lives,
he hopes to produce a totally different sprit and an utterly different attitude of mind.
In his scheme of community of wives, we may see multifarious purposes that it serves. It frees the guardians from
the narrowness and worries of family life. It allows to them a whole time devotion to the service of the state. It
emancipates the best among women and allows the state to gain in the service of the, female section of its citizens. It
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creators the preface unity among the guardians which is so essential for the ultimate unity of the state. It also paves
the way for a better and a healthier stock of children. It also tries to bring about the social equality of men and women.
It is their status of equality alone that establishes that team spirit which is so essential for the service of the community.
His scheme of community of property among the guardians is a men corollary of the abolition of household.
Plato is convinced that without a communism in the enjoyment of goods that are supplied free, the rules cannot be
fully freed from unnecessary distractions and selfishness. For the full expression and development of reason, private
property as an expression of appetite is abolished. Moreover, since political and economic power are not to be
concentrated in the same hands, the guardians of the states should not have any private property at all. It will not only
act like a safeguard against tyranny, it will also ensure the mutual dependence of the rulers and the ruled. The rulers
will depend for their necessities upon the free supplier made by the subjects, while the subjects will depend upon the
rulers from their protection and good government.
1.4.7 Plato's Communism versus Modern Communism
Plato's communism was not designed for the removal of property. It rather advocates the philosophy of property.
The modem communism is meant for, the removal of private properly and exposes the prosily of philosophy to
reform and to improve the present day world. Plato's communism remains what had been called by Prof. Natrop as
"half communism". It is not an institution of the social whole. It affects less than half of the persons and much less
than half of the goods, of the society to which it belongs." The modem communism affects the whole society and is
applicable to all. Plato's communism does not emphasize the doctrine of equality, whereas modem communism is
based on the principle of equality. Plato's communism envisages community of wives and property, whereas the
modem communism is concerned only with the latter aspect of it. Plato's communism is to be realised through the
agency of the state, whereas modem communism regards the state as an executive committee serving, the interests of
the capitalists' class and believes in its extinction. The Platonic communism regards the state as a partnership in all
science a partnership in all arts, a partnership in all virtue and in all perfection. Plato's communism is realised through
a system of classes whereas the modern communism is achieved through the establishment of a classless society.
The communism of Plato establishes the dictatorship of the philosopher king; the modem, communism believes in
the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Platonic communism is realised only on national scale; but the modem
communism is realised on international scale. The Platonic communism is achieved by making an appeal to the
altruism of the governing classes; the modem communism is brought about by making an appeal to the fidelity of the
workers: The Platonic communism is achieved through education and perfect training and thus through peaceful
means. On the other hand the modem communism believes in revolution and violent means for ending the system of
capitalism and bringing into existence a new type of society. Lastly the Platonic communism is spiritualistic because
it purposes is a realization of the life of the spirit where as the modern communism is thorough going materialistic
because its ultimate end is the betterment of the material conditions of life.
Few thinkers have been as logically consistent as Plato. He is one of the greatest system-builders in the history of
Political Thought, whose conclusions are the logical deductions from his basic assumptions. It is not possible to
accept his premises and to reject his conclusions. Plato's conception of Philosopher Rulers or Perfect Guardians
their unlimited and unchecked powers of ruler ship is the direct logical result of his basic assumptions with which he
starts.
Plato starts in his Republic with the following two assumptions ; -
1. Triplicity of human mind into Reason, Spirit and Appetite and the corresponding division of the state into three
classes-Rulers, Auxiliaries and Peasants. The Rulers represent Reason, the Auxiliaries represent Spirit, and Peasants
represent Appetite in the state. Just as Reason is the complete master of the human mind, the other two elements
being subservient to it, naturally the Perfect Guardians who represent Reason are the complete masters in Plato's
Ideal State which according to him is "the embodiment of the human mind"
2. The Socratic dictum which is the second basic assumption of Plato's Republic is that "Virtue is Knowledge". In
other words "Virtue" and "Knowledge" are identical. The latter amounts to identification of "goodness" and "wisdom".
Now Wisdom according to Plato is a quality of greatest importance to the state. The basis of an ideal State according
to Plato is Scientific Knowledge. Without it the ignorant people would govern and the whole citizen lot is bound to
suffer. Plato during his own time finds ignorance of rulers as the main cause of the turmoil in city-states. Hence Plato
emphasizes that the philosophers who know should have the ruling power. Only then there will be peace and happiness
in the state. His dictum is "The wise shall rule and the Ignorant shall follow". Hence if Virtue is Knowledge and the
latter must be made the basis of the Ideal State, it naturally follows that the man who possesses Wisdom or who
knows-the Philosopher or Scholar or Scientist -ought to have decisive power in government and that it is his knowledge
or wisdom which entitles him to such a big role in the state.
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 Not only that Plato's conception of "Rule of Philosophy" is a logical deduction from his first principle but also
induction from the current corruption in the various city-states. Hence, Plato's thinking in this respect is also pragmatic
as he tries to remedy the then practices in all city-states and particularly in Athens. In Athens Plato found as if "the
ignorant had the right-divine to govern wrong." No special qualification was essential in order to become a ruler in
Athens. Plato's utterances like this that "in order to become a carpenter one needs some training but in order to
become a ruler, a simple lottery will do", is clearly satirical on Athenian practice. Any fool could become a ruler by
the simple chance of lot. This is intolerable for Plato who believed that only competent, wise and efficient people
should have the right to govern.
1.5.1 Features of Plato's Rule of Philosophy : -
First, the conception of Rule by the Philosopher King is the most profoundly original conception in the entire
Political Thought of Plato. Plato was the first Greek writer who thought of unlimited government of a Philosopher-
Ruler for his Ideal State. Greeks had firm faith in democracy in which every citizen had the right to participate in
public affairs. Plato denounced Athenian democracy as the government of ignorance and suggested some novel and
unprecedented institution which almost resembled tyranny -the most hated institution for Athens.
Second, Plato's Rule of Philosophy is always a government by the elite. The government of intelligence must be
government by a few. Scientific knowledge is the prerogative of very few meritorious persons. All do not possess the
equal capacity for cultivation of virtue or Knowledge. Hence all cannot be entitled to participate in the function of
government which is one of the most technical arts. Those few who possess the capacity should rule over those many
that do not. Thus Plato's government in the Ideal State will always be aristocratic if not monarchic. At a number of
places Plato goes to the extent of saying that if there is only one top-most meritorious person in the state, let him
become the Philosopher-King. But if there are more than one fairly equal Philosophers, let it be "an aristocracy of
intellect." As Edward Zeller says, "The Platonic State can only be an aristocracy of Virtue and Intellect exercised by
one or few."
Third, a Philosopher of Plato's conception is one who is the lover of wisdom. He is a passionate seeker after truth.
He has knowledge of the "Idea of Good." And by dint of his knowledge "he is the spectator and all time and all
existence.' He knows what is the purpose of all being and all doing and the end of all human existence and human
actions. With the help of such an intellectual brilliance he can see and judge better than others can as to what is most
beneficial for the community. Hence the role of a Philosopher is best for any society. Fourth, another distinctive
feature of the Platonic Rule of a Philosopher is' that the Perfect Guardians or the Philosophers realise fully the
identity of the interests of the state with their own: nay, it can be said they have no interests, apart from the welfare of
the state. Their chief concern is the good of the community; they obtain whatever happiness they are capable of from
dedication to the well-being of the community. The element of Reason which they represent, teaches them that the
happiness of the part depends upon the happiness of the whole. Hence the mentality of the selfless service to the state
is a derivation from the rational character of the Perfect Guardians.
Fifth, Plato's Philosopher-Rulers are the product of highly technical training which they undergo up to the age of
20 along with Auxiliaries and from 20 to 35 exclusively. Hence the government of Plato's Ideal State is the consequence
of his system of Education.
Sixth, and by far the most important feature of Plato's Rule of Philosophy is that the Philosophers are absolute so
far as their powers of ruling are concerned The Rule of the philosophers is absolute the sense that they are not
responsible or responsive to public opinion or to custom or written laws. The Philosophers are not bound to abide by
the customary laws or the public opinion or the code of low. Such a proposition of the despotism of Philosophers is
supported by a three basic arguments: (1) Logical, (2) Practical and (3) Expedient.
1. Logical argument can be stated in this way:- Such a conclusion is logical if his premises are granted. He
starts with the idea that "Virtue is Knowledge." If 'Knowledge' is the guiding star of the State, and the Rulers are
qualified to become Rulers by the possession of their Knowledge, the control of public opinion or laws. Upon their
acts is irrelevant.
2 Similarly, Practical argument can be stated thus:- Since Philosophers alone know what is good or bad and
the remedy of the bad, it is as foolish to bind their hands with the rules of law, as to force an expert physician to write
down his prescription from a medical text-book.
3. Lastly, the 'Expedient' argument can he stated in the following words:- No doubt every society must have
a government but government by a Philosopher is better than a government by law. The reign of law is less flexible
than the wisdom of a Philosopher. The decrees of a Philosopher-King would be the dictates of his ripened wisdom
and his discretion would be better than inflexible laws whose dead uniformity is against the spirit of true Justice. Law
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does not and cannot give everybody his due. Law has no meaning other than to give the least bungling rule that will fit
an average case; but a Philosopher's wisdom gives to everybody what he deserves. Hence it is always expedient have
the government of a Philosopher-King.
Thus, with these three arguments, Plato propounds that the Philosophers in the Ideal State should be absolute,
untrammeled by law and public opinion.
Seventh and last feature of Plato's Rule of Philosophy is that he does not propound an unqualified absolutism.
Though he states very clearly that the Philosophers should be free from the shackles of law and public opinion and
customs, yet he says that they are not free from all restraints. They most respect the fundamental articles of the
constitution of the state. They must not abruptly change the basic principles on which the state is based. These basic
principles are four in number according to Plato : -
(i) The Philosophers should watch against the excessive inflow of property and wealth in the State.
(ii) They should keep the size of the State consistent with its unity and self-sufficiency.
(iii) They must maintain the rule of Justice i.e. due performance of his specific function by each citizen.
(iv) And last, they must see to it that no change is made in the system of Education.
Thus, Plato seeks to make his Philosopher-Rulers or even the Philosopher-King the servant of the fundamental
and unchanging social order.
1.5.2 Criticism :-
First, Plato's conception of Philosopher-Rulers leads to tyrannical government which runs counter to Athenian
democracy. Tyranny was the most despised of all forms of government.
Secondly, it is also a denial of the firm faith of the city state, with its ideal of free citizenship and its hope that
every man within the limits of his powers might be made a sharer in the duties and privileges of government. By
insisting on the supreme authority of the Philosopher-King, Plato reduces the majority to the status of automata or
political robots.
Thirdly, his concept that knowledge is the prerogative of a few also is against modern notion of equality. His
disbelief in the capacity of the masses to rule themselves is again deplorable. Here Aristotle's view seems to be
sounder that the mass of people possess more collective wisdom than the few Philosopher-Guardians. Similarly his
rejection of law as the basis of the State is objectionable as law is the embodiment of the wisdom of the people
accumulated through centuries. Plato later on realises this fault in his later book ''The Laws" and gives to "Law" it's due
place in the State.
Fourthly, Plato's conception of the Philosopher-King completely rules out direct and indirect democracies.
Fifthly, Plato does not propose for his Philosophers any study of finance or law or military tactics. He thinks that
the study of abstract Mathematics, Dialects and the "Idea of Good" would be sufficient. So "Rule of such Philosophers"
Sabine says' "might easily become a rule of the saints. Philosophers would be too sublime for such a difficult art as
"government."
Sixthly, excessive philosophic contemplation leads to eccentricity and the rule of an eccentric is bound to be
misunderstood and therefore unpopular.
Seventhly, a Philosopher-Ruler might identify his own interests with public interests. He might rule for stabilizing
his own political power, though apparently for the welfare of the state. Plato's Philosopher-Rulers with their unlimited
powers bear ugly resemblance to modern dictators with their totalitarian dogmas.
Eighthly, as Sabine points out his comparison of government to medicine, of rulers to expert physicians, and of
citizens to patients is an analogy which is over-drawn.
Ninthly, as Professor Popper in his commendable thesis points out Plato's Rule of Philosopher and a continuous
supply of Philosophers through his system of Education are incompatible. "For if Philosophers were needed as
permanent rulers, there would be no need for the Educational system to produce new ones"
Tenthly, the famous passage from Plato "unless the Philosophers are Kings or the Kings of his world have spirit of
Philosophy cities will never have rest from their evils" has become a target of attack on the part of Kant, who says
"That Kings should become Philosophers or Philosophers Kings, is not likely to happen; nor would it be desirable,
since the possession of power invariably debases the free Judgment of Reason." Here Lord Acton's dictum also can
come true-"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
And lastly, his concept of Philosopher-King is the most utopian idea of Plato. At no time in the history of the
world such a Philosopher King has ever been in power. Hence Plato's Ideal State with its Philosopher-Rulers cannot
and does not exist on the earth at least. One writer says "As for Philosophers they make imaginary Jaws for imaginary
Commonwealths.''
11
 When all is said, one must admit that Plato is correct when he emphasises that only competent persons should
rule. There might be a difference as to in what competence consists. For Plato competence consists in Knowledge. A
person who possesses Scientific Knowledge is competent according to him.
1.6 Summary
Thus in this lesson, we have tried to cover all the major ideas of Plato strained in the Republic. Some of his ideas
are considered as utopian, imaginary, unpractical and unreal e.g. his communism of wives which has never been
practiced throughout the ages, his division of the state in three stereo-typed classes with distinct functions, his
concept that in the ideal state there is no necessity of laws; his communism of property etc. However, in the ‘Laws’
Plato tried to grapple with the actualities. He re-admitted ‘laws’ and gave them the most important place in the
governance of the people. He also modified his communism, admitted private property as well as family as indispensible
human institutions. Further, Plato allowed wealth to share with intellect. The machinery of government advocated by
him in the ‘Laws’ is the one combining the merits of oligarchy, democracy and Monarchy. This work of Plato greatly
influenced Aristotle in the writing of his Politics.
However, there are certain ideas conceived by Plato which are of everlasting importance to mankind. These ideas
represent the Universalism in Plato. Some of the important ideas of Plato which have exercised profound impact in
years after him include his basic idea i.e. Justice. His assertion that the society is always “a unity amidst diversity” and
that every member of society should perform his duties to the best of his capacities is indeed an exceedingly penetrating
analysis of society which hold good even today. Closely related to his concept of justice is Functional Specialization.
His emphasis that every member of society should perform the functions for which he was best fitted by his aptitude
and training is more true today when the society has grown complex. His view that the wise should rule and it is virtue
which should prevail in the state is a truth which is universally recognized. Plato paved the way for the emancipation
of women by insisting that they should be given necessary education on equal terms with men and be permitted to take
active part in the affairs of the state. This principle has now been accepted on universal basis. Plato emphasized the
impotence of state-controlled education and provided a detailed scheme of education which aimed at promoting the
interest of the society. In modern times both democratic as well as totalitarian countries acknowledge the importance
of education as an instrument for the effective working of the society and the political systems. Plato in his writings
also displayed great sense of nationalism and placed the nation above everything else. He was even willing to sacrifice
the time honoured institutions of private property and family in the interest of state. His concept of philosopher king
was also designed to provide a ruler who could rule in the interest of the state and be above selfish motives. In
addition to these ideas of everlasting importance, Plato is the father of more than one school of thought in the sense
that he was the first to originate a number of ideas which were later on grouped under various categories of schools
of thought. He is known as father of ‘Idealism, Organic Theory of the State, Fascism, Socialism, Communism,
Romanticism, etc.’ No doubt, sometimes Plato is condemned for giving certain Utopian ideas, but does not in any
way undermine his permanent contributions to political philosophy.
Check Your Progress-2
Note: Check your answer with that given at the end of the lesson.
1. What were the Prima Facie Theories of Justice?
2. Why Plato criticized the Traditional Theory of Justice?
3. According to Plato, what is Social Justice?
4. What are the bases of Plato's scheme of Communism?
5. 'The Perfect, Guardian must be a philosopher King'- that comment.
1.8 Glossary
• Athens and Sparta- Greek City States.
• Totalitarian- A system of government in which there is only one political party that has absolute power and
control over the people.
• Prima-Facie- What appears to be true and is accepted as a fact, until evidence to the contrary is detected or
submitted.
• Radical- Advocates fundamental changes in the political, legal, economic structure of the state; often but not
necessarily by extreme means.
• Pragmatic- Refers to an empirical and experimental outlook; a system that judges the truth of a conception
by its effects.
• Teleological- the doctrine that each of the part of nature is designed to fulfill a particular end.
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 • Analogous- having analogy; similar.
• Demagogues- A popular leader in democracy who appeals to emotions and sentiments of the people and
thereby establishes his hold over them.
• Altruism- devotion to the welfare of others.
• Utilitarian- the doctrine of Bentham used on the idea that the greatest possible happiness of the greatest
number should be the criterion of all social action.
• Utopian- fictitious island possessing a perfect political, religious and economic system.
• Monogamy- marriage to one wife or husband.
• Tyranny- coercive, arbitrary government uncontrolled by prescription.
1.9 Answers to Check your Progress Exercise
1. See Section 1.3
2. See Section 1.3
3. See Section 1.3
4. See Section 1.4.6
5. See Section 1.5
1.10 Suggested Readings
1. G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1961.
2. W.T. Jones, Master of Political Thought, Vol. II, London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd; 1955.
3. E. Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, New Delhi: Dover Publication, 1964.
4. David Boucher and Paul Kelly (eds.) Political Thinkers from Socrates to the Present, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
5. William Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co., 1960.
6. Subrata Mukharjee and Sushila Ramaswamy, A History of Political Thought: Plato to Marx, Delhi: PHI
Learning Pvt. Ltd., 2018.
7. Brian Nelson, Western Political Thought, New Delhi: Pearson, 2006.
8. Sukhbir Singh, History of Political Thought: Plato to Burk, Vol.I, Meernt : Rastogi Publication, 1997.
9. R.M. Bhagat, Political Though: Plato to Marx, Jalandher ; New Academic Publishing Company, 1988.
1.11 Terminal Questions
1. Evaluate Plato’s theory of Justice.
2. Briefly describe Plato’s Communism of Wives and Property. How his communism is different from that
of modern communism.
3. Examine Plato's views on the rule of Philosopher King.

*****

13
 Lesson-2
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Structure
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Learning Objectives
2.2 Aristotle’s Method
2.3 Critique of Plato
2.3.1 Aristotle on Plato’s conception of the Unity of the state
2.3.2 Aristotle on Plato’s Communism
2.3.2.1 Aristotle’s Criticism of Communism of Wives
2.3.2.2 Aristotle’s Criticism of Communism of property
2.3.2.3 Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s neglect of the lower classes
2.4 Aristotle’s views on State and Government
2.5 Aristotle’s concept of Slavery
2.6 Aristotle’s Theory of Property
2.7 Aristotle’s Theory of Revolution
2.7.1 Causes of Revolution
2.7. Maintaining constitutional stability/Prevention of Revolutions
2.8 Summary
2.9 Check Your Progress
2.10 Glossary
2.11 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises
2.12 Suggested Readings
2.13 Terminal Questions
2.0 Introduction
Though Aristotle’s theory of political ideals stands upon the ground which he had already covered because of his
association with Plato yet in his methodology he chalked out a new path. If Plato was primarily a deductive thinker,
Aristotle largely followed the inductive method. If Plato started with abstract notions of ‘Virtue is knowledge’ and
‘Justice’ and built his ideal state on these basis, Aristotle reasoned inductively, by comparing the working constitutions
of a large number of city states, and based his ideal state on the realistic appraisal of the foibles and follies of human
beings. In fact, his chief work ‘Politics’ may be regarded as the justification of the existing institutions such as the
city-state, family, property and slavery. ‘Politics’ suggests remedies for the drawback, if any, in these institutions and
makes no attempt at their abolition like Plato in his Republic.
In this lesson, dear students, you will study with me Aristotle’s critique of Plato, his views on 'property' and
'slavery'. We will also discuss about his theory of revolution and maintaining constitutional stability. Before we
discuss about Aristotle’s political ideas, I would like to tell you, in a few sentences, about his approach or method.
2.1 Learning Objectives:
Dear learner, after completing this lesson, you will be able to:
• Know about the method of Aristotle.
• Describe how Aristotle was a critique of Plato.
• Understand Aristotle’s views on the subjects like Slavery, Property, Revolution, maintaining constitutional
stability.
2.2 Aristotle’s Method
Politics according to Aristotle, deals with forms and not ‘Matter’, as matter is unknowable because it is in a
constant flux; form, on the contrary is permanent and knowable because it is permanent. As such what is the identity
and what constitutes the permanence of a state? asks Aristotle. He gives the answer by stating that the identity of the
state lies not in its ‘matter’, in other words not in its citizens. ‘What makes the state’s identity and constitutes its
permanence, is not its particles or members but its ‘form’ that is to say its constitution, for the constitution is the
14
‘form’ of the state. Thus Political science is a science of political ‘form’ or constitution. But while ‘form’ is the
subject of science and not “matter”, yet, with the exception of ‘Divine Mind’, ‘form’ cannot exist apart from ‘matter’,
as Plato had thought. On the contrary, the two are indissolubly connected. Therefore, knowledge of ‘forms’ demands
sense perception of ‘matter’ for its basis, and the process of human enquiry is an ascent from the individual ‘matter’
to the general ‘form’ or in other words, induction. Investigation being thus directed towards facts will, Aristotle holds
at the beginning of the ‘Politics’ attain best results if it follows the facts most closely, and if, when they develop, it
follows their development from the beginning. It will attain a true conception of ‘form’ most certainly, if it observes
‘matter’ in its growth towards ‘form’. From the point of view of development ‘form’ is an ‘end’ towards which matter’
is determined or in other words matter is the primary material necessary for the realization of some end and this
primary material develops until the end is realised There is, thus, ‘constant movement from ‘matter to ‘form’ or from
the ‘Potential”, which is the matter to be ‘Actual’ which is matter informed by ‘form’. This great general conception
of ‘movement’ towards an “end” is applied by Aristotle to knowledge and science, it is also applied to politics. In
politics, there is the primary material of family association, which developed until it is “bound” in the state whose
constitution is its final “form”. This dynamic conception of the relation of matter is not indeed quite the same as the
static. Dynamically, the matter of the state is the family association, while statically it is individual citizen. Thus,
Aristotle looks upon the state from various angles and adopts different methods to arrive at its definition.
2.3 Critique of Plato:
Aristotle, the most distinguished and outstanding disciple of Plato was deeply influenced by the Political philosophy
of his teacher. According to Dunning also, “he differs from his master Plato, much more in the form and method than
in the substance of his thought. Most of his ideas which seem characteristically Aristotlean are to be found in Plato.”
Although, Aristotle was deeply influenced by Plato but neither was he a blind follower of his teacher-nor did he ever
miss an opportunity to criticize him. He has devoted first part of Book II of his ‘Politics’ to a severe, and often
obviously unfair, even hostile criticism of Plato’s ideas. The main target of his criticism is his, ‘Republic’, though
‘The Statesman’ and ‘The Laws’ have not remained untouched. His severest criticism of Plato is leveled against (1)
Plato’s conception of the unity of the state, (2) Plato’s communism of property and wives and (3) Plato’s comparative
neglect of the lower classes in his ideal and sub ideal state.
2.3.1 Aristotle on Plato’s conception of the unity of the state
Aristotle did not agree with Plato that greater the unity of the state, better it was. According to Aristotle, the whole
conception of the ideal state of Plato is vitiated by Plato’s emphasis on the excessive degree of unity that is essential.
It is the very nature of the state to be a plurality of dissimilars. A unity based on the removal of all diversities in
individuals is fatal to the state. According to Aristotle, the real unity in the state arises out of proper organisation of
relations among individuals who differ from one another. Each one of the diverse elements in the state has its own
specific functions and .advantages. Diversity of functions and organization leads to exchange of services. It is the
very basis of human association and independence which means satisfaction of moral and material needs of people.
According to him, if society consists of people with diverse capacities then moral and material needs will be satisfied
and thus independence will be attained but if society consists of members all alike, then it will result only in a single
contribution, and an imperfect independence. In fact diversity, is as essential as unity; or rather, it is essential to unity.
The greater the internal diversity in the state, the greater will be its self sufficingness and independence.
According to Aristotle, Plato’s procedure in the ‘Republic’ was self destructive. He was so fixed upon the end of
the unity of the state that he swept away the means. Pure unity, such as he desired, is best attained where there is but
a single unit, as Plato himself dwarfs his state into a family or clan, so in strict logic, for perfection’s sake, it should
be dwarfed from a family into a single individual.
This criticism of Plato is not absolutely fair because Plato had never maintained that the state is constituted of
like elements. On the contrary, he had insisted primarily on the differentiation of classes. Plato was well aware of the
diversity of functions and interests in the state and accordingly provided three clearly distinguished classes i.e. the
rulers, the warrior and the farmers. It is only to the upper two classes that is communism applies and it is only in
relation to these classes that Aristotle is justified in saying that Plato aims is at too much unity. The majority of the
population in the state would belong to the third class, divided into sections with their diverse functions and interests.
Alongwith this, he also criticized some other aspects of Plato’s ideal state. He refused Plato’s theory that state
came into existence as a result of division of labour. According to him it is the social nature of man which brought the
state into existence. According to him, “he, who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient
for himself, must be either a beast or a God, he is no part of the state.” A social instinct is implanted in all men by
nature.
15
 Again Aristotle did not find true or healthy citizenship in the ideal state of Plato. According to him in Platonic
state there are only rulers and the ruled. The rulers alone cannot be citizens; the ruled alone too cannot be citizens. A
citizen is one who both rules and is ruled in turn. Aristotle establishes complete equality between the rulers and the
ruled, one who is ruled today will be ruler tomorrow; one who is ruler today will be ruled tomorrow. There is complete
equality between the rulers and the ruled; such equality between the rulers and the ruled did not obtain in Platonic
state. The ruled in his state were completely devoid of political privilege or rights.
2.3.2 Aristotle on Plato's Communism
After criticizing Plato for his concept of complete unity of the state, he also criticized him for the means adopted
for this unity and harmony i.e. his theory of communism. Plato had suggested that his communism of wives and
property was the best means of creating harmony and unity in the state, Aristotle was also keen in securing the unity
of the state but differed on the concept of such unity and the methods of its achievement. According to him real unity
of the state could be created not by the abolition of the time honoured institutions of private property and family but
by organising and training individuals of various types and capacities according to the spirit of the constitution of the
state.
2.3.2.1 Aristotle’s criticism of Communism of Wives
Aristotle felt that Plato’s communism of wives was neither scientific nor rational. It was unnatural and foolish. He
was of the opinion that family was a time honoured and natural institution therefore its abolition will create confusion
and disharmony rather than order and harmony in the social order.
Under Plato’s scheme of communism children shall not know their parents and shall absolutely be neglected No
one will bestow any affection or care on common children because the sense of personal possession and relationship
is the whole basis of affection. In Plato’s scheme each guardian will have a thousand sons and each child a thousand
fathers. According to Aristotle it is better to be a real cousin than Platonic son.
According to Aristotle Plato’s scheme of communism of family will also give rise to problems concerning morals
and relations between one citizen and another. Under his communism unholy acts might be committed even on the
nearest relatives which will positively be curse on human civilization and which cannot be justified on any ground.
Again according to Aristotle, Plato’s scheme of communism of wives attempted to abolish all individuality or
privacy in family relations, and made every wife the wife, and every child the child of the whole community. Plato
imagined that through this scheme he would destroy the exclusiveness of the family life and the disputes which this
institution of family produced. Along with this he also intended to extend the warmth of family feeling over the whole
state by making it one family. But according to Aristotle actually no greater unity will be gained through this scheme
because affection varies inversely with the circle which it embraces; and a limitation of the number of associates is a
necessary condition of a strong sentiment of common interest. But in Plato’s scheme the circle is so large, the
number of associates so many, that only a shallowest sentiment of a common interest can be possible. In this sense,
the scheme destroys what unity there was in the state: it abolishes the former groups, because, though each possessed
a real unity, none was sufficiently large to embrace the whole of the state; and it substitutes a larger group in their
place, which is so large that it has scarcely any unity at all. While nothing is gained, there is much that is lost . Again
Aristotle has not been fair while criticizing Plato. Whereas Plato, under his arrangements, tried to cover only an ideal
class of extra-ordinary citizens. Aristotle levied his criticism ignoring this very basic principle and feeling as if
Plato’s arrangements were meant for all including ordinary citizens.
2.3.2.2. Aristotle’s criticism of Communism of Property
Aristotle has also criticized Plato’s communism of property. According to Aristotle, there are three possibilities
with respect to the distribution of property. There may be common possession and common use, private possession
and common use and there may be common possession and private use. He assumed that Plato had given his adhesion
to the system of common possession. Aristotle objected to communism of property on both moral and economic
grounds. Economically, he objected to a system of common ownership because it means common neglect; what is all
men’s business is nobody’s business. Men set themselves to work more earnestly and efficiently at what they regard
their own. The magic of property is a necessary stimulus to the maximum of production.
Secondly, common ownership is very likely to lead to disputes about the proper distribution of the amount produced
as a result of joint labour and thus promotes conflicts among the co-owners. There is no standard by which the amount
received by a person may be adjusted to the labour put in by him. If an equal division is attempted, some will feel that
they have received less than their work deserves; if proportional division is sought, it will be condemned as unequal
and unfair by those whose share is small. Communism is thus likely to destroy like mindedness and produce conflicts
among those who would have lived as good neighbours if they did not come into contact with them on too many
points. Aristotle admitted that disputes arise among men in regard to private property also but due to wicked nature of
man.
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 Aristotle also advocated private property on moral grounds. Accordingly to him private property is an instrument
for righteousness, and conversely righteousness demands a certain furnishing of private property. Virtues like liberality,
generosity and hospitality cannot be practiced in the absence of private property. According to him fullness of civic
life is lost to the citizen who has no private property and is not in a position to contribute anything to the state. Sense
of personality and its concomitant virtue of self respect have been the ultimate foundation of property. Property is
necessary to the realization of moral will.
So Aristotle’s argument against communism of property, in its essence, is that property represents a natural and
normal instrument and extension of personality, a source of pleasure and an opportunity of good and moral activity.
The aim of communism of property is to try to get rid of human selfishness. Since this selfishness is inherent in the
nature of man, the best cure for his selfishness is not communism, but education of the people in the spirit of the
constitution so that they use their private wealth generously and allow the common use of what they own individually.
There will be, in Aristotle’s formula, private possession with common use. The benefits of both individualism and
communism will be secured. Private possession will bring its economic and moral advantages. Common use, not
merely dictated by law, but flowing from a proper spirit, will issue in that unanimity which Plato desired. According
to him, no material cure will heal a spiritual evil, only spiritual means will produce spiritual result.
All this what Aristotle maintained has been true but not a fair criticism of Plato. For Plato also spiritual means—
a common education-had been his primary object. It is merely from an excess of caution that he has recourse to
material means i.e. communism of property. Plato felt that his scheme of education would make good citizens but in
addition, he gave the concept of communism so that these citizens did not lapse into badness by chance. This shows
his distrust of human nature. So Aristotle infact should have criticized Plato for an ascetic distrust of human nature.
On the other hand, Plato was not altogether mistaken in believing that education was not in itself sufficient and
that some economic basis was necessary. A common education may give us the highest type of socialism; but a
starving man is not ready to receive his education, some form of martial adjustment is necessary to prepare the
ultimate adjustment of the soul.
2.3.3 Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s neglect of the Lower Classes
Aristotle is dissatisfied with the vagueness of Plato’s ideas regarding the lower non-guardian classes representing
an over-whelming majority of the population of the state. According to Aristotle, Plato did not formulate any system
of education for them in accordance with their needs and requirements. Communism was not applicable to them. He
did not fix up any position for them in the state. According to Aristotle, this neglect of lower classes would result in
social division namely guardian and non-guardian classes. This type of arrangement would not result in harmony and
order which had been the basic aim of Plato’s philosophy. This would rather result in disharmony, anarchy and
discontent.
As regards Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s neglect of the lower classes whose existence he holds to be necessary
for the state, he himself did not grant those classes right of citizenship in his ideal state.
So on the basis of this discussion, it can be concluded that Aristotle’s criticism of Plato was not very fair. Aristotle
over-looked the fact that Plato was concerned with an ideal state. This was an attempt at understanding the nature and
possibilities of human creativity.
After this, now we will come to his concept of slavery.
2.4 Aristotle’s Views on State and Government
As regards his concept of the state, first of all Aristotle applies a method of definition and tries to arrive at a
definition of the state by approximation or discrimination. ‘The State”, says Aristotle, “is a kind of community”. A
community, he wrote further, is a union of unlike persons, who because of their differences are able to satisfy their
needs by exchange of their goods and services. Aristotle then distinguishes several aspects of community of which
the state is only one. The object of this is to distinguish the rule of house-holder over his wife, children or slaves
from the political rule. The problem therefore, which he poses to himself is to find as what kind of community is the
state? He points out that the exchange of goods by buying and selling or merely contractual relations makes a
community, but not a state because there need be no common ruler in such a community. On the other hand and on the
other extreme, there are communities where there is a distinction of the ruler and the ruled but not in the nature of
political (the master and the slaves) or constitutional ruler. The state, according to him, lies in an intermediate position,
distinguished from the contract on the one hand and from ownership on the other hand.
A general principle for defining the state is in reference to ‘Growth’ or historical development. Aristotle wrote,
“He who, thus, considers the things in their growth or origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest

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view of them.” Thus history- shows that family is a primitive kind of community brought into being by such fundamental
needs as those for shelter, food and propagation of the species, so long as men had progressed so far and no further
than to satisfy these needs, they lived in detached families under a patriarchal government. A higher state of development
is represented by village which is the union of several families and still higher by the state which is a union of villages.
Aristotle, therefore, defines the state as “a union of families and villages having for its end, a perfect and self
sufficing life by which we mean a happy and honourable life. It is quite clear form this definition that the growth is not
merely in size but it becomes “self sufficing”. This refers in part to its territory and also its means of economic
support but not primarily to these only. What is distinctive about state is that it first produces the conditions necessary
to a really civilized life. It “originates”, says Aristotle, “in the needs of life but continues for good life.” Thus I am
sure that it is clear to you that the state exists for the sake of good life and not for the sake of life only.
Another point which I would like you to bear in mind is that the state includes household or family as one of its
necessary elements and it is wrong to abolish it, as desired by Plato in his Republic. No doubt, family in its primitive
form depends on physical needs but it definitely requires for its development, capacities beyond those possessed by
gregarious animals. It requires speech and power to distinguish the right from the wrong, a characteristic only of
rational animal. These rational facilities of man can be further developed only in the state. It is in this sense also that
phrase ‘self-sufficing’ is used and man is regarded by Aristotle as a political animal, the only animal that dwells in
cities and subjects himself to law, produces sciences, art and religion and many sided creations of civilization. These
represent the perfection of human development. To live without these, a being must be either a beast or God, man is
destined by nature for state life. The state, in fact is the culmination of natural development, Aristotle wrote in
Politics. ‘‘Hence it is evident that the state is the creation of nature and man is by nature a political animal.” Further,
the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual since the whole is of necessity prior to the part”.
Before I explain to you this particular remark of Aristotle, I would like you to point out that Aristotle uses the
word nature with reference to society in double sense. Firstly, it is true that men arc instinctively or by nature social
because they need each other. The primitive community as pointed out above depends upon impulses imbedded in
life, such as sex and appetite for food. They are indispensable but they are not distinctive of human life because they
are not very different in man and lower animals. Human nature is more, characteristically, displayed in the development
of its rational faculties and moral values. Since state is the only medium in which these can develop, it is natural in a
sense that it is the opposite of instinctive. Just as it is natural for an acorn to grow into oak, so it is natural for human
nature to expand its highest powers in the state. Thus, as per the second meaning, the state is natural because it
contains the possibilities of the perfect unfolding of the innate potentialities of human beings. It is therefore, prior
to individual not in the chronological or historical order but in the order of moral priorities. Self realisation is the
highest moral value, and since it is possible only in the state hence the state is prior to either the individual or the
family.
It is clear that to Aristotle, the state has an organic growth and performs a moral function. This brings him to the
examination of the ends of the state. Its end is to give, as noted in the definition of the state above, a perfect, self
sufficing and fully developed life to the individuals living in it. This it can do by developing good faculties into habit
of good action. It should provide the necessary environment for the fullest development of the ethic rational faculties
of human beings. However, it didn’t mean the destruction of individual’s identity. Man, as having its nature supplanted
by the state rather than the state as having control over man’s every faculty is the pivot of his thought. The function of
good life among its citizens and therefore the state was spiritual association in a moral life. Which type of state could
best promote these ends? And the state which best promotes these ends would be Aristotle’s Best or ideal State.
It is said that what Aristotle calls the ideal state is always Plato’s second best State. Plato’s best state is the Rule
of Philosopher king untrammeled by law, whereas the state in which law is supreme is his concession of human
frailties and is regarded by him as second best state. It is this type of state which is Aristotle’s best State. His ideal was
constitutional and never despotic rule. It is not exactly democracy but includes elements of democracy. It is community
of equals aiming at the best possible life. It ceases to be constitutional or genuinely political if the discrepancy
between its members is so great that they cease to have the same virtue. Constitutional rule is consistent with the
dignity of the subject, whereas a personal or despotic rule is not. The constitutional ruler rules over the willing
subject. He rules by consent. The constitutional rule has three elements. Firstly, it is a rule in public or general
interest as distinguished from a factional or tyrannous rule in the interest of a single class. Secondly, it is lawful rule
in the sense that government is carried on by general regulation and not by arbitrary decrees and also in the vague
sense that the government does not flout standing customs and constitution.

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 Thirdly, constitutional government means the government of willing persons as distinguished from despotic which
is supported by mere force. As a matter of fact, constitutional was never defined by Aristotle. That is why it is said that
Aristotle wrote upon the ideals of state and not on ideal state. Being analytical by nature he analysed the various
claims to power and came to the conclusion that none was complete in itself. He also believed that ideal should be
within the domain of practicability. So be portrayed the best practicable State which results from avoiding the extremes
in democracy and oligarchy that experience had shown to be dangerous. This type of state Aristotle called ‘Polity’ or
constitutional government, a name applied in book III of Politics to moderate democracy. Its social foundation is the
existence of a large middle class which are neither very rich nor very poor. They are not poor enough to be degraded
or rich enough to be factious. They form a group large enough to give state a popular foundation disinterested enough
to hold the magistrates responsible and select enough to avoid the evils by the government of the masses. The best
political association is therefore the one which is controlled by the middle class. Thus, it is manifest that best political
community is formed by citizens of middle class and those are likely to be well administered, in which the middle
class is large and larger if possible than both the other classes or at any rate than either singly. It is in this sense that
Aristotle is sometimes called the philosopher of middle class commonsense. Stability is the basic objective of the
middle class commonsense and stability of the state arises out of the balance between ‘Quality’ and ‘Quantity’. The
first includes political influence which arises from prestige of wealth, birth and education; the second from sheer
weight of numbers. None of these is allowed to predominate in the ideal state.
Other favorable external conditions for the best state, which are partly inspired by the law of Plato and which are
based on Aristotle’s doctrine of the golden mean, are :- (i) population, which should be such that citizens know each
other, to be able to select right persons to different offices (ii) size, which should be neither too large nor too small;
(iii) character of people, (iv) class in the state and system of education is also prescribed by him for his best State.
The other things for his best state are best means of defence against foreign attacks, topography, water supply
arrangements for streets and fortification. His description of governmental organisation of his best state is very
cursory’. He lays down that there should be three institutions to perform three main functions of government that is
popular assembly for deliberative work which should be composed of all citizens and to whom ultimate decision of
government must be submitted. There should be a magistracy for the execution of the laws and judiciary’ for its
interpretation.
Viewed objectively, Aristotle writes, the state is an assemblage of citizens. Aristotle defines Citizen as one who is
eligible to take part in the assembly and to serve on juries. The essence of citizenship is neither residence in the state
nor right of suing or being sued, nor descent from citizenship. A citizen it is clear, would be functioning member of
the city state, the prime qualification for citizenship is the capacity to rule and be ruled in turn. Artisans, mechanics,
labourers were not regarded by Aristotle to be fit to become the citizen as the manual work deliberalised the soul and
rendered the person unfit for political speculation and discharge of civic duties. These classes had no leisure and
were mostly preoccupied with earning their livelihood. Here Aristotle is bringing through the back door what had
been openly stated by Plato that the capacity to rule was possessed by a few individuals. Aristotle, by so defining the
citizenship is dividing the society into two parts which was his chief point of criticism against Plato’s ideal State in
his Republic. I am sure it must be clear to you that Aristotle’s conception of citizenship is extremely aristocratic and
illiberal. It is impossible to provide for the direct participation of the citizens in a modem state with large population.
Further if the end of the state is to serve the greatest good of the greatest number, it must be able to utilize the
experience of the largest number of people. Again if citizenship is to be reserved only for a class of people who are
rich enough, not to have to work for their living, we might well be certain that the governing body based on rich
citizenship would first and last think of passing legislation to ensure the stability of the rule of its own class and
would, therefore, identify its own class with the public interests of the state.
2.5 Aristotle’s Concept of Slavery
While trying to define the state Aristotle begins with household. The household consists of husband, wife, children
and also slaves. He finds slavery essential to a household and defends it as natural therefore moral. In order to lead a
good life slaves are required as some instrument is required to produce good music. Men differ from each other in
their physical and intellectual fitness. Those who are intellectually more advanced than the others are designed by
nature to lead the others. The intellectual must control and rule the physical. To Aristotle, it is natural, therefore, that
some men should be born slaves and some born to rule over them.
Here Aristotle's views on who is a 'slave' will not be out of place. Two him, a slave holds a 'middle' position
between men and animals. He is a 'humanised beast'. He differs from an animal in that he possesses reason enough to
comprehend other man's reason. But he also differs from man in not possessing reason of his own, sufficient capacity
of foresight and self-direction. In the worlds of Aristotle, "For he who can be and, therefore, is another's and he who
participates in reason enough to comprehend, but not to have reason, is a slave by nature."
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 Slavery is advantageous to both master and the slave. Slavery is good because the slave gets the derivative virtues
and excellence of his master. Aristotle appeals to the owners to be merciful to their slaves, and suggested that those
who are cruel to their slaves should be punished. The Aristotle’s defence of slavery rests on two assumptions i.e. (1)
men are divided by nature with respect to capacity for virtue and (2) it is possible to categorize people on the basis of
their capacity for virtue.”
Further if Aristotle approves of the institution of slavery, he does so under definite conditions. He makes out a
distinction between slave by law and slave by nature i.e. between casual and natural slaves. Slaves by law include
prisoners of war. He admits that the child of a natural slave is not always a natural slave. He does not approve of
slavery by mere right of conquest in war because superior physical force does not always mean superior excellence.
Besides, the cause of war may be unjust and conquest immoral. Then again a Greek should not conclave a Greek. He
asserts that the interests of the master and the slave being the same, the master should not abuse his authority over the
slave but befriend him. All slaves should be given hope of emancipation.
It is quite clear that Aristotle adopted a realistic attitude on the question of slavery. He justified slavery to secure
the necessary leisure to the free born Greeks for participation in public affairs. For this reason the slave was the
master’s living tool, to be used kindly, but still to be used for the master’s good.
Now let us make a few points in criticism of Aristotle’s defence of slavery. Firstly, his definition of a slavery
according to which some men are by nature born to issue orders and others to obey them without reasoning would
reduce the majority of men in the present age to the position of slaves. A wage earner with little initiative of his own
is very like Aristotle’s instrument of action or a living tool and therefore nothing more than a slave according to
Aristotelian definition. Secondly, his assertion that some men are born to rule and other born to obey would reduce
the society into two parts arbitrarily. The fact is that, in society, there are countless gradations with respect to moral
and intellectual endowments which would point to, not slavery, but a very complex system of subordination and
authority. Aristotle’s definition would reduce domestic servants and even women in backward countries to the position
of slaves.
2.6 Aristotle’s Theory of Property
Like Aristotle’s concept of slavery his concept of wealth or property is also closely related to his concept of
household. According to Aristotle, like the slave, property is also an instrument of the householder, with the difference
that slave is a real part of the household as he shares in its moral life, whereas, property is external to the good life; it
is a condition, but not a part. Property provides material things sufficient for the purposes of a moral life. He defined
wealth as, “a store of things which are necessary or useful for life in the associations of city or household,” or it is
termed as, a collection of instruments for the use of the household or state”
Firstly, this definition implies that property has instrumental value and is necessary for the proper functioning or
existence of the household, and thus this institution cannot be abolished. Secondly, it implies that since wealth is a
means or instrument to a moral life, it would be limited in amount. According to him, every art has a definite number
of tools, and those of a definite size and same is true of economic art. In this context, he disagrees with modern
thought that only an infinite wealth will satisfy infinity of need. He rather feels that unlimited wealth would not lead
to the real purpose i.e. the purpose of moral life.
As to methods of acquisition of wealth or property, the production of wealth for him has no philosophical
significance. He regards it as a more or less disagreeable necessity incidental to the maintenance of life, and therefore
as a function of the household, but the lowest of its functions. According to him there are two methods of acquiring
property, natural and unnatural. The natural methods are those through which mere necessary subsistence is procured.
Among these he enumerates cattle raising, agriculture and hunting. The unnatural methods of acquisition are those
which aim not at the mere maintenance of life, but at endless accumulation of wealth. Of these methods trade, whether
in the form of barter or in that of sale for money, may be natural, when pursued merely for procuring necessities of
life, and not as an end itself. But through the use of money to facilitate exchange men have been led to see in money
itself the end of the trade; and therefore has arisen, the evil of lending money at interest. In this practice money is
made to reproduce itself instead of being applied to the procurement of the needs of life. According to him such a
mode of acquisition of wealth has no logical justification and is wholly unnatural.
As regards distribution of property or wealth, according to him there are three possibilities: there may be common
possession and common use; private possession and common use; and common possession and private use. Aristotle
has discussed these possibilities with respect to distribution of land only. He assumes that Plato had given his adhesion
to the system of common possession and thus was committed to communism. Aristotle has criticized Plato’s
communism of property. He has objected to a system of common ownership on both economic and moral grounds
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but has laid greater stress on the latter. Common ownership of property leads to common neglect. Magic of property
is a necessary stimulus to the maximum of production. People set themselves to work more earnestly and efficiently
at what they regard their own. Furthermore, common ownership leads to disputes about proper allocation of the
produce or a common soil. If an equal partition is done then some will feel that they have received less than their work
deserves; if proportional division is sought then it will be condemned as unequal and unfair by those whose share is
small. Common ownership, thus, is likely to destroy common-mindedness.
Aristotle has given moral justification of private property. According to him private property is an instrument for
righteousness, and conversely ‘righteousness demands a certain furnishing of private property’. Aristotle defends
private ownership because he considers property as a thing held in trust for virtue. Private ownership is natural and a
necessary factor in good life exactly in the same way as the state is natural and necessary because it is the condition
of moral growth.
He justified private possessions because liberality is not possible without it. One cannot have the virtue of giving,
if one has nothing to give. While talking about the virtue of giving, he is thinking of the active virtue of a civic life, of
which generosity is a part. Fullness of the civic virtue would be lost to the citizens, if they have nothing to give to the
state. Private possession according to him is the source of development of one’s personality, it is source of self
expression, it is a “realized will” and is justified provided that such will is a right will. It is the reflection of the self,
if the self reflected is the moral self. This shows that according to him without these conditions, there can be no right
to property.
Aristotle justifies private property only as an instrument to attain the moral end. According to him this right is not
to be simply retained, it is to be retained when it has been, “improved and perfected by proper customs and proper
legislation regulating its use.” These customs and legislations would make it sure that private property is used as an
instrument for moral purposes. Thus, private possession leading to virtues such as charity and generosity would also
become public possession. According to Aristotle, it would be both, individual possession as well as common
possession. There will be Aristotle’s formula, ‘private possession with common use’. The benefits of both individualism
and communism will be secured. Private possession will bring its economic and moral advantages and common use
of this possession would lead to unanimity. According to him, institution of property or anything external does not
lead to disunion in the state. Disunion is the result of a spirit of disunion in man. This spirit cannot be healed by
material cure i.e. by abolishing the institution of property but by spiritual cure i.e. through common education, which
will put all men on the same spiritual level and initiate them into the same spiritual community.
2.7 Aristotle’s Theory of Revolution
Aristotle made law, which is the supreme power, as basis of various forms of government. The classification is
well known. If the supreme power is vested in one, it is monarchy, if in several, it is aristocracy and if in many, it is
polity. In all, then the supreme body must exercise its power according to law. If the power is exercised arbitrarily
then these forms will be transformed into tyranny, oligarchy and democracy respectively. These are regarded by him
as the perverted forms of government. It may also be pointed out that Aristotle made a distinction between the state
and government. To him the identity of the state depends upon the identity of its constitution which is defined as an
arrangement of the offices of a state, determining their distribution, the residence of sovereignty and the end of the
political association. In fact, change of constitution denoted a change in the state itself. Therefore, anything which
unsettled the spirit of constitution was regarded by him as a major change, or revolution or sedition. Thus revolution
or sedition was something which unsettled the ‘tone’ and disturbed the law abidingness of a city.
2.7.1 Causes of Revolution
Aristotle discusses the causes of revolution in Book V of the ‘Politics’ and suggests preventives for them. It is a
very detailed discussion yet illuminating. Though it may not be possible for me to go into that lengthy discussion yet
I will try to summarize for you the subtle points from his Politics. First of all, Aristotle takes into consideration the
general cause of revolution or change and also explains the meaning of sedition. According to him sedition is the act
of body of persons, forming a combination for the attainment of some political end by illegal means. Therefore it
involves revolutionary action. There is a possibility it may not result in a revolution and only produce a non revolutionary
changes within the four walls of the constitution. For instance, a revolution will be considered to have occurred if
oligarchic form of government is overthrown and is replaced by democracy or vice-versa. However, a revolution will
not be deemed to have taken place, for instance if within a democratic set up changes is made about the selection of
the members of the assembly or magistrates or in the qualifications for the grant of citizenship. Explaining general
cause Aristotle pointed out that it lay in the sense of justice of an individual or a group of individuals, when some feel
that distributive justice of the state is for them a system of injustice as it gives to them the same as other when they
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ought to have in justice more or it gives to them less than others, it may become the ultimate motive of a rebellion or
a political revolt. Thus, I hope, it is clear to you that it is the different interpretations of justice and equality that lead
to the making of claims by different persons and different parties, and the conflict of these claims causes political
struggle and leads changes. So the general motive is always passion for some conception of equality.
Aristotle then takes up particular causes of revolution and broadly divides these causes into three categories.
Firstly, there are Psychological motives or temper of revolutionaries. This includes a passion for equality or the
quality. It is therefore the state-of mind which creates a revolution. This is the general cause which we have already
discussed and here it is made to appear as a specific cause, Secondly, it could be honour, dishonour, disgrace or profit,
loss or fine. The desire to secure honour or profit or to avoid dishonour or loss may lead to the attempt to bring about
the change. Thirdly, there are initial occasions which serve to start a political disturbance and mutual dissensions. The
intrinsic occasions are insolence and profit making among those in authority ; honours being distributed amongst
those who are not considered to deserve them, presence of superiority in some form such as acquisition of power by
a person, institution or group of persons becoming too great for the state and more than a match for the strength of
the general body of citizens; fear amongst the wrong doers that they would suffer punishment or amongst the ordinary
person to suffer wrongs; contempt, disproportionate increase in a part of the society. The incidental occasions
enumerated by Aristotle are election intrigues, willful negligence in allowing people disloyal to constitution to take
power, neglect of trifling changes such as disappearance of property qualifications gradually in an oligarchy and lastly
dissimilarity of elements in composition of state such as heterogeneity of territory. While explaining this particular
cause Aristotle wrote that the causes for a revolution may be small, but the issues are invariably great. Small and
personal matters may lead to large and general consequences. Here it may be added even strength of parties resulting
in a deadlock may also prove to be cause of a revolution. Further it may also be pointed out that, force and fraud both
play an important part in the conduct of revolutions.
Aristotle then proceeds to discuss the particular causes of revolution and changes in different types of states. In
democracies, it is the demagogue ‘talking’ as well as ‘fighting’ who is held responsible for the revolution. The talking
demagogue by his policy of attacking the rich individually and collectively drives them to oligarchic revolution in
self defence. By bringing false occasions in order to confiscate property or wealth and be egging on the people
against them, by imposing on them heavy public burdens in his anxiety to win popular support, a talking demagogue
forces them to combine and hit out at a democratic form of government. On the other hand a fighting demagogue
makes himself a tyrant by posing to be a friend of the people. Thus, there is the possibility of a democracy turning into
mobocracy in case the eager candidates in their anxiety to court the people displace the rule of law and it may change
into oligarchy or tyranny.
Oligarchies are overthrown when unjust treatment is meted out to the masses by ruling oligarchies. The other case
is the dissension amongst the governing class when a section of that class begins to play the demagogue or some of
its members become impoverished and turn revolutionaries or an inner ring is formed inside the governing body.
Further, personal disputes may affect the stability of an oligarchy and another cause may be general growth of wealth
leading to increase in number of persons eligible for office which may also alter their character.
In aristocracies revolutions are due to a policy of narrowing the circle of government. The collapse of aristocracies
as also of ‘politics’ which are closely allied—is generally a defective balance of different’ elements combined in the
constitution. This may lead either to change in this direction in which the balance is tilted or to violent reaction
towards the opposite extremes. Aristocracies are particularly liable to be victims of trifling occasions. The last and
important cause of change in all types of constitutions is said to be the influence of powerful neighboring state. This
greatly affects and undermines the constitution. This analysis of the causes of revolution of Aristotle has been illustrated
by a number of historical examples and is regarded as a perfect example of application of historical method in
Political Science.
2.7.2 Maintaining Constitutional Stability/Prevention of Revolutions
Aristotle’s attempt at suggesting the methods for ensuring constitutional stability in various forms of constitutions
is no less illuminating and penetrating. Aristotle wrote that to know the causes which destroy the constitutions is also
to know the causes which would lead to their preservation. Opposite effects are brought about by opposite effects?
Briefly stated, the following are the suggestions for prevention of revolutions :-
(i) Authorities must guard against petty forms of lawlessness which creep into the society unperceived. When
each is small all are small too, yet ‘the whole or all is not little although it is made up of little’.
(ii) Confidence should never be placed in devices to intend hoodwink the masses. They are always explosive in
actual experience.
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 (iii) Menace of danger is not the only cause of preservation of the constitution. When danger is imminent, men
are alarmed and they therefore keep a firmer grip on their constitutions.
(iv) The State must keep a watch against quarrels and seditions amongst the notables.
(v) Assessment connected with the requirement of property qualifications be regularly made.
(vi) No person should be advanced by the state out of all proportion to others. It is always better to ward small
honours over a period of time than to give honours rapidly (It is not all who can stand sudden prosperity.)
Nor the honours should be removed suddenly.
(vii) A magistracy should be instituted to supervise those who live in a way out of harmony with the established
constitution. For example flourishing sections of society should be kept under watch in democracy.
(viii) Provision should be made not by law but also by the general system of economy to prevent the magistrates
from being able to use the offices for their own gain especially in an oligarchical constitution,
(ix) In democracies the rich be spared, their estates should be secured from the threat of redistribution, however
they should be prevented from undertaking expensive but useless public service.
Aristotle also noted that in the holders of high offices three qualities are needed. Firstly, there should be loyalty
to the established constitution, Secondly, they should have high degree of capacity for the duties of the office and
lastly, a quality of goodness and justice is part of their character. Further, he also insisted that it should be ensured that
the number of those who want a constitution to continue should be greater than those who do not and that the education
of citizens should be so organised as to train them in the Spirit of the constitution under which they live.
Kingship is best preserved by a policy of moderation. The example ‘par excellence’ of objectivity and scientific
outlook is the approach of Aristotle towards the preservation of tyranny, the most hated form of the constitution. Two
methods were suggested by him. The traditional method based itself on repression with the object of breaking the
spirit of the subjects, sowing distrust amongst them and making them incapable of action. These objectives could be
achieved by looping off “tall poppies”, by forbidding common meals, clubs and education thus trying to destroy
anything that generates mutual confidence and a high spirit, by setting up an efficient espionage system, by impoverishing
the subjects, by the imposition of taxes, by constant war mongering and thus keep the subject occupied and in need of
a leader all the time. A tyrant should never trust his friends, as they have the most power to affect his overthrow. The
second method for establishing tyranny suggested by Aristotle was by resimiating it with kingship. Thus a tyrant by
good administration and exercise of personal restraint will tend to stabilize himself. A wise tyrant will adorn his city,
pay heed to public workship, honour the good, keep his own passions in check and enlist in his favour as large a
measure of social support as he possibly can. An echo of these suggestions, my dear students, you will hear in
Machiavelli, at a later stage during the course of our future exchange of ideas. In fact, you will realize, as you go along
with me in the discussion on political philosophy, how all pervasive has been the influence of Aristotle. Thomas
Aquinas, Marsigilo of Padua, Locke, Montesquieu and even Karl Marx will be found to owe something of their
philosophy to this master of the masters of Political Science.
2.8 Summary
Thus, Aristotle is one of the most influential political thinkers in the history of political thought. Due to his
characteristically scientific approach to political issues, he is regarded as the father of Political Science. He was the
first pragmatic thinker who based his conclusions on facts and imported a scientific outlook to the study of the
subject. He laid the foundations of the comparative method of study of political institutions. His views were mainly
based on the study of 158 constitutions of the Greek city states. He was the first man to give the character of
independent science to politics. He seperated politics from ethics and discussed these two subjects in two different
books. His philosophy is a mixture of Hellenic ideas and universal ones. His faith in the superiority of the Greek race
and Greek city states, justification of slavery, notion of limited citizenship do not appeal to reason. On the other hand,
his views regarding the social nature of man, natural origin of the state, popular supremacy, the rule of law, revolution
and constitutionalism are of everlasting importance to mankind. His concept of ‘rule of law’ and ‘Constitutional
State’ which is universally accepted in all the democratic states at present is his most important legacy to the posterity.
He emphasized the principle of natural origin of state. He asserted that man is a political animal and the instincts of
sex and appetite have played an important part in the creation of state. His views regarding the positive functions of
the state appeal very much to the modern mind. His statement that the state’s main function is to try to bring about
moral development in the individuals is really what the modern profounder of welfare state say. Further, Aristotle
emphasized the importance of the masses and public opinion. He anticipated the theory of separation of powers by
dividing the governmental functions into deliberative, magisterial and judicial functions. Aristotle also offered most

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effective justification for the institution of private property and made strong plea for its retention. He held that
property should be used for the good of community. He asserted that inequality in wealth is the main cause of revolution.
He said that political stability is possible only in a state where there are not extremes of wealth or property. He also
favoured the time-hounoured and natural institution of family.
In nutshell, we may say that Aristotle was a practical man and had a realist approach. It was his realism with its hard
logic, fine analysis, keen observations and a touch of idealism that made him philosopher and scientist of all ages.
2.9 Check Your Progress
Note: Check your answer with that given at the end of the lesson.
1. Name the three main grounds on which Aristotle criticized his master Plato.
2. How Aristotle justified the institution of property?
3. Why did Aristotle consider slavery natural?
4. For Aristotle, what is Revolution?
2.10 Glossary
• Inductive Method: The method which tries to reach generalizing propositions (Universal laws, general
hypothesis) from individual facts, events and cases.
• Deductive Method: Reason from preceding statements.
• Despotism: The term used for the government controlled by absolute, arbitrary and tyrannical force.
• Oligarchy: A government in which supreme power is held by a privileged few.
• Individualism: A type of world outlook whose essence consists in regarding the rights of the individual as
absolute and setting him against the society.
• Intrinsic: Inherent, real.
• Ascetic : The denial and suppression of bodily pleasures and appetites.
• Gregarious : Living in herds, fond of company.
2.11 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercises
1. See Section 2.3
2. See Section 2.6
3. See Section 2.5
4. See Section 2.7
2.12 Suggested Readings
1. G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1961.
2. W.T. Jones, Master of Political Thought, Vol. II, London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd; 1955.
3. E. Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, New Delhi: Dover Publication, 1964.
4. David Boucher and Paul Kelly (eds.) Political Thinkers from Socrates to the Present, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
5. William Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co., 1960.
6. Subrata Mukharjee and Sushila Ramaswamy, A History of Political Thought: Plato to Marx, Delhi: PHI
Learning Pvt. Ltd., 2018.
7. Brian Nelson, Western Political Thought, New Delhi: Pearson, 2006.
8. Sukhbir Singh, History of Political Thought: Plato to Burk, Vol.I, Meernt : Rastogi Publication, 1997.
9. R.M. Bhagat, Political Though: Plato to Marx, Jalandher ; New Academic Publishing Company, 1988.
2.13 Terminal Questions:
1. Critically examine Aristotle's views on Property.
2. Give an account of Aristotle's ideas on the causes and prevention of Revolution.
3. Analyse Aristotle's views on slavery.
4. Present an analytical overview of Aristotle's critique of Plato.

*****

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 Lesson-3
Machiavelli (1469-1527 A.D.)
Structure
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Learning Objectives
3.2 Life and Works of Machiavelli
3.3 Views on State craft
3.4 Relation between Politics and Ethics
3.5 Machiavelli's Humanism
3.6 Summary
3.7 Check Your Progress
3.8 Glossary
3.9 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises
3.10 Suggested Readings
3.11 Terminal Questions
3.0 Introduction
Niccole Machiavelli was an Italian diplomate, politician, historian, philosopher and humist of the renaissance
period. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy. With him a new phase in the development
of political philosophy sets. In fact, he was more a practical politician rather than a political philosopher. His thought
was largely determined by the historical background of his life. He is best known for his writing ‘The Prince’, a
handbook for unscrupulous politicians that inspired the term ‘Machiavellian’ and brought him a reputation as an
atheist and an immoral cynic. But Machiavelli’s character like that of other philosophers is neither good nor bad. His
character is a compound of more or less contradictory motive forces into a relative and partial unity. The essentials
of his republicanism on the one hand, and his advocacy of princedom on the other hand, somehow reconciled by his
conviction that in these corrupt and degenerate times men are incapable of ruling themselves and so require a strong
unified power over them.
3.1 Learning Objectives
After going through this lesson, the students will be able to:
• Understand the historical background which shaped the political ideas of Machiavelli.
• Understand the Political Philosophy and methods of Machiavelli.
• Explain his views on power, politics and statecraft.
• Comprehend Machiavelli as a humonist thinker.
3.2 Life and Works of Machiavelli
Machiavelli was born in Florence, of well-to-do parents in the year 1469. His father was a lawyer. In 1494, he
entered the service of the Republican government in the capacity of a clerk in Chancery. Because of his sharp intellect,
he rose in his position so rapidly that in 1498 he got one of the highest posts in the government, that of second
Chancellor and Secretary. It was a post concerned with diplomatic, military and administrative affairs. This post he
held until 1512. Florence, during this period, was an independent Republic. Because of Machiavelli’s position and
reputation, he came to be entrusted with many important and delicate responsibilities of state. He was sent on diplomatic
mission to several courts. In 1502 he was sent as an envoy to the court of cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentina whose
methods he studied and admired. The year 1512 brought Machiavelli’s public career to an end. The Medice family
which had been driven out of power in Florence, effected a coup d’etat with the help of the Spanish army, and came
back to power. With it, Machiavelli fell into disgrace and is 1513 was put into prison on suspicion of his part is a
conspiracy against the Medice family. After remaining in the jail for a year, he was finally released on the condition
that he would retire from public life and abstain from all political activity. He returned to his farm at San Casciano and
lived the life of an exile. It was here that he died in 1,527. It was during this period of retirement that he wrote his
immortal works. Among his works the most famour are 'The Prince’, 'The Discourses’, 'The Art of War', ‘History of
Florence’, and 'Mandragola'. In his works, there has been brilliant epitome of his period.

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3.3 Views on Statecraft:
Machiavelli was less a political philosopher and was mainly concerned with the art of government. The “Prince’
and the “Discourses’ are books on the art of government rather than on the theory of state. Machiavelli never thought
in terms of writing a treatise on political theory; he only concerned himself with giving suggestions to the ruler as to
how to solve day to day administrative problems and how to keep himself in power. Machiavelli’s main subject-matter
is causes of the rise and decline of states and the means by which statesman can make them permanent. “The Prince”
consists mainly of the ‘tips’ given by Machiavelli to his fictional Prince. It is mainly the handbook on the art of ruling
and maintaining oneself in power. He writes almost wholly of the mechanics of government and the policies by which
they can expand their power and the errors that lead to their decay or overthrow. Machiavelli made casual references
to the theory of state in his works and dealt at length with the principles which the Prine should observe to maintain
himself in power.
State, according to Machiavelli, is the highest form of human association which has to be created as the human
beings are selfish, egoistic and ambitious, but weak and fickle. State is not something natural to human beings but is
an artificial creation. It is not something which is implanted in the social instincts of human beings but has its origin
in a calculating self-interest on the part of the individual.
According to him, there are three forms of the state e.g. Monarchy, Aristocracy and Republic. He deals at length
with the Monarchy, and the Republic and ignores Aristocracy altogether. He had a very low opinion about Aristocracy.
He regarded the Republic as the best form of government, but as the conditions in the then Italy had become rotten, it
no longer remained practical. Monarchy suited the conditions of Italy of his times as it was meant for founding a new
state or reforming a corrupt one. Machiavelli stressed that a normal or healthy state always has an impulse to expand
or grow its power. The tendency towards extension of its dominion is in his opinion inevitable in both republics and
monarchies. To him, aggrandisement is the symptom and natural consequence of health in a state. To him, the acquisition
of an Empire is as natural to a state as growth to a human body. Though Machiavelli regarded force and fear as
important instruments in administration, yet he also considers the good laws as the foundation stones of the state. He
holds that a law enacted by a law giver is not only helpful in regulating and controlling the actions of the citizens but
also helps in the growth of civil and moral virtues among the citizens and the development of national character.
After dealing with the theory of state in a casual manner, Machiavelli offered some suggestions to his fictional
prince regarding maintaining himself in power. Some of them are as under:
1. The prince should crush all opposition to his authority with an iron hand, should not hesitate to make use of
ruthless force. He should enforce his will without bothering about the privations of his subjects.
2. As force is an expensive and inefficient method of attaining the objective, Machiavelli says that a shrewd
ruler should also use methods of propaganda and religion to lull the people into submission. He holds that a
tactful use of these devices can obviate the need of force. He wants the rulers to be both fox and a lion.
3. The prince should try to take quick and firm decisions, because hesitation can prove very harmful. He would
like the prince to act promptly and make mistakes rather than lose initiative through delay and uncertainty.
4. A good prince should try to maintain peace and plenty in the country so that the people can lead a comfortable
and contended life.
5. The prince should maintain a well-trained regular national army of his own citizens and should not depend on
mercenary soldiers, because the national army alone can defend the state and make it powerful.
6. The prince should be a good soldier and commander. He should possess thorough knowledge of the war
strategy and maintain best possible arms and equipments. He must also keep the morale of his forces high.
7. The prince must try to maintain his popularity with the people and earn their love and affection. In the words
of Machiavelli “a prince should retain the affection of his people otherwise in any crisis he has no remedy.”
A prince who is popular with the people can easily handle hostile nobles and rich men in the state.
8. The prince should try to cultivate public spirit and patriotism among his citizens through education, religion
and propaganda. The personal qualities of the prince can also help a great deal in the cultivation of the public
spirit.
9. The prince should be better feared than loved because people love a ruler so long as they receive or expect
certain benefits from the ruler. On the other hand, by creating a fear in their mind, he can get their obedience
for a longer duration. However Machiavelli warns that the prince should not be hated, as the hatred can be
ruinous for him.

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 10. The prince must maintain utmost secrecy in the conduct of the state’s affairs. If his plans or strategy etc., are
leaked out, they will lose their effectiveness and prove harmful for the state.
11. It was not essential for the prince to be always honest. If the interests of the state so demand he should not
mind resort to fraud and other dishonest means. The prince should not mind even violating his promises for
the good of the state.
12. The prince should not under any circumstances touch the property and women of his subjects, because
people are very touchy about both these things. To highlight this point Machiavelli goes to the extent of
suggesting that a person will more readily forgive the murder of his father than the confiscation of his
patrimony.
13. The prince should be a good showman and project himself as the embodiment of qualities like generosity,
kind-heartedness, chivalry, mercy, sincerity, humanity, bravery, and religiousness. It is not essential that the
prince should actually possess these qualities, but he should be able to make a show of these qualities, in
other words he should be able to build up his reputation as a good man even though he may not actually be so.
14. The prince must avoid the company of flatters because it helps debasing effect on his sense of judgement. He
therefore wants the prince to tell everyone that he wants to know the truth and does not feel offended even
if the truth is bitter.
15. The prince should not have permanent friends or enemies. Therefore, he should not hesitate to leave his
friends any time if the interests of the state so demand. He should make friends keeping in view the degree
of interests he can promote.
16. The prince should not listen to every Tom, Dick and Harry, because this could undermine his respect with his
subjects. He should mix up only with a handful of counselors, who have proved their sincerity and collect all
necessary information from them.
17. The prince should try to collect correct information about the strength of his enemy through intelligence
and crush him before he becomes too powerful and poses a challenge to his authority. He should never
under-estimate the strength of his enemies.
18. The prince should be miser or lavish in keeping with the general feeling of the subjects. This can secure for
him their praise and co-operation.
19. Finally, he wants the prince to follow an expansionist policy. Failure to expand the state shall lead to its
stagnation and ultimate decline. It was therefore both in the interest of the prince as well as the state that he
should pursue expansionist policies.
In addition to the above suggestions, Machiavelli made numerous other suggestions to his prince, but it is not
possible to reproduce all of these here. We get a fairly good idea about the shrewd insight of Machiavelli from these
tips to the prince. In fact, some of the principles laid down by Machiavelli for his prince hold good even today.
3.4 Relation Between Politics and Ethics:
Throughout the Ancient and Medieval Ages, Politics had been the hand maid of Ethics. A very luckwarm attempt
was made by Aristotle to separate Politics from Ethics but he, too was not very successful. It was Machiavelli who
completely separate Politics from Ethics, though at the cost of his reputation. Machiavelli had said that politics and
Ethics were two different sciences whose spheres of enquiry were altogether different. Politics deals with the rules
of conduct of State, and Ethics deals with rules of conduct of individuals. The ruler who for all practical purposes is
the state is much above and different from the subjects.
Machiavelli asserts that the Ruler whether in a corrupt state or in a free state must identify his interests with those
of the subjects. A prince cannot hope to be successful unless he regards the interests of the subjects as his own. The
chief interest of a prince is public welfare. If the end is to safeguard the interest of the state, then Machiavelli would
recommend any means whatsoever. Reasons of state justify every degree of treachery and brutality. Even murder,
deceit and assault are permissible if the end is of course, to safeguard the interests of the State. It is only the promotion
of public welfare that Justifies immoral deeds. He said, “in the actions of rulers”, end justifies the means. Let a prince
therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by
everyone.” In the ‘Discourses’, Machiavelli defines the reasons of state even more clearly: for where the very safety
of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty,
nor of glory or of shame should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question
should be: what cause will save the life and liberty of the country.

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 Machiavelli never praises immorality for its own sake; his basic attitude is not one of nihilists. He neither assumes
that there are no values in this world, nor wishes to create a world in which all values would be destroyed. Machiavelli
is aware that civilization implies some sort of values. His immorality implies therefore, not the denial of moral
values in all situations but the affirmations that, in the specific situation of the statesman, the rules of power have
priority over those of ethics and morality.
Machiavelli did not invent political murder, treachery, and fraud. But before his time such crimes were committed
defacto and no attempts were made to integrate them into a moral world of their own. The traditional reaction to
political immorality has been either one of polite neglect, half hearted excuse or at best, severe censure of individual
violation of ethics and morality. The sanctity and inviolability of the moral code seemed, before Machiavelli, in no
way impaired by the regrettable exception to the rule, regardless of how frequent they were. In Machiavelli, the
traditional attitude of polite neglect and hypocritical, or sincere regret is replaced by the positive affirmation that the
reasons of state is for the statesman the determining code of conduct, and that statecraft constitutes a value system of
its own which is different from that of ethics and religion. What is evil from the view point of morality and religion
may therefore be good from the view point of the reason of state, if it serves to acquire, retain, or expand power.
Good and evil are thus reduced from absolute to relative categories, and it depends upon the basic assumption of
a system of values whether a particular action is good or bad. Assuming power as the end of politics, goodness then
coincides with efficiency, an efficient means of acquiring, consolidating and expanding power is good. Efficiency in
politics is thus analogous to virtue in morals or religion and inefficiency replaces the concept of sin. Machiavelli
himself still uses the term ‘virtue’ for the successful ruler, but he means the ambitious, ruthless, successful ruler, and
not the ruler who is a regular church goer, mindful of other men’s wives and generally a practicing moralist.
The role of religion as a mere instrument of political domination, cohesion and unity becomes even clearer in
Machiavelli’s advice that the ruler supports and spreads religious doctrines and beliefs in miracles that he knows to be
false. The main value of religion to the ruler lies in the fact that it helps him to keep the people “well conducted and
united” and from this viewpoint of utility, it makes no difference whether he spreads among them true or false
religious ideas and beliefs.
Machiavelli’s theory of separation of Ethics and politics is not immune from criticism. If suffers from the following
defects:-
(i) It puts premium on the misdeeds of politicians. The politicians, under the grave of protecting the integrity
of state may commit all sorts of crimes.
(ii) There is no guarantee that interests of the Ruler and the Public would be the same. His personal whims of
prejudices may be given effect to just as the policies of the state.
(iii) Machiavelli’s theory of “End Justifies the Means” goes directly against Mahatma Gandhi’s theory of “Means
Justify the End”.
We can conclude by saying that though criticized yet, Machiavelli raised a very serious question. All clear-minded
political thinkers in subsequent centuries have agreed with Machiavelli that individuals and states cannot be subjected
to the same rules of morality. He was realist enough to realize this.
3.5 Machiavelli's Humanism:
What is Humanism? Like most of the terms 'humanism' too is difficult to define, for it refers to different ideas,
sometimes conflicting in different times and spaces. In simple terms it can be defined as a philosophical and ethical
position that prefers the value and agency of human beings over the doctrine of faith and belief, the humanists prefer
rational and critical thinking than blindly following doctrines of faith. It rejects the notion that the intangibility of
social and political reality is inherent in a transcendent divine and metaphysical - order of being. Humaniat's political
discourse is non-theological and non-metaphysical. Technically this meant that human reality is understood and
represented not in theological and metaphysical categories, but rather in historical circumstantial, empirical and
practical terms. Substantially it meant that humanist political discourse assumes that the social and political world is
changeable and that man is the agent of change. The fundamental premise of humanist political discourse is, in other
words, that human reality is a human artifact, the product of human intentions, desires and actions. Humanism, more
generally, see the universal above the particular the external above the temporal, the abstract above the concrete, the
transcendent above the worldly and the contemplative above the active. Generally the term asserts notions of human
freedom and development.
Machiavelli was a humanist. He was against the medieval perspective of Christianity. He also opposed the ancient
and medieval ideas of natural rights and detested the idea that the world was structured by God or nature based on the

28
principles of rights. As the humanist thoughts were at the centre of his intellectual ideas, he also rejected the idea of
deterministic Universe, in spite of the fact he saw some regularities and lawfulness in the universe, and argued for a
cosmos that is open to the human.
Machiavelli challenged the popular humanist assumption that when people are educated, they will (automatically
choose virtues over vice. In the 'The Prince' he criticizes this notion and asserts that people are more likely to
respond to fear and that it is power which makes for a good government and not morality. Though he differs from the
popular humanistic view of his age, he still stresses on the human faculties and agencies instead of taking refuge in
faith and belief.
Machiavelli like other humanists lay emphasis on the human potential and agencies, but unlike them he is willing
to admit the darkness that lurks within the hearts of men. In his quest for a stable political life, he puts forth a set of
laws that shape the trajectory of the movement from corruption His detailed examination exposed the human nature
that is certain contrary to the established stereotypes. On surface, Machiavelli's analysis reveals human nature as
essentially evil, but on a careful consideration an account of a different perspective of human potential for nobility is
exposed.
Machiavelli argues that choosing between corruption and nobility is a matter of human choice. But the way we
choose involves morals and Machiavelli's views on morals are quite different and interesting. Unlike the Romans and
the Christians, he proposes a modern view of morality, according to which there are no eternal moral truths prescribed
by God or the nature. According to Machiavelli, moral obligation of the human beings are not created by some
supreme being or nature or something similar, but are created by human themselves as a logical response to the
necessity of forming a society and living together.
Machiavelli belongs to the Social Contract tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, which explicitly asserts that
morality and laws are not eternal but rational deliberations concerning the requirement and needs of human civilization.
It is this tradition that proposed and asserted the possibility of moral progress. If such is the case then no action is
wrong till the formation of laws, and this was view accepted by the others in the social contract tradition. But Machiavelli
does not consider the time before civilization devoid of values.
No doubt, Machiavelli is more humanistic than the other humanists but there is a problem. The term Machiavellian,
referring to the ruthless pursuit of an end by any means, badly misinterprets the ideas that he expounded in 'the Prince'
and 'Discourses' which he wrote about the same time. Both books need to be read in context with each other to
understand Machiavelli's belief in democracy and the right of people to have a voice in their government. While the
Prince is a set of short maxims, bit of advice written for a political leader to digest easily .The Discourses is a longer
work, focusing on how citizens can run a republic. Thought Machiavelli was ambiguous to the relative merits of
republics and monarchies, in Discourses (1531) he showed a marked preference for republican government, but in
'The Prince' he developed a model of radical autocracy. For this reason, his goals remained unclear.
Though he did profound the necessity of using any means to an end, his end was to benefit humanity" So it's really
not just any end - it is the political end of saving the state to allow human beings to live security and flourish."
Machiavelli talks about creating states and societies based not on what people should ideally be, but on how they are.
He was also the first to suggest using psychology in statecraft. He treats people as individuals units that participate
in politics and whose minds you need to get into- they are no Longer a mass. You have to figure out what they think, so
you can manipulate what they think to rule more effectively.
It is Machiavelli's challenge to our modern world that we ferret out new possibilities by understanding that what is
right in one circumstance may be disastrous in another. "When he talks about the state of war, he is really talking about
a state of mind. He stresses flexibility- to be able to think quickly and react even in the peace.
People often say that he was critiquing' Christianity or Plato Aristotle, but his thinking is far broader than that. He
is interested in challenging any dominant way of thinking that may not preserve a secure society.
Beside this his methods were coherent throughout and remain a major contribution to social science and the
history of ideas. Like earlier humanists, Machiavelli saw history as a source of power, but unlike them, he saw neither
history nor power itself within a moral context. Rather he sought to examine history and power and in an amoral and
hence wholly scientific manner. He examined human efforts events in the same way Galileo and the Science examined
physical events. To this extent his work, though original in its specific design, was firmly based in the humanistic
tradition. At the same time his achievements significantly eroded humanism. By laying the foundations of modern
social science, he created a discipline that, though true to humanistic methodology, had not the slightest regard for
humanistic morality. In so doing, he brought to the surface a contradiction that had been implicit in humanism all
along; the dichotomy between critical objectivity and the moral evangelism.
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 Based in these modern considerations, Machiavelli proposes a realistic form of liberal political philosophy,
which was something common to the humanists of the time. His entire idea of modern liberal republic expresses the
humanistic notion that humans are capable of making meaningful choices. This motion can be seen in his
recommendation of forming a balanced constitution that includes a high respect for every section of society, and
power of the executive to respond properly in the time of emergencies. These ideas certainly do not exhibit a
deterministic view of morality, laws and government; instead they exhibit a humanistic and developing perspective of
morals, laws and humans.
3.6 Summary:
Machiavelli is probably one of the most misunderstood political thinkers. He is mainly criticized for drawing a
bad picture of human nature; his principle that ‘ends justify the means; and his undue emphasis on the role of force in
keeping the people united. Even then he has made tremendous contribution to the growth of political thought. He was
the first modern thinker in many of his great ideas.
Firstly, he completely rejected the feudal conception of a hierarchy of autonomous entities and envisaged a
territorial, national and sovereign state which enjoyed supreme power over all the institution in the society. Secondly,
he deserves the credit for freeing politics from the clutches of ethics. Prior to him politics was considered a hand
maid of ethics. He for the first time asserted that there were two distinct standards of morality for the state and the
individual and freed the state from the shackles of moral principles. However, he insisted on the individuals to observe
the ethical principles. This way of looking at politics greatly influenced the subsequent political thinkers. Thirdly,
Machiavelli was the first thinker to emphatically denounce the authority of Church and tried to reduce it to a subordinate
position to the government. However, he was not against the idea of using religion as an instrument for the promotion
of state interests. Fourthly, Machiavelli for the first time offered materialist interpretation of the origin of state, and
completely ignored the metaphysical or supernatural elements. His theory that state was founded in the weakness of
human nature, insufficiency of human mind and inordinate ambitions and desire of human beings, was a novel one.
Fifthly, he was the first exponent of the principle of ‘power politics’ and propounded the theory of aggrandisement
which insisted that the state must either expand or perish. He was a great humanist. He proposes a realistic form of
liberal political philosophy. In fact, Machiavelli was more of a practical politician rather than a political philosopher.
With him a new phase in the development of political philosophy sets in. Dunning has said, “Machiavelli was the first
modern political philosopher. It is quite as accurate to say that he ends the medieval era as that he begins the modern.”
3.7 Check your Progress
Note: Check your answer with that given at the end of the lesson.
1. "Machiavelli was the child of his own time". Discuss.
2. Examine Machiavelli's views on ethics and politics.
3. Why is Machiavelli known as a humanist thinkers?
3.8 Glossary
• Renaissance- was the period in Europe especially Italy in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, when there was a
new interest in art, literature, science and learning.
• Machiavellian- a person who is sneaky, cunning and lacking a moral code. The word comes from the Italian
philosopher Niccole Machiavelli, who wrote the Political treatise ‘The Prince’ in which he encourages “the
end justifies the means” behavior especially among politicians.
• Aggrandisement- the term is used for the enlargement of the territory of one state at the expense of another.
• Republicanism- Belief in or support for government by elected representatives of the people.
• Morality- principles concerning what is good and bad or right and wrong behavior.
• Perfunctory- done quickly as a duty without any interest or feeling.
• Acquiescence- to accept something without argument, although you may not agree with it.
• Nihilist- a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles.
• Pragmatic- dealing with problems in a practical way rather than by following ideas or principles.
3.9 Answers to check your progress exercises
1. See Section 3.2
2. See Section 3.4
3. See Section 3.5

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3.10 Suggested Readings:
1. G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1961.
2. H. Butterfield: The Statecraft of Machiavelli, London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd, 1940.
3. F.J.C. Hearnshaw (ed.) : The Social and Political Ideas of Some Great Thinkers of the Renaissance
and the Reformation.
4. D. Germino, Modern Western Political Thought: Machiavelli to Marx, Chicago; Chicago University
Press, 1972.
3.11 Terminal Questions:
1. Critically examine Machiavelli’s views on Politics and Statecraft.
2. ‘Machiavelli had one theory for Revolution and another for government’ (Sabine). Elucidate.
3. Narrate the most important tips given by Machiavelli to his prince.
4. 'Machiavelli was a great huminist thinker'. Discuss.

*****

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 Lesson-4
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 A.D.)

STRUCTURE
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Learning Objectives
4.2 Human Nature
4.3 The State of Nature
4.4 Law of Nature
4.5 The Social Contract
4.6 Hobbes as an Individualist and Absolutist
4.7 Summary
4.8 Check Your Progress
4.9 Glossary
4.10 Answer to Self Check Exercise
4.11 Suggested Readings
4.12 Terminal Questions
4.0 Introduction
Hobbes was the first Englishman to present the system of Political Philosophy that can stand among the
great systems of history. His work placed him at once in the first rank of political thinkers and his theory became
from the moment of its appearance the centre of controversy and enormous influence throughout Western Europe.
“So skillfully did he plead all the most conspicuous concept of current political thought in his system and adapt them
to his ends,” writes W.A., Dunning, “that philosophers of all schools were forced to a recognition and discussion of
his doctrine; whether by way of approval or by way of condemnation.”
Among the great modem philosophers, Hobbes attempted to bring political theory into intimate relation
with a thoroughly modern system of thought. He strove to make this system broad enough to account for all facts of
nature on the basis of scientific principles. He attempted to analyse human behaviour both in its individual and social
aspect. It is for this reason that George H. Sabine regards Hobbes as the greatest thinker on political philosophy that
“the English-speaking people have produced.”
What is the political philosophy? What is the scientific principle on which his political philosophy is based?
To answer these questions, my dear student, we will have to examine some of the influences which shape his views on
Human Nature and formed the basis on which he raised the super-structure on his political philosophy.
The new developments in physical science, which were taking place during his times, greatly influenced him.
According to these developments the physical world began to be regarded as purely mechanical system in which all
that happens may be explained with geometrical precision, according to the new quantitative conception of the physical
world. It is consisted of colourless, Soundless particles moving with mathematical precision in accordance with
simple, deterministic mechanical law. Hobbes grasped this principle of motion and the concept of world as mechanical
system and made if the central points of his political philosophy.
In ‘Leviathan’, he tried to answer the perennial problems of political success. What is state and what is man,
and why man should obey the state. He is most renounced systematic thinker. Although Hobbes claims himself an
original thinker, yet he had some influences of contemporary thoughts. However he is considered one of the most
original thinkers. He is a great system builder and ranked with Plato and Hegal. ‘The Leviathan is the greatest, perhaps
the sole master piece of political philosophy written in the English Political Philosophy......
In his famous book “Leviathan” (1651), while applying these principles, he wrote: “Everything which exists
is body, that is, everything which exists consists of particles moving in accordance with deterministic mechanical
laws. There is no difference in principle, in this view, between the behaviour of billiard-balls colliding and rebounding
on a billiard table and the behaviour of plants, animals, or indeed of men”. In his opinion, everywhere we are confronted
with same fundamental laws of behaviour with the difference that the motions with these laws describe are more
complex because of the increasing number of particles involved.

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 On the basis of this assumption, he sought to construct an integrated system of philosophy with three parts
all dealing with ‘body’ first with inanimate body, that is geometry, mechanics and physics, the second part dealing with
physiology and psychology of individual human being and the third, concluding with the most complex of all bodies
the artificial body called the society or the state.
4.1 Learning Objectives
After reading this unit, you will be able to
• Know about Hobbes’ Theory of state of Nature.
• Understand Hobbes’ Theory of Social Contract and
• Evaluate Hobbes’s as an absolutist or Individualist.
4.2 Human Nature
Hobbes political philosophy was greatly influenced by the violence, the brutality and the appalling waste of
life and properly caused by the civil war in England. His observation of human nature—in himself as he frankly admits
and also surely as he saw it revealed in those dreadful years-of revolutionary disturbances-led him to the conclusion
that “man is an animal who is moved by two and only two considerations—fear and self-interest. Every other motive
which at first sight seems to distinguish man from other animal is reduced by him to one or the other of these basic
tendencies. For instance, we generally regard sense of humour as distinctly human trait, laughter is regarded as a sign
of friendliness, good nature and good fellowship. But to Hobbes, on the contrary, it is occasioned in man “either by
some sudden act of their own that pleaseth them, or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by
comparison where of they suddenly applaud themselves.”
Man is not primarily a creature of reason but of the passions. His further assumption is that the movement of
particles either aids or retards ‘vitality’ of the organ which was the heart rather than the brain. If the vitality increased
and decreased, two primary types of emotions desire and aversion respectively, are created. What men wish good is
called desire and he avoids is omission. For Hobbes conception of good or bad is subjective and ever changing. The
end of every man is success in obtaining the things which he from time to time desires. And this according to Hobbes
is ‘Felicity’ and the means through which a man can achieve “Felicity” are ‘powers’. This life becomes a perpetual and
restless desire of powers after powers that ceaseth only with death.
These twin influences determined the Hobbesian concept of Human Nature. The first influence enabled him
to develop a psychology of human nature on the principle of motion. According to Hobbes, the motion of bodies is
transmitted through the sense organs to the central nervous system where it appears as ‘sensation’. Such transmitted
motion always aids or retards the ‘vital motion’ the organ for which, as he supposed was heart rather than brain.
Accordingly as the vital motion is heightened or repressed two primitive types of feelings appear. These are ‘desire’
and ‘aversion’ respectively. Desire is an endeavour towards that which is desirable or favourable to vital process and
‘aversion’ is repulsion from that which is undesirable or unfavourable.
This leads Hobbes to postulate that human will is completely determined. It is also a motion and is preceded
or accompanied by the thought of the subsequent motion of which it is cause. Accordingly animals (Human beings
included) have two sorts of motions. Firstly, voluntary motions which begin with birth such as course of blood,
excretion etc. Secondly, there are involuntary motions such as ‘go’, ‘speak’, ‘move’ whose cause is imagination and
are preceded by the thought of ‘whither’, ‘which we’ and ‘what’.
On this psychology of human nature, Hobbes further builds his philosophy of ‘value’. The object of desire is
‘good’ and that of aversion, ‘evil’ (in relation to the person that uses them). The conclusion is that ‘nothing is inherently
good or evil.’ Value is subjective. According to Hobbes value is simply the expression of motion of body towards or
away from object about which the judgment is made. Thus, it is not the case that we desire the object we do desire
because it is ‘good’, on the contrary, ‘good’ is the name we give to those objects which attract us that is towards which
we move. As such, ‘goodness’ we assert of the object is not in it, it is a feeling in us, produced by the motion of
particles which form our body in exactly the same way as the heat or colour which we feel or perceive is really in us
though it seems in the object.
Now this psychology and view of ‘value’ when correlated to man’s capacity for the rational would simply
mean that procession of reason though an important function does not really alter the picture of man motivated by
‘self-interest’ and ‘fear’. Reason is conceived by Hobbes as purely instrumental and therefore, it simply enables the
animal who posesses it to avoid many of things which he fears and secure many selfish gratification whose enjoyment
otherwise he will have to forego.

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 It is this conception of human nature which is the basis of political philosophy developed by Hobbes. It was
the first whole-hearted attempt to treat political philosophy as part of a mechanistic body of scientific knowledge.
4.3 The State of Nature
Human nature as it is, Hobbes couldn’t have painted a bright picture of the ‘State of Nature.’ The state of
nature was, therefore, a state of war where every man was an enemy of every other man. Since ‘self-interest’ and ‘fear’
was the sole motive which guided the human behaviour, life was necessarily hard and cruel. In the state of nature might
and fraud prevailed. In the words of Hobbes, in the state of nature, “there is no industry, no culture, no navigation.... no
society; and which is worst of all continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish and short.” The all absorbing pre-occupation of all men is self- preservation. “1 put for a general inclination of
all mankind” Writes Hobbes “a perpetual and restless desire of power which ceaseth only in death.... because he
cannot assure the power and means to live well, he cannot do without the acquisition of more.”
Thus, no moderation of desire can place a limit to the struggle for existence. Since each individual is roughly
equal in strength and cunning, none can be secure. There is a ‘war of every man against every man’. There is neither
right nor wrong, justice nor injustice. The rule of life is that, a man can get so long as he can keep it. It appears that life
in the state of nature approximated that of savages.
However, Hobbes was not much interested in the question of actual historicity of the state of nature. For him
the question was as to what life would be like if men had no sovereign. He regarded the question of equality in the
state of nature as irrelevant. Therefore, the fact, supposing it to be a fact, that man had never so lived, could not
disprove the Hobbesian thesis that man’s life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” without a sovereign.
Rather if it could be ascertained that man had so lived it would be simply additional evidence to support Hobbes’s
view.
4.4 Law of Nature
How then do the human beings pass on from this state of nature to state of civil society ? The raw material of
human nature from which a society must be constituted, as I have already discussed above, is made of two contrasted
elements, desire and aversion, from which arise ail emotions and impulses, reason, by which action can be diverted
intelligently towards the end of self preservation. Upon this regulative power of reason depends the transition from
the savage and solitary to the civilized and social condition.
The transition is made by the laws of nature, the “conditions of society or of human peace.” These laws state
what an ideally reasonable being would do if he considered impartially his relation with other men in all their bearings
upon his own security. Hobbes wrote, “A law of nature is a precept, on general rule, found out by reason by which a
man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taken away the means of preserving the same, and to
omit that by which he think it may not be best preserved.” The laws of nature, therefore are the hypothetical conditions
upon which the fundamental traits of human beings allow a civil society to be founded. They do not state like the laws
of the nature as postulated by Cicero, Thomas Aquinas and other medieval thinkers, values but they determine, casually
and rationally what can be given value is legal and moral systems.
Let me make it clear to you there are two stages involved in the argument put forth by Hobbes. The first is the
contention that by following certain rules (which Hobbes chooses to call the laws of nature), we could live together
in peace and harmony. These have great utility for self-preservation than violence and general competition. The
second contention is that we are far too intemperate and short sighted to follow these rules of our own volition. In
other words men can avoid attacking others and start co-operation for mutual self-preservation, only when there arise
a powerful sovereign authority with overwhelming powers to enforce these rules.
Hence it follows, writes Hobbes, that man should be “willing, when others are so too, for peace, and defence
of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down his right to all things, and be content with so much liberty against
other men, as he would allow other men against himself.” It also follows that there should be all powerful sovereign
authority to enforce these rules since men being selfish, may not do so of their own.
However, this conclusion does not follow because neither of his prepositions is true. This is the case even if
we accept his estimate of human nature: it is still more obviously the case if this account of man’s character and
motives is rejected as being one-sided and exaggerated. Hobbes was, in fact, an individualist and utilitarian. He justifies
power of the security of human beings and there is no rational ground of obedience and respect for authority except
the anticipation that these will yield a larger individual advantage than their opposite. No moral considerations are
involved. But since utility alone is not enough, he suggests a common coercive power to enforce these rules in
common interest of all, for he feared that some clever people may deem useful, though mistakenly, to ignore them.
Thus, his view of human nature, the state of nature and the law of nature implies him to devise a social contact with the
help of which men came out of state of nature, established a state with an all powerful sovereign.
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4.5 The Social Contract
In order to get out of the terrible state of nature, men enter into covenants to forego such of their natural
rights which, being retained will hinder the progress of mankind towards the establishment of a civil society. Though
men realize it yet, because of their selfish and unsocial inclination, they cannot be expected to agree spontaneously
to respect each other’s rights. The performance of covenants may be reasonably expected only if there is an effective
government which will punish non-performance. In Leviathan, he wrote, “covenants without the sword, are but words
and of no strength to secure a man at all,” In the same book he wrote at another place. “The bonds of words, are too
weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power.”
Hobbes wrote. “the obligation of subjects to the Sovereign’s understood to last as long and no longer, than
the power last by which he is able to protect them.”
Thus, security depends upon the existence of a government having the power to keep the peace and apply the
sanctions needed to curb man’s innately unsocial inclination. The effective motive by which men are socialized in the
fear of punishment and something glory. The law is observed only if the government has the powers to enforce it.
Reason provides a sufficient ground for mutual accord but is too weak to offset the avarice and greed of man in the
mass. In substance, his theory amounted to identifying government with force, at least, the force must always be
present in the background whether it has to be applied or not.
To justify force, Hobbes retained the old idea of the social contract. But the contract was not to be binding
on the sovereign or ruler. It was a covenant between the individuals by which all sign self help and subject themselves
to a sovereign. In Leviathan Hobbes stated thus:
“The only way to erect such a common power as may be able to definite them (i.e. men) from the invasion of
foreigners, and the injuries of another—is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly
of men that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voices into one will, which as much as to say, to appoint one man
or assembly of men to bear their person, and everyone to own and acknowledge himself to be the author of whatsoever.
He that so birth their person shall act, or caused to be acted in those things which concern the common peace and
safety and therein to submit their wills; everyone to his will, and their judgement to his judgement ........... 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 and authorize all his actions in like manner. This done, the
multitude so united in one person, is called commonwealth.”
Let us, analyse the Social Contract. Firstly, it is clear that since the right resigned is merely the use of natural
strength and covenants without sword are mere words, this is a contract only in a manner of speaking, in fact, it is
logical fiction to offset the anti-social fiction of his human psychology. Undoubtedly it helped him to import the
notion of moral obligation into social relation.
Secondly, the contract comes up suddenly and transforms the chaos of the state of nature into the order lines
of civil state. In the state of nature, no contracts are possible, for there is no sovereign to enforce. How then is it
possible to make a social contract in the state of nature? Perhaps Hobbes failed to realize that sovereign resulted
from but did not coexist with the social contract. Locke ridiculed the Hobbesian social contract by remarking that it
appears when men quitting the state of nature entered into society they agreed that all of them but one should be under
the restraint of law; all but he should retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with the power and made he
nitrous by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they care to avoid what mischief may be done to them
by polecats and foxes, but are content to be devoured by lion.”
Thirdly, the state of nature of Hobbes was a state of war of against all in which the cardinal virtues are force
and fraud. How could then a man who is antisocial go against his own nature and suddenly enter a state of peace and
harmony? A state in which force and fraud are deliberately set aside, a state in which acts of wrong and justice are put
under the double ban of public disapproval and positive prohibition. How could a man stick to such a state?
Lastly, it is not clear as to how the self interest of individual suddenly changes into duty towards the sovereign
after the contract. If men are selfish they cannot tolerate an absolute sovereign. How could the extremely selfish man
of the state of nature willingly agree to an irrevocable and unconditional surrender of all his natural rights? It is
something one fails to understand.
4.6 Hobbes as an Individualist and Absolutist
At times, scholars find contradictions in Hobbes's thoughts. According to Mcpherson' "Hobbes starts as an
individualist, concludes as an absolutist" or "Hobbes is individualist in his assumptions, but absolutist in his conclusions."
However, according to Sabine, Hobbes absolutism is a derivative of his individualism. We may say that absolutism

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and individualism are two important political ideas which find important places in Hobbes's scheme of things. There
is on the one hand theory of sovereignty which makes Hobbes's sovereign absolute in all respects. Hobbes has been
regarded as the first exponent of the theory of the absolute powers of the sovereign. Thinkers like Bodin who precede
him put certain veritable limitations on the powers of the sovereign. It was destined for Hobbes to make his sovereign
absolute and unlimited, supreme and unrestrained from all sides. As this theory of sovereignty proved to be the
revolutionary theory of its time, and also controversial theory, in its dust and turmoil people forgot that the theory of
absolutism of the sovereign was derived from his individualism. His critics failed to realize that Hobbes started with
individual and ended with individual. Individual's security is the pivot round which all his other political ideas revolve.
Everything in Hobbes's political philosophy, either before or after the institution of the civil society, is for the
individual, of the individual and by the individual. His critics never penetrated deep into his theory and got the superficial
impression that absolutism was the central part of his system. But actually absolutism was only are ally, an
accompaniment, a subservient idea of another idea that is individualism. This idea of absolutism derived all its light
from individualism, just as the moon gets its light from the sun. Without the light of the sun, the moon has no radiance
similarly, without the necessity of the individual self-preservation, it was not probably necessary for Hobbes to make
his sovereign absolute. From the point of view of influence of Hobbes on subsequent political thought also, we find
that his individualism was more important than absolutism. His individualism gave rise to the laissez-faire theory
which became a powerful tool in the hands of utilitarian thinkers like Bentham in the development of the individualistic
doctrines in the 19th century. Self-interest of the individual came to be regarded as the pre-dominant motive in life.
His absolutism, on the other hand, was forgotten after the dust of the revolution had settled down. There was wrong
impression about him that he was absolutist and nothing else, because he belonged to the Royalist camp.
The view of Sabine is definitely correct when he says, "The absolute power of the sovereign-a theory with which
Hobbes's name is more generally associated was really the necessary compliment of his individualism." Prof. Wayper
also said," the Leviathan is not merely a forceful enunciation of the doctrine of sovereignty ……. It is also a powerful
statement of individualism. "Hobbes is no liberal or democrat but he is an individualist because for him the world is
and must always be made up of individuals. For him, there did not existing such things as people, or common will or
general will or common good as, for instance, they exist for a staunch democrat like Rousseau. What was most
important for him was the inevitability of separate individuals and their separate interests. His individualism is based
in the philosophy for which the world is composed of individual substantiate. Hobbes's individualism is also to be
distinguished from atomism, the doctrine which believes that individual is an indestructible particle of matter, and
also from universalism, the doctrine that there is but one individual, the universe. Hobbes's individualism regards the
individual, as a distinct and separate unit.
In Hobbes's theory there is definitely a primacy of will, non-rational element over rational part. According to him
individual person is that which is separate, incommunicable, eccentric or even irrational. Individual may be collected
together, may be added, may be substituted for one another or made to represent, but can never modify one another or
compose as a whole in which their individuality is lost. We have seen in the preceding pages that Hobbes's individuals
even after execution of the contract, do not lose their individuality. They do not submerge themselves in something
new, but remain their individual-self, with their self-preservation. The theory that Hobbes's individuals retain their
individuality even after the contract becomes clear if we realize that they transfer all their natural rights except the
most significant of them i.e. the right to life. Had Hobbes the inclination of a collectivist he would have enunciated
the theory of the total surrender of rights including the right to life. Hence, in Hobbes, neither before nor after the
institution of civil society we find any such thing as people or community. Hence, before and after the contract what
continues to be important is the individual wills.
We have seen also in dealing with Hobbes's origin of the state, that what is created is an artificial representative
who wills and acts in the place of each individual. There is substitution of many conflicting wills by one will and not
extinction. The individuals continue to exist, the only difference the contract has brought about is that in case of
conflict between the two wills, they agree among themselves, to surrender themselves to the final arbitration of the
sovereign, the artificial person so created. The conflict between two or more wills will arise mostly in respect of the
right to life and nothing else. In Hobbes's society there is no concord of wills, no common will, no common good, its
unity lies in the singleness of the representative. Hence the creation of the civil society does not, in any way compromise
the individual of its components.
There is common belief that Hobbes started as an individualist and ended as an absolutist. It is believed that up to
the institution of the sovereign he was a staunch individualist and the creation of the civil society of his concept was
designed precisely to destroy individualism. This belief is completely fallacious. It is not possible for a consistent

36
thinker like Hobbes to start with one view-point and end with another. Once his first principals are accepted his
conclusions follow automatically. He was an individualist through and through. He had to assign absolute powers to
his sovereign as this was also warranted by logic. His absolutism does not destroy individualism. In support of our
contention the following arguments are adduced :-
First, the dark view of human nature with which he started necessitated the creation of the absolute power, with
ruthless and coercive force, capable of keeping them in awe and also in control, against the upsurge of the anti-social
tendencies. This animal, as he is depicted by Hobbes, understands only one thing that is force. The very fact that an
absolute sovereign has been created for the control of the anti-social tendencies of the individuals pre-supposes their
individuality and does not destroy it.
Secondly, according to Hobbes the absolute sovereign is a means to an end, not an end, in itself. "The State is not
the end of the individual, but the individual is most certainly the end of the state."The sovereign exists to serve the
specific purpose of the individual. The absolute sovereign was created to provide sufficient security to the individual's
life. Its justification lies on its utility: Since the absolute sovereign is reduced to a utility, a servant in the cause of
individual security, a means to an end, it does not destroy the individuality.
Thirdly, the sovereign gets the absolute powers with the consent of the individuals. He is their representative who
would not destroy the individuality of his constituents. His sovereign and absolute powers are derived from the
consent of the governed.
Fourthly, even after the creation of the absolute sovereign, the individual is not completely swallowed by it. The
individuals have the liberty of thought, belief, education, art, literature, etc. They are free to do anything in the silence
of law. So long as the law does not forbid, the individual are free to do anything. Law will interfere only when the life
and security of the individual is involved. This right of protection of the life of individuals, they have themselves
transferred to the sovereign for which they should not have any grudge. Where is the question of the sovereign,
howsoever absolute it may be, superseding and by-passing the individual and his individuality?
Fifthly, Hobbes's individualism is nowhere more glaring and apparent than in the individual's right to resist the
sovereign in case the latter fails to give sufficient protection for individual's life or in case the sovereign himself
tries to kill him or places him in such conditions in which his life is endangered. That clearly shows that the individual
still retains his individuality. He is the judge in every case, to determine whether a particular action of the absolute
sovereign is detrimental to life and security and whether to offer resistance or shut his eyes to it.
Sixthly, as we have discussed above, that even after the institution of the absolute sovereign, there does not come
into existence any collective will or general will or people or community.
There still remain "the only individual human beings each actuated by his private interests." The absolute sovereign
remains an out-side power to enforce discipline in the recalcitrant sections of the individuals.
Lastly, Prof. Oakeshott has given a very sound argument in this respect. He says that the Leviathan has not been
created with the purpose of the destruction of the individual it is in fact the minimum condition of the civilized and
settled society. He argues further that the sovereign is absolute in two respects only and neither of them is destructive
of individuality: first, the surrender of natural rights to him is absolute and his authorization is permanent and exclusive;
secondly, there is no appeal from the legitimacy of his command. The surrender of the rights was absolute. Even after
giving absolute rights to the sovereign, and providing for no appeal against the command of the sovereign, except in
the case of danger to the life of the individual, Hobbes was an individualist out-and-out.
We can conclude by saying that the Leviathan was the first democratic attack on democracy. We already know that
Hobbes had no liking for democracy. He was no democrat or liberal, but he was definitely an individualist as we have
tried to establish in the fore-going discussion. He attacked democracy with the instrument of democracy itself.
Democracy is normally defined as government of the people, for the people and by the people. "Hobbes's government
can be said to be the government of the individual, for the individual and by the individual but it cannot be said to be the
government of the people, for the people and by the people, rather it is the anti-thesis of democratic government.
Democracy involves the answerability of the ruler to the ruled at periodical intervals. Hobbes's sovereign is not
answerable to the people for his acts of commission and omission. He is prone to resistance from the individual
separately, not people as a whole, only to one contingency, threat to the life of the individual. Hobbes as we know,
never allowed associations or institutions of individuals to be formed lest these should oppose the sovereign. He also
did not give the right of opposition to any section of the population. He thought that sovereign has the power to punish
any seditious activity lest it should lead to the dissolution of the civil society. And look at the ingenious way he has
tried to curb all opposition or difference of opinion. He has used the most democratic method for crushing democracy.
He uses the theory of consent. It is the individuals themselves who have by their willing consent, instituted the
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sovereign, transferred their natural rights to him and empowered him to act on their behalf. What else is meant by
democracy? But all this is the theoretical part. The sovereign in practice wields the maximum powers that could ever
be used by any ruler. To some extent the omnipotent ruler is necessary also. Our social instincts are not Vet mature.
Most of us are not yet ready to pension the police.
4.7 Summary
In Conclusion with Prof. Wayper, we say that the “succeeding generations had usually disagreed with Hobbes,
but it is no exaggeration to say that they have found in him a mind well worth their while to work for the riches of the
ore that it yield.” The central point of Hobbes’s Philosophy is the individual and security of his life. In his philosophy
everything is for the individual, of the individual and by the individual, and there is nothing beyond the individual.
4.8 Check Your Progress:
1. Discuss Hobbes' Perception of state of Nature.
2. According to Hobbes, why people entered into a social contract?
3. Why Hobbes is considered an individualist?
4.9 Glossary
• Philosophy: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge reality and existence, especially when considered
is an academic discipline.
• Human Nature- The General Psychological Characteristics, feelings, and behavioural traits of Humankind,
regarded as shared all human.
• Vitality : The State of being strong and active.
• Felicity : State of being happy.
• Covenants : A covenant is a commitment in a bond or other formal agreement that certain activities will or
will not be undertaken.
4.10 Answer to Self Check Exercise
1. See Section 4.3
2. See Section 4.4 and 4.5
3. See Section 4.6
1.13 Suggested Readings
1. G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1961).
2. W.T. Jones, Master of Political Thought, Vol. II, (London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd; 1955).
3. M.M. Gold Simth, Hobbes Science of Politics, (New York : Colombia University Press, 1969).
4. F.S. Me & Neilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York : St. Martin’s Press Inc, 1968).
5. David P. Ganthier, The Logic of Leviathan : The Moral and Political Theory of Hobbes oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1969.
6. Shefali Jha, Western Political Thought from the Ancient Greeks to Modern Times, Chennai : Pearson
India Education Services Pvt. Ltd., 2020.
7. Subrata Mukharjee and Sushila Ramaswamy, A History of Political Thought: Plato to Marx, Delhi: PHI
Learning Pvt. Ltd., 2018.
1.14 Terminal Questions
1. Hobbes was an advocate of absolutism. Justify?
2. Critically evaluate Hobbes Social Contact Theory?
3. Discuss the views of Hobbes on Human of Nature?
4. Write Short not on Hobbes views on:-
a) Sovereignty of the State.
b) Nature of Contract.

*****

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 Lesson-5
John Locke (1632-1704 A.D.)

STRUCTURE
5.0 Introduction
5.1 Learning Objectives
5.2 Locke’s Perception of the Human Nature
5.3 Locke’s Perception about State of Nature
5.4 Locke’s Conception of the Law of Nature
5.5 The Social Contract
5.6 Locke as a Liberal Philosopher
5.7 Summary
5.8 Check Your Progress
5.9 Glossary
5.10 Answer to Self Check Exercise
5.11 Suggested Readings
5.12 Terminal Questions
5.0 Introduction
Locke is the greatest figure in the history of English political thought. He was born in a family of Puritan
lawyer in the year 1632. He was a physician and due to that reason he got some contracts with Lord Ashley. Later early
of Shaftesbury appointed him personal medical advisor. Due to this association he was influenced by the founder of
Whig Party and it was a turning point of Locke’s life. Another thing which influenced his life was a Glorious Revolution
of 1688 in which English people changed their monarch and established responsible government without any bloodshed.
In this revolution he got the idea of Human nature. He observed that human beings are essentially decent and honest.
The political writings of John Locke were inspired by the same civil conflicts which produced the Leviathan.
Regarded in his relation to the 17th century as a whole, Locke stands high in the group of thinkers who promoted
rationalistic idea of life—who preached that the earth and all the institutions there of were made for man, and not man
for them, and that whatever the importance of unquestioning faith in preparation for the life to come, to peace and
comfort which were sought by man in the present life were to be secured only by the relentless application of reason
to all the problems that arose.
Locke’s political theory, like that of Hobbes, rests on his conception of ‘Human Nature’. This not only
determines, at the moral level, the end or propose for which the state exists, but also at the psychological level, the
means (that is the precise form of state organisation recommended in theory) for attaining this end. Locke and
Hobbes agree about the end for which the slate exists, i.e. peace, security and well-being of its individuals. However,
they disagree fundamentally about the way in which this end can best be achieved because their conception of human
nature and motivation differ.
Although the psychological theory about the Human Nature is never set forth formally and explicitly as
Hobbes set out in Book I of ‘Leviathan’ yet we can easily comprehend Locke’s conception of human nature from
numerous passages in his Second treatise on Civil Government. He wrote, ‘All men are naturally in a …...... State of
equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal no one having more than another …..”
The use of word equality in the above quotation need a little explanation. Whereas for Hobbes equalityment
that man’s physical and mental powers on the whole are almost equal, for Locke equalityment that every individual is
counted as one and is, therefore morally the equal of every other. It means that man has rights which belong to him
simply as a human being and not because of his pre-eminence in strength, wealth or intellect. This ought to be recognized
by everyone.
Thus, the physical powers and capacities, status, strength of a human being have nothing to do with his being
morally equal to his fellow beings. Human beings ought to be equal, even if in fact they are. In short, men are morally
equal, just as soon as reason in them which makes them human beings is sufficiently developed for them to recognize
those natural laws which define their rights and duties. The relations of man to man are human. This also means, to
begin with, that there is a moral order in which men participate and to which they ought to correspond. It also means
39
that being rational, they are capable of recognizing the existence of this order and their duty to conform to it. It means
finally that men are moved by sympathy, love and tenderness to perform socially cohesive acts, even when they do not
have duty to do so.
5.1 Learning Objectives
After reading this lesson, students will be able to:
• Know Locke’s Perception of the Human Nature.
• Understand Locke’s views on state of Nature.
• Explain the Social Contract Theory of John Lock.
• Comprehend Locke as a Liberal Political Philosopher.
5.2 Locke’s Perception of the Human Nature
For Hobbes, as you already have been told in the previous lesson, man is merely an animal, a creature of
nature, while for Locke, he is a member of a moral order and subject to a moral (and in this case natural) law. No
doubt, this moral law is only an “ought”. It states not the way in which men behave but the way in which they ought to
behave. Locke was certainly realist enough to see that men do not always, or even often do not do what they ought. But
this in itself is enough to distinguish man from other animals, as in case of animals an “ought” is meaningless, being
irrational the moral law simply does not apply to them.
Moreover, the fact that Locke’s man is subject to a moral order also distinguishes him from Hobbes man at
the psychological level. While Hobbes’s man is moved solely by animal considerations of bodily comforts, Locke’s
man, at least sometimes hears the voice of duty. And while Hobbes’s man is always utterly selfish, Locke’s man is
sometimes really altruistic.
In spite of all these differences, I must tell you that Locke’s theory of ideas contained in his ‘Essay concerning
Human understanding” is fundamentally as egoistic in its explanation of human behaviour as that of Hobbes’ in terms
of self-preservation a doubtful improvement but the calculation of pleasure and pain was as self-centered as the
calculation of self- preservation and security.
5.3 Locke’s Perception about State of nature:
Like the ‘Leviathan’, Locke’s Second Treatise’ opens with a description of society from which government
has been abstracted, the State of Nature. It seems quite a different condition from that by Hobbes. While Locke calls
it a “state of perfect freedom (where men arc able), to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and
persons as they think fit” and while he makes it— “a state also of equalities wherein all power and jurisdiction is
reciprocal”, he does not extend liberty of action to the seizure and use of one’s neighbour and his property in the
manner of Hobbes’s “right of nature”. Even the freedom of use our self, as explained in the paragraph above in
confined ‘within the bounds of law of nature’. He wrote, ‘Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but
consult it, that being all equal and independent, not one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possession.
Men “living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them
are properly in the state of nature” which is “a state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation.”
The picture is an idealic one that seems far removed from the capacity of Hobbes’s natural man. But it is the
traditional picture of man in his perfection, a sociable and rational animal, living in harmony with his fellows. New
researches’ point out that scattered, through the chapter on the state of nature are traces of quite different pictures,
much like that drawn by Hobbes. And in the subsequent discourse “of the state of war” its details are tiled in. The
statements are subtle. The first and the chief qualification of individual liberty in the state of nature is that one ‘has
not the liberty to destroy himself. A few line further on the idea is rephrased in more positive language : “Man being
born as ‘as been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of
the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world hath, by nature ‘a power not only to
preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men but to
Judge of and punish the breaches of that law in other.” Every one, as he, is bound to preserve himself.
The formula looks remarkably like Hobbes’ first law of nature, the law of self preservation. However, Locke
broadens the mandate and makes his natural man a sociable animal—our ought also “as much as he can to preserve the
rest of mankind”. Yet this is interestingly qualified by the phrase, when his own preservation comes not in competition.”
Duty to self always comes first. In fact, we are brought to wonder whether the State of Nature is as Locke says, one of
“peace and goodwill”. There are aggressors in it, for we are told the law of nature needs an executor, “that all men may
be re-strained from invading other’s rights and from doing hurt to one another.” In the state of nature this executive
power is given to every man, who has the right and obligation to “preserve the innocent and restrain offenders.” Some
offenders will be no better than wild beasts and men will find it necessary to “destroy things abnoxious to them.”
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 The peace of the state of nature will be broken not only by an occasional offender but by all its members,
who are all ill-natured, passionate, and revengeful. Therefore, the objection continues, the state of nature should be
abandoned for the governmental order,. which God himself has appointed” to retrain the partiality and violence of
men.” He wrote, “I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of
nature; which must certainly be great where men may be judges in their own case.” Thus the state of nature involves
the state of war because of the passionate nature of man. There can be no, “living together according to reason” in the
state of nature. If this is meant as a key element of the definition of the State of nature, then that society simply does
not exist. There is only the state of war and it is excluded only by the creation of governmental authority. This is the
way in which Locke “scatters” his meaning up and down the text and hides his Hobbesian natural right theory under the
respectable grab of the traditional natural law. Sabine comments, “It is evident then, that Locke’s whole theory depended
upon explaining exactly what was meant by the law of nature, upon which pre-political conditions of mutual assistance
rested and in accordance with which political societies are. In fact, he never gave any careful analysis of it at all.”
5.4 Locke’s conception of the law of nature
The controlling link in the chain forged by Locke is manifestly law of nature. It is that which determines the
character both of the state of nature and of the civil state which eventually follows. What the law of nature is to him.
It is a law that does not materially differ from that of Hobbes. Although the Hobbesian conception of the law of nature
in the beginning was essentially that of brute force, it was just a law of the sword, which Hobbes later for the sake of
his convenience changed into a law of peace. The law of nature, to Locke, is not a natural impulse. It is rather moral
law based on reason to regulate the conduct of men in natural conditions. One of its but in purposes is equality but not
in intellect, physical might and possession, but m personal liberty and independence. Locke defines it as a dictate of
right reason which obliges everyone and teaches mankind who will but consult it, that all beings are equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty and possession. It is a law which proclaims itself
to the heart of every individual, not an infant or an idiot; a law which owes nothing to human institutions, social or
political, but to which, on the contrary, those institutions owe everything that gives them any worth. It is a law which
not only commands man to love his neighbour in general, but which also lays itself out, so that he who runs may read
in a detailed code of specie duties covering the whole field of his conduct and governing his whole life in whatever
circumstances he may find himself placed. What is the general nature of this law? Locke is at once ready with an
answer. It is a law of goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation: in one word, a ‘law of peace’; a law which might
have been dictated and if we mat believe the scriptures, as in fact dictated by the Prince’ of Peace.”
This very law which was a determining body of rules for the conduct of men in, their natural conditions, the
very author and originator on natural rights which was also the arch of the covenant, was not free from defects. This
law of nature, the very source of all blessings, was found on experience to fail man at the very moment when he stood
most in need of it. Secondly, every man is ready to apply its restraining canons to the acts of others he is not quite so
ready to apply them equally to his own. Thirdly, even when a man’s will is honestly set on doing justice to others, he
can never be sure that his judgment is not wrapped by unconscious selfishness ; by the bias to which all men are
subject in favour of themselves. No man with a sensitive conscience will care to be judge in his own case. Lastly, even
supposing both these conditions to be satisfied that his will is perfectly good and his judgement perfectly sound, he
can have no assurance that, in the absence of any settled law, he will be able to make justice triumph. A law which is not
written, a law that has no sanction behind, a law which is merely the dictate of right conscience and the principle of
morality, cannot be regarded a law in the real sense of the term. It is because of this drawback of the law of nature that
the natural rights of men became unsafe and insecure. Variety in manner and method of the enforcement of justice
inevitably cause confusion and uncertainty in life, and there is need of a known and certain rule in accordance with
which the lights of individual are to be protected and maintained. It is to secure such a rule that civil society was
instituted through the social contract.
5.5 The Social Contract
To get rid of the state of nature which had become a state of in convenience, people make a contract to enter
into a Civil Society. This is a contract of all with all. By the first contract, the civil society is constituted. By the
second contract, the government comes into existence. This contract is the step to the drawing up a trust which
creates government as only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends. The community is thus both creator and beneficiary
of the trust. But as a beneficiary of the trust, the community makes no contract with the trustee who accepts a
unilateral obligation towards it. The acceptance of the trust by the government is at the same time its undertaking not
to exceed the limits laid down by the trust.

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 It is to be noted that the essential basis of the contract in the case of Locke is consent. He himself writes at
one place in the civil Government that no man can be incorporated into the commonwealth without his consent. In this
connection, Locke discusses two types of consents: (1) formal or active consent, (2) implied or tacit consent. If the
consent is implied or tacit, the individuals, according to Locke, are at liberty to depart and to organize and to begin a
new order in any part of the world they can find free and unpossessed. But if the consent is formal or expressed, they
are perpetually and indispensably obliged to be and remain unalterably a subject it. The Lockean contract is based on
the expressed and formal consent and as such, like that of Hobbes, it remains essentially irrevocable. He who has
signed it “can never again be in the liberty of the state of nature.” Freedom to depart, so long as no express undertaking
to join the commonwealth has been given, obligation to remain until death brings release, from the moment it has
been given, such is the social contract as it presented itself to Locke.” It is permanent and indissoluble like that of
Hobbes and rests on a much firmer sanction.
Another, a very significant feature of this contract, is that like Hobbes, men do not surrender their rights
which they possessed in the state of nature. It is, rather, for the, safety and protection of these rights that the authority
is constituted. All that the men agree to is to “give up everyone his single power of punishing to be exercised by such
alone as shall be appointed to it amongst them, and by such rules as the community, or those authorized by them to
that purpose, shall agree on.” Hence the contract is no more than a surrender of certain rights and powers whereby
man’s remaining right will be protected and preserved. It is then not general as with Hobbes, but limited and specific.
The contract by which men pass from the state of nature the civil state is not an instrument of enslavement but a
charter of freedom for the individual who, so far from surrendering all his powers to a despotic monarch or a despot
oligarchy, surrenders so much, and only so much, of them as shall provide security, hitherto lacking in fact though not
in right the free untrammeled exercise of all the rest.
Another significant feature of the Lockean contract is that it ensure to the individuals the right of revolution
against despotic and tyrannous government. The purpose of the government is to ensure justice and protect the natural
rights of the individuals. But if the king betrayed the trust which had been placed in him, if he tried to assume more
power than that which had been delegated to him, the people according to Locke have a perfect right to revolt. He was
also willing to admit that even Parliament, consisting of the elected delegates of the people, might at times become
tyrannical and so the right, of rebellion was extended to cover this, situation as well.
The decision of creating a revolution against the king is to be taken by a majority of legislature; and the
decision of making a revolt against the legislative body is to be taken by the community as a whole. Thus the creation
and recreation of government entirely depend upon the consent of the people. Nothing is done without taking the
people into confidence.
The theory of contract, as applied to the relation between the governor and the governed, was intended to be
counter blast to the theory of Divine Right. It roughly stripped the king of the halo of sanctity, of mystical majesty,
cast around him by seventeenth century theology. It reduced him at one stroke to a position of equality with his
subjects. The Essay of Civil Government is, in fact, “an assault not only upon the sovereignty of Leviathan, but upon
the very idea of sovereignty. Its shafts are aimed not merely against one particular form of sovereignty, the most
oppressive and the least endurable, but against any form, even the mildest, that sovereignty can assume.” The practical
effect of this interpretation is to restore the theory of contract to the purposes for which it was originally framed : to
overthrow the portentous fabric so ingeniously conjured out of it by Hobbes; to sweep away the absolute sovereignty
of the whole community a sovereignty, however,’ strictly limited by the prior claims of the individual in its place.
5.6 Locke as a Liberal Philosopher
Locke is one of the greatest liberalist in the history of political thought. He is often credited with founding
liberalism as a distinct traditions, based on the social contract arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty
and property and governments must not violate these rights. He maintained that right of man rested on the law of
nature, government was regarded as a human institution-merely on artificial arrangement for maintain law and order.
The people were sovereign, with the government as their delegate with limited power. Locke concerned himself with
the problem of the maintenance of natural rights and liberties on the one hand, and a limited and constitutional
government-which may not harm these rights, liberties-on the other.
He believed in the principle of separation of power to prevent accumulation of government powers and
despotism. He had separated the government powers into three i.e. Legislative, executive (including Judiciary) and
federative powers. He believed in Laissez- faire state (French term meaning leaving alone). For maximization of
individual liberty, he limited the government functions. For him, human beings are rational beings, they are aware of
the fact that what is in their best interest and they strive to acquire maximum pleasure.
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 According to Vanghan, the whole philosophy of Locke is centered around individual and individual liberty.
He can be called as father of liberalism on this following grounds:
First, the idea of innate, inherent, and natural rights forms a fundamental position in his general system. John
Locker’s ‘Second Treatise of Government’ is a ringing defence of individual liberty and individual rights, including
rights to private property. These right are believed to belong to the individual, not due to any extraneous reasons, but
due to the fact of his very personality.
Secondly, the individuals enter the state, already possessed of the natural right’s with the proclaimed purpose
of protecting them better. The raison d’etre of the state is the protection of the individuals rights and liberties.
Locke’s state can justify its existence only by the performance it shows in making the rights more secure.
According to Locke, the main problem of the state is to secure the greatest amount of liberty. Locke sought not the
liberty for the strong, the fovoared or the fortunate, but liberty for everyone regardless of his circumstances in life.
Thirdly, Locke makes the consent of the individuals as the found-ation-stone of the state. The consent, may
be express or tacit. It is the liberalism in him that is responsible for his theory of consent. According to him an
absolute government is no govern-ment at all since it is based on caprice instead of reason. The absolute government,
like that of Hobbes, lacks the essential element of consent without which the law will have no binding force. Law is
binding on individual only if it emanates from his express or tacit consent. Only that government is legitimate which
is founded on the consent of the individuals. If legitimate government is based upon the consent of its subjects they
may withdraw their consent also, if the government for-feits its right to rule by making a, breach of the trust.
Fourthly, Locke’s liberalism is evidenced by his theory of Negative State. The functions of his state are
limited to the negative role of preventing the subjects from infringing the rights of the fellow citizens. The state
interferes only where there is infringement of the rights of the individuals. The state has no positive work to do. The
individual is left to his own in the sphere of morality, intellect, and education.
A staunch liberalist like Locke cannot tolerate the state’s interference in the social affairs of the individual.
The state’s jurisdiction is limited to the protection of the rights of the subjects inter se. Beyond that begins the sphere
of the individual. Through his theory of negative state, Locke, proves himself to be the greatest liberalist in the
history of political thought. He believed in Laissez faire state or theory of night watchmen state’ where role of state
islimited to night watchmen ship. The economic affairs shall be governed by market forces where every individual is
driven by ‘Profit motive’. He has considered state as necessary evil confined its role to maintain law and order,
protect the country from outside attack and protect rights and liberties of people.
Fifthly, his theory of property also unambiguously tells us that Locke is out-and-out an individualist and
liberalist. According to him, the property in the beginning was owned by community in common. The right to private
property arises only when the individual mixes a part of his personality, namely, labour with some object commonly
owned by the community. Prior to his process everything was common. It becomes private when an individual imparts
a bit of his individuality to the common object. This shows the value of the individuality to the personality which
Locke recognizes without any ambiguity. The individual becomes the owner of the things to which he adds his bodily
labour. Probably, there won’t be better proof of the worth of the human beings. That is why he wants the man to be free
in economic sphere also.
Sixthly, he maintained that man, being rational, can live in natural harmony with his fallow being and maintained
that choice, which is based on reason, is the normal basis of human action. Man knows better what is good and what is
bad for him, so let the man be firee.
Seventhly, Locke’s theory that civil law cannot go against the law of nature, is another tenet of individualism
in his philosophy. Law of nature, according to him, is intelligible and plain to every rational creature. Now the state’s
law has to conform to the law of nature under all circumstances. The type of relation between the civil law and the law
of nature “lays the state at the mercy of the individual, by enabling any minority, however small, to challenge the
moral justification of any law which the majority has passed. It thus throws a slur upon the law of the state from the
very beginning and lays a perpetual ferment for rebellion against the state on the part of any and every individual.” The
law of nature, as we know, does not cease in the civil state. State’s interpretation of the law of nature even is not final.
Eighthly, Locke’s theory of Revolution also demonstrates his liberalism without any ambiguity. That only
shows that the individual is absolute or sovereign and the state, the moment it transgresses its limits or fails to rise up
to the mark forfeits its right to rule and can be legitimately overthrown. The state is reduced by Locke to the status of
the hand-maid of the individual who rules supreme in his scheme of things.

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 Apart from these, by attacking patriarchal defenses of absolutist monarchy, he takes some modest steps
towards attacking patriarchy and promoting the moral rights of women and equal moral status of men and women.
Locke espouses a theological ethics, within which one can discern seeds of secular and even utilitarian notions of the
foundation of ethics.
This short listing of some of Locke’s ideas indicates that he was a liberal political philosopher. However,
there are tensions and perhaps inconsistencies, in Locke’s thought, and later articulations of Lockean ideas not
surprisingly emphasis and develop different elements in the Lockean package. Opposed positions in modern liberalism
can with justification trace their roots back to Locke.
It reduces the state to a ‘negative institution, a kind of gigantic limited liability company” (Laski.) One of the
fatal consequences of this extreme individualism and liberalism is that the life of the state is stripped of all moral
purposes. Its role is centred in preventing the individuals from cutting each others’ purses or flying at each other’s
throats. After all each individual, howsoever weak, must act what is known as social justice. The so called sovereignty
of the individual will definitely lead to the domination of the strong over the weak, the rich over the poor. The true
sovereign in Locke’s system is individual as against the Leviathan who is sovereign in Hobbes’s system. But both
these thinkers have taken their views to the extreme. What is required is the via media, the golden mean in which the
just rights of the individuals could be reconciled with the rightful authority of the state.
5.7 Summary
Let us now make an overall assessment of the political theory of Locke. Sabine writes that “in spite of
simplicity which it seems on the surface to possess and which made it the most popular of political theories, it is in
reality involved though he saw the multitude of issues with great clarity yet he could not give it a logical structure
………… Though circumstances made him the defender of revolution he was by no means radical, and in intellectual
temperament he was the doctrinaire of the philosophers. His principles he mainly inherited and he never examined
them thoroughly.” His political philosophy was an effort to combine past and present and also find nucleus of an
agreement for reasonable men of all parties, but he did not synthesize all that he combined.... From his political
philosophy emerged diverse theories in the century following him.” Dunning gives the estimate of Locke’s political
philosophy as under:
“It was a theory treating of state of nature that was not altogether bad and its transformation into a civil state
that was not altogether good; by a contract which was not very precise in its terms or very clear in its sanction. It
embodied moreover, a conception of sovereignty of the people without too much of either sovereignty or people; the
law of nature that involved no clear definition of either law of nature; of natural rights, but not too many of them; and
separation of powers that was not too much of a separation. It concluded, finally, with a doctrine as to the right of
revolution that left no guarantee whatsoever for the permanence of rather loose jointed structure which the rest of the
theory had built up. Yet this illogical incoherent system of political philosophy was excellently adapted to the
constitution which England needed at time and which Whigs actually put and kept in operation. It was a good, respectable
commonsense view of the features of political life that impressed a philosophical observer, it was strong in individual
parts, if not in their correlations.”
Whatsoever the criticism, it cannot be denied that the greatest importance of Locke’s philosophy lay beyond
the contemporary ‘English Settlement’, (after the ‘Glorious Revolution’), in the political thought of America and
France which culminated in the great revolutions at the end of eighteenth century. Here Locke’s defence of resistance
in the name of inalienable rights of personal liberty, consent and freedom to acquire and enjoy property had their full
effect. “As a force in propagating the ideals of liberal by non violent reform Locke probably stands before all other
writers whatsoever. Even his more doubtful ideas such as the separation of powers and the inevitable wisdom of
majority-decisions remained a part of the democratic creed.”
5.8 Check your Progress
1. Describe Locke’s perception of Natural Law.
2. Explain the nature of Locke’s Social Contract.
3. Examine the views of Locke on Natural Rights.
4. Why Locke is known as a Liberal Philosopher?
5.9 Glossary
• Individualism: The habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant.
• Natural Law: An observable law relating to natural phenomena.
• Social Contract: A social Contract is an unofficial agreement shared by everyone in a society in which
they give up some freedom for security.
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5.10 Answers to Check Your progress Exercise
1. See Section 5.4
2. See Section 5.5
3. See Section 5.3
4. See Section 5.6
5.11 Suggested Readings
• Consult the books already suggested in the previous lesson for the study of John Locke’s Political Philosophy.
• M. Saliger, The Liberal Politics of John Locke, (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. 1968).
• John Dunn, The Political Though of John Locke, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
5.12 Terminal Questions
1. Make a critical assessment of Locke’s State of nature and Social contract?
2. Examine the Social Contract Theory as propounded by John Lock?
3. Make an estimate of John Locke as a liberal Political Philosophy?

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 Lesson-6
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778 AD)

STRUCTURE
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Learning Objectives
6.2 Rousseau's view on Social Contract
6.3 Rousseau’s Theory of General will
6.3.1 Attributes of General Will
6.3.2 Criticism
6.4 Rousseau’s Critique of Civil Society
6.5 Summary
6.6 Check Your Progress
6.7 Glossary
6.8 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
6.9 Suggested Readings
6.10 Terminal Questions
6.0 Introduction
With the work of J.J. Rousseau, we leave the Machiavellian and Hobbesian world of calculating mind and
egoistic reason and enter the world of sympathetic heart and general- will. The politics of interest balancing and
liberal conflict gives way to the politics of interest fusion and democratic co-operation.
While Rousseau lived his entire life in the eighteenth century (1712-1778) and while his literary product is
contemporaneous with the great writing of the Age of Reason, his thought stands apart from the main schools of his
day. This is true despite the fact that many of his chief concepts, such as the state of nature, natural man, the social
contract and General Will constituted the fashionable Jargon of eighteenth century. Rousseau is the theorist of will
and sentiment, and as such, is the father of romanticism. In fact, his life and personality epitomizes one of the great
turning points in the history of the Western mind. Rousseau’s anti-rationalism was, at least in part, the result of
personal unhappiness flowing from the class of the neurotic personality with the society of his time. Rousseau tells
us about himself in his ‘Confessions’. As his father had left Rousseau’s mother to go to Constantinople, she urged
him to return. He abandoned everything and came home. He writes, “I was the sad fruit of this reunion. Ten months
after wards I was born ill and weak; I cost my mother her life and my birth was the first of my misfortunes. He grew up
almost a wild thing under the unsteady tituiege of his father who abandoned him at the age of ten. He lived for many
years the life of tramp, absolutely without discipline or responsibility. His self education began after the age of
twenty-six. Though his ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ made him famous, he could not adjust himself to the
artificial life in Paris. He withdrew from the fashionable world of France to a hermit, seeking comfort and solace in
the arms of the mistress, Lavasseur, a simple uneducated peasant woman with whom he lived for the most part of his
life. We must understand his violent attack on civilization and praise of the primitive and common place, his attack on
philosophic reason and praise of sentiment and emotion, in this context.
The writings which were to establish Rousseau’s reputation as a political theorist were a ‘Discourse on the
Origins and Foundation of Inequality among Men’, ‘A discourse on Political Economy,' ‘The Social Contract’
and the ‘Emile’.
I think the above paragraphs might give you some idea of the environmental setting which inspired Rousseau’s
writings. So, let us turn our attention to his political theories. The main point which you should keep in mind is that
despite the fundamental difference in the political theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau share much common
ground, in seeking to define the political good, the proper goal and object of the political order. For example hypothetical
behaviour of man a pre-political pre-social ‘State of Nature’ for a standard. The hypothesis is worked out in each case
by “a prior’ separation of original from acquired human characteristics, rather than teleological analysis of man as a
perfect form of idea—-as in the classical (Plato and Aristotle) and Christian (Thomas Aquinas) traditions. Each
writer thinks of the subject under analysis as an ‘Ingenious Machine’.

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6.1 Learning Objectives
After readings this lesson students will be able to:
• Know about the Rousseau’s Concept of social Contract.
• Understand the Rousseau’s Theory of General Will.
• Evaluate Rousseau as a critic of civil society.
6.2 Rousseau’s Views on Social Contract:
Rousseau’s, like Hobbes and Locke, beings with the state of nature. But his concept of state of nature is very
different from that of Hobbes and Locke. In Rousseau’s state of nature all men were equal and living peacefully and
having joint ownership over all property. People were living a very simple and natural life. Rationality, morality and
artificially had not yet creped into their lives. The life was not, as yet, organized. There is one important feature of
Rousseau’s’ state of nature. It is that, his state of nature, is not historical, but a “hypothetical one, a way of illustrating
his view nature and diagnosis of society’s ills.” According to Rousseau, in the hypothetical state of nature men only
were possessed with gregarious instinct and the capacity for learning by experience. Hunting, fishing and subsequently
agriculture become the chief sources of subsistence. Everybody co-operated in the food gathering occupations.
There was absolutely no social bickering and disorder, as private property, was not yet born, and there was ample
produce for all to consume. The man in the state of nature was leading the happy, care-free life of the brute, without
fixed abode roaming about, with his herd, like a nomad. No social evils had yet crept in the natural savage. Unlike
Hobbes’s state of nature, all were not at war with everybody else. It was a state of peace and not that of war. Again,
unlike Locke’s state of nature, it was neither organized nor moral. Rousseau’s concept of man in the state of nature is
that of a noble savage. According to Rousseau, in the state of nature without any knowledge, dress or speech. The state
of nature of Rousseau, unlike that of Hobbes was a state of peace, and not of war. Natural man was leading a solitary,
happy, free and independent life. His life was self-sufficient. In the state of nature of Rousseau there was no law, no
morality, no family. These institutions, according to Rousseau, are based on Reason, which is artificial and was
conspicuous by its absence in the natural state. Noble Savage was basing his behaviour, purely on instincts. The
primitive man was in paradise. He was leading a very happy life. He was constantly in the state of bliss.
According to him the origin of civil society lies in the institution of private property. It came as a Fatal
chance or coin-cidence, like Adam’s Biblical Fall. Like Adam, one cursed man tasted the Forbidden fruit of private
property. The latter became the root of all troubles. One man thought of owning some property of his own. Prior to
that there was no question of “Thine and Mine.” Everything was owned in common by all. Previously everybody used
to do his best and to enjoy the fruit of common effort. The land was tilled in common and the grain was distributed
according to their need. Then came the sudden fall. In the inimitable world of Rousseau “The first man who, after
enclosing a piece of ground bethought himself to say “this is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him,
was the real founder of civil society. ‘‘The scramble for land and other private property resulted in war, murder,
wretchedness and horror. The capacity of individuals to own and produce being different, there came into existence
inequality in every sphere of life. There raged a fierce war between the rich and the poor. There came every possible
vice. Liberty and Equality had disappeared. The people started leading a miserable life. They were still in the state of
nature. They wanted to get rid of the state of things in which, they found themselves. Thus we find that in Rousseau’s
state of nature there were two stages or periods namely—(i) Pre-property State of Nature and (ii) Post-property
State of Nature. Pre-property state of nature was ideal stage while the Post-property state of nature was wretched;
How could they get rid of this ? Social Contract comes as a convenient device.
Rousseau’s concept of Social Contract is a kind of mixture of the views of Hobbes and Locke and also a
sport of improvement upon the two. He adopts the method of Hobbes in as much as the entire individual surrender
their rights completely to the body-politic. The individuals become complete zeros. They merge their wills in the will
of the society. Rousseau combines this method of Hobbes with the substance of Locke. As a result of Locke’s as well
as Rousseau’s Contract what emerges is the Political Society and not society as such. The Society existed even
before. The improvement made by Rousseau upon the ideas of Hobbes and Locke is that, according to Rousseau what
emerges as a result of his contract is an organism with a will, as again the idea of Hobbes and Locke of an artificial
thing, an artifact, a mechanism, a machine. “The body politic”, he says, “is also a moral being possessed of a will.”
Such a will, Rousseau calls’ a General Will.
The terms of Rousseau’s Contract are: “Each member 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 indivisible part of
the whole.”

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 According to Rousseau, “Each gave himself unreservedly to the whole community—surrendered all his
right and liberties.” Thus was equality preserved? But in giving himself to community as a whole, each gave himself to
nobody in particular. Thus was liberty preserved, “The fertile brain of Rousseau evolved, a plausible-looking theory
that the people by mutual contract alienate all their liberties, not to any human superior but to the General Will, of
which every individual is an integral part. They transfer their freedom “from themselves as individuals to themselves
as a collectivity. Each was an equal and indivisible part of the corporate entity, and the sovereign was the’ General
Will”
By such a contract a political-society is created. The politic society, so created, is based on the consent of
all members. Rousseau has solved Locke’s dilemma also, in as much as the constant flow consent comes to the
General Will; as every individual is a constant participant in the General Will. Locke cold not solves that problem.
According to Locke consent once given was forever, and was binding on future generations also.
By this contract, the state of nature came to an end. The political society is ushered in. The character of the
man is changed. The con-tract substitutes justice for injustice and right for appetite. By it the man is transformed
from a stupid and limited animal to an intelligent being and a man. It gives a moral character to the action of the
individuals. Morality is the bye product of the contract. Here also, Rousseau differs from Locke. Locke’s individuals
were moral even before the Contract. As a result of contract, Locke’s individuals be-come only rational. Locke’s
individuals become both rational and moral after the contract. As a result of the contract, Rousseau’s in-dividuals are
gainers. Prior to contract, they had only control over their actions alone. After the contract, as active participant of
the General Will, every individual stands to gain equal power to control others. Every individual is the co-sovereign.
Another important aspect of Rousseau’s contract is that no govern-ment is created by this contract. Only
political society or the state comes into being, with the powerful and sovereign General Will as the central figure of
the society. Rousseau thinks of government only as sub-servient agent of the community, which is brought into
existence in order to implement the decisions of the General Will. In this respect, Rousseau disagrees both with
Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes’s contract brings into existence simultaneously, the state and the government. Rather, for
Hobbes, the Government is the condition-precedent of .society. Here Hobbes is putting cart before the horse. Similarly,
Locke’s view that government comes into being as a result of second contract, also, significantly differs from the
view of Rousseau. Rousseau does not regard the creation of government so significant, as meriting a second contract.
Though, out of the three social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the latter’s theory is most
appealing’ and popular, yet, it can be subject to one very serious criticism. How could the individuals surrender all”
their fights on the one hand in individual capacity and receive the same back in the hands of the community as a whole.
Rousseau forgot to distinguish between indi-vidual and the community. They are two entirely different things. His
theory was more of a “Medley of Fancies” than a logical and con-vincing piece of argument. But, all the same it had
a great mass appeal, as the people of his time wanted to have in their hand a theory of popular government, based
apparently on consent, without looking to its logical contents and results. If Rousseau’s theory of social contract is
put to logical test, it will result in the most autocratic and worst type of despotic government.
6.3 Rousseau’s Theory of General Will
The terms of Rousseau’s Contract, which in his memorable words are “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 indivisible part of the whole.” As if by one stroke, the society or community as a whole becomes a
living organism, possessing a will of its own. This will of the Moi Commun, Rousseau calls General Will. This Will
is Sovereign and Supreme. Though the General Will now would rule over all other wills, yet we must not forget that it
is derived from the wills of the contracting individuals. It is a collective or moral body composed of as many members
as the whole society consists of and deriving its unity, its common identity its life and its will from the constituents.
Rousseau does not mean to say that the General Will substitutes or replaces the individual wills altogether. On the
other hand, he is clearly of the view that, individual wills continue to exist with equal protection of their rights under
the sovereign General Will. If the individuals have surrendered their fights, they have also regained them as members
of the sovereign General Will. Being a member of the society, is, on the whole a good bargain, as individuals, being
participants, in the General Will, have equal control over others, which they lacked previously.
According to Rousseau, General Will does not mean the will of the majority. But it is more probable that it
may represent the General Will. But the most important ingredient of the General Will is that it must will the common
good of all members of the society. But sometimes the majority may not represent the General Will, if it does not
will the common good. On the other hand, Rousseau, sometimes goes to the extent of saying that, one single individual
may represent the General Will, if he wishes the common good, as against the over-whelming majority which does
not wish the common good.
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 In order to understand Rousseau’s theory of General Will, we must understand the distinction between the
real will and the actual will. This distinction is entirely Rousseau’s creation. He divides individual will in two parts.
The actual will is selfish, irrational, personal motivated, individualistic and self-oriented. The real will is something
higher, nobler and supreme. The real will wishes the good of all. It aims at the common good. The General Will
coincides with the real wills of all. In other words, the General Will is the synthesis of the real wills. General Willis
die will of all the citizens when they are willing not their own private-interests, but the general good. It is the voice of
all for the good of all. Regarding the generation of General Will, Rousseau is of the view that after the rejection of
contradictory actual and selfish wills, the residue would be the General Will.
Here we may also distinguish between General Will and Will of All. According to Rousseau, the General
Will is not the sum-total of the Wills of All. At time he seems to suggest that the General Will is created when all
unanimously agree on a point, though in the same breath he says that Will of All may not be the General Will, if it does
not will the common good. General Will may become identical with the Will of All if they all are willing the common
good.
In-a nut-shall we can say that Rousseau’s General Will is the synthesis of real wills, irrespective of the fact
whether those real wills are those of many of a few or one single individual. The criterion is not the number, but the
common good or general good. Even if minority or one single individual wills the common good, it would be general
Will.
6.3.1 Attributes of General Will
(1) It is indivisible:— The General Will cannot be divided. Division of General Will means its death. Just as
personality or an, individual cannot be divided. General Will cannot be divided.
(2) General Wills Unrepresentable Rousseau’s General Will cannot be represented by anybody else. Just as
human will cannot be represented, similarly the General Will cannot be properly represented by anybody
else. In fact, Rousseau’s General Will was meant only for those countries where there was direct democracy.
In representative democracies, General Will is in true sense not applicable.
(3) Ii is unlimited, absolute and supreme:— Rousseau’s General Will is as supreme or absolute as Hobbes’s
Leviathan, it has complete control over the regulation of the state. General Will is not synonymous with the
Government. The Government is only an agency or tool in the hands of Great Will to implement its policies;
General Will reigns supreme in its jurisdiction. Nobody can dare disobey it, as it is the sovereign will of all
for the welfare of all. Rousseau writes; “Whosoever refuses to obey the General Will shall be compelled to
do so by the whole body ….. he will be forced to be free.”
(4) It is inalienable General Will delegated. It is a single whole and attempt to separate it from the body-politic
will mean its en What is delegated to the Government is the authority to implement politics and decisions of
the General Will and not the ingredient of the General Will.
(5) It is infallible :— Rousseau says that General Will always right, because it tends to the good of all. People are
always night, but their will is not sometimes known. Rousseau says “the deliberations of the people are always
equally correct. Our will always for our good, but we do not always see what this is…..”
6.3.2 Criticism:-
Rousseau’s theory of General will can be criticized on the following grounds :
1. As Jones points out, it leads to totalitarianism, pure and simple. All the powers attributed to the General Will
Rousseau will be chough to turn anybody’s head. It may become dictatorship of one person or a few, serving
the interests of a clique though it may have the guise of morally justifiable appearance of a popular government.
2. Rousseau has no clear conception of General Will. It is not clear from the fact that he uses the term General
Will in different senses in different parts of his works. Sometimes he identifies General Will with that will
which wills the good of all. Sometimes he suggests that General Will may be discovered through.’ The will
of the majority. Some-times it is a will of wise legislature.
3. Thirdly in practice it is difficult to distinguish-the General Will from the Will of All. Rousseau provides us
with standard judgement whether a decision taken by the people represents the General Will or merely the
Will of All. But who is to decide as to what is right and what is wrong.
4. Rousseau believes that General Will is the standard of justice. But by this conception he has created more
confusion. Justice is an abstract conception and reconciling desirable.
5. Rousseau divided the Will of an individual into two integral parts namely essential and non-essential Wills.
But we cannot divide an individual Will into an essential Will and a non-essential Will, because an individual
Will is a corporate thing, one complete whole.”
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 6. Rousseau’s theory, of General Will gives rise to what Sabine calls, “the paradox of freedom.” By signing, the
Social Contract, the individual gives his natural, simple liberty and in return gets the very liberty of obeying
the General Will….. If he does’ not obey the General Will he should be rebelling against the right and he,
actually the slave of his selfish Will. So Rousseau advocates compul-sion on one who refuses to obey the
General Will on the plea that the force used is for his own good. This force may take the form of imprisonment
or death. It may not, however, be in the interests of the individual to have his liberty or life taken away from
him. In short freedom and force cannot go together.
7. The theory of General Will emphasises the notion of general good rather than the good of the individual.
This leads to a conception of the state as a super-entity, distinct from its organic elements, file individuals.
But in practice it is very difficult to separate the interest of the individual from that of the state interest of
the state and of the individuals are identical.
8. Rousseau’s Theory of General Will demands too much sacrifice from the individual,
9. Moreover it is wrong to say that General Will cannot be represented… It can be represented if the
representatives are enlightened persons belonging to an enlightened community. It is possible to conceive
such a society.
10. According to Jones the applicability of the General Will in a large state is not possible.
11. Rousseau does not tell us how to put the General Will in practice.
Thus we find that Rousseau’s concept of General Will is inadequately described and is surrounded by’
paradoxes. In spite of this, the conception of General Will, is described by Hearnshaw as the single and simple
volition of the body politic regarded as a living entity. It is Rousseau’s most profound contribution to political theory.
According to Maxey, “the concept of General Will is the crux of Rousseau’s system and probably his most distinctive
contribution political thought.” It is Rousseau’s theory of General Will which became the basis of Hegel’s dictum “V/
ill not force is the basis of the state.” The true basis of democracy is not force but active and selfless will. The theory
puts the social interest before individual interest. Rousseau is also primarily responsible for promoting the theory
Nation State.
6.4 Rousseau’s Critique of Civil Society
For Rousseau society was inevitable, without which man could not fulfill him or realise his native potentials.
If he was critiquing civil society, it was because it was not founded on presently principles and had corrupting power.
The task was to make a new social order that would help man realize his true nature.
The second Discourse, as this essay is described, is a narrative of the fall of man- how his nature got twisted,
warped and corrupted with the emergence of civil society, which in turn was necessitated through the rise of the
institution of private property and they require to defend it through institutionalizing social inequality through law.
However, we have to keep in mind that Rousseau’s investigations on civil society were not to be considered as
historical truths, but only as mere imaginary reasoning, rather exact nature of things.
Tracing the fall of man, Rousseau says that in the initial phase of state of nature, which is a condition prior to
the emergence of society, man was ‘noble savage’ leading a solitary, happy, free and independent life. He existed in
separation and had a few elementary, easily appeased needs. It was neither a condition of plenty nor scarcity; neither
there was disagreement nor co-operative livelihood.
There was no language or knowledge of any science or art. In such a situation man had no conception of just
and unjust, virtue and vice. The noble savage was guided not through cause but through two instincts self-love or the
instinct of self-preservation, and sympathy or the gregarious instinct.
The state of nature, which was one of innocence, did not last forever. In course of time, the noble savage who
lived in isolation and was satisfied with little means discovered the utility and usefulness of labour. Without yet
having given up their primitive dispersal, men began to collaborate occasionally and created a degree of provisional
order. Later men began to build shelters for themselves and families stayed jointly- a stage. Rousseau calls the
patriarchal stage. But as he consolidated his first social dealings, he gave himself to labour and to thought i.e. to the
use of cause and language. This brought in the first fall for men wrenching him from the happiness to the patriarchal
stage and passed from a subsistence economy to an economy of productive development. The emergence of metallurgy
and agriculture was indeed a great revolution, but iron and corn, which civilized men, ruined humanity.
The farming of earth led to the enclosure of land, and this necessarily gave rise to the thought of property. As
Rousseau puts it in a well-known statement, “The first man who after fencing off a piece of land, took it upon himself
to stay “ This belongs to me “ and establish people easy-minded enough to consider, was the true founder of the civil
society.”
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 Once men began to claim possessions, the inequality of men’s talents and skills led to an inequality of
fortunes. Wealth enabled some men to enslave others; the very idea of possession excited men’s passions and provoked
competition and conflict. Conflict led in turn to a demand for system of law for sake of order and tranquility. The rich
especially voiced this demand, for which the state of violence threatened everyone’s life, it was worse for the rich
because it threatened their possessions also. The result, says Rousseau was the origin of civil society and laws, which
gave new fetters to the poor and new powers to the rich; which destroyed natural liberty forever.
Rousseau suggests though, that things required not have turned out as badly, as they had. If, with the
establishment of the government, men ran headlong into chain’ that was because men had the sense to see the advantages
of politic institutions, but not the experience to fore see the dangers. To this there Rousseau was to return some years
later in the social contract.
Thus, according to Rousseau, the origin of the civil society and resultant creation of a political authority
happened in three revolutions. The first revolution took place after the institution of family evolved on a permanent
basis. The second revolution was brought by the agriculture and the discovery of metal leading towards the specialization
of functions and division of labour. The enclosure of land gave rise to the idea of private property and the sense of
mine and thine and the change from the state of nature to that of the civil society. The scramble for the land and other
private property resulted into war, murder and horror. Conflict led in turn to a demand for a system of law for the sake
of order and tranquility. The rich and the poor, with their interest tried to find out a solution, led to the creation of civil
society with Laws to protect private property and the force to implement them. Thus, the formulation of civil society
is accomplished through an artificial co-operation between the rich and poor having their own motives, this coming
into being of the civil society is considered as the third revolution by Rousseau. However, to Rousseau, this origin of
civil society is a curse to the civilization because it irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the laws of
property and inequality, converted the clever claims into inalienable right, gave the rich. It became advantageous to a
few, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and wretchedness. People wanted to get rid of this post-
property state of nature and the way out is through social contract.
Civil Societies Rousseau described it in discourse, came into being to serve two purposes; to provide peace
for everyone and to ensure the right to property for anyone lucky enough to have possessions. It was thus of some
advantage to everyone but mostly to the advantage of the rich, since it transformed their de facts ownership into
rightful ownerships and kept the poor dispossessed. It was, indeed, a somewhat fraudulent social contract, since the
poor got so much less out of it than did the rich.
It may however be noted here that Rousseau was not depicting the transition from state of nature to “civil
society” as a historical fact. Rather the above account has to be understood as hypothetical reasoning calculated to
explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual origin.
But Rousseau also believed in the possibility of genuine social contract, one in which people would receive
in exchange for their independence a better kind of freedom, namely true political, or republican^ liberty. As described
in the Social Contract (1762), such liberty is to be found in obedience to what Rousseau called the “general will” a
collectively held will that aims at the common good or the common interest. The fundamental problem for Rousseau
is not man but instead the 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.
6.5 Summary
Notwithstanding the implications, it has to be .said that Rousseau expressed through the doctrine of General
Will an important fact about the way political societies actually operate which is quite missing from the individualist
theories that is, the recognition that men in political society do not live in merely utilitarian relationship with one
another, each morally completely apart from his social involvement.
The individual receives from the society in which he is educated, a way of life and a way of looking at the
world. He becomes as Rousseau supposed, in large part what society makes of him. Of course the dependence is not
necessarily on a single, all inclusive, “reference group,” a fact which Rousseau also recognized though he did not
approve of it. An individual becomes “Socialized” through a variety of primary and secondary groups which warp him
in an intricate web of social influence. The political society remains, however, a most significant reference group in
pluralist society, and operates through a variety of specific structures and processes to influence the important aspect
of individual behaviour. Understanding how these processes operate, how men become “politicized” has recently
become an important subject of empirical research in political science.

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6.6 Check Your Progress
1. Discuss Rousseau’s views about ‘State of Nature’.
2. According to Rousseau, why people living in the stage of nature entered into a social contract?
3. Define the General Will.
4. Why did Rousseau criticize the civil society?
6.7 Glossary
• Contemporaneous : Existing or occurring in the same period of time.
• Romanticism : A movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century emphasizing
inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.
• Gregarious : Sociable
• Moi-Commun : A Common Self
• General Will : The source of legitimate authority residing in the collective will as contrasted with individual
interests.
• Sovereignty : Supreme power or authority.
• Legitimate : Conforming to the Laws or to Rules.
• Totalitarianism : A system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete
subservience to the state.
• Patriarchal : A system of society or government controlled by men.
6.8 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
1. See Section 6.2
2. See Section 6.2
3. See Section 6.3
4. See Section 6.4
6.9 Suggested Readings
• Supplement the list of books already given in the previous lesson, with the following
• Prem Arora, Brij Grover, Western and Indian Political Thinkers, (New Delhi : Book hive Publicsher).
• Roger D. Master, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).
• John W. Chapman, Rousseau, Totalitarian or Liberal, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956).
6.10 Terminal Questions
1. Critically examine Rousseau’s Theory of General Will?
2. How is Rousseau’s Social Contract Theory different from that of Hobbes and John Locke?
3. Evaluate Rousseau as a critic of civil society.

*****

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 Lesson-7
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832 A.D.)

STRUCTURE
7.0 Introduction
7.1 Learning Objectives
7.2 Principle of Utility
7.2.1 Measurement of Pleasure and Pain
7.2.2 Classification of Pleasure and Pain
7.2.3 Critisim
7.3 Summary
7.4 Check your Progress
7.5 Glossary
7.6 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercise
7.7 Suggested Readings
7.8 Terminal Questions
7.0 Introduction
The Utilitarian School dominated English political thought for over a hundred years, from the middle of the
18th to the mid of the 19th century. The Utilitarian doctrines became dominant in English political thought because
of the repercussions produced by French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, French
revolutionary ideals of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” had made a deep impression on the English people. On the
other hand the Industrial Revolution had created a new manufacturing class composed of people who were intolerant
of state restrictions upon trade. Their economic philosophy of laissez-faire and free trade reflected the economic
needs of the times; their political philosophy of individualism and their love of liberty were largely a reflex of their
economic doctrines. They opposed the stagnation of the 19th century and desired to liberate new forces, being
confident of human progress. This was, in addition, a wide-spread discontent among the working classes. The trade
union movement was growing and demands were being made for reform in industrial conditions and for an extension
of political power to the masses. Accordingly the doctrines of natural law and of social contract disappeared, and
liberal theory in England turned from visionary idealism to practical and commonplace reform. The Utilitarian
philosophy was the only consistent and systematic body of doctrine developed to serve as a foundation for the practical
needs of the period.
The founder of Utilitarianism was David Hume, and it was professed by Priestly, Huteheson and Paley in
England and by Helventius in France. But it was first around Jeremy Bentham, the most typical utilitarian of them all
that a utilitarian school began to take form. He laid down the foundations of the utilitarian school as distinct from the
utilitarian theory.
In this work he was greatly assisted by James Mill, who was able to convert Bentham to radicalism and bring
him into contact with a remarkable group of men who came to be known as the utilitarian’s because o their firm faith
in the general principles formulated by Bentham. Some of these adherents of Bentham, like J.S. Mill, developed the
aspects of Utilitarianism, and others like Malthus and Ricardo applied the principle to the economic field.
All those who had a faith in Utilitarian principle; were convinced that all men seek happiness. If pleasure
alone is good, then the only right action is that which produces the greatest happiness, and that the sole justification
of the state is that it makes possible this greatest happiness. They were all philosophic radicals, theorists of
representative democracy and of universal suffrage. The English speaking work today still bears witness to their
teaching. In the words of G.M. Young, “It would be hard to find any corner of our public life where the spirit of
Bentham is not working today.”
Jeremy Bentham was born on February 15, 1748 in a well-to-do family in England. His life span covered
the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Bentham’s contribution to Political Science, unlike his predecessor
Hegal’s philosophical approach to the relations between man and state lay primarily in the legal and practical philosophy.
As an active practitioner of law, he mainly concerned himself with the task of improving the existing system of law as
well as of current legal thought. Throughout his career he sought to provide a scientific foundation to the study of
Jurisprudence. But he was not wholly pre-occupied with writing he was also engaged in the task of prison-reform.

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 Although we find his style of philosophizing often turgid and barren, he remarkably succeeded in attracting
a band of followers who familiarized his ideas to the people. Not a system builder like Hobbes or Hegel or having
Rousseau’s capacity for lucid exposition, he combined in his thought the scientific spirit of Hume, the liberal insights
of John Locke and Montesquieu, the hedonism of Hartely and Helvetius and above all the rationalism of the French
enlightenment, in the tradition of Rane Descartes he believed that reason helps thus to solve all problems by resolving
complex appearances into simple elements which in turn, could provide guidelines for action.
Some of his famous works are the Fragment on Government, the Introduction to the principles of Morals
and legislation (1789) and the Essay on political Tactics (1791).
Bentham was not concerned with the problems of man’s relation to cosmos. His quest was for reasonable
solutions of social and political, problems and problems of law and government. He was not a very passionate man
and yet he revolted against the defects of his contemporary legal order. He was obsessed with the problem of change
in the legal system, and provided powerful arguments to convince people why it ought to be changed. His was the
voice of the middle class of his times who reached against the rotten, aristocratic order having outlived its utility. His
works like Catechism of Parliamentary Reform (1809) and constitutional code (1823) cleared the decks for web
the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 in the British Parliament.
Following Locke, argued that knowledge is derived from experience to repudiate the doctrine of Natural
Law which had found a new support in Blackstone’s jurisprudence. Impressed by Hume’s attack on the doctrine of
Natural Law he argued that since knowledge is a product of sense experience, it is bound to be subjective in character.
Therefore, there cannot be anything like eternal natural laws or eternal natural rights.
7.1 Learning Objectives
After reading this lesson, the students will be able to understand Bentham’s Utilitarian theory and will know
about his ideas of pleasure and pain.
7.2 Utilitarian Theory
Jeremy Bentham was influenced by Priestly’s work, “Essay on Government” (1768)which emphasizes that
good and happiness of the majority of a community should be the great standard. Priestly had taken this phrase from
Hutcheson. According to Bentham, the main purpose of politics is to discover a principle by which the government
should promote happiness of the greatest possible number. Such principle is based on utility which in turn recognises
two sovereign masters of human behaviour, pain and pleasure. These two sovereigns—pain and pleasure—point out
what men shall do. Standard of right and wrong, and chain of causes and effects are linked with these two sovereign
masters who govern the process of thinking and actions of men. Principle of utility recognises men’s subjection to
these two sovereign masters. The goal of the principle of utility is to promote the fabric of felicity with the help of
reason and law. The principle of utility approves or disapproves a action according to the tendericy which increases or
decreases the happiness of an individual or of a group or of a government whose interest is in question.
Bentham bases his theory of principle of utility on human psychology. All ideas are derived from the senses
as a result of operation of sensible objects. Pleasures and pains of body arise from perception of the sensible objects
and are the sole deter-minants of human behaviour. However Bentham recognises other determinants like sympathy’
and imagination. He is not very clear on the question of freedom of will which is affected by motives. Again motives
are perceptions of pleasure and pain or external events.
Bentham defines what is utility. According to him, utility is property in any object. It produces benefit and
pleasure and may prevent the happenings of pain, evil and unhappiness to a party whose interest is taken into
consideration. The utilitarian principle takes the interests of the community and the individual into consideration.
The interest of the community is the sum of the interests of all the members of society. An action is conform-able to
the principle of utility if it has a tendency to increase the happiness of the community. An action of the government is
conformable to the principle of utility if a tendency of the government is to increase the happiness of the community.
Every action of the government or of an individual should be judged in terms of its utility. The words like “ought”,
“ought not”, “right” and “wrong” have meaning when they are judged in the light of the principle of utility. The principle
of utility is also called the principle of the greatest happiness. The objective of the government is to promote the
greatest happiness of the great-est number.
There are four sources of pleasure and pain, according to Bentham. They are physical, political, moral and
religious. Pleasures and pain belonging to these four sources are capable of giving a binding force to any rule of
conduct. Therefore they may be termed as sanctions : (i) Pleasure or pain which is caused in the present life in the
ordinary course of nature belongs to the physical sanction. , If a man suffers in natural and spontaneous course of

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things, such suffering is styled calamity. If suffering is caused to a man due to his own imprudence, it is a punishment
of physical sanction, (ii) If judges dispense justice according to the will of the sovereign, it is political sanction. Here
suffering is imposed by law and has political sanction, (iii) When some persons concerned with the public good
dispense justice, not according to the settled rules, it is issued from moral or popular sanction. If a man suffers for
lack of any friendly assistance due to his misconduct, punishment has moral sanction, (iv) It is religious sanction
when it is issued from the hands of a super invisible being. If a man suffers on account of interposition of a particular
providence, punishment has religious sanction. All pleasures and pains which come from the physical, political and
moral must be experienced in this life. But pleasures and pains coming from the religious sanction may be experienced
either in the present life or in the future life.
Pleasures and pains are to be classified according to their sorts, says Bentham. A distinction has to be made
between simple and complex pleasures and pains because laws are concerned with them. These simple and complex
pleasures and pains are to be considered by the legislators and the judges because the punishment prescribed by the
legislators and applied by the judges shall have the just effect.
Pleasure and pain are produced in the minds of men by the effect of certain factors. But quantity of pleasure
and pain pro-duced in the minds of men by the effect of physical, moral, religious and institutional factors is not
uniformally proportio-nate to the cause.’ If depends upon the sensibility of a man. Further the same cause may produce
different degree of pleasure or pain at different times to the same man.
According to Bentham, the people should be governed only by the principle of utility. All other principles
are either inade-quate or wrong. The principles of asceticism, sympathy and antipathy are opposed to the principle of
utility. The principle of asceticism approves those actions which diminish the happi-ness of man. It disapproves those
actions which promote happiness. This principle is followed by the moralists and religious men. Though some citizens
have followed this principle, no government has completely followed it. In a few instances it has followed. For
example, the Spartan regime in Greece follo-wed it to some extent. Bentham opines that the principle of asceticism
cannot be consistently followed by all people. On the contrary, the principle of utility can be consistently pursued by
all people. Another principle which adversely affects the princi-ple of utility is the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
Various systems which are concerned with the standard of right and may be reduced to the principle of sympathy and
antipathy principle of sympathy and antipathy is likely to error on t. of severity. But errors occur, in many instances,
on the side of lenity.
The principle of utility is the basis of legislation and morals declares Bentham. This principal is to be followed by the
lators and the’ private persons. Bentham is mainly concerned with the legislators. The legislators who work through
compulsion must take note of pleasures and pains of individuals. Pleasures and avoidance of pains are the objects
which the legislators must have in view. They are also instruments with which the legislators are expected to work.
Therefore the legislator must understand the force of pleasure and pain in measuring their value. Pleasure or pain of
an individual or of a community is to be measured in terms of intensity, duration, certainty, uncertainty, nearness,
remoteness, etc. If balance is on the side of pleasure, it gives good tendency of the action. If balance is on the side of
pain, it is bad tendency of the act. Pleasure or may be measured either for an individual or for the whole community.
The legislators must understand the importance of pleasures and pains because both are their ends and means with
which they work.
The principle of utility which works for the greatest happiness of the greatest number has an immense value
because it rejected the infallibility of the supreme ruler who desires to impose his concept of happiness or of morality
on the people. The main concern of Bentham’s principle of utility is Welfare of the community. This utilitarian
principle can be applied to all social constitutional and legislative reforms.
7.2.1 Measurement of Pleasure and Pain
Bentham’s doctrine is the doctrine of “hedonistic calculus”. As it categories various pleasures quantitatively.
Bentham believed that pleasure and pain can be measured, if not actually, to enable the ruler to promote the one and
discourage other. He gave a specific calculus to calculate the amount of pleasure and pain which a thing or an action
would generate.
He believed that value of a pleasure considered by itself and in relation to a single individual, depends upon
four circumstances: (a) its intensity, (b) its duration; (c) its certainty, and (d) its proximity. But in dealing with pains
and pleasures, it is not enough to assess their value as though they were, necessarily, isolated and independent. Pains
and pleasures may have as consequences other pain and pleasures. Therefore, if one wishes to estimate the tendency
of any act from which pains or pleasure directly results one must take into account two other circumstances; These
are (a) its fecundity or productiveness; (b) its purity. A productive pleasure is one which is likely to be followed by
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other pleasures of same kind. A productive pain is one which is likely to be followed by other pains of the same kind.
A pure pleasure Is one which is not likely to produce pain. A pure pain is one which is not likely to produce pleasure.
When the calculation is to be made in relation to number of individuals, yet another circumstance is to be taken into
account of its extent. That is the number of persons who are likely to be affected by this particular pleasure or pain.
Bentham believed that a’ legislature, working through compulsion or moral power, could increase one and
diminish the other by application of the following sanctions (a) physical; operating in the ordinary course of nature,
(b) political, operating through organs of governments, (c) moral or popular, operating through social sanctions and,
(d) religious, arising from an invisible power.
7.2.2 Classification of Pleasure and Pain
Bentham has also classified pleasures and pains into simple and complex. He has given a list of fourteen
simple pleasures and twelve simple pains. Pleasures of sense, health, amity, power, piety, benevolence etc. illustrate
the first; and the pains of sense, privation awkwardness, enmity piety, malevolence illustrate the second. These simple
pains and pleasures are the foundations of ail the complex pleasures and pains.
After delineating the principle of utility Bentham thought, how to reconcile man’s diverse interests? Bentham
admitted the need of a common agency which would eliminate the clash of interest in society. When such reconciliation
is not product of voluntary co-operation, the state must try to achieve it. It is significant to note that Bentham identified
society and state. For, Bentham - the individual is the ultimate reality, the .society or community is a ‘fictitious body’
having no existence apart from the citizens who compose it. The state exists for the individual and not the individual
for the state. This is the individualistic or atomistic conception of society which is an important feature of the
theories of Hobbes and Locke, and is quite opposed to the organic view which one finds in Rousseau.
7.2.3 Criticism:
Bentham’s theory of utility can be criticized on the following grounds:
1. He started with a wrong psychology. Human beings are not as coolly calculating about pleasure-seeking as
he presumes them to be. He takes an over-simplified view of human nature. Human nature is too complex to
be capable of being defined in such a manner. Man is a bundle of desires of immunerable types and also of
reason and institution. Man is more than a pleasure-hunter.
2. There is a contradiction in two statements. On the one hand, he says that man can only seek his own personal
happiness, on the contrary, he says that he should strive to seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
When by nature he cannot seek his own personal pleasure, how can he strive for the general goods? He is not
able to reconcile his egoism with his altruism.
3. Pleasures are always subjective. No subjective standards can be laid down. Human beings are not like set
machines to enjoy objectively the pleasures.
4. The quality of pleasure is as important as quantity of pleasure. To emphasise only the quantity of pleasure is
going for away from reality.
5. This co-called felicific calculus is simply not the method of calculating quantitatively the pleasures. In fact
quantitative measurement of such subtle and subjective sensations like pleasures is not possible pleasures,
unlike physical objects, cannot be added or subtracted or divided.
6. There is no logical connection between the two phases “Greatest Happiness” and greatest number suppose
there are two possible actions x and y. Suppose ‘x’ is capable of producing 25 units of happiness for each of
5 people (25x5 = 125); and ‘y’ 4 units of happiness for each of 25 people (4x25=100). Which is the correct
course to follow? If we are ruled by the recommendation to produce the greatest happiness, we shall do x; if
by the recommendation to serve the greatest number, we shall do ‘y’. Thus, two separate exhortations appear
on the surface which contradict each other.
7. He identifies pleasure with happiness, but as we all know happiness is a much broader term than pleasure.
8. Theory of the greatest happiness of the greatest number implies logically that interests of 49% people can
be sacrificed for the sake of 51%, which is not a correct theory according to the democratic principle. The
state should stand for the interests of practically all the individuals comprising it.
7.3 Summary:
In spite of his philosophical ambiguities and shallowness of philosophical depth Bentham is regarded as one
of the greatest political thinkers in the history of political thought. He influenced the course of events in the 19th
century to such an extent that all the reforms carried out in England and elsewhere followed the directions that
Bentham has indicated.
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 In fact, the utilitarian’s held their sway during the later half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th
century also. Despite its logical deficiencies, the greatest happiness of the greatest number became a watch-word of
liberalism and progressive reforms. The legislators got a measuring road to judge the worth of a particular piece of
legislation.
7.4 Check Your Progress
1. What are the basic assumptions of Benthamiste Utilitarianism?
2. How pleasures and pains can be calculated, according to Bentham.
7.5 Glossary
• Utility: It is a measure of satisfaction and individual gets from the consumption of the commodities.
• Hodonism : A belief that pleasure is the most important thing in life.
• Felicity : Intense happiness.
7.6 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercise
1. See Section 7.2
2. See Section 7.2.1
7.7 Suggested Readings
• J. Bentham, A Fragment on Government etc. ed, with and introduction by Wifrid Harrison.
• J. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarian’s: Basic Blackwell and Molt, Ltd, 1949.
• L. Stephen, English Utilitarians, Vol.I, 1990.
• E. Halevey, The Growth of Philosphical Radicalism, 1928.
• R.M. Bhagat, Political Thought : Plato to Marx, Jalandhar: New Academic Publishing Company, 1988.
7.8 Terminal Questions
1. Examine and Estimate Bentham's Utilitarianism.
2. Why Bentham's theory of Utility is criticized?

*****

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 Lesson-8
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 A.D.)
STRUCTURE
8.0 Introduction
8.1 Learning Objectives
8.2 Mill's Views on Liberty
8.2.1 Definition of Liberty
8.2.2 Dangers to Liberty
8.2.3 Types of Liberty
8.2.4 Limits of the Activities of State and Society
8.2.5 Criticism
8.3 Mill's Views on Representatives Government
8.4 The Subjection of Women
8.4.1 An Estimate
8.5 Summary
8.6 Check Your Progress
8.7 Glossary
8.8 Answer to Self Check Exercise
8.9 Suggested Readings
8.10 Terminal Questions
8.0 Introduction
John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was a philosopher. Economist, political thinker and a dominant figure in English
intellectual life in the latter half of the 19th century. In his childhood, he was an object of an experimental education
in the hands of his father James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Mill later become a key advocate for utilitarianism, an
ethical and political theory that views moral goodness as dependent on greatest happiness for the greatest number of
people concerned and stresses the importance of representative government in politics. His works include ‘on Liberty’
and ‘other Essays’, Utilitarianism, System of Logic, Principles of political Economy, and Considerations of
Representative Government. This lesson intends to examine Mill’s views on liberty, Representative Government and
Subjection of Women. He refined the utilitarian tradition of philosophy established by Jeremy Bentham and he re-
emphasised the primacy of individual liberty and self determination against the inroads of the majority in democratic
societies. Mill’s case for women equality reflects his Utilitarian roots, the subordination of women he argues, is not
only “wrong in itself’ but one of the chief hindrance to human improvement.” By denying women the same opportunities
as men, he says society not only impedes the development of roughly half of population but denies itself the benefit
of their talents.
8.1 Learning Objectives
After reading this lesson, students will be able to
• Explain Mill’s views on Liberty.
• Understand Mills views on the concept of Democracy.
8.2 Mill’s Views on Liberty
Mill’s Essay on Liberty is one of the finest discourses on the definition of freedom in general and freedom
of thought and expression in particular. Free discussion alone can nourish fruitful ideas. Truth will certainly come out
of free discussion out if somebody’s views are suppressed not only that truth will never come out, that particular
individual’s development will be retarded. There cannot be any self-realization of self-development of individuals
without Liberty. For Mill, Liberty is not an abstract or Natural Right to be asserted by man but a concrete right to be
judged by its utility. The criterion for judging is the development of individuality’, There should be free scope for the
development of varieties of character. Every human action should be directed towards the development of one’s
individual self. ‘Differences of views are ‘be embodiments of different individualities and let every individual maintain
his individual-ity against heavy odds. That shows the health and moral development of individuality and society the
two developments being complementary. But for the difference of opinion and the free expression thereof the society
becomes dull and stagnant. Liberty for Mill is the life-breath of society. This extra-ordinary interest in Liberty, as we
have discussed above, is against the basic Utilitarian tenets.
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8.2.1 Definition of Liberty
At two different stages, Mill gives two “different definitions of Liberty ; (a) The first definition of Liberty
as given by Mill to which he generally sticks is that “Liberty is being left to oneself.” In Mill’s words ‘‘Over himself,
over his actions and thoughts the individual is sovereign”. “All restraint is an evil”. These are some of the ideas of Mill
on this aspect of Liberty’s definit-ion. Mill goes to the extent of saying that any interference with individual’s liberty
of action is not justified except to prevent him from doing harm to others. If by my action no member of the society
is harmed, neither the society nor the state has the right to interfere with that action of mine over which I have the
exclusive juris-diction. Mill divides individual’s actions into two categories ;—(i) Self regarding, (ii) other-regarding
actions, in the sphere of self-regarding actions of the individuals, they should be left totally free; Mill critically
examines the legitimate degree of control that society and the state may exercise in the sphere of self-regarding
actions. He takes the example of Drunkenness which is a purely self-regarding action so long as it does not lead to
disorder or cruelty or dangerous neglect of family, and the society and the state should not interfere and should not
enforce prohibition or stop sale of alcoholic liquors to put any restrictions. But as stated above, if it leads to disorder
it will become other-regarding action and the .slate will have the right to interfere. In the sphere of other-regarding
actions which involve and affect the interests of other members of society, the state and society can legitima-tely
interfere. The stale and the society should interfere only in such other-regarding actions alone “as produce positive,
demonstrable harm to others.” The state will be within its legitimate limit to enforce compulsory’ education. Lack of
education to the children will certainly harm the society as a whole. If parents fail to give education to their children
the stale should either force the parents to do so or to arrange for the education of the children itself. Mill gives
another example wherein the state can force the individuals to do something for their own benefit. The state can
enforce conscription legitimately. In the words of Wayper, “It is legitimate to oblige a man to bear his share in
maintaining society. Conscription is .hot to be regarded as an unwarranted infringement of his liberty”. Mill abandons
the Laissez Faire Theory and justifies states’ interference in the sphere of business and industry to a legitimate
extent.
(b) The second definition of Liberty, as given by Mill is “Liberty consists in doing what one desires.” This
definition is very much different from the earlier definition. Mill gives an example. The state or society would be
justified in preventing a man from crossing a bridge which was known to the unsafe. Liberty consists in doing what
one desires and he certainly does not have the desire to fall in the river. He has the desire of crossing the bridge it
would be better to frustrate this desire of his than to allow him to fail in the river which is greater evil. This leads to
much more positive activities on the part of the state than the earlier definition. In the words of Wayper. This definition
of liberty throws the door open to any amount of interference. Mill has gone far towards admitting the extremis
idealist contention that one can be forced to be free. Bentham must have gyrated in his grave...that his favourite
follower could ever contemplate such a non-utilitarian proposition.”
8.2.2 Dangers to Liberty
The above discussion reveals that Mill is not concerned with any narrower concept of liberty. His concept of
liberty may be equated with the liberty of the individual to develop, enrich and expand his personality to the fullest
extent. Mill’s Essay On Liberty is not a complete treatise on state, its nature or political obligation, unlike Hobbes’s
Leviathan and Locke’s ‘Of Civil Govern-ment’. It is, as Mill says himself an essay. This essay deals with the value and
nature of human freedom, of the conflicts that arise between the citizen and the state and between the individual and
the society. Not only that such freedom is useful to individual bat also to the society as a whole. For Mill, liberty of
thought and expression, freedom of discussion and investigation, freedom of self-controlled moral judgment, absolute
freedom of feeling, sentiments and opinion (on all subjects—speculative, religious, scientific, theological or literary),
Liberty of expressing and publishing opinions. Liberty of states and pursuits etc. were good in their own rights.
Intellectual and political freedoms, in particular, are beneficial both to the society, that permits them and to the
individuals that enjoy them. Mill deals in detail with the dangers to such a valuable concept liket Liberty. According to
him dangers to Liberty come from two sources:
(a) from the state, through the laws that could restrict freedom.
(b) unorganized but terrible power of general opinion, in other words/the society.
In Mills times, the influence of unorganized society, the unwritten and unconventional authority of the masses
over the individual was probably more menacing than the power of the state. The demands of the state on the individual
in his time were less exacting and fewer. On the other hand in many matters, ‘‘affecting his private and intellectual
life, his love affairs, his views on religion, sex and science”’ the individual found himself bound by” a constricting
orthodoxy and would have to guard his words and actions with a care which he might find intolerable” (Macallun). In
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England of Mill’s times the- yoke of opinion was heavier and that of law-givers lighter than in most other European
countries. Mill, knew to his cost, the tyranny of the opinion of the public. He used to visit one highly polished and
intelligent lady, Mrs. Taylor about five years his senior, quite often, and used to draw inspiration and guidance from
her in his political writings. At the age of 25, he had met Mrs. Taylor and this association continued for the whole life.
This association he calls as ‘‘the most valuable friendship of my life” After the death of Mr. Taylor, Mill married Mrs.
Taylor. His association of about twenty years with a married woman and his subsequent marriage with a widow was the
subject-matter of a severe criticism from the public and almost became a scandal. Mill found nothing wrong, in his
association with Mrs. Taylor but the then society, rigged as it was with century-old and out-moded customs, found his
conduct certainly objectionable.
This is the background of Mill’s being more critical of the interference of the society than of the state in the
individual’s affairs. In his own words “in our time from the highest class to the lowest, everyone lives as under the eye
of a hostile and dreaded censorship. We fear our neighbours more and the policemen less.” This was the general
tyranny of society to which we have already elluded, and which then, much more than the slate power, a serious danger
to individual and freedom. Mill found that the pressures of society were not only constraining man’s actions but were
also weakening their impulses .and desires. It was against this kind of restraints from the society that Mill raised his
voice. His voice was against the magical influence of out-moded customs, and practices, which were not only as the
proverb says, a second nature but were continually mistaken for the first.
Mill was not against custom us such. He speaks very highly of the vah.ve of custom, but he criticised only
those customs or rules of society which don’t appeal to reason.’ Mill’s primary concern as a political thinker is that
all the unreasoning assumptions, rates, customs and usages should be weighed and considered by the reflective and
balanced judgement of thinking men. But his problem is not solved here also. He finds that the thinking men are apt to
be few, very few. He does not have faith in the mental abilities of the man on the street.
He believes in the ‘’aristocracy of wisdom.” Mill was the apostle of the wisdom of the few and that is why he propounded
the theory of plural voting for university graduates, scholars and other intelligent classes of society. If the age-old
customs and usages are screened by men of wisdom, the opinion of the public will no longer be a menace to liberty.
8.2.3 Types of Liberty
Mill, in his Essay On Liberty discusses Liberty under three heads:-
First, the inward domain of consciousness, liberty of thought and feeling, including the liberty expressing
public opinions.
Secondly, liberty of tastes and pursuits, of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character of doing
what we like.
Thirdly, the liberty of combination among individuals, freedom to unite for any purpose not involving harm
to others.
Mill is mostly concerned with the first type of liberty, namely the liberty of thought and expression. He
briefly touches upon the other two types of liberty.
The first type of liberty is the most important part of his Essay. According to Mill the freedom of thought
and expression is most essential for the self--development and self-realisation of the individual. Such freedom of
expression and thought is, not only essential for the development of the individual’s personality but it is necessary for
the health and vigor of the society and the state. The state should frame its laws and the society should make its rules
and curve out its institutions in such a way that ibis liberty of thought and expression is realized. This is essential for
both the high type of moral character of the individuals and the high type of civilization.
Mill believed in the error of judgement of many. The number was no criterion of rightness or wrongness of
any decision. The majority was not infallible. It had no right to impose its judgement on the minority. Mill was the
first political thinker to realize the impact of the tyranny of majority. In the words of Sabine, “The threat to liberty
which Mill chiefly feared was not government but’ a majority that is intolerant of the unconventional, that looks with
suspicion on divergent minorities and is willing to use the weight of numbers to repress and regiment them
What Mill recognised and what the older liberalism bad never seen, was that behind a. liberal government there must
be a liberal society.
Mill realized the third and the most important factor, the first two being individual and government, in the
realization of individual’s liberty. In the words of Mill, “All mankind minus one is destitute of the right to coerce the
single dissentient. The human race would be loser if one single’’ individual is not permitted to express his opinion.
His approach in his discussion on liberty of thought and expression is very rational, appealing. His view that. truth

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emerges out of free discussion and free arguments actually appeals to reason. He is extremely convincing in
demonstrating the- fallibility of human reason. How nicely has he put it that when human reason is fallible no person
should be prosecuted or persecuted for holding an opinion which is different Horn the popular or majority opinion.
He quotes example’s from history. The two examples that he cites are of Socrates and Christ who were both prosecuted
for holding opinions different from the ones popularly accepted in their tines. But later on people realised their
mistake; and future generations worshipped them. Humanity has suffered a lot from such prosecutions.
For Mill, Liberty is not an abstract or Natural right to be asserted but a concrete right to be judged by
criterion of development of individual personality. The individual personality or individuality is not something which
goes against society. It is rather complemen-tary. ‘Individuality is both a personal good and social good. Mill’s difficulty
comes to lime-light when there is clash between the two goods—namely Freedom and responsibility, between the
individual good and social good as represented by the state. The firm opinion of Mill is that society can never be more
important than the individual.
If the individual good and the social good run in accord, well and good. But when there is conflict, the
freedom of individual will prevail upon the social good. Mill’s is another answer to the perennial question how far can
one good namely freedom be reconciled with the other good namely order and social peace. As Mill invariably
prefers freedom as compared to social peace, he is one of the greatest indivi-dualists of all ages.
8.2.4 Limits of the Activities of the State and Society
Mill examined the legitimate degree of control which society and state may exercise over the individual. In
the sphere of self-regarding actions which affect the individual alone no interference of the society or the state can
be tolerated. This position is in connection with intellectually mature persons only. In the case of children, lunatics
and peoples living in independent colonies the society and the state can interfere even in the sphere of self-regarding
actions. In the sphere of other regarding actions which Mill said that the state can interfere. Some of the examples of
other regarding actions are encroachment on other’s rights, infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified by
his own rights, falsehood or duplicity in dealing with others, unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over them, even
selfish abstinence from defending them against injury. These actions and others like them are fit for moral reprobation
by the society and punishment by the states. Some of the self-regarding action; which start affecting others will be
classified under the head other-regarding actions and can be interfered with by the society and the state. He gives an
example of a man who through incomperance of extravagance becomes unable to discharge his debts or support his
family he may be justly punished by the society and the state. But this punishment is for the breach of duty towards
family-and-the creditors and not for extravagance.
Similarly a man trying to commit suicide may be prevented from doing so as the loss of his life will affect
the other individuals. But we should be the dividing line between the self regarding and other regarding actions may be
a matter of endless dispute.
So far as the liberty of action is concerned the society mid the state can interfere only if action of any
member harms others; the good of the individual, physical or moral, is not a sufficient reason. So long as one does not
become a nuisance to others, freedom, of action and of association is unfettered from the interference of the state
and society.
8.2.5 Criticism—
(l) There is no definite line of demarcation between the self-regarding and other-regarding ‘actions. At various
items and various stages the disputes may arise as to what is a self-regarding and what is another-regarding
action.
(2) Mill assumed that the individual is sovereign over his body and mind. He should be left free to act as he wished
and society cannot impose any limitation on his freedom. The soundness of this statement may be doubted. The
sovereignty of the individual himself is not a self evident proposition.
(3) Though Mill’s exposition of Liberty is one of the best in the history of Political Thought, he was unable to
reconcile the claims of individual freedom with the claims of order and social peace satisfac-torily. He was
emotionally attached to Benthamism so much that he could not get rid of it. Moreover, he started with the
premise of atomistic concept of individual. Hence he could not arrive at a different conclusion. He had to
sacrifice the social goods at the altar of individual freedom. He only defended the old theory of liberty with new
arguments. As Sabine puts it “he represents a typical example of the futility of putting new wine into old bottles.”
Though sometimes he talks of social legislation and socialism, yet he could not do justice to social good and
society as a whole so far as their relation to individual liberty was concerned. His solution of the perennial

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 problem of political obligation cannot be said to be the correct one. Sabine has aptly put it, “The fundamental
difficulty with Mill’s argument was that the never really analysed the relationship between freedom and
responsibility. At times he retained the traditional view derived from Bentham that any, compulsion or even any
social influence is an abridgement of liberty. What Mill’s theory of liberty required was a thorough going
consideration of the defence of personal liberty on social and legal rights and obligations.’’
(4) Barker has criticized Mill as the “Prophet of an empty liberty and an abstract individual.” What Mill gave to his
individuals, was not liberty in the true sense of the term. Liberty grows within the precincts of the society. He
gives to Libert, more of a negative connotation while Liberty, properly speaking, is a positive term. Liberty, as
some of the inter idealistic realized, was the freedom of being one’s true self. This freedom can only be achieved
by becoming a member of the organic social whole, and accepting willingly all social control. Hence it is
correct to say that Mill is prophet of empty liberty. Similarly, the type of individuals that Mill envisaged, in fact
do not exist in reality. They are not like particles in the sand-heap of society. On the other hand, they are like
limbs of the body-politic or a living organism. It is both-way traffic. Mill would say that without individuals
society cannot exist. Agreed But can the individuals exist without society? The answer is ‘no’, Just as only living
organism cannot live without the limbs (in fact it can live for sometime without non-vital limbs) the limbs
cannot survive for a single minute after the death of the living organism. On the same analogy, the society cannot
live without individuals just as the individuals cannot live without the society. The individuals and society are so
related to each other that one cannot imagine to live without the other. Hence it is correct to say that Mill was the
prophet of “the abstract individual.”
No doubt, the inconsistencies from which Mill’s concept of Liberty suffer are many, but all these have not
succeeded in eroding his importance as the most enlightened champion of individualism and individual liberty in the
history of political thought. He is remembered and respected even today for his earnest plea for individual liberty.
Liberty for him is both individual goods and social good. His concept of freedom combines both the internal and
external words of individuals. Particularly his emphasis upon the spiritual aspect of freedom makes it more sublime.
He offered one of the best vindications of the liberty of through and expression. He realized the danger of society
from the tyranny of the majority over the minority and suggested necessary remedial measures. Mill has become
immortal due to his reorganization of the value of human personality and his insistence on the development of full
individual as the goal of state and government.
8.3 Mill Views on Representative Government
In his ‘Representative Government’ Mill is mainly concerned with institutional reforms in the government
so as to make it more representative and responsible. Political institutions are the work of men and are either well or
ill made like other things, says Mill. When political machinery is to be operated by men, it requires active participation
by them. It is to be adjusted to the capacities and qualities of men who participate in it. Such requirement implies
three things :
(i) People must be willing to accept a particular form of government.
(ii) They must be able to do certain things which are necessary to keep that form of government in good condition.
(iii) They must be able to fulfill the purpose of such form of government. Failure to fulfill any of these conditions
renders a form of government unstable to the particular case.
Mill discusses the characteristics of the government which is best fitted to promote the interests of people :
(i) The first element of a good government is the possession of virtue and intelligence by the people who
constitute the state. Political operations of the government depend on the possession of these qualities by
the people. The good qualities of the people provide the moving force which runs the machinery of the
government.
(ii) The second constituent merit of the good government is the quality of the machinery itself. It is to be
observed how the machinery takes advantage of the amount of good qualities of the people and uses them for
good purposes. The representative government is a means through which the general standard of intelligence
and honesty of the community and intelligence and virtue of individual members are brought to bear upon the
government.
People who have highly developed moral and intellectual qualities, the most just laws, the purest judiciary,
the most enlight-ened public administration, and the most equitable financial system can move easily and quickly
towards a higher stage. On the other hand, if the institutions of the people are not properly constructed, the people
cannot march ahead.

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 Mill explains what a representative government is and why it is ideal; A representative government is one in
which the whole people or some numerous portion of them exercise sovereign power through deputies who arc
popularly and periodically elected. People possess this sovereign power in all its completeness. Every citizen has a
voice in the exercise of sovereign power. Occasionally, he is called on to take an actual work in the govern-ment by
discharging general or local functions. Mill lists the following reasons why the representative government is ideal:
(i) The representative government in which ail people participate can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the
society. Participation even in the smallest function is useful.
(ii) Rights and interests of every citizen are secure because everyone is able.
(iii) The representative government promotes the good management of the affairs of the state by means of moral
and intellectual faculties of the citizens. In turn it improves the faculties of the citizens. Thus it promotes a
higher form of national character.
(iv) It promotes the well-being of the citizens. The general prosperity achieves greater height and is widely
diffused.
Representative government can be successful if three condi-tions are fulfilled:
(i) People should be willing to accept the representative government.
(ii) They should be able to do what is essential for the preservation of representative government.
(iii) They should be willing and able to discharge the functions which the representative government imposes on
them.
Mill explains the composition of parliament. The British Parliament is always in his mind as the typical
instance of representative bodies. The lower class consisting of small employers of labour, tradesmen and manual
labourers and the upper class consisting of employers of labour, possessors of inherited wealth and professionals
shall have equal representation in the parliament. In this parliament no group should be so powerful as to suppress
truth and justice. Though the parliament does not represent a selection of the greatest political minds in the country,
it represents a fair sample of every grade of intellect among the people. These sections have to express the wants of
the various sections of the people and to be an organ for popular demands.
The following are the functions to be performed by the parliament:
(i) One of the important functions of the parliament is voting of taxes. This function exclusively belongs to it.
Sanction of the parliament is required for the appro-priation of revenues to the different items of the public
expenditure.
(ii) Another important function of the parliament is deliberation. As it is less fitted to administer, it cannot
dictate in detail to those who are in charge of administration.
(iii) The parliament can decide who shall be prime ‘minister but cannot nominate the members of a cabinet. It
recog-nises the leader of a party whose general policies and programmes command its support. It can expel
the political executives if they abuse its trust.
(iv) It also watches and controls the government. It throws light of publicity on the acts of government.
(v) It is nation’s committee of grievances and congress of people’s opinions. A subject of discussion in the
parliament is of great public importance and interest. Every interest and shade of opinion is pleaded in the
parliament. The decisions that are arrived at after the great discussion are to be carried out by the individuals
specially trained to it. The parliament has to see that these individuals are honestly and intelligently chosen.
However, it shall not unduly interfere with administra-tion. In describing the functions of the parliament,
Mill is influenced by the British parliament.
Certain evils of representative parliament are listed by Mill:
(i) Certain dangers may arise if an adequate amount of intelligence and knowledge is not found in the parliament.
(ii) Improperly constituted parliament may encroach on the area of the executive. It may expel a good ministry
and elevate a bad oho. It may be partner in the misdeeds of the executive.
(iii) It may impose a selfish, impulsive, short-sighted, ignorant and prejudicial general policy. It may abrogate
good laws and pass bad laws.
(iv) There may be danger of class legislation from the parliament.
Mill makes an attempt to remove these and other evils of representative parliament as far as possible without
interfering materially with the necessary benefits of democratic system:

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 Mill has suggested some very intelligent safeguards and methods by which representative government
democracy can be effectively ensured and worked properly.
First, education should be imparted to the individuals in the civic sense and the art of citizenship. Mill’s
basic assumption is that men arcade what they are by their education. Right type of education can make the citizens up
to the mark and keep them aware of their rights and obligations.
Secondly, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. If the public is vigilant enough, no government can deprive
them of their rights and rule over them in a dictatorial manner. Enlightened public opinion is the greatest safeguard
against the dangers of democracy.
Thirdly, in order to avoid the rule of the ignoramus. Mill suggest that more educated and intelligent-classes
should be given weightage in voting. The only device to ensure this is what Mill calls Equal Representation and which
is better known as Proportional Representation. The minorities should be given representation into their strength.
According to Mill, True Democracy is one which will give due weight and influence to all the different elements of
society. He suggests plural voting for men of worth and proportional representation for giving due weight to the
minorities and intelligent sections of the society. Mill approved the Hare System of proportional representation.
Mill had the guts to reject the easy doctrine that the suppression of minorities was the necessary price to be
paid for free government.
Fourthly, another safeguard that Mill suggested was the voting by open or public ballot. According to Mill,
“People will give dishonest and mean votes from lucre, from malice, from pique, from personal rivalry, even from the
interests and the prejudices of class or sect, more readily in secret than in public”
Fifthly, Mill suggested that for safe-guarding the interest of those sections of society which would not
otherwise be adequately represented in an assembly popularly elected, there should be a Second Chamber. Moreover,
the Second Chamber would curb the enthusiasm of the majority party in the lower chamber to recklessly pursue its
own interests and would point out its weaknesses.
Sixthly, another minor safeguard is that the M.P.’s (Member of Parliaments) should not be paid any salary.
They should be treated as true representatives and not mere delegates?
Seventhly, he was in favour of extending the right to vote to women also. In his time, he was regarded as an
eccentric. He was advancing arguments of the 20th century, while living in the 19th century. In his Essay on the
Subjection of women he gives detailed physiological and psychological reasons for giving suffrage to women. His
cause ultimately triumphed.
Eighthly, the next safeguard for democracy as suggested by Mill is that, though there should be universal
suffrage and the workers and household servants should also be represented, evils of general suffrage should be
mitigated :
(i) by restricting the suffrage only to those who knew three R’s i.e. who could read, write and perform the
common operations of arithmetic. The state should make every endeavour to make available educational
facilities to all the citizens of the state.
(ii) by restricting the franchise to only those who paid some prescribed minimum amount of taxes, otherwise
the “vote will be merely allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to put his hand into other people’s pockets for
any purpose.” This would make the voters and the legislator, both, more responsible. His argument is very
sound. Those who do not pay any taxes but have the power to dispose of other people’s money by their votes
“have every motive to be lavish and nose to economize.” The bankrupts and paupers should never be allowed
the right of franchise.
(iii) By giving extra votes to the superior elements in society. He wrote boldly in favour of such additional or
plural voting. Criterion for such plural voting should not be property as it is a temporary make-shift. Educational
criterion is also not satisfactory. A person’s occupation can be some sort of a good test. Foremen, merchants,
bankers, professors etc. are likely to be more intelligent than the labourers. The number of such additional
votes, taken together, should not weigh the votes of the rest of the community so that the privileged plural
voters taken together should not be powerful enough to pursue their sinister class interest without restraint
at the cost of the single voters. The maximum number of additional votes that can be allowed is only three.
The clear motives behind the scheme of plural voting are Equality and Freedom in the true sense of the
terms.

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 Ninthly, indirect election is another safeguard of democracy. According to him the past experience has
suggested that indirect elections can mitigate the evils of democracy. In his time the Senate of the U. S. A. was elected
by the state legislature. According to him indirect election works well where the electors have some other functions
also to perform. Presidential election in America, be regarded as direct as the electoral college is dissolved after the
election of the resident. The election of Rajya Sabha in India and that of the President of India are the examples of the
indirect elections of the type that Mill desired.
Tenthly, expenditure on elections should not be borne by the candidates. The state should bear the expenses
on election. Now, the rich people who can afford to spend large sums of money usually what happened in his time and
what is happening these days is that get elected with the sheer force of their money.
Lastly, public servants should not be popularly elected. They should be selected through competitive exams.
The study of Mill’s ideas on representative government reveals that he was a democrat alright but with some
reservations. He was a reluctant or distrustful democrat. He accepted representative democracy with a pinch of salt.
The safeguards of democracy that he has provided clearly speak of his insight into the statecraft. This goes to his
credit that where he was conservative, he was supporting well- established institutions and those institutions have still
survived after eventful careers. Such institutions that he supported are British Cabinet system, U.S. Senate, U.S.
Supreme Court, and Swiss and American Federalisms. It further speaks well of him that where he made innovations
such as in his concepts of women’s suffrage, competitive exams for the civil servants, proportional representation
etc. the progeny has been with Mill. Of course, some of his safeguards against extreme democracy like plural voting
and exclusions from suffrage have been discarded by the various nations of the world. The Reforms Act of 1867 in
Britain was a great tribute to him. Moreover, his boldness in advocating even unpopular theories which he considered
to be correct is worth appreciating. As Maxey has put it, “Contemporary liberals did not share Mill’s apprehensions as
to dangers of democracy. But the generations following both world wars have found in Mill much to approve. A half
century of experience with demagogism, bossism and pressure politics has brought democratic thought face to face
with reality..”
8.4 The subjection of Women
‘The subjection of Women’ is an extended essay by J.S. Mill. Mill published the essay in 1869 in memory of
his late Wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Harlot Taylor died in 1858, more than a decade before Mill wrote “The subjection
of Women” but he nevertheless attributes much of the essay to her. Mill says that though he had been committed to
the principle of equality before he met tier, she taught him the ‘Practical’ consequences of women’s legal subordination.
He developed the essay with the Harriot’s help. Mills vision of liberalism extended to the rights of women. He was a
champion of gender equality. Mill presents arguments as to why women should be allowed to participate equally in
society, politics, education, and professions.
Historical context of the subjection of Women.
In the essay, Mill argues for equality between men and women. At the time of publication. The subjection of
Women” caused outrage for its radical propositions. The Victorian Era in Britain was highly patriarchal and male
dominated. The education of women was limited and they were denied access to many professions. Philosophers,
politicians, and even scientists claimed that women were inferior to men. Due to supposed intellectual deficiencies,
women were not considered rational enough to vote. The women’s vocation was marriage and in marriage a women
ceased to be a separate person and became the person of her husband. Her property became her husband’s property
and she had no right to separate from him.
However, throughout the 19th century,’ The Woman question’ emerged as a common topic within political
and social discourse. Rapid urbanizing was changing the nature of society. Urbanization had created new job
opportunities for women, particularly in factories and manufacturing. Many women worked outside the home and
could achieve some level of financial independence. In fact, some business preferred to hire women as they could pay
them fewer wages.
Women increasingly became an important labour force and economy. Questions began to be asked as to
what sort of legal, political, and social rights these women were entitled to. These questions did not just revolve
around working class women. The role of middle and upper-class women was also impacted by industrialization.
From the mid to the latter part of the 19th century, there were some progress in women example, in 1868
first time nine women were enrolled at the University of London. During his time as a Member of Parliament, Mill
used his platform to champion the rights of women by calling on parliament to introduce women suffrage. He also
sponsored the married women Property Act (1868), which would grant married women the same property rights as
single women. The first Married Women’s property Act was not passed until 1870 and the right of a husband to use
force against his wife was first denied by the courts in 1891.Mill argued that the legal position of Victorian women
was worse than that of slaves.
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 The subjection of women: Mill was a firm believer in gender equality. He knew that despite some incremental
steps for women’s rights, more was needed to ensure equality. He continued to engage in the woman question by
publishing ‘The Subjection of women? He demonstrated the irrational prejudice against women. He argued that men
should accept gender equality as it would be an overall benefit to society.
Mill’s main argument is that the subordination of women is wrong. It is wrong because it is unfair, and it is
also wrong because it promotes unhappiness among women. Anything that makes people miserable must be remedied.
Mill claims that, until we guarantee gender equality, humanity can’t improve itself. We will never progress, morally
or economically, while we cling to outdated and harmful gender ideals. Mill accepts that his arguments are controversial
but all change is painful.
The main problem, Mill claims, is that men make false assumptions about women. They assume that women
are weak and feeble. They believe that women are incapable of intellectual discourse. However, the reality is that no
one knows what women are capable of be it voting, working, or living independently until they try.
‘The subjection of women’ explores where these false assumptions come from. Mill blames customs and
tradition. We believe that, if something is customary it must be right. Since men have controlled women forever.
Subordination, then is customary and is treated correct and natural. Unsurprisingly, Mill critiques this logic. Mill
says that we should only uphold customs if these customs make sense. Since we don’t know what women are capable
of, it is illogical to say that they are weaker than men. We can’t know this unless women have the same opportunities
to better themselves as men.
The implication, then, is that if men can prove that the women are weaker sex, then subordination possibly
makes sense. In the mean-time gender equality must be the default position. Saying that men are physically stronger
than women isn’t a solid argument, either. Just because someone is powerful doesn’t make them a good leader.
Women must have the opportunity to govern themselves and put their own stamp on society. Women must have the
same rights as men to forge their own path in life. Mill says. We shouldn’t accept our birth rank if we don’t want to.
This is the principle of social mobility. A poor man can rise from the working class to the middle class if he works
hard enough. If we accept that men can change their place in society, then we must afford the same freedom to
women.
Mill knows that men think subordination is natural. He knows that men assume that they are better than
women, simply because it is the way they taught to think. Women take on subordinate roles because they taught to do
so. It does not mean that subordination is natural- it simply means that men condition women to accept subordination
and inequality.
‘The subjection of women’ lays out another significant proposition. Even if women are naturally the weaker
sex, it doesn’t mean they deserve subordination. They deserve legal and political equality. Women are naturally different
from men biologically and mentally, but different does not mean incompetent. Women simply have different qualities
to offer society.
Human are naturally competitive. Mill claims. We always want to be good at something. This goes back to
social mobility. We want to improve ourselves. In a free society, everyone should have the same opportunities to
succeed. The capable will succeed while others will not. ‘This logic applies whether someone is male or female. A
progressive society let’s everyone strive for greatness regardless of their gender.
Mill harshly criticizes slavery in all forms. He believes that talent and good minds are wasted when humans
are forced into slavery. If some has talent, then we should nurture them. They should be allowed to use their gifts to
improve the society and help others. Whether this person is a male or female is irrelevant.
Mill then considers what might happen if we try on equality for size. For example, if women see themselves
as equals, they won’t be so weak or docile. They will be mentally stronger and happier. They will be self-sufficient. If
we let women explore their full potential, they will improve society, which will benefit everyone. Since marriage was
so important in the 19th century, Mill considers the effects of gender inequality on the marital home specifically. He
argues that husbands and wives should be equals. They should be partners. The problem is that, since women are
uneducated, they can’t talk about the things that interest their husbands. They can’t offer companionship and the
improvement that follows healthy intellectual debate; once we guarantee gender equality; we improve every facet of
society from the marital home to the political sphere.
Mill argues in favour of legal and social equality between men and women. He writes that the legal subordination
of one sex to the other is wrongs in itself and one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.

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 At the time that Mill wrote ‘The Subjection of Women. Women could not vote. A married woman was not a
separate legal entity from her husband and any property or money she owned came under his governance. A common
justification for women’ inferior legal status was that they were morally superior to men, and therefore better restricted
to the home, where they would be protected from the polluting influence of public life and could shape the morals of
the future generation. Mill argues that it is illogical.
Further, it was widely believed that women were more emotional than rational, and did not have the intellectual
capabilities of men. Mill argues that if women seen emotional, passive and apolitical, it is because they have been
brought up to be so. Mill insists that until society treats men and women equally, it will be impossible to know the
natural abilities of women, or whether there are inherent differences between the sexes.
8.4.1 An Estimate
Upon its release, “The subjection of women” was met with some criticism from critics. However, the women’s
rights activists were much more enthusiastic and they ensured the document was distributed throughout Britain and
the United States. The subjection of women is notable for situating John Stuart Mill at the forefront of the developing
notion of a feminist movement. He was quite radical. He explains that once married, women lose their property rights
and become financially dependent on men. As a result, most of their personal decisions are ultimately based upon the
wishes of their husband.
Mill analyses the institution of marriage, which fails to protect women from physical harm and financial
ruin. He argues for greater professional opportunities for women. Mill also calls on reform to change existing social
structures. Indeed, Mill makes caustic appeal to intellectual evil of the immorality of subjugating women as second-
class citizens due to prejudicial limitations of birth and birth alone. He questioned the faulty rationality behind the
Subordination of women. In place of the existing social and legal order Mill suggests “complete equality, admitting
no power or privilege on the one side, or disability on the other.”
Mill explains the structure of his argument. He showed how the opinion that women are inferior to man is
based on prejudice and untested presumption rather than on reason and proven fact.
Mill criticizes the logic of the prevailing social order, in which men control the lives of women. Mill boldly
advocated enfranchisement of women. He fought for the rights of women. Women all over the world can never
discharge the debt that they owe to Mill who championed the cause of their emancipation.
Criticism: Many commentators have criticized the limit of substance in Mills writings on women. Susan
Okin (1979) argues that the Mill is denying women the opportunity to establish themselves fully as equals with men
through outside employment. Similarly Gail Tulloch (1989) seas sees Mill as someone who did not question the
traditional division of labour as the division of power despite arguing for women’s political equality. For Okin, Mill
also asserts that women should only have a right to that property which she brings to the marriage or earns herself, not
that which is brought in by her husband while she is at home running the household.
Mary Shanley (1981) sees the hypocritical attitude of Mill when he argues for ‘marital friendship’ but does
question the traditional division of labour. According to Shanley attitude of Mill’s man towards the sharing of household
duties is far from building any genuine form of friendship between married couples for which Mill is arguing.
In short, the criticism is that Mill argues for equality and freedom of opportunity for women, and yet he asserts that
the best division of labour is for women to stay at home- thus denying them the opportunity to establish themselves
as equals will men and denying women the right to a share in the income earned by their husbands.
Elizabeth S. Smith tries to defend Mill by pointing that for Mill traditional division of labour is not the only
way rather it is the best division of labour. Arguing on the logic of pragmatism she tries to defend Mill from his many
other writings and his political contexts. First, she thinks, for Mill, allowing women to work outside the household
would place women in the situation of ‘double-burden’, which is unjust. But this logic presumes the primacy and
essential duty of household to women and will not digest many feminist thinkers.
Smith’s last defence is through political and social contexts of Mill. She sees the ‘Subjection of Women’ a
text not only of philosophical rather political necessity as far as Mill’s motive of political activism was concerned.
She brings the issue of enfranchisement of women which was hotly debated in Mill’s time and in which Mill was the
prime important figure. But at the same time 18th century England was not much got rid of deeply patriarchal
assumptions. Smith says, for Mill enfranchisement of women was prime concern and he was pushing hardly for it. He
knew the potential reaction of the fellow English-people. Therefore, Mill forced himself to be soft on several other
more important women’s issues like questioning of sexual division of labour, to build a suitable atmosphere for
legislations of women’s enfranchisement rights Mill thought that the opening of one sphere will lead to others.

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 Some critics, such as Jenifer Ball and Moira Gates, argue that Mill tends to focus on the socio-legal aspects
of the subordination of women and not on the cultural aspects which subjugates women. They criticize Mill’s argument
that solely striking down legal barriers against women will create equality between the sexes but fails to mention that
women are subjugated not only by law, but also by customs and general feelings.
Although Mill had a limited role in shaping the legal aspects of society which hinder and cage women to
inequality his influence cannot be discounted. Mill ultimately endorsed the debate of equality within the political
sphere and kick started a campaign which would later lead to universal suffrage and gender equality. Mill had a much
larger role in creating a new relationships in marriage by creating ‘martial friendships’. Mill was a revolutionary in
bringing about gender equality.
Conclusion: J.S. Mill’s’ The Subjection of Women” is a landmark work both in the long history of women’s
struggles for political, legal, economic, and personal equality, and in the shorter history of rigorous intellectual
analyses of women’s subordination. One of the lasting legacies of Mills the Subjection of Women is its careful
argument for the need for Justice at both the public and the private levels, which requires changes at the domestic
level that are as radical in the 21st century as they were in the 19th.
Mill argued nearly 150 years ago that the liberation of women will produce two important results. It will
benefit society by the triggering the contributions of women in many fields, and it will benefit women by granting
them autonomy that is essential to happiness. First male to advocate feminism in a time where feminism in the
political discourse was discouraged.’
8.5 Summary
Thus, we see that in spite of his drawbacks and weaknesses. Mill was a great man and great political thinker.
The contributions made by him to the growth of political thought are really remarkable. He gave a new direction to the
Utilitarian tenets so as to enable them to be acceptable in the high political and intellectual circles in particular, and
the masses in general. He modernized Utilitarianism, so to say. He had a great insight into the “things to come”. He
realised that the time had come when state had to be assigned a more positive role than the one the early Utilitarian’s
were willing to assign to it. He was a perfect democrat but he was not blind to the shortcomings of the democratic set-
up. The world will always remember him for his advocacy of the emancipation of women, their suffrage, proportional
representation, his liberalism, individualism, classic advocacy of liberty, his cautious approach towards democracy,
his realisation of the possible tyranny of majority rule, so on and so forth. He will also be remembered always for his
qualities of head and heart.
8.6 Check Your Progress
1) How J.S. Mill defined Liberty?
2) For J.S. Mill, what are main dangers to liberty?
3) What are the main safeguards suggested by J.S. Mills to ensure effective representative democracy?
4) According to J.S. Mill, what are main reasons responsible for Subjection of Women in the society?
8.7 Glossary
• Proportional Representation: Refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate
are reflected proportionately in the elected body.
• Hare System: A system of proportional representation that aims to achieve party representation in the closest
proportion to actual voting strength by transferring votes beyond those needed to elect a candidate from that
candidate to the next indicated choice.
• Plural Voting : Practice of casting more than one vote or of voting in more than one constituency.
• Demagogue : A Political Leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary
people rather than by using rational argument.
8.8 Answers to check your progress exercise
1. See Sub Section 8.2.1
2. See Sub Section 8.2.2
3. See Section 8.3
4. See Section 8.4

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8.9 Suggested Readings
• E. Barker, Political Though in England 1841-1914.
• J. Berlin, John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life in his four Essays on liberty.
• J.S. Mill, On Liberty, Rapresentative Government, the Subjection of Women, London: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1919.
• M.J. Cowling, Mill and Liberalism.
• R.M. Bhagat, Political Though: Plato to Marx, Jalandher ; New Academic Publishing Company, 1988.
8.10 Terminal Questions
1. Discuss J.S. Mill’s views on Liberty.
2. Write an essay on Mill’s view on representatives government.
3. Make a critical analysis of J.S. Mill's view on 'subjection of Women'.
4. How J.S. Mill modified Bentham’s Utilitarianism?

*****

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 Lesson-9
Jmmanuel Kant (1724-1804 A.D.)

STRUCTURE
9.0 Introduction
9.1 Learning Objectives
9.2 What is Enlightement
9.3 Notion of Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitanism
9.4 Towards International Peace and confederation
9.5 Summary
9.6 Check Your Progress
9.7 Glossary
9.8 Answer to Self Check Exercise
9.9 Suggested Readings
9.10 Terminal Questions
9.0 Introduction
Immanuel Kant was a brilliant German philosopher who is regarded the most systematic thinker of the
Enlightenment. He is also known as the exponent of idealism. Kant was born at Konigsberg in East Prussia in a family
of modest means. His father was a saddle-maker, and his grandfather was an emigrant from Scotland. He was educated
at the University of Konigsberg where he was appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics as late as 1770, after a
prolonged struggle.
Kant was a sociable person who enjoyed the company of his scholarly friends, but he never married. He lived
in a relative isolation from the political upheavals of the eighteenth century. He did not comment on his contemporary
politics in his writings, but exerted enormous influence on legal and political thinking of his time as well as of the -
subsequent generations. According to Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought; 1982), “Kant believed that
reason, which could lead to theoretical knowledge only when carefully circumscribed, has a natural tendency to
transcend its limits, leading to empty and paradoxical beliefs which could never be rationally supported.” This simply
implies that reason should always be applied with caution. Normally, it is capable of legitimate practical application
where it serves as a competent guide to moral principles and practice. Kant believed that reason is the distinctive
quality of human agency which impels each person to treat himself and every other person as an end- in itself and not
as means to an end. This is the keynote of Kant’s philosophy Kant valued the essential ideals of the Enlightenment and
viewed the French Revolution, which put these ideals into law, as the triumph of liberty over despotism. In an essay
entitled “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), he contended that the Enlightenment marked a new way of thinking and
eloquently affirmed the Enlightenment’s confidence in and commitment to reason.
Kant’s reputation as a philosopher largely rests on his following works; Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785); Critique of Practical Reason (1788); Critique of Judgement
(1790); Towards Eternal Peace (1795); Metaphysical Principals of Virtue (1797); and The conflict of the Faculties
(1789). Several twentieth century philosophic movements have their origins in Kantian though, and many issues
retain their importance.
9.1 Learning Objectives
After going through this lesson, the learners will be able to:
• Understand Kant’s views on Enlightenment.
• Describe his notion of perpetual peace and cosmopolitanism.
9.2 What is Enlightenment?
In his essay’ that is Enlightenment’ Kant discusses the reasons for the absence of enlightenment and what is
required from people for enlightenment to flourish.
Kant defines enlightenment that a person achieves when he frees himself from immaturity that he caused
himself. Immaturity to Kant means an inability to be able to think on your own and to rely on other people’s opinions
to make decisions, this also means that a person is immature if he is unable to use his own Judgment and understanding
of things.
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 Kant acknowledges that remaining ‘immature’ is the easy option for most people, because it’s the lazy option.
People can turn to a priest to be their moral conscience for them, or a doctor to determine their diet. Women have
been rendered perpetually immature by men in order to keep them meek and ignorant.
Kant explains that the immature person is so because he lets others decide for him and he becomes dependent
on help from others so much so that acting and thinking on your own becomes something very difficult. Here to
explain his argument Kant draws an analogy of the influence of government on its people with tamed animals, who are
trained to not cross a certain boundary without their carts by making the animals aware of the dangers that lie ahead.
This makes the cattle afraid to even try and see for itself. In the same way the government-provides its people with a
set of beliefs and ideas that the immature person’ immediately agrees upon and which aids in furthering his immaturity.
Kant argues that it is extremely difficult for a man to reach maturity alone but it is easy for a number of
people to do so together. The reason is that when a person starts relying on others for guidance he finds it increasingly
difficult to break out of that pattern and start thinking on his own as any mistakes he makes will highlight the defects
in his way of thinking. Kant also hints in his essay that a person needs certain qualities to leave immaturity, and these
include fearlessness and vigor.
The key to enlightenment, Kant asserts, is freedom. If people are granted that, enlightenment will follow.
The problem is that most people aren’t free. Even those guardians’ and authority figures who keep others enslaved are
themselves victim of this system, which they inherit from those who have gone before them.
Kant goes on to say that if a society was given freedom it will inevitably become enlightened. This statement
seems a little extreme but he goes on to explain further that for enlightenment to reach everyone it should be brought
about slowly and gently. Then Kant goes on to explain how and to what extent freedom should be exercised. Kant
explains that public use of freedom is absolutely essential for enlightenment to take place. He says once people start
expressing themselves openly in public forums, these thoughts will eventually influence decisions taken by those in
positions of authority. The philosopher also points out the difference between uses of freedom at an individual level.
To attain enlightenment public freedom has to be used; however he says that use of freedom at an individual level is
not useful at all.
Kant also distinguishes between what he considers a public freedom to exercise one’s reason (and to question
the way things are) and the civic duty we have to obey orders without questioning them. For instance, a soldier
engaged in military action cannot afford to question the order his superior gives him: he needs to obey the order
without question, because that is his ‘civic’ duty at that moment. But off-duty, if that soldier wished to philosophic
publicly (e.g., in the role of a scholar) about the flaws in the military system, he should be free to do so.
The same goes for paying taxes. One can argue in parliament, or write pamphlets and newspaper articles
about whether high taxation is a good thing (i.e., exercising one’s public duty to question things), but when the taxman
sends you a bill, you’d better pay up (i.e.. observe your civic duty).
Kant also differentiates between expressing of one’s opinions and acting on those opinions, he uses an
example of a clergyman at the church. He is appointed on the condition that he will teach the principles lay down by
the church so he has to teach them as it is. However, he can point out constructive criticisms in the way of working of
the church which can then be reviewed by his seniors. Thus, Kant points out that one can -not achieve enlightenment
without following the laws of the society, he has to obey the laws but at the same time he should have the courage to
criticize what the things is wrong or should be changed. So for him any society that does not obey the laws cannot
achieve enlightenment.
Kant invites us to consider whether a society of priests could set down some rules which would be binding
for generations to come. He says this would be wrong, because it denies future generations the chance to question
such rules, and social development would be impeded as a result. He also argues that an enlightened monarch would
allow his subjects true freedom to think and do as they wish in religious matters, and the monarch should keep his
nose out of such matters.
Kant says that revolutions are counter-productive as new ideas replace old ones. Those new ideas are imposed
on the immature population like the older ideas were. So according to Kant the situation brings about no difference
but this is not true for a democratic world where rulers are selected by the people and can be changed if majority of
the population is dissatisfied. However, one of the unique principles of democracy is that people have freedom. They
have the freedom to think and either choose to extend the current governments terms or elect a new leader if they are
not satisfied with the performance of the current one.

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 Thus, it is evident that the slow and gradual change that Kant talks about can be implemented in Monarchial
society, it may even be the most efficient way of bringing about change but in a democratic world this is not possible.
Next, Kant argues that at the time of writing ‘What is Enlightenment people are not living in an enlightened age’ but in
an age of enlightenment’: that is, we’ve not attained full enlightenment yet because the process is a long one, but
progress is (gradually) being made, “thanks largely to the enlightened monarch under whom Kant himself is living,
Frederick the Great.
Kant concludes “What is Enlightenment?’ by considering the difference between civil and intellectual and
spiritual freedom. Perhaps paradoxically, the less civil freedom people have, the more intellectual freedom they gain,
and as their intellectual abilities grow, so the health of a particular society grows as governments can start treating
people with dignity.
An Analysis: Thus, ‘What is Enlightenment’, is concerned with every citizen’s public right to use his reason.
Everyone in a civilised society, Kant argues, should have the freedom to question the status quo and take part in a
debate about how society should be governed and maintained. But such public rights and freedoms need to be balanced
by the citizen’s private or civic responsibility to obey the law, and observe the status quo, when required to.
In other words, even while we discuss and philosophies about how to improve society, we have to live in the
one we currently have, and civilisation would break down if people chose, for instance, to stop following laws they
considered unjust or refused to pay their taxes because they disagreed with the levels of taxation.
What is Enlightenment?” is fundamentally a clarion-call to people about the need to dare to be wise. What is
required is not merely intellect but also a willingness to engage one’s reason and exercise that reason upon the
everyday things that govern our lives: political systems, financial structures, education, trade, and much else.
Enlightenment is mankind’s coming-to-maturity, a willingness to think for oneself and emerge from an immature
state where we hand over the power and responsibility to authority figures, whether they’re priests, doctors, teachers,
or politicians.
9.3 Notion of Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitanism
Kant was the first philosopher to make a case in a systematic manner for perpetual peace among nations as
Nature’s inherent purpose. The invisible hand of Nature was working its way through human history converting individual
egoistic, competitive, aggressive human actions into higher state of peace. In the Science of Right (1790), he discussed
the rights of nations, international law and also the universal right of humankind. Inspired by Rousseau’s emphasis on
the dignity of the human being Kant insisted that ethically people ought to be treated as ends in themselves and that
means, a ruler had no right to treat his people as objects for his ambitions and wars. The people had rights but did not
owe any duty to the sovereign. According to Kant it was sovereign who had duties towards the people.
Kant’s insistence on human dignity led him to emphasize on some important key concepts like individual
rights, equality before law, the need for a correct legal procedure and an educational system that enhanced reason.
Moral law and the autonomy of the individual formed the basis of freedom which was possible only under the rule of
law. Hence, laws were necessary and it was our duty to respect the law. But law could be administered only in a state
without prejudice to rank and privilege, which was a union of human beings. Laws were the conditions by which the
will of one particular individual would be harmonized and united with the will of others within the framework of a
general law whose basis was freedom. Only in a republican state would all human beings be free, equal, independent
and autonomous.
For Kant, morality and self-determination were the same thing and a person acted on the basis of categorical
imperative which implied acceptance of general principles which one recognized within oneself and was not self-
contradictory and was universally applicable. This framework allowed Kant to make a synthesis between individual’s
own moral will and the universal law. Action followed a philosophy of right which allowed the freedom of existence
of an individual while allowing all others to exist equally on the basis of a universal law.
According to Kant, since human beings were endowed with reason by nature, the purpose of nature was to
ensure the development of rationality for that constituted the human essence. History was a process towards rationality
and linked progress with reference to the moral character of human beings. With his firm conviction in human rationality,
Kant condemned servility and cherished independence of mind. He regarded paternalism as the worst form of
despotism. Members of a civil society were united for the purpose of legislation, and thereby constituted a state.
Citizens were endowed with three juridical attributes that inseparably belonged to them by right. These attributes
were constitutional freedom, civil equality and political independence. Kant did not dwell into the ways and means of
achieving a republican constitution, but merely indicated a set of absolutely valid principles for conflict resolution.

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He was categorical that republican constitutions in individual states were the necessary stepping stones to achieving
perpetual peace among all nations. His faith in republican ideals of 1776 and 1789 did not waver despite the excesses
in France during the reign of terror, ultimately helping in the rise of Napoleon. The overall optimism of the
enlightenment, and the rise of republicanism “and constitutional liberalism convinced Kant that perpetual peace can
be envisioned within the plurality of nation states.
Moral practical reason within us pronounces the following irresistible veto: there shall be no war, either
between individual human beings in the state of nature, or between separate states, which although internally law-
governed, still lives in a lawless condition in their external relationships with one another. For, war is not the way in
which anyone should pursue their rights... . It can indeed be said that this task of establishing a universal and lasting
peace is not just a part of the theory of right within the limits of pure reason, but its entire purpose (Kant ibid: 17).
The general perception in the eighteenth century was that the transition from monarchical to republican
institutions would eclipse wars, and herald in an era of peace and moderation. “Kant and the other liberals were
essentially correct about the benefits of democracy. Peace is more likely when societies have adopted non-violent
means of conflict resolution, executive authority is constrained by a system of checks and balances, and intertwined
commercial interests make conflict uneconomical .... There has been a dramatic increase in the number of democracies
since World War II .... The pacific efforts of interdependence provide more reason than ever, therefore, to believe
that Hobbesian anarchy is being reconstructed to reflect liberal values” (Russett 1993).
Kant believed that the history of human race was a progress towards a perfect political constitution, and
considered the republican constitution as the perfect one. He asserted that there was a reason to believe that the
natural process supported the ultimate goal of perpetual peace and explained this with reference to the idea of unsocial
sociability of human beings, meaning that the personality of human beings was that of a split personality. They could
not live with one another and could also not do without one another. In earlier times, human beings spread over the
entire surface of the earth to escape others, but the necessities of existence led them to develop trade and commerce
and the latter two in turn brings people together. In the same process, he was convinced that nations would be brought
together making the dream of perpetual peace a reality. He applied the categorical imperative to the relations of
states and rejected any action or policy that would make peace among nations impossible. Like individuals, he insisted
that nations must enter into a union of states, which was the only way to establish peace. This would make a permanent
congress of nations a practical reality enabling nations to settle their differences in a civil process than by barbarous
war. He based the right to a universal peaceful union of all nations on the juridical principle of legal justice, namely
that all people have a right to associate with one another as they originally share the entire soil of earth. He also
insisted that even though perpetual peace may not be a reality in the near future, but must be worked for, as one’s duty
and states that “the universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final
purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason” (Kant ibid: 69). It was morality itself
that vetoed war, as war treats human beings as mere means and persons as mere things. War was rejected by rational
citizens out of legal motive of self love and conversely to wage war was to renounce reason.
Kant in his Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1790) stated that nature
compelled people to find a cosmopolitan solution making a league of nations the natural outcome of social evolution.
Until that was realized human beings would suffer the cruelty of conflicts. The way out was a moral order which can
be brought about only through education, as that would help in building character in accordance with moral principles.
The justice and conscience within us, and not with help of governments, would enable us to realize our destiny, the
sovereignty of God on Earth. Kant lamented that rulers spend very little money on public because they spend it on
paying for past and future wars and was convinced that the ever-growing war debt would eventually make war impractical
economically. Reiterating Montesquieu, he highlighted the value of interstate commerce as paving the way eventually
for an international government, as commercial activity and material prosperity were a panacea against war.
In 1795, Kant published his major work on peace entitled Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch as a
just treaty that could be signed by nations in the background of his indignation at the separate treaty of Basel which
Prussia ceded France territory west of the Rhine so that it could partition Poland along with Russia and Austria. Kant
described his proposed peace programme with reference to two steps—the preliminary articles and then, to three
definitive articles at not only halting hostilities but also to lay solid foundations of peace. As far as the first was
concerned, he stipulated the following;
1. No secret treaty of peace shall be held valid in which there was tacitly reserved matter for a future war.
2. No independent states, large or small, shall come under the dominion of another state by inheritance, exchange,
purchase, or donation.
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 3. Standing Armies shall in time be totally abolished.
4. National debts shall not be contracted with a view to the external friction of states.
5. No state shall by force interfere with the constitution or government of another state.
6. No state shall, during war, permit such acts of hostility which would make mutual confidence in the subsequent
peace impossible: such are the employment of assassins, breach of capitulation, and incitement to treason
in the opposing state. He added that a state had no right to wage a punitive war because just punishment must
come from a superior authority and not an equal. Like Bentham, Kant emphasized that justice must be
delivered publicly and open to scrutiny.
For enduring peace Kant suggested the need for three definitive articles. They are as follows: (i) the civil
constitution of every state should be republican in which laws apply to everyone universally and fairly, as that means
a government by law and not by favoured persons. His hope lay on the mechanisms of checks and balances within a
democratic setup which was absent in authoritarianism. The public opinion would be the restraining element in a
republic. His reasoning was that majority of the people would go to war only in self defense and not otherwise.
Therefore, if all nations were constitutional republics it would signal the end of war and aggression. For perpetual
peace, constitutional republics were the only one of several necessary conditions, (ii) The law of nations shall be
founded on a Federation of Free states. If all wars have to be ended forever, then there must be a league of peace and
if more republics associate with one another the more practical a federation becomes, (iii) The law of world citizenship
shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality. He also conceded that realization of this ideal would be slow
and long but was confident that intensive education of all citizens in every country would make possible the ideal.
Eventually, the conflict between the individual’s obligation qua citizen to obey the law of the state and his obligation
qua man to obey the cosmopolitan law will cease as the member states of the universal confederation cease to
contravene the cosmopolitan law. As a result, the moral responsibilities of citizen and man will coincide and citizenship
would assume a universal status. Kant’s argument for perpetual peace rested on the assumption that human beings
have the singular potential for reasoning and moral development. But Kant did not advocate world government as
centralized authority was detrimental to individual freedom.
Kant’s doctrine of perpetual peace was one of the most influential aspects of his political philosophy, and
has inspired many subsequent thinkers. Herbert George Wells (1866—1946), writing in the early days of World War
I, believed that this War would be the war to end all wars on the grounds that once popular government replaces
Prussian militarism and autocracy there would be no war among European nations. In 1909, Sir Ralph Norman Angell
reiterating Kant pointed out that war had become unprofitable due to modem commerce even for the technically
victorious country and an interdependent European community based on economic self interest then political wars
would cease in the same way as religious wars had stopped in the West. Angell rationalist, believed that war could be
eliminated through the growth and progressive application of human reason to international affairs. He pointed out
that once human beings were convinced that war was mutually destructive with no winners,’ disarmament and peace
would become possible. However, Angell failed to realize that most of the modem wars, including the First World
War, were not necessarily due to economic reasons. Schumpeter argued that modem states were inherently peaceful
and opposed conquest due to capitalism’s success in ensuring prosperity. Clarence Streit in Union Now (1938)
proposed a federal union of democratic states modelled after the US constitution on the grounds that trade and
peaceable ways of democracy would keep this union perpetual. It included common citizenship, a defense force, a
tariff-free market, and a common currency. In recent times, on the basis of the Kantian doctrine of perpetual peace,
a thesis has emerged that democracies do not fight one another as peace has its dividends; that commerce and trade
are much better alternatives than war and conflict.
9.4 Towards International Peace and Confederation
State of nature among the nations is to be given up in order to enter into a confederation of states regulated
by law. All international rights are provisional until the state of nature among the nations is given up. A true peace can
be acquired only within a universal union of states. Though it may not be possible to establish an international state,
there can be an inter-national alliance designed to realize perpetual peace. A union of many states designed to maintain
peace may be called a permanent congress of states. Neighbouring states are at liberty to join such union which
enables all the states to settle their disputes in a civilized manner. All states can unite thus in order to enact certain
universal laws to regulate their intercourse. Revolution in transport is bringing the states closer to one another.
Kant explains the conditions necessary to secure international peace : (i) Conclusion of peace is not valid if
there is a secret reservation of the materials for a future war. It is not a peace but is a mere truce. It is only a
suspension of hostilities. Peace implies an end to all hostilities. A conclusion of peace eliminates all causes for a
future war. (ii) Existing states should not be acquired by another state by inheritance, exchange or gift. A state is not
a possession but it is a society of men. Like a tree, it has its own independent existence. A moral personality of the
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state cannot be converted into a commodity. Similarly the subjects cannot be used like commodities, (iii) Standing
armies are to be gradually abolished because they always threaten one another with frequent wars. Men are not to be
hired to kill or to be killed. Such killing cannot be reconciled with the rights of men. (iv) Even when the states are at
war, they shall not engage themselves in certain acts of hostility which would affect mutual confidence and future
chances of peace. Acts to be prohibited by belligerent states are assassination, poisoning, breach of agreements and
treason which are dishonourable stratagems. Even during war there must be some sort of trust between the warring
states. A war of punishment between states cannot be justified because there is no relationship of superior to inferior
among the states. A war is only an unpleasant means of asserting one’s right by force in the absence of court of justice
to decide disputes. Peace can be established when every neighbour gives a guarantee of peace to other, (v) Foreign
debts should be prohibited by terms of peace because national bankruptcy involves other states in the resultant loss
and other states may conduct public inquiry into the financial affairs of the bankrupt state, (vi) No state should be
allowed to interfere in the constitution and government of another state. Interference of external power in the affair
of a state is a violation of the rights of an independent people. Such interference would make an autonomy of all other
state insecure and is a serious offence, (vii) A state should allow the philosophers to express freely and publicly on
the matters of war and peace. Their discussions may throw light on important public issues, (viii) A republican
constitution is necessary to secure international peace. It offers an opportunity to establish a perpetual peace. Under
this constitution consent of the citizen is required to declare war. The citizens usually hesitate to embark on such
dangerous enterprise because they have to suffer the consequences of war, to fight in war, to supply war materials
from their own resources and to bear a burden of debt. Hence they understand the evil effects of war and importance
of peace Conditions are different in a non-republican state in which the people are not citizens and in which the head
of the state is not a fellow citizen but the owner of the state. A war does not force such head of the state to make the
slightest sacrifice, his banquets, huntings, pleasure-palaces and court festivals are not affected by war. Therefore he
declares war without any sufficient reason, (ix) In order to secure an international peace, there is need for a
confederation of states in which rights of everyone are safe. If the states have to co-exist with one another, they must
renounce their savage and lawless freedom and submit themselves to public coercive laws under the confederation of
the states.
Kant explains the steps through which mankind has to go through in order to secure the confederation of
states: (A) Every state eventually feels resultant distress of military preparations and wars. Though reason of mankind
may suggest the establishment of a confederation of states, the states will establish such a con-federation after many
devastations, upheavals and complete exhaustion of their powers. Wars will increasingly become great financial
burden on financial stability of the states. As violence and distress compel men to submit themselves to the coercion
and to enter into a civil constitution, the distress produced by constant wars compels the states to enter into a
cosmopolitan constitution. (B) As men have to take decision to renounce their brutish freedom and to seek peace and
security within a law governed constitution, the states have to renounce brutish force and to seek peace and security
in a confederation of states. (C) When the states are closely linked by trade, upheaval in any state affects all. Hence
other states offer themselves as arbiters without any legal authority. Thus they indirectly prepare the ground for a
future political system without any precedent in the past. Every state will have an interest in maintaining this political
structure. (D) If every state has to enjoy its independence and possessions, there should be an international right
based on enforceable public laws.
Nature does not work without a plan, maintains Kant. There has been a regular process of improvement in the
political cons-titutions. Good factors like civil constitutions, laws and mutual relations among the peoples have
elevated and glorified the states while their inherent defects are responsible for overthrow of the political systems. In
this process a germ of enlightenment has survived and developed with each revolution and has paved the way for
higher level of improvement. A plan of nature reveals how the mankind eventually works towards the conditions under
which destiny of people can be realised. A purpose of the his-tory of human race is the development of all natural
capacities of mankind under a perfect political constitution.
Kant advocates a confederation of states but not an inter-national state. A confederation of states is a group
of separate states which are not welded together as a single unit. There is no amalgamation of separate states under a
single universal monarchy because a soulless despotism will finally lapse into anarchy. A strong ruler of one of the
confederating states may desire to dominate the whole world but nature does not allow him to do so. Linguistic and
religious differences maintain the separate existence of the states. Nature plays the double role. It unites the states in
certain matters and keeps them with separate existence in some other matters. Lawful agreement of the con federation
of states is reconcilable with the freedom of the state. The confederation of states links peoples without any kind of
lawful condition. It binds them for a single purpose of preserving peace in the world. It is not based on coercive laws
but it is a free association. It has no sovereign power. It is expected to encompass all the states and to establish

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perpetual peace. Under no circumstances it shall have military conquest as its objective. It intends to preserve freedom
of every state. It shall protect the member-states from the external aggression and shall refrain from interference in
the internal affairs of a state. It should be possible even to the smallest state to derive its security and rights not from
its own power, but from the strength of the confe-deration of states.
In course of time, concludes Kant, culture grows and men move towards a greater agreement over their
principles which lead them to mutual understanding and peace. Further unity is also preserved by an equilibrium of
forces within the confedera-tion of states. Thus world peace is preserved both by the indivi-duals and by the confederated
states.
9.5 Summary
Kant’s philosophy is based on three basic ideas (i) There should be supremacy of the spiritual over the
materials, (ii) There should be supremacy of pure reason over sensation or experience. Pure reason provides a body
of principles for guidance in actual affairs, (iii) There should be supremacy of the universal law over the wishes,
caprices and desires of the individual citizen. Thc.se basic ideas exerted a great amount of influence over subsequent
social and political speculation.
‘Enlightenment’ and ‘Cosmopolitanism’ are two important aspects of Kant’s political philosophy.
Enlightenment is concerned with every citizen’s public right to use his/her reason. It is a clarion call to people about
the need to dare to be wise. What is required is not merely intellect but also a willingness to engage one’s reason and
exercise that reason upon the everyday activities that governor lives. Enlightenment is mankind’s coming to maturity,
a willingness to think for oneself and emerge from an immature state to a mature one.
Further, he was a champion of world peace times, on the basis of the Kentian doctrine of perpetual peace, a thesis has
emerged that democracies do not fight one another as peace has its dividend, that commerce and trade are much
better alternatives than war and conflict.
9.6 Check Your Progress
1. According to Kant, what is Enlightenment?
2. What is required from people to achieve Enlightenment.
3. Discuss in brief Kant’s Peace Programme.
9.7 Glossary
• Idealism: The branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of
being, identity and change, space and time.
• Enlightenment: A philosophical movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional social,
religious and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism.
• Cosmopolitanism: Is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community; believing that
humans can and should be ‘world citizens’ in a ‘Universal Community’.
• Autonomous: Not subject to the rule or control of another.
• Synthesis: The act of combining separate ideas, beliefs, styles, etc.
• Punitive: Intended as a punishment.
9.8 Answers to check your progress exercise
1. See Section 9.2
2. See Section 9.2
3. See Section 9.3
9.9 Suggested Readings
1. Subrata Mukharjee and Sushila Ramaswamy, A History of Political Thought: Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt.
Ltd., 2018.
2. S.H. Patil, Modern Western Political Thought, Jairpur: Printwel Publishers, 1988.
3. D. Germino, Modern Western Political Thought: Machiavelli to Marx, Chicago; Chicago University
Press, 1972.
4. Shefali Jha, Western Political Thought from the Ancient Greeks to Modern Times, Chennai : Pearson
India Education Services Pvt. Ltd., 2020.
9.10 Terminal Questions
1. Discuss the views of Immanuel Kant on Enlightenment.
2. Describe Immanuel Kant’s notion of Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitanism.
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 Lesson-10
G. W. F. Hegel
(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831 A.D.))
STRUCTURE
10.0 Introduction
10.1 Learning Objectives
10.2 Hegal's Ideas on Individual Freedom
10.3 Views about civil society and state
10.3.1 Features for characteristics of Hegal's State
10.4 Summary
10.5 Check Your Progress
10.6 Glossary
10.7 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercise
10.8 Suggested Readings
10.9 Terminal Questions
10.0 Introduction
Hegel was one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century both in the volume of his writings and
in the range to his influence. He became professor in Heidlberg and then succeeded Fichte to the coveted Chair of
philosophy in the University of Berlin. For the rest of his life he was undoubtedly the uncrowned king of philosophy
is Germany. Some of his important books, are Phenomenology of Mind, (1807), Encyclopedia of Philosophy Sciences
(1817). Outline of Philosophy of right and the Philosophy of spirit (1820), Philosophy of Law and Philosophy of
History.
Hegel was deeply influenced by the historical forces working around him. And therefore, his philosophy
embodied the cross currents of contemporary European politics. It reflected changes that had come upon the European
society after the breakup of the feudal order in the wake of the French Revolution and the emergence of a mercantile
society. More than two centuries ago, Machiavelli had emphasised the need for national unification. Thomas Hobbes,
a century ago, had stressed the need for law and order in society. About fifty years later, Burke had given a justification
for tradition and prejudice as the most important forces which ought to govern every society. And again, Montesquieu
and Locke in their own way emphasized the value of a liberal society. All these trends in European political thought
crystallized in the difficult but the grandiose figure of Hegel, who represents the best and the worst features of the
area of revolution reaction and reconstruction.
Medieval thinkers believed in the distinction between the real and the apparent and thought that all appearances
are deceptive. Hegel abandoned this static view of reality which had also received support from Kant’s distinction
between the subject and the object; and reconciled this with Hume’s recognition of the role of reality. According to
Hegel, the real is inherent in the apparent and both cannot be separated. The unity of what he calls ‘determinate
existence’ and ‘its concept’ is achieved in the Hegelian system by the notion of Absolute. The Absolute manifests
itself in the world, taking the world into itself and transforming it into a spiritual existence. The movement of the
Absolute or the idea follows the dialectical pattern.
10.1 Learning Objectives
After reading this lesson, students will be able to
• Know Hegel’s views about Civil Society and State.
• Understand his views on individual and freedom.
10.2 Hegal Ideas on Individual Freedom
The world, according to Hegel, is a mere datum but the Reality is universal and therefore, we can get freedom
neither by subduing the world nor by turning inward but by realising our identity in an articulated universe which is
recorded in the continuous movement of the Absolute. According to him, the mind under an illusion comes to think of
itself as distinct and separate from the world, the finite. But, Hegel maintains, finite is a part of infinite which is
“accomplishing itself in the world”. This contradiction or the concept of alienation or what Hegel calls, “unhappy
consciousness,” is central to his thought. He calls this state of mind as that of objective cynicism. There ensues a
dialectical tension between human needs and desires on the one hand, and the social environment, on the other. In
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such a condition, the mind finds itself alienated for it becomes self-conscious, but not conscious of the world as its
own extension. The most characteristic example of a man in such a state is that of an ascetic. But then, slowly and
gradually, mind realizes with the help of reason that there is no contradiction between itself and the world, and the
latter comes to be regarded as the part of the former. It should be noted that in the Hegelian system this opposition is
not merely an aberration, but an essential law of nature.
Here from the sphere of nature, Hegel passes on to the sphere of the objective spirit which is the world
embodying the idea of freedom. Through the dialectical tension between the morality on the subjective, on the one
hand, and the law, which is objective, on the other, we pass on to the sphere of social ethics which reeks to combine
the Ideal and the Actual. According to Hegel the fullness of ethical life is achieved in the three stages. The order of
progress is from the family to the state. Civil society comes in between the two. According to him family serves the
sensual needs of man, provides for the satisfaction of his simple wants, and affords him protection. The family
incorporates the rational idea of mutual love and is thus the basis from which Hegel begins his analysis of the state.
But the family is too small for the adequate satisfaction of man's wants and the individual finds it necessary to get out
of its narrow circle and to be introduced to a wider range of interests which are pubic in their nature and broadening
in their influence. This is made possible through the membership of what civil society, which according to him is the
antithesis of the family. Civil society consists of independent men and women held together by tics of contract and
self interest. In civil society there is universal competition. In the words of Wayper the whole process of trade and
industry in bourgeois society becomes a new organisation for the supply of human needs, so that man in that society
is producing for his family, satisfying his own wants and at the same time serving his fellows, which makes bourgeois
society take on a rational and universal significance. As this bourgeois society develops it produces guilds and
corporations, which teach their members to think not of their own interests but of the interests of the whole to which
they belong. The thesis, the family, a unity held together by love, knowing no differences is thus confronted by the
antithesis, bourgeois society, an aggregate of individuals held apart by competition, knowing no unity, even though it
is manifestly struggling towards a greater unity which it has nevertheless not yet attained. The synthesis, which preserves
what, is best in thesis and antithesis which swallows up neither family nor bourgeois society, but which gives unity and
harmony to them, is the state. Hegel considers the state as the consummation of the whole process of the progressive
realization of human freedom. It is both the “end” and the ‘activity’ of the public life. Hegel says that the state is both
universality and particularity, “It is the actualization of the ethical idea. “It is the ethical mind knowing and thinking
itself.”
Thus, as an illusion for Hegel, we attain our freedom only through the state. He rejects the individualistic
notion of individuals enjoying freedom at the dawn of human history, later lost in the process of time. Such a state of
nature, Hegel argues must have been a state where violence and caprice ruled. According to Hegel, true freedom is a
distinctive quality only of the state, order because it alone unifies the objective and the subjective, universal and the
particular.
The state is the true giver of the real freedom to the individuals. In the state alone man can fully raise his
outward self to the levels of his inward self of thought” (Hegel). Again, in the words to Hegel, nothing short of the
state is the actualization of Freedom”. The real Freedom, which is the product of the state manifests itself first in law,
secondly, in the rule of inward morality, and thirdly in the whole system of social institutions and influences that
make for the development of personality. At a number of places Hegel surprises his readers by saying that the state
which has been recognized as an end in itself is a means of enlarging freedom of the individual. But it is only a logical
jumble with which Hegel plays and at the end he proves that the freedom of the individuals lies in the complete
obedience of the laws of the state. Hegel rejects Kant’s conception of Freedom “as negative, limited and subjective
and individualistic.” For Kant Freedom consists in obeying the laws of Reason, which is determined by the Categorical
Imperative of Duty. According’ to Hegel Kant’s concept of freedom is negative because there is always the force of
compulsion to obey the Categorical Imperative, it is limited because it takes little account of the relation in which the
individual stands to the society as a whole, and lastly it is individualistic because the individual is regarded by Kant as
an end in itself—everything else being a means to it. Kant nowhere holds that Freedom can be realized only through
participation in social and political activities.
Hegel, on the other hand, emphasises that Freedom consists in “complete obedience to the laws of the
state.” Hegel argues that the state is the Embodiment of Reason. The Laws of the state are the out- ward expressions
of Reason. According to German Idealists Freedom lies in the obedience of Reasons. Another argument put forward
by Hegel is that the essence of Spirit which seeks to know itself is Freedom. The history of mankind is the history of
the evolution of Spirit and hence of Freedom.

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 When the state is the embodiment—of freedom all the individuals living under it are Free, with capital ‘F’.
The individual realises Freedom to the extent to which he identifies himself with the Spirit or the Essence of Spirit.
There are two wills existing side by side in the individual mind—Real will and Actual will. Real will represents the
Rational will and takes care of the Interests of the community as a whole while the Actual will looks after the personal
and private interest of the individual alone. According to Hegel, freedom for the individual consists in subordinating
the Actual will to Rational Will. By serving the interests of the community alone, the individual can get the fulfillment
of his personality. The impulsive will being very powerful, the individual himself cannot subjugate it without the help
of the state. The only way to be free is the voluntary submission of the impulsive will to Reason which is expressed in
the State. According to Hegel, the individual is free only if he identifies, voluntarily, willingly, and consciously with
the laws of the state. If the individual obeys the State due to fear of punishment, he is no longer free. Hegel does not
conceive of the Freedom in terms of the rights of the individuals. The state is omnipotent. The individuals do not
possess any Rights against the State. He does not give any Rights of Speech, or Expression or Association to the
individual in conflict with the state. Whatever rights the individual may seem to be exercising, can be exercised only
in the silence of Law or within the four corners of Law. The individual has no right against the state, but within the
state.
In the state alone, man can find freedom, while without it, he is completely in subjection. In the history of
mankind, at no time man was so free as in the German state of his time.
Freedom for the Individual, consists in subordinating the Actual Will to the Rational Will. But the Individual
himself cannot do so without the help of the state. The only way, open to the individual is the voluntary submission to
the more perfect expression of the Reason expressed in the State. According to Hegel, the individual is free only if he
identifies himself consciously with the laws of the state. If the individual obeys the state due to the fear of punishment
he is no longer free. Hegel does not conceive of Freedom in terms of the Rights of individuals. The state is Omnipotent.
Individuals do not possess any Rights against the State. Whatever Right they possess, it is within the state. He does
not assign any Rights e.g. Right to freedom of Speech, Expression or Press etc., to the Individuals.
According to Hegel’s dialectical and historical method, the course of history is determined. In the words of
Prof. Lancaster, “It is a necessary result of following the dialectical method that individual wishes and preferences
are reduced to the level of mere caprice. The actors in human history are not but vast impersonal forces.”’ The
individual endeavours, in order to merit any consideration in the vast canopy of history, must fall in line with the
dialectical direction of the world history. The unbiased and un-jaundiced view of history does not testify to the
Hegelian theory. ‘Particular individuals’ will, wishes whims, timely interventions, and endeavours have changed the
entire course of history. In his own time he had seen the dramatic rise and fall of an ordinary man like Napoleon to and
from the heights of Glory, and the Role of his Willpower in changing the course of history. In fact, his emphasis on
the transcendence of the individual was a useful corrective to the extreme atomism and individualism of the Napoleonic
and post-Napoleonic era. But Hegel, too, carries it to the other extreme point where individual values disappear.
Fourthly, the dialectic was a double-edged sword which was used by Hegel as an instrument of conservatism,
while in the hands of Marx and Engels it was a tool for bringing about revolutionary com-munism.
As Prof. Joad has pointed out that Hegel’s own logic defeats him. According to Hegel, the historical evolution,
through dialectical process was to consummate in the nation-state of the type of Germany. Thereafter, the historical
evolution was to come to an end. Hegel was wrong in this theory. Historical evolution never comes to an end. The
further developments of economic inter-dependence of all the nations and the emergence of the world organisations
like League of Nations and U.N O. prove the Hegelian Logic to be false.
Sixthly, as Sabine has pointed out that Hegel’s Theory of the logical emergence of the German national state
out of the Dialectical logic was not correct. Hegel’s theory of nationality was not the outcome of the dialectic but
was occasioned by the revolutionary upsurge of contempor-ary France. If dialectic could be the logical basis of the
nation-state, how in the hands of Marx, it could in theory at least, be the basis for the annihilation of the nation-state?
There was contradiction between Hegel’s theory of dialectic and the nation-state.
Logic as such cannot be the basis of all human activities. Human Nature, as it is, 9/10th of human activities
are governed by passion or emotions and only about 1/10th are at the behest of reason or logic. The past experience
of the individuals and that of the state also has a pride of place in human evolution. In all human activities, as Justice
Holmes said of law, the experience counts far more than logic.
Thus we find that there were inconsistencies in Hegel’s theory of Dialectic and historical method. It was too
abstract a method to be applied to the study of social sciences. But as a practical instrument of social change it made
history because Marx adopted it, of course, after putting it upside down, as the basis for communist revolution.
Hegel’s immortality is ensured through the use of his method in a theory which reigns supreme over about one half of
the present world population.
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10.3 View about civil society and state
Like Plato, Hegel was also a great system builder in the history of political philosophy. He starts with
certain set “self-evident truths or premises, as they are generally called in political philosophy. One of such premises
was that “what is rational is real and what is real is rational”. In common parlance this phrase would mean that what-ever
exists is according to Reason and whatever is according to reason does exist. But Hegel was a great artist in abstraction.
He used these two words in very deep, obscure and philosophical sense. The cardinal principle of Hegel’s
philosophy was the theory of the gradual unfolding of the Absolute Reason or Spirit or Geist or Absolute Idea,
through the dialectical process. The Reason gets its complete Self-Realization in the State. Thus according to Hegel
the state was rational, or according to reason, nay perfect rationality, Reason embodied or Reason personified. As
such the state is of the eternal and necessary essence of the Spirit. In other words, the state, as such, is rational. Now
coming to the word “Real”, following Aristotle, Hegel had held that the true nature of a thing or Reality is known when
it is fully developed—as a whole, in its entirety. The true nature of Reason or Reality is known when it gets complete
fulfillment, in its entirety, in the state as a whole. Hence the state is Real. By an algebraic theorem, now, we can prove
that Real is Rational and Rational is Real. As the State=Rational, and the State=Real, hence the Real=Rational or vice
versa. The state, according to Hegel, was the Embodiment of both Rationality and Reality which were logically
treated-us synonymous by Hegel. Here Hegel uses the word Real as meaning Fundamental or important. For Hegel,
Real is not synonymous with ‘existent’. He understands by Reality that which is underlying and significant, not that
which is empirical.
What exists is always momentary and to a large degree accidental, the mere surface manifestation of deep-
lying forces which alone are real. Hegel rejects Fichte’s theory that only the ‘ ideal state is rational. According to
Hegel all states are rational as they represent the consummation of the historical process of the un-folding of the
Reason, and hence all states are worthy of our reverence and awe. It must be admitted that Hegel’s endeavour to
idealise the actual state and to rationalise the existent state has a marked conservative effect, but it cannot be helped
as this conclusion is the logical conse-quence of the theory of the Unfolding of the Reason or Spirit. What-ever has
happened so far was necessary in the process of the unfolding of the Spirit. No event could take place unless it was
ordained by and found necessary by Reason in its search for fulfillment. Hence events have taken place according to
a rational plan. Whatever happens happens because the Spirit or Reason needs it and whatever the Spirit needs is right
and rational He also believed that the Real world is as it ought to be. Nobody can deny that the Real state (as it ought
to be) must be rational. Following has own logic, he proved that all states were as they ought to be. Hence by a queer
logic he glorified!’ the existing states and treated them as ideal and rational states which deserved obedience from
their constituents. He adorned the state with such epithets as March of God (Absolute Reason) on earth and Embodiment
of Reason.
Before we come to discuss the Features of Hegel’s state, it is necessary to see how the state, in a historical
process, emerges out of the Family and ‘Civil (Bourgeoise) Society. As it has been narrated in earlier pages, for
Hegel, the state was the synthetic product of the family (thesis) and the civil society (antithesis). According to Hegel
the physical evolution of the Reason comes to an end with the emer-gence of man on the scene. But the social
evolution goes on further.
In the above triad the Family represents unity. Civil Society represents Particularity and the State represents
Universality. In his theory of historical evolution of the state from the family Hegel closely follows Aristotle’s logic.
Man is by nature gregarious. He could not live alone”. Hence in order to fulfill elementary needs of food, sex and
primitive protection men are naturally inclined to live in a family—a unity in-corporating the rational idea of mutual
love. The Family was the first and rudimentary institutional embodiment of the Spirit in its search for self-fulfillment.
The family to a limited extent represents the rational and ethical order.
Hegel’s theory of family was conventional. There was nothing new about it. The family cannot fulfill all the
complex needs of man, hence it is insufficient. The family is found to be too small for the adequate satisfaction of
man’s wants. The family, “a unity incorporating the rational idea of mutual love is thus thesis from which Hegel begins
his analysis of the state”.’
But the Family is inadequate to satisfy the multifarious needs and his multi-faced personality. In order to
have a better fulfillment of their personality, the individuals by force of their nature develop 3 wider organisation,
namely civil society or bourgeoise society in which they hope to lead ethical life! “While the characteristic feature,
of Family is the unity based on love, the diversity based on “contract and competitive self-interest” is the basis or
bouraeoise or civil society. A wide range of trade and industry is developed in bourgeoise society. The diverse human
needs are better satisfied in the civil society. To regulate properly the diverse interests and the rights of the individuals
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police force also comes into existence. But, according to Hegel, so far the state has not come into existence. Hegel
distinguishes between the state and civil society. Though civil society performs more or less the same functions as
the state, yet Hegel vehemently argues that state is different from and superior to the former. The property is the
product of civil society.” The civil society evolves laws, though they may not be, necessarily just laws.
While giving an account of civil society, Hegel gives an exhaustive narration of guilds and corporations the
estate and classes, the associations and local communities, by coming whose members’ the individuals learn to think
not only of their own interests but also of the interests of the whole group to which they belong and thus develop
social and cooperative instinct. In the words of Hegel, “But in developing itself independently to totality, the principle
of particularity passes over into universality, and only there does it attain its truth and the right to which its positive
actuality is entitled. “The civil society so depicted by Hegel is a state, but it is of an inferior sort. It is based on
material needs of human beings “that are not wholly private and yet arc primarily self-regarding...but it is some-what
less selfish than the family...Civil society, in short, is a set of institutions with the function of educating the individual
to the point where he sees that he can get what he needs only by willing what all men need. It is not a completely
organic unity but rather a collection of self-subsisting particulars imperfectly conscious of their interdependency.
Within it is only the promise of-true political life. Wayper, The Hegelian Civil Society was The State in embryo, the
state in the making, a kind of state, but not a completely developed one, as it could not embody fully what he calls
Reason or Geist. Civil Society’s marked distinction is Competition, while that of the state is Co-operative Unity. The
Civil Society does not represent that Organic, Universal and Rational Unity which the State Represents. In Civil
Society also there are all the ingredients of the State, like the police, army, trading community, agriculturists. But
they are all in such a frame of mind that they would seek their own interests in competition with others. The moment
the members of the Civil Society start striving for the “Universal Interests” of the immunity, it gets converted into the
State. It is almost psychological change in the minds of the minds of the constituents that will make the state out of
the civil society. The state is morally superior to civil society. But this moral superiority or psychological change is
brought about by a class of devoted civil servants. The moment the individuals start identifying their interests with the
interests of the community as a whole they will become an Organism. The wills of the Individuals become the Will of
the State. The State becomes an Organism and an Objectified manifestation and personification of the individual
wills. The state becomes a moral Person. The state is the successor, though, a morally superior successor of the civil
society, in the evolution of mankind. But they can, in a given society, exist side by side. They are in fact mutually
dependent. The civil society, even after the emergence of the state continues “to perform the common-place business
providing public services, administering the law, performing police duties and adjusting industrial and economic
interests. The state may indeed direct and regulate them as need arises, but it does not itself perform them. Civil
Society depends upon the state for intelligent supervision and moral significance. The state, however, depends upon
civil society for the means of accomplishing the moral purposes which it embodies. But though mutually dependent,
the two stand on distinct dialectical levels. The state is not a means but an end” State is the elimination of the process
of human evolution. At different places Hegel has attributed to the states numerous high-sound-ing epithets such as
“March of God on Earth”. “The Divine Idea as it exists on Earth”. “Spirit personified”, “Realized Ethical Idea.” The
basic difference between the civil society and the state is that in the former, the individual is for himself the sole end,
in himself, while in the latter, the state is the higher end for which the individual exists. This brings us to the Features
of Hegel’s State.
10.3.1 Features or Characteristics of Hegel’s State:—
The first and foremost characteristic of Hegel’s State is that it has divine origin. Here, of course, we should
not confuse this feature with the Theory of divine right of the kings to rule. Divine origin of the state in Hegelian
sense means that it is the “culmination of divinely guided growth of Absolute Idea or Reason or Geist”. It is, as if, the
“March of God on Earth.” In order to trace the roots of the state, we don’t have to go about searching this-worldly or
mundane things. Instead, we have to look to some super-natural or metaphysical phenomenon.
Secondly, Hegel’s state is an End in itself. Every other conceivable thing inside the state of outside it is a
means to it. The state does not exist for the Individuals. The Individuals exist for the state. It is not the Individuals who
have made the state, it is just the other way’ round. The persons living in the Civil Society were not the perfect
individuals of Citizens. The rare and the final dignity of citizenship was bestowed Upon the individual only after the
state ushered into existence and made them moral and fit to be the constituents of the state. There can be “no spiritual
evolution beyond the state, any more than there can be any physical evolution beyond man.”
Thirdly, the state is a whole which is far greater than the parts, i.e. the individuals which compose it. Their
significance or importance is only due to the fact that they are members of the state. It implies that the individuals
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must obviously be completely subordinated to the state just as the organs of the human body are subordinate to human
orga-nism. It is not the individuals who have made the state; rather it is the state which has made the individuals
citizens.
Fourthly, the state is unchecked by any moral law, for the state is itself the creator of morality. It is the state
which has made the men moral. The individuals can never plead conscience or the moral laws against the state.
Individual Conscience cannot tell us what is right and good for the community as a whole. The individual conscience
must be informed by the tradition of community. The state is the best possible and the most appropriate interpreter of
the wisdom of the past crystallized in the traditions or customs of the community. The state is above custom and
morality. Hence whatever the state does is right. The interpretation of the traditions comes in the shape of laws of the
state. This being the position, the laws of the state are always correct. According to Hegel, the state is infallible. In
case of conflict between the state and the individual, the state is bound to be invariably correct and the individual
invariably wrong.
Fifthly, the state is the true giver of the real freedom to the individuals. In the state alone man can fully raise
his outward self to the level of his inward self of thought. Again, in the words of Hegel, nothing short of the state is the
actualization of Freedom”. The real Freedom, which is the product of the state manifests itself first- in law, secondly,
in the rule of inward morality, and thirdly in the whole system of social institutions and influences that make for the
development of personality. At a number of places Hegel surprises his readers by saying that the state which has been
recognised as an end in itself is a means of enlarging freedom the individual. But it is only a logical jumble with which
Hegel plays and at the end he proves that the freedom of the individuals lies in the complete obedience of the laws of
the state.
Sixthly, the State is the Interpreter of the Customs of the community which are indeed the “collective reason
of the past”. The Interpretation comes in the shape of the Laws of the state. The state is the only fountain head of the
laws of the states. It is the Creator or Social Ethics. The state is the only organization which can tell us what is right
and what is wrong.
Seventhly, the state is infallible. Whatever the state does is right. In case of conflict between the individual
and the state, the latter is bound to be correct and the former wrong due to the moral authority of the state. The
infallibility of the state was the most important tenet of the philosophy of Hegel. It is absolute in its relations with the
individuals.
Eighthly, the state is not only absolute in its relations with its subjects, it is absolute in its relations with
other states, in its relation with other states is not bound by any rules at all. The highest law is its own welfare. There
is no such things as International Law, according to Hegel, because the states obey it so long as it is conductive to
their interests. The state is sovereign in the true sense of the term. The state is self-sufficient. No moral laws can
govern the relations bet-ween the states interse.
Ninthly, war is not an absolute evil. On the other hand, it is a virtue in itself. It brings to the fore-front the
noblest qualities in man. War is a virtuous activity. It aids the moral development of the individuals. Success in war
justifies war, irrespective of the fact what sorts of means are used. The victorious in war is the true representative of
the World Spirit. War is to Virtue what mother” is to the child. War plays a great role in world history. In his words,
“World History is the world court of Justice.” In a particular war it is the World Spirit which decides which, of the
contesting states is its true embodiment, ‘War is an instrument in the hands of the World Spirit to push through the
development of the world on the lines of the Dialectic. Hence, according to Hegel, war is a sacred institution.
Tenthly, in Hegel’s state the individuals have no right to resist the commands of the state. They have not been
given the right to resist as they are the creatures of the state. They are what the state has made them. The individuals
are the organs of the organism—a body politic. Just as the parts of Human Body cannot revolt against the body, the
individuals cannot resist the state on whatsoever ground. In this respect Hegel is more totalitarian than Hobbes even
as the latter allows the right to resist the state to his Individuals in certain contingencies.
Eleventhly, according to Hegel the best form of government is the constitutional monarchy of the type of
Prussia of his time. It would be better if it is hereditary. Out of the three branches of the govern-ment, legislative is
the Thesis universal aspect. The Administrative wing is the Anti-thesis or particular aspect. The Monarch who represents
the best in the two is the Synthesis. According to Hegel sovereignty of the state resides in the Monarch and not in the
people. The Administrative wing which includes the Judicial functions is harmoni-sed by the Monarch with the
Legislative wing. Hegel had a dislike for the Parliamentary System of England. He denounced the Territorial
Representation of the Individuals in the Parliament. He propounded Functional Representation in the legislative
wing. The interests of clastes should be the basis of Representation in the legislative wing.
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 These characteristics of the state of Hegel are applicable to an Ideal State—a state which exists only in Idea.
But at numerous places Hegel, in so many words, identifies his ideal State with Prussia. According to Hegel, the
Prussian state of his time had reached the apex of the development of human society according to the Dialectic
formulae and no further development was possible. There was nothing higher and more perfect than the Prussian State
and beyond it in the evolutionary Process.
10.4 Summary
In conclusion, we can say Hegel made valuable contributions to the development of Political thought. He
grasped the connection between the morals and Politics; he propounded a theory of State which paved the way for the
worst type of absolutism etc.
Thus, for a correct appreciation of Hegel we must keep in mind the age to which he belonged. It was an age
of anarchy and chaos. Germany was passing through travail of unification. A strong monarchy was perhaps a dire
necessity. And even a casual glance into his writings will show us that for Hegel the state which embodies the highest
system of right is not the whole system. Beyond the state there is a ‘hero’ and a ‘victim’ as also the sphere of philosophy,
religion and art.
Even, if at times, he grants absolute powers to the king, these powers are justified on the ground that they
enable individuals to realize their freedom. The vital difference between Hegelianism and totalitarianism is that while
in the first the power is an expression of the rational will of the state, in the letter this will itself is the expression of
power and derives its validity from the fact that it has been expressed by somebody in power. Hegel’s philosophy is
thus far from Nazism and Fascism.
Thus the recognition that the state and society are the products of diverse, needs and characters of the
individuals, and that the state and society continue for the harmonization of individual interest with social interest,
have been motivating forces even in modem liberal society. Indeed, deriving inspiration from Hegel and Kant, Green
injected into modern liberal tradition, an organic complexion.
10.5 Check Your Progress:
1. "State was the synthetic product of the family and the civil society." Discuss.
2. "Freedom consists in complete obedience to the laws of the state." Explain this statement from Hegalian
viewpoint!
10.6 Glossary
• Antithesis: A person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.
• Consciousness : A person’s awareness or perception of something.
• Jingoism: Extreme Patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy.
• Bourgeoisie : Mean typical of fairly rich middle class people.
• Guilds : An association of craftsmen or merchants formed for mutual aid and protection and for the furtherance
of their professional interests.
• Dialectical : Inquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their solutions.
10.7 Check Yours Progress Exercise
1. See Section 10.3
2. See Section 10.2
10.8 SUGGESTED READING
1. G.W. Hegel : Philosophy of Rights, Trans : T.M Knox.
2. Pelazynski, Z.A (ed.) The Political Philosophy of Hegel: Problems and Perspectives.
3. V.R Mehta : Hegel and the Modern State: An introduction to Hegel’s Political Thought, New Delhi:
Associated Publishing home, 1968.
4. S.Hook : From Hegel to Marx. Studies in the intellectual development of Karl Marx, New York; The
Humanities Press, 1958.
5. S.A Avineri : “Hook‘s Hegel", Encounter, Nov., 1965.
6. C.L. Wayper : Political Thought.
10.9 Terminal Questions
1. Discuss Hegel’s views on civil society and State?
2. “State is march of God on Earth” Hegel. Comment?
3. Critically examine Hegel’s views on freedom?
4. According to Hegal, How civil society is different from that of the state.
*****
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 Lesson-11
Karl Mark (1818-1883 A.D.)

STRUCTURE
11.0 Introduction
11.1 Learning Objectives
11.2 Marx’s Theory of Historical Materialism
11.3 Marx’s Theory of Alienation
11.4 Summary
11.5 Check Your Progress
11.6 Glossary
11.7 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercise
11.8 Suggested Readings
11.9 Terminal Questions
11.0 Introduction
No other modern political thinker has aroused greater controversy or exerted greater influence on posterity
than Karl Marx. Indeed Marx had tremendous influence on the mind of men. Marxism has several facets; a political
theory, an economic doctrine and philosophy. There is of course, a sense in which his thought was each one of these.
And yet above all, his theories are related more to politics and action.
In a narrow and limited sense Marx was a revolutionary thinker but he was also a humanist. The latter aspect
has been largely ignored. Various reasons are responsible for this, in the first place, Marx in his later life had been
more concerned about the revolutionary aspects of his thought. But equally, and perhaps more important, than that,
has been the fact that the followers of his later thought have been more numerous, have aroused more controversies
and have produced a number of revolutions. But we cannot miss the fact that his earlier thought was perhaps more
important and of late has been becoming increasingly useful. In the context of recent existentialist thinking
contemporary critics and commentators of Marx have underlined the fact that Marx was one of the earliest thinkers
to comprehend the phenomenon of alienation as a consequence of modem capitalism and industrial society. And in
this context his earliest work, Economic and Philosophy Manuscripts (1844), has gained importance after having
suffered obscurity for over a century. Marx was perhaps the first thinker to note that in the society which was then
developing in Europe, man was being rapidly alienated from his work and from his social surroundings. Indeed these
new interpretations of Marx are drawing a sharp distinction between the early humanist Marx and the later revolutionary
Marx. Marx is not fully comprehensible except in the context of the earlier humanist Marx, Marx’s welcome of the
Communist society, for instance, was deeply moral, implying the removal of injustices from a Society, machine
which made these injustices possible.
Unfortunately, however, although this approach to the study of Marx would have been more objective, it has
made little impact on the academic world which still tends to look exclusively to the later revolutionary Marx, it is
for this reason that the revolutionary aspect of Marx needs to be seen within frame-work of his philosophy.
11.1 Learning Objectives
After readings this lesson, students will be able to
• Examine the Marxian Theory of Historical Materialism, and
• Understand his theory of Alienation.
11.2 Marx’s Theory of Historical Materialism
Historical Materialism is the extension of the principle of dialectical materialism to the study of social life
and its evolution. It seems to explain social evolution in terms of certain permanent laws of social change. It is
Marxian philosophy of history. It has in it the elements of historical study of the past and analytical account of the
present social structure and prosperity, unfolding the future. In the words of Plemenatz, “Historical Materialism is
the heart of Marx-ism.” Prof. G.D.H. Cole prefers to call it “the realistic interpretation of history.”
Sometimes Historical Materialism is taken by men like Vaughan as economic determinism but the one is
not the same as the other. It is, however, surprising that Marx did not make any comprehensive statement about his
Historical Materialism. The only satisfactory reference he made was in his book, ‘Critique of Political Economy,
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published in 1869. It is in the writings of Engels and his correspondence with Marx that more general treatment is
found. Marx probably intended to deal with Historical Materialism comprehensively after the completion of Das
Kapital, but he was not spared to do so he died in 1883.
Another problem that hinders exposition of Historical Materialism is that earlier exposition to which reference
is made by Marx and Engels is not always easy to reconcile with the later exposition given to it by Engels.
Historical Materialism is more or less a joint contribution of Marx and Engels. Each independently reached
his conclusion in the early forties of the last century. Engels in his preface to the manifesto tells us that when he met
Marx in 1848, Marx had already worked out a theory and put it before him. Similarly, Marx tells us that Engels
independently had worked it out before he met him. This is also clear from Engel’s book, ‘The History of Working
Class in England.’ Interpretation of history and Historical Materialism came as a reaction against the idealist
interpretation of history. According to the Idealists men work by virtue of ideal influences. Ideas and not matter are
the ultimate reality which determine the course of history. Marx held that reality was in the other way wrong. History
must be interpreted only in the light of economic development. According to Marx every social system has an inner
unity of its own. Social, economic, cultural, and religious systems are all inter-linked by a common economic structure.
The forms of life are merely different phases of the same core of reality.
Marx distinguishes between the essential and primary base of social structure and the secondary factors
which take their birth in the materialising of the primary factors. In other words, he distinguishes between the
fundamental and the super-structure of society. The latter is based upon the former and any change in the former
necessitates a change in the latter. This fundamental structure is the foundation made of the methods of production of
material means of life and of the relation of production. This relation constitutes the economic system or the economic
structure of society. This is the primary factor which determines the super-structure of society. In Marx’s own words,
“In the social production of material needs of life men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent
of their will; these relations of productions which correspond to a definite stage of the development of the material
forces of production make the economic structure of society which is the real foundation upon which arise the legal
and political super-structure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The modes of production
in material life determine the general character of social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their (social) existence but rather it is their social existence that deter-mines
their consciousness.”
Whenever changes occur in the modes or in the relation of pro-duction the whole social pattern undergoes
a change. These changes produce corresponding changes in ideas and institutions.
The state is the executive agency of the dominating class. It is the power that is employed by a dominant
economic class to sustain the existing relations of production. State is the result of the class antagonism of society,
corresponding to the modes of production. Society is always split into two major classes i.e. those who own the
means of production and those who do not own the means of production (the haves and have-nots):
But those who had been dominating politically under the old methods of production are bound to resist. The
conflict is inevitable. In the conflict the new class that dominates the society economically is successful and when it
comes into power it seeks to change the character of legal, political and moral institutions of a country so that they
may be helpful in the maintenance of their domination.
Every system of production has given rise to two principal mutually hostile classes : free man and slave,
patrician and plebian, lord and serf. Again Marx writes, “there is no history apart from the record of class-struggle.”
Marx applies historical materialism to explain both the past history and future possible evolution. He distinguishes
between five stages of production. The first primitive communal stage, slave stage, feudal stage, capitalist stage and
socialist stage. Under the first, means of production are socially owned. Under the second the slaves work for their
masters. Under the third the feudal lord potentially owns the serfs since the serfs can have, some property. Under the
fourth, capitalist owns the means of production but not the labour though they are compelled to work for them. Under
the fifth, which has not come into existence, workers themselves own the means of production. This will happen when
capitalism reaches its fullest development but then it would be abolished because of its inherent contradictions. It
may be noted that from the view point of production each of these stages represents an advance upon its predecessor.
This being in accordance with the dialectical principle.
This application of Historical Materialism to the past history results in an interpretation of history which
not only helps Marx in calling the capitalists, as reactionary element, and the working class the revolutionary in its
present stage, but also argues that destruction of the present order is foredoomed as was the feudal stage. The victors
of the struggle will be workers because the trend of future is with them. Materialistic conception of history thus
enables Marx to introduce the element of prophecy.
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 Capitalist society will be replaced by the proletarian state and in the ultimate equilibrium the classless
society would be established and dialectic history will pass into its final stage.
Appraisal, According to Edward Arcling, “The materialistic conception of history is that the chief, the
fundamental factor in the development of any nation or any society, is the economic factor— that is, the way in which
the nation or the society produces and exchange its commodities”.
However it is impossible to explain all historical movements exclusively in economic terms. The theory
ignores the fact that human passions, sentiments, emotions, religion etc., also influence human activities. According
to Russell, “Larger events in our political life are determined by the interaction of material conditions and human
passions.” As a philosophical doctrine, the economic interpretation of history is incapable of universal application.
According to Prof. Laski, “The insistence upon an economic background as the whole explanation is radically false”.
He pointed out that Balkan nationalism could not be explained in the light of economic background only. Moreover,
neither it is possible nor reasonable to bring the entire range of man’s motives and interests under a single factor
called economic. Undoubtedly, economic factors influence human affairs but it is wrong to assume that they alone
determine human affairs. According to Christopher Lord, “The materialist interpretation of history does not explain
the decline of Rome or the outbreak of our recent wars. It is too rational to account for psychological movements
like the advance of rationalism, too materialist to explain the power of ideas over the mind. Above all it states that
hitherto it has been impossible to control economic forces. It is, therefore, impossible, according to the communists,
to plan capitalism; but apparently it is quite possible to plan socialism.”
In spite of some of these drawbacks of the theory, load is of the opinion that this very theory has brought
Marx more lasting fame than any other theory. In his own words, “It would be difficult to over-estimate the influence
of this theory on working class though it has played a much larger part than Marx’s theory of value in making his name
venerated as the father of socialism. The secret of its attraction lies in the fact that it gives the working classes the
assurance of being on the winning side”.
We may conclude in the words of Sabine: “Thus economics becomes for Marx a combination of history
and analysis: analysis of the relations prevailing in any given system of production, supplemented by the history
of the rise and development of that system.”
11.3 Marx’s Theory of Alienation
Karl Marx developed his theory of alienation in his early writings, particularly in the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts (1844). When he was in his mid twenties he outlined the various ways in which human
beings become alienated in their lives, particularly in the course of the labour process. According to Marx, human
beings experience a loss of control over their and over the creations that constitute the basic institutions and processes
of society, such as the state and work. This alienation or estrangement means that human beings have a sense of living
in a world that is alien and hostile, and they experience that lives meaningless, unsatisfying and worthless. Ultimately
human beings live in a way that is less than fully human; they are de-humanized.
Marx derived his theory of alienation from Hegel’s notion of alienation and his own critique of Hegel. For
Hegel, alienation referred to the process of “Spirit” (Geist) externalizing itself in the creation of reality, but failing to
grasp that the world was not something external spirit. Spirit, through human consciousness, gradually comes to
realize that the world is the creation of the spirit, and in so doing overcomes alienation. Marx moved away from this
notion of alienation rooted in idealist philosophy. Following the line of thought developed by the young Hegelians
and by Feuerbach in particular, Marx identified the problem of religions alienation where human beings create the
notion of God and projected it on to our most essential features, we then give it an independent existence and bow
down to worship this entity that is entirely our own creation. This process sees the externalization of our essential
features and the fashioning of an alien entity out of them which then has a power over us.
In religions alienation we become separated from our essential selves, and this occurs in an even more
significant a way in the labour process. Human productive activities are fundamental to us, not just as the way in which
we produce our subsistence, but also as the way in which we develop and express our human potential. However, in
class society and in capitalism in particular, the process of production is a process by which individuals become
alienated. First, individuals are alienated from what they produce. For example, a worker in a factory creates a product
which is then sold by the factory owner when, where, to whom and at what price he sees fit. The worker has no control
over the product that he has created. Secondly, an individual is alienated from the conditions of the work process, that
is, ne has no control over the process of production, does not own the tools of production and increasingly under
capitalism has to perform dull, repetitive tasks requiring little imagination, skill or creativity. Thirdly, an individual is
alienated from his,” species - being”, that is to say, he is unable to develop and express his essential human
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characteristics. Human beings, according to Marx, are essentially productive creatures and it is in the course of
producing that distinguish ourselves from animals. Unlike animals, human beings produce consciously, planning their
actions and using imaginations and creativity. Human beings can exercise their will and not just act according to
instinct, and they are also essentially social and co-operative, but all these characteristics are denied in the labour
process in capitalism. The restrictions placed on us by a class society where the majority do not have free access to
the means of production, where there is a highly specialized division of labour, and where control is exercised over
our labour by bosses and impersonal market forces serve to prevent work from being enriching and fully human
activity it should be.
In later years and especially in ‘Capital’ Marx stopped using the term ‘alienation ‘a term he used frequently
in the 1840s and 1850s. In his attempts to redefine and reconfigure the concept of alienation as the central experience
of Capitalist subjects, Marx amplified it with the Concepts of commodity fetishism and machine labour.
In short, Marx’s concept of Alienation informs us that under capitalism, the vast majority of the workers
work in a way that does not engage their distinctively human properties. Rather than exercising their creativity, their
ingenuity, the ability to respond to many varying challenges and situations, they produce in a dumb, repetitive, single-
track fashion. They produce as animals do, rather than as humans should. Marx says that many of us feel human only
when we are not working.
For Marx, the solution to the problem of alienation is communism; the overthrow of capitalism with the
abolition of the division of labour and private property will make dealienation possible. The individuals attain their
freedom when they understand the operation of capitalism and how capitalist relations alienating humans.
11.4 Summary
In conclusion, we may say that in spite of a few flaws in Marxian doctrine, the creed has an appeal and it shall
continue to have an appeal as long as there is misery and suffering. Prof. Wayper rightly points out, “for the power of
his message for the inspiration of his teaching and for his effect upon further developments, Marx can be sure of his
place in any collection of the world’s great masters of political thought.”
11.5 Check Your Progress
1. How Marx interpreted the history?
2. According to Marx, Why workers become alienated in a class society?
11.6 Glossary
• Synthesis: The combination of components or elements to from a connected whole.
• Alienation: The state or experience of being alienated (isolation, detachment).
• Revolution: A forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system.
11.7 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercise
1. See Section 11.2
2. See Section 11.3
11.8 Suggested Readings
• G. Lichteim, Marxism’s A Historical and Critical Study London, 1961.
• Alex Callinicos, The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, Sydney: The Book Mark Publications, 2004).
• S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Combridge: The university Press, 1969.
• R.M. Bhagat, Political Though: Plato to Marx, Jalandher ; New Academic Publishing Company, 1988.
• Mohammad Iqbal Shah, Marx's Concept of Alienation and its Impact on Human Life.
11.9 Terminal Questions
1. Critically examine the Marxian theory of Historical Materialism?
2. What is Marxian Theory of alienation?

*****

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 Lesson-12
Hannah Arendt (1906-75 A.D.)

STRUCTURE
12.0 Introduction
12.1 Learning Objectives
12.2 Political Action
12.2.1 Theory of Action
12.2.2 Components of Action
12.2.3 Relationship between Action and Speech
12.3 The Private’, the ‘Public’ and the ‘Social’
12.4 Summary
12.5 Check Your Progress
12.6 Glossary
12.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
12.8 Suggested Readings
12.9 Terminal Questions
12.0 Introduction
Hannah Arendt was one of the brilliant German born American political philosophers. She was bom in Germany.
Her parents were secular Tews who were grown up in Russian Jewish homes. Hannah received her higher education at
the University of Heidelberg where she earned her doctorate in 1929. But she was prevented from teaching in German
universities because she was a Jew. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Hannah became a political activist in 1933.
Later she was arrested by Gestapo (the secret state police) for conducting research in anti-Semitic propaganda. On
her release she escaped to Paris (Fiance) where she met several brilliant scholars. In 1941 she migrated to the United
States where she attained American citizenship in 1951. In due course, she became an intellectual celebrity and
succeeded to obtain professorial positions in American universities.
Hannah Arendt’s most notable works include: The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951); The Human Condition
(1958); On Revolution (1961/1965); Eichrnann in Jerusalem’. A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963/1965); On
Violence (1969); Crises of the Republic (1972); and The Promise of Politics (2005).
Hannah is particularly known for her analysis of the problems of human freedom and the various forms of
power prevailing in the contemporary society. Her thinking is so original that it cannot be clubbed -with any one
of the prevalent ideologies.
Hannah Arendt sought to identify several problems of the contemporary world, to analyse their causes, and
to describe the deficiencies of the prevailing political systems. It may not be possible to revert to the past to overcome
the present day problems. In any case, she thought that the further was open, as human being had immense capacity to
initiate new things. Human freedom is essential to facilitate the realization of this capacity. At the same time it is not
possible to predict the future course of human action or to control its direction. Given freedom, human beings will
choose their own course of action according to their own judgement.
12.1 Leaning Objectives
After reading this lesson, the learners will be able to:
• Understand the views of Hannah Ardent about Political Action.
• Explain her idea of the social.
12.2 Political Action
‘On Human Condition’ is a major philosophical work of Arendt. Here she has given her theory a political
action. In this work she has established that the most important function is participation in politics. Though she
cannot be categorized as belonging to a particular school of thought, yet she can be projected as the scholar of ‘civic
republicanism’. It represents those who emphasize on civil society activism and participation of people in political
affairs.

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 In ‘The Human Condition’ (1958) she distinguished between the concepts ‘Political’ and ‘Social’ and ‘Labour’
and ‘Work’ and between various forms of actions, and then discover the implications of those distinctions. Her
philosophy of political action, corresponding to the existence of a public realm, is broadly developed in this work.
Arendt contends that, while human life always evolves within societies, the social being part of human nature, political
life, has been internationally created by only a few of these societies as a space for individuals to achieve freedom
through the construction of a common world. These theoretical categories which attempt to bridge the gap between
ontological and sociological structures are suddenly delineated. While Arendt refers labour and work to the realm of
the “Social”. She favours the human condition of action as the “political” that is both existential and aesthetic. The
human condition is primarily concerned with the problem of reasserting the politics as a valuable realm of human
action, Praxis and the world of appearances.
Arendt debates that the Western philosophical tradition has devalued the world of human action which attends
to appearances, subordinating it to the life of contemplation which concerns itself with essences and the eternal. In
the human conition and successive works, and with it the common life of the political and the values of opinion, from
the depredations of the philosophers by thoroughly elaborating vita active, she reinstates the life of public and political
action to apex of human goods and goals.
12.2.1 Theory of Action
Action, according to Hannah, occurs between people, not between people and things or objects. She defines
action as “the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter.”

Action

Action Thinking
(Vita-Action) (Vita-Contemplative)

Labour
(Animal Laboran)

Work
(Home Faber)

Action
(Zoon Politikon)
According to Hannah Arendt, action is more important than thinking. She gives hierarchy of actions. Least
important action is labour.
What is Labour?
Those actions which are performed to fulfill our basic need. Man has no control, there is no freedom for
man in this spheres. All animals perform this action. In this stage, man is animal Laboran.
Work
Work comes in second place. It includes those actions like economic activities, professional actions etc.
According to Arendt, man is builder of this world, when man performs this action, they make the world a place worth
living. Man is Homo Faber. He is only partially free.
Action
Highest in the hierarchy. This is most important action. Only humans perform it. It is sphere of complete
freedom. It is participation in politics or political action. When man performs political action, he achieves ‘human
conditions’. After all man is Zoon Politikon. It is the sphere of freedom of thought and action. It is therefore recognized
as the ‘Public Realm’.

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Here Analysis of Action
Only through action, person reveals his identity. Actualize the capacity for freedom. Reaffirm the reality of
this world.
12.2.2 Components of Action
There are two components of action: Freedom and plurality.
(i) Freedom: She defines freedom as natality. (Capacity to do something new).
(ii) Plurality: Plurality further has two components; equality and diversity.
a) Equality : Means sameness. Since all of us are humans, all of us are same or equals.
b) Diversely: Though all of us are same, yet all of us different. Everyone has capacity to do something new. It
means everyone is irreplaceable. Thus, according to her, every life is precious. Any person can be the source
of natality.
According to her plurality is important. We exercise our freedom, in presence of others rather than alone. Just like an
artist need audience, as a humans to express ourselves, we need other: plurality is a human condition, because on this
earth men not man lives.
Theme of Plurality and Freedom
Emphasis on people’s participation in politics, giving everybody freedom to express himself. Recognizing
the worth of each person. This shows that Hannah is a supporter of participative and deliberative democracy
Hannah Arendt’s Analysis of Human Activity

Type of Activity Goal Status of the Activity

Labour Sustaining Life Means to an End : Lowest Level

Work Creating a Collective Means to an End : Higher Level
Human World
Action Attaining Freedom End-in-itself : Highest Level

Arendt maintains that in the modern world, people have created so strong and nation-wide organizations to
look after their private interests that no scope is practically left to attend to the public issues. Economic and scientific
progress has caused immense damage to introspective philosophy. People are so preoccupied with the problems of
sheer survival that they have lost sight of the goal of creating a stable human world. In other words, people are
now living at the levels of ‘labour’ and ‘work’; they have lost the capacity of thought and ‘action’.
These conditions have led to the emergence of a consumer society where culture is continuously pressed
into the service of entertainment industry, and freedom of thought has been relegated to the background. In order to
revive the freedom of thought, it is necessary to segregate the ‘public realm’ from the private domain so that the
importance of public issues is no longer eclipsed by the dominance of private interests.
12.2.3 Relationship between Action and Speech
According to Hannah Ardent action is speech and speech is action. She means to say that there should be no
difference in what we say and what we do. In the worlds of Hannah, “only where words and deeds have not parted
company, where words are not empty and deeds are not brutal. Where worlds are not used to hide, but to reveal.” Thus
for Hannah Arendt “the action is the only activity that goes on directly between humans ….. corresponds the condition
of plurality ….. this condition is not only condition sine qua non but condition per quam.
12.3 The ‘Private’, the ‘Public’ and the Social
According to Arendt’s perspective, the ‘Private’ domain was a political. This is the sphere of biological
necessity associated with the maintenance of the household. In classical thought and practice, this ‘private’ place was
governed, in hierarchical manner, by its head. Private property also fulfilled and vital role. This arrangement was not
simply about maintaining the ‘old sanctity of the hearth’. A privately owned home provided a hinterland, a place of
retract from the rigors of the public and political world.
Arendt perceived a life confined to the ‘private’ sphere as existentially impoverished and denuded of wholeness.
Hower, familial relations and interactions within the ‘Four walls” of the hours hold were vital and it was essential to
maintain the security of ‘darkness’ associated with this domain.
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 A characteristic of contemporary life, however, was that the ‘merciless glare of the public realm ….. floods
everything in the private lives ….. so that the children no longer have a place of security where they can grow.’
Arendt maintained that according to classical thought and practice, the ‘public’ sphere was where politics
occurred. Emerging from the ‘Private’ Men were able to have a ‘second life’ forming relationships of equality and
debating the affairs of the day with citizens bestowed with equal status. She conceded that his ‘equality’ was only
afforded to an elite minority since this political realm has ‘very little in common’ with our more contemporary
understanding of the concept. It meant ‘live among and to have to deal only with one’s pears, and it presupposed the
existence of ‘unequal’s who …. where always the majority of the population in a city state.’ The public sphere was,
therefore, the place where select coterie of individuals, speaking among their pears, performed and revealed themselves
as persons of distinction, fulgent talent and unbridled excellence.
The term ‘public signifies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of us and distinguished from our
privately owned place in it. The distinction between a private and a public sphere of life corresponds to the household
and the political realms.
‘Society’ is the confusion of the public and private. She said, ‘the emergence of the social realm, which is
neither private nor public, strictly speaking, is a relatively new phenomenon whose origin conceded with the emergence
of the modern age, and which found its political from in the nation-state.’ Hence, the ‘social’ was form of administration
which might be perceived as a ‘facsimile of one super human family’ called society. The emblematic mechanism of
the ‘social’ was the modern bureaucracy, which under certain circumstances could conjure up the ‘most tyrannical’
forms of rule.
Arendt argued that the Marxist concept of a ‘class society’ was historically obsolete. Given the rise of a
‘mass society’ all the ‘various social groups had suffered the same absorption into one society with the ‘realm of the
social’ encompassing and controlling all members with equal strength. Society had, in short, conquered the public
realm and everyone. In ‘modern world’ or ‘mass societies’ the ‘private and the ‘public’ spheres were no longer discrete
and separable spheres in that they constant by flowed ‘into each other like waves in a never resting stream. The new
‘social realm’ had, in a relatively short time transformed all modern communities into societies of labourers and
jobholders.
This new configuration generated a dull, deadening conformism; a world in which people were like ‘atoms,
within a mass whose movements are predictable’. All that remained was the imperative to ‘produce, consume and pass
away like animals’. Moreover, this ‘modern age’ was one in which there was a detectable and ‘growing world alienation’.
In short, a ‘society of men’ who either lived in desperate lonely separation’ or were ‘pressed together into a mass’.
Mass society was seen as nothing more than a kind of organized living’, ‘automatically’ established among human
beings who had ‘lost the world once common to all of them.’ The ‘Social’, thus was deeply problematic to her because
in served to blur, even eradicate, the tidy different she identified between the private and the public.
12.4 Summary
Political writings of Arendt Triggered widespread debate among political scientists, sociologists and
historians, who generated a wealth of inconsistent commentary on a variety of subjects; at the same time their influence
has been proved unusual, extending even to the American Judicial System. Her promotion of politics to the zenith of
human good and goals has also been defined, demoting as it does other modes of human action and self-realization to
an subordinate status.
12.5 Check Your Progress
1. Discuss the hierarchy of actions as explained by Hannah Arendt.
2. Describe the components of action as suggested by Hannah Arendt.
3. How social sphere is different from private and public spheres.
12.6 Glossary
• Ontological : Relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
• Praxis : Practice, as distinguished from theory.
• Anti-Semiticism: Refers to the attitude embaying hostility towards Jews.
• Vita Activa : Active Life
• Homo Faber : Man the Maker; human beings are able to control their fate and environment as a result of the
use of tools.

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 • Zoon Politikon: The term was used by Aristotle for ‘political man’; the human being is a herd animal who
tends to organize into groups with leaders, manages, rules and all other sorts of things that can be called
‘taking care of things for the group.’
• Sine qua non: An essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary.
• Per quam : As much as possible.
• Apolitical : Not interested or involved in politics.
12.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
1. See Sub Section 12.2.1
2. See Sub Section 12.2.2
3. See Section 12.3
12.8 Suggested Readings
• Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicageo: University of Chicago, 1958.
• Michael Gottsegen, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, Suny University Press, 1993.
• O.P. Ganba, Western Political Thought, Mayur Paperbacks, 2016.
12.9 Terminal Questions
1. Explain the views of Hannah Arendt on Political Action.
2. Write a brief note on Hannah Arendit’s idea of the ‘Social’.

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 Lesson-13
Jurgen Habermas (1929-)

STRUCTURE
13.0 Introduction
13.1 Learning Objectives
13.2 Theory of Communicative Action
13.3 Public Sphere
13.4 Summary
13.5 Check Your Progress
13.6 Glossary
13.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
13.8 Suggested Readings
13.9 Terminal Questions
13.0 Introduction
Born in Germany in 1929, Jurgen Habermas emerged as the most important German philosopher and socio-
political theorist of the second-half of the 20th century. He is one of the world’s most influential living philosophers.
He obtained his Doctorate from the University of Marburg in 1954. He is known ‘Sociologist’ and ‘Philosopher’ in
the tradition of ‘Critical Theory’ and ‘Pragmatism’. He is perhaps best known for his theories on ‘Communicative
Rationality’ and ‘Public Sphere’ His speech disability made him think differently about the importance of
communication. As a young teenager, he was impacted by World War II. His father was descanted as a Nazi sympathizer
and Habermas himself was a leader of the Germon Jungvolk, which was a section of then Hitler Youth. He was brought
up in a stannchy Protestant milien. Habermas studied Philosophy and Sociology in the Frankfurt School under critical
theorists Mark Horkheimer and Theodora Adorno. He began his career in the late 1950s as a part of the Frankfurt
Institute for Social research. In 1962, his first major work appeared under the title, ‘The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere’. This classic work was based upon bourgeois public sphere. It gives a detailed account of the
development of bourgeois public sphere in the 18th century and the transformation due to the influence of capital
derive mass media. He has written and co-authored hundreds of books, articles, papers, speeches and chapters and is
widely read and cited inside academia and beyond it. His major contributions encompass the fields of philosophy.
Sociology, democratic theory, philosophy and Religion, Language, Jurisprudence, and historical and cultural analysis.
In this chapter, we will discuss about his best known theories of ‘Communicative Action’ and ‘Public Sphere’.
13.1 Learning Objectives
The objectives of this lesson is to familiarize the students to the Habermas’ theory of ‘Communicative
Action’ and his notion of ‘Public Sphere’.
13.2 Theory of Communicate Action
The ‘Theory of Communicative Action’ is a two volume (1981 book by the philosopher Habermas in which
the author continues his efforts of finding a way to ground “the social sciences is a theory of language” which had
been set out in the logic of the social sciences. The theory of Communicative Action is Habermas’ magnum opus. It
is a major contribution to social theory with reflections on the basic concepts of social theory with reflections on the
basic concepts of social methodology of the social sciences, hypotheses about modernization as a process of societal
renationalization. Habermas does not see social rationalization as a process that culminates in the loss of meaning
and freedom in the world, but a potential for societal learning and human emancipation. He work a distinction between
communicative action and purposive rational actions. The former is ‘content oriented’, whereas the latter is ‘success
oriented’ and goal oriented. The latter instrumental actions are appraised from the standpoint of efficiency with
following the technical rules. They are strategic actions aiming at influencing others for the purpose of achieving
some end. Communicative action constitutes and independent and distinct type of social action. The goal is not to
influence others but to reach an agreement or mutual understanding about something in the world. The goal of the
agent is subordinated to the goal of achieving a mutually co-operative process of interpretation of the life-worldly
situation. The individuals with communicative action aim at understanding by relating their interpretations by three
basic type of speech acts: connotative, regulative and expressive. Habermas forms it as communicative rationality as
it tries to criticize its own validity claims.
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 Habermas investigated how language influences human activity in the world, separating human action into
two distinct types: labour and interaction. Human beings are creatures who live in a linguistic universe permeated
with meaning, value and symbolism.
He argued that human interaction in one of its fundamental forms is ‘communicative’ rather than ‘strategic’
in nature, in so far as it is aimed at mutual understanding and agreement rather than at the achievement of the self-
interested goals of individuals. Such understanding and agreement, however, are possible only to the extent that the
communicative interaction in which individuals take part resist all farms of non rational coercion. The nation of an
“ideal communication community” functions as a guide that can be formally applied both to regulate and to Critique
concrete, speech situations. Using this regulative and critical ideal, individuals would be able to raise, accept, or
reject each other’s claim to truth, rightness and sincerity solely on the basis of the ‘unforced force’ of the better
argument- i.e. on the basis of reason and evidence-and all the participants would be motivated solely by the desire to
obtain mutual understanding. Although, the ideal Communication Community is never perfectly realized (which is
why Habermas appeals to its as a regulative or critical ideal rather than as a concrete historical community), the
projected horizon of unconstrained communicative action within it can serve as a model of free and open public
discussion within liberal-democratic societies. Likewise, this type of regulative and critical ideal can serve as a
justification of deliberative liberal-democratic political institution because it is only within such institutions the
unconstrained communicative action is possible.
Liberal democracy is not a guarantee that communicative rationality will flourish, however. In need, in modern
capitalist societies, social institutions that ideally should be communicative in character-e.g. family, politics and
education-have come to embody a merely ‘strategic’ rationality, according to Habermas. Such institutions are
increasingly overrun by economic and bureaucratic forces that are guided not by an ideal of mutual understanding but
rather by principles of administrative power and economic efficiency.
Habermas’s findings carried wide-ranging normative implications. In Moral Consciousness and
Communicative Action, 1983), he elaborated a general theory of “discourse ethics” or “communicative ethics”,
which concerns the ethical pre-suppositions of ideal communication that would have to be invoked in an ideal
communication community. He defended that unconstrained communication is guided by reasons that can be rejected
or redeemed by speakers and hearers as true, right or sincere.
Habermas was criticized by both the post modern left and the neo-conservative right for his trust in the
power of rational discussion to resolve major domestic and international conflicts. While some critics found his
normative critical theory as applied to areas such as education, morality, and law to be dangerously Eurocentric,
others decried its utopian radically democratic or left-liberal character.
13.3 Public Sphere
The public sphere is an areas in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify
societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. A ‘public’ is ‘concerning the people as a
whole’. Public sphere is a place common to all, where ideas and information can be exchanged. Public sphere provides
a platform to mediate between state and public is public issues. It is a liberal model ideal in a democratic polity. The
term was originally coined by German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. He explored the status of public opinion in the
practice of representative government in Western Europe.
According to him, in its ideal form the public sphere is “mode up of private people gathered together as a
public and articulating the needs of society with the state.” A Public sphere began to emerge in the 18th century
through the growth of coffee houses, literacy and other societies. Habermas argues that the later part of 19th and 20th
century, the press did not act as public sphere because newspapers became profit oriented and business interests
turned the press into an agent of manipulation. He said privileged private interests involved the public sphere.
Describing the emergence of the public sphere in the 18th century, Habermas noted that the public realm, or
sphere originally was co-extensive with public authority, while the private sphere comprised civil society in the
narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labour. The ‘sphere of public authority’
dealt with the state or realm of the police and the ruling class. But According to Habermas public sphere is conceptually
distinct from the state: it is a site for the production and circulation of discourse that can in principle be critical of the
state. The public sphere is also distinct from the official economy, is not an arena of market relations but rather one
of the discursive relations, a theater for debating and deliberating rather them for buying and selling. The people
themselves came to see the public sphere as a regulatory institution against the authority of the state. The study of the
public sphere centres on the idea of participatory democracy, and how public opinion becomes political action.

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 The public sphere is seen as a domain of social life where public opinion can be formed Habermas declares
several aspects as vital for the public sphere. Mainly it is open to all citizens and constituted in every conversation in
which individual come together to form a public. The citizen plays the role of a private person who is not acting on
behalf of a business or private interests but as one who is dealing with matters of general interest in order to form a
public sphere. There is no intimidating force behind the public sphere but its citizens assemble and unite freely to
express their opinions. Although Habermas considers state power as ‘Public Power’ which is legitimized through the
public in elections, the state and its forceful practices and powers are not part but are a counterpart of a public sphere
where opinions are formed. Therefore, public opinion has to control the state and its authority in everyday discussions,
as well as through formal elections. A Public sphere is the basic requirement to mediate between state and society and
in an ideal situation permits democratic control of state activities.
Habermas dates the formation of the term of public sphere and public opinion back to the 18th century.
Before the rise of the Bourgeoisie and the creation of bourgeoisie public spheres the understanding of the term
‘public’ was quite different. Before that time the representation of authority through a lord was called ‘public’ referring
to the public representation lords were seen as. This public representation was merely stating their authorities before
the people than for the people they governed. By the end of the 18th century the feudal powers of church and nobility
diminished paving the way for the rise of a bourgeois society in Europe. With it the meaning of the world ‘public’
changed as well, ‘Public’ longer described the representative court of a person and their authority. It came to mean the
legitimizing regulations of an institutional system that held governing powers. Citizens were now subsumed under the
state forming the public.
Nineteenth century saw an expanding public sphere with the growth of the media and technological
development, literacy spread, increased working class and improved industrialization. Participation of alienated groups
changed the ideologies of public discourse so also the content in the press changed. According to Jurgen Habermas,
structural transformation of political public sphere was refeudalisation’ where the distinction of‘ Public’ and ‘Private’
could not be easily applied. As the bourgeois public sphere disintegrated, Habermas reflects on the ideology of the
media providing a site for public participation and wonders whether the mass media having a great power could be
harnessed for public good? Habermas is highly critical of media in public sphere and he calls it as pseudo-public-
sphere and says that we have moved from culture-debating to a culture-consuming public.
Habermas’ concept of ‘public sphere has been criticized by the other theorists of public sphere. John P
Thomson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, claims that the Habennas’s notion of Public Sphere
is old due to the proliferation of mass media. Michael Schudson, University of California, argues that more generally
public sphere as a place of rational independent debate never existed. Nancy Fraser, Professor of Political Science
and Philosophy says that these are multiple spheres and counter publics.
Although Habermas happens to be the central theorist of public sphere, where he says that once a person is
idealised he is allowed to speak, interact and take Action in collective decision. According to him public sphere is an
arena where ‘rational-critical argument’ takes place without violence, but there are many other theorists of public
sphere who are critical of his argument. His student Oscar Negt and colleague Alexander Kluge argue that the bourgeois
public sphere that Habermas refers to have no meaning in the times of the advanced structural changes and the media
cartel.
Many defenders and critics of Habermas’s notion of the bourgeois public sphere fail to note that the thrust
of his study is precisely that of transformation, of the mutations of the public sphere from a space of rational discussion,
debate and consensus to a realm of mass cultural consumption and administration by- corporations and dominant
elites.
Habemias’s critics argue that he idealises the earlier bourgeois public sphere by- presenting a rational
discussion and debate when in fact certain groups were excluded and participation was thus limited. Oscar Negt and
Alexander Kluge criticized Habermas’s neglect of Plebian and Proletarian public sphere.
Mary Ryan notes that not only did Habermas neglect Women’s public sphere but marks the decline of public
sphere precisely at the moment when women were beginning to get political power and become actors (1992:259).
In Kellner’s view, Habermas does not adequately theorise the nature and social functions of contemporary media and
information, they are for him mere mechanism of transmitting messages, instruments that are neither an essential
part of the economy nor polity.

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13.4 Summary
To sum up, we can put the explanation of the concept of Habermas about ‘Communicative Action’ into the
following conclusion: ‘Communicative Action’ refers to a social activity that at least two of the main body take life-
world as the background, language as a media, for the purpose of understanding the co-operative action and individual
socialization.
Futher, Habermas’ Liberal model of public sphere holds a normative claim. It is an idealistic model of
democracy which is shaped through structural changes of society that ended in a transformed understanding of the
public sphere. How a public sphere should ideally be? As such, it does not actually exist in modern democracies that
are industrially advanced, constituted as a social-welfare state and where massed of people are supposed to form
public. Habermas himself had to admit that the participation of women and the inclusion of minorities is not guaranteed
by his model relying on the circumstances of bourgeois society in the early 19th century.
13.5 Check Your Progress
1. Explain ‘Communicative Action’ in view of Jurgen Habermas.
2. What is Public Sphere? How it is defined by Habermas?
13.6 Glossary
• Discourse Ethics: Is communicative ethics where the norms are deliberated in the society and validated.
• Communicative Action: Habermasian theory of ideals with due emphasis on practices being deliberated
in ideal speech situations with speech acts.
13.7 Answer to check your Progress Exercise
1. See Section 13.2
2. See Section 13.3
13.8 Further Readings
1. T. McCarthy, The Theory of Communicative Action Boston: Beacon Press, 1984/1987.
2. J. Habermas, “The Public Sphere” in C. Mukerji and M. Schudson (ed.), Rethinking Popular Culture:
Contemporary Perspective in Cultural Studies, Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press,
pp.398-404.
3. Andrew Edgar, The Philosophy of Habermas, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s U.P. 2005.
4. Thomas A McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, Cambridge : MIT Press, 1979.
5. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol-I: Reason and Rationality of Society,
T.McCarthy (Trans.), Boston: Beacon, 1984.
6. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action; Vol-II: Life World and System, T. McCarthy
trans; Boston: Beacon.
13.9 Terminal Questions
1. Evaluate the views of Jurgen Habermas on Communicative Action.
2. Write a detailed note on Habermas’ concept of Public Sphere.

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 Lesson-14
John Rawls (1921-2002 A.D.)

Structure
14.0 Introduction
14.1 Learning Objectives
14.2 Rawls Theory of Justice
14.2.1 The Problem of Justice
14.2.2 Methodology
14.2.3 Principles of Justice
14.2.4 A critical Appraisal
14.3 Rawls Concept of Political Liberalism
14.4 Summary
14.5 Check Your Progress
14.6 Glossary
14.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
14.8 Suggested Readings
14.9 Terminal Questions
14.0 Introduction
John Rawls (1921-2002) is a contemporary American philosopher whose theory of justice led to the revival
of interest in political philosophy in modem times. He is regarded as the first original theorist of justice since the
times of Plato and Aristotle, ancient Greek philosophers. Since Raw’ls published of Theory of Justice (1971), many
brilliant scholars were inspired to write on the problem of justice, and all of them weaved their argument around
Rawls’s position on this issue. Rawls himself developed his thinking in the liberal tradition, and followed the
methodology of the social contract — particularly John Locke’s (1632-1704) version of this theory — to arrive at
the principles of justice. His theory of justice as fairness envisions a society of free citizens holding equal basic
rights, enjoying equal opportunities of advancement, and cooperating to achieve a common goal. His theory of political
liberalism focuses on the legitimate use of political power in a democracy. He strives to show that although free
institutions allow for diversity of worldviews, yet they are capable of achieving an enduring unity. His writings on the
law of peoples seek to extend the known principles of justice to the global sphere in order to achieve global justice.
Rawls was the son of a prominent lawyer. He studied at Princeton and Oxford and graced the faculty at Harvard for
over three decades. His major works include A Theory of Justice (1971). Political Liberalism (1993). The Law of
Peoples (1999) and Justice as Fairness (2001).
14.1 Learning Objectives
After going through this lesson, the students will be able to:
• Elucidate John Rawls’ theory of Justice and
• Comprehend his concept of ‘Political Liberalism’.
14.2 Rawls’s Theory of Justice
John Rawls, in his celebrated work A Theory of Justice (1971), asserted that a good society is characterized
by a number of virtues. Justice is the first virtue of a good society. In other words, justice is a necessary hut not a
sufficient condition of a good society. Those who argue that justice should not be allowed to come in the way of
social advancement and progress run the risk of causing the moral degradation of society. In a just society, justice is
established as the foundation of social structure. Hence all political and legislative decisions should be designed to
fulfill the requirements of justice.
14.2.1 The Problem of Justice
According to Rawls, the problem of justice consists in ensuring a just distribution of primary goods’ which
include rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth, means of self-respect and so on. Rawls
described his theory as the theory of pure procedural justice. It means that once certain principles of justice are
unanimously accepted the distribution resulting from their application will be necessarily just. Rawls severely criticized
those theories of allocation which ignore the moral worth of individual for the attainment of any predetermined
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goals. He particularly attacked utilitarianism because in calculating the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ it
does not care if it leads to extreme hardship to any particular individual. For instance, one might imagine a state of
affairs in which the maximum amount of happiness would be produced and its distribution to a maximum number of
people achieved by the enslavement of a minority. Rawls has brilliantly argued that you cannot compensate for the
sufferings of the distressed by augmenting the joys of the prosperous.
Now within the utilitarian school, J.S. Mill (1806-73), English philosopher, showed his inclination toward
individualism on two important points; (a) While Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the founder of utilitarianism, had
only recognized quantitative differences between pleasures. Mill highlighted the significance of qualitative differences
between pleasures, and thereby recognized the value of individual preferences; and (b) In the sphere of liberty—
particularly the liberty of thought and expression. Mill argued that each individual’s opinion is as valuable as any
others, and thereby recognized the value of individual thinking. On those two points. Mill sought to discover the
moral worth of individual behind the crude formula of ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’. John Rawls’s
attack on utilitarianism was directed precisely to restore the moral worth of individual in determining the allocation
of social-economic advantages in society. So it will not be out of place to assert that J.S. Mill’s departure from crude
utilitarianism was brought to its logical conclusion in John Rawls’s theory of justice.
14.2.2 Rawls’s Methodology
Rawls evolved a unique methodology for arriving at a unanimous procedure of discovering the principles of
justice. Following the tradition of the ‘social contract’, Rawls envisaged an ‘original position’ by abstracting the
individuals from their particular social and economic circumstances. These individuals are symbolically placed behind
a ‘veil of ignorance’ whore they are supposed to be deliberating as rational agents. They are totally unaware of their
wants, interests, skills and abilities as well as of the conditions which lead to discrimination and conflict in society.
But they have an elementary knowledge of economics and psychology, and are also endowed with a ‘sense of justice’.
Each individual wants to maximize his or her well-being, without being envious. They are self-interested but not
egoists. They are not prepared to take a risk or resort to gambling. According to Rawls, in such a state of uncertainty
the rational negotiators will choose the least dangerous path. In other words, each individual will hypothetically
place himself or herself in ‘the least advantaged position while recommending the criteria of allocation of the primary
goods. Hence each of them will demand greatest benefit for the least advantaged.
The conventional theory of the social contract was designed to ascertain the son of political authority as
well as the grounds and limits of political obligation. It is a philosophical question; its answer can be found only
through logical procedure, and not through empirical investigation. So the exponents of this theory sought to visual a
condition when people lived without a civil society. This hypothetical condition was described as the ‘state of nature’.
Then they speculated the reasons which led people to the decision to relinquish the state of nature and enter into civil
society. Finally, they conjectured the terms and conditions on which people agreed to live together in civil society.
When people set up civil society, it is relatively a simple matter. In the state of nature, all men are similar by
nature; they are placed in similar conditions; they have a similar objective (e.g. self-preservation, punishing offenders,
or overcoming the scarcity situation); and they have a similar expectation from civil society. So in civil society each
one is placed under identical political obligation. But inquiry into the principals of justice is a complex issue.
Different people for whom justice is sought, are endowed with differential capabilities; they come from a wide
variety of social-cultural-economic political backgrounds; they are very sensitive to the treatment meted out to them
in the social set-up. One cannot start one’s argument from a simplistic hypothesis like that of the ‘state of nature’. So
Rawls visualizes the men — rational negotiators who are qualified to deliberate on the principles of justice (not
merely natural men in a state primitive simplicity) — placed in the ‘original position’, deliberating behind a ‘veil of
ignorance’. They must be ‘abstracted’ from their particular situations to enable them to determine the ‘rules of justice’
which are thoroughly impartial, and which are thought to be acceptable to everyone. In short, Rawls’s hypothesis of
the original position designed “to combine into one conception the totality of conditions which we are ready upon
due reflection to recognize as reasonable in our conduct towards one another” (A Theory of Justice: 1971). Since the
principles of justice are to be determined by ‘rational negotiators’, they exercise ‘rational choice’ in adopting these
principles. It is also important to note that the conception of the ‘original position’ reflects the image of “a democratic
society wherein persons regard themselves as free and equal citizens” (A Theory of Justice: 1971). In a nutshell,
investigators of the principles of justice are endowed with a general wisdom but they are ignorant about their particular
conditions.

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14.2.3 Principles of Justice
As a result of the hypothetical negotiation under such conditions, three principles justice will be accepted
by all. according to Rawls, in the following order: (1) Principle of equal liberty (i.e. equal right to most extensive
liberty compatible with similar liberty of others) which postulates that nobody’s liberty will be compromised for any
other benefit (liberty in this sense implies equal right of political participation, freedom of expression, religious
liberty, equality before the law, etc.); (2) Principle affair equality of opportunity, particularly for acquiring offices
and positions; and finally, (3) The difference principle which implies that any departure from equal distribution of the
primary goods can be justified only when it could be proved to bring greatest benefit to the least advantaged. In other
words, a special reward for extraordinary ability and effort to any individual can be treated as Just only if it
results in the greatest benefit to the least privileged. When these conditions have been fulfilled, the criteria of
efficiency can be justly applied in a competitive economy. In other words, the rule of allocation ‘to each according to
his ability’ can be applied only if higher efficiency of the concerned individual results in ameliorating the condition
of the least advantaged.
Here Rawls introduces the idea of the chain connection which implies that in order to strengthen a chain, we
should start with strengthening its weakest link, and then repeat the process by identifying the weakest link on each
occasion. As Norman Barry (An Introduction to Modern Political Theory; 1989) has elucidated: “Rawls ...argues
that a ‘chain connection’ operates between the best and the worst off and that a rise in the expectations of the best off
will have effect of raising everybody else’s expectations, throughout the system” The justifiability of any special
concessions, subsidies or protection depends on the empirical facts whether or not such benefits filter down ultimately
to help the neediest. As Samuel Gorovitz has significantly observed: “Rawls ...is clearly a redistributionist in that he
takes the proper function of government to include not merely the maintenance of a social order, but the achievement
of distributive justice by placing the highest social value on the needs of the neediest” (‘John Rawls: A Theory of
Justice’ in Contemporary Political Philosophers, edited by Anthony de Crespigny and Kenneth Minogue; 1975).
14.2.4 A Critical Appraisal
Rawls’s theory of justice has been criticized by various schools of thought. Collectivism argue that he has
discovered the ground for the justification of the existing capitalist system. He has shown that if the rich have the
freedom to accumulate wealth, the poor would be automatically benefited. Even if his principle of fair equality of
opportunity is strictly enforced, the existing disparities between the rich and poor will not be substantially reduced.
A slight improvement in the condition of the most disadvantaged sections will be treated as an excuse to permit vast
socio-economic inequalities.
Some critics argue that identification of the most disadvantaged sections is very difficult. If income and
wealth are treated the sole criteria for identifying such sections, how shall we compensate those who lack ability or
who suffer from emotional insecurity?
Marxists contend that Rawls has tried to determine the principles of justice in a hypothetical condition
where people deliberate behind a ‘veil of ignorance’. Any deliberations without the knowledge of prevailing social
and economic conditions are meaningless. Moral systems should always be analysed in the light of class relations
and the patterns of ownership of private property.
Libertarians argue that Rawls has sacrificed liberty for the sake of equality. Why should we force the
meritorious and industrious to work for the benefits of the most disadvantaged sections? Moreover, enterprising
persons must take risks for their advancement in life. Rawls’s negotiators are not prepared to take risk. How would
they promote social progress?
Communitarians point out that Raws’s political philosophy does not grade any conception of good life as
superior or inferior to other. This ethical neutrality evades the opportunity of the pursuit of the common good.
On closer analysis, these diverse critiques seem to be based on biased interpretations of Rawls’s theory of
justice. In fact, Rawls has tried to combine different value systems in order to arrive at his theory of justice. Some
tenets of these value systems are thought to be incompatible with each other. Any attempt to combine them must yield
a complex model. This applies to the present case also. Indeed, Rawls’s theory of justice represents the convergence
of libertarianism, egalitarianism and communitarianism.
In the first place, Rawls is a libertarian because his conception of men negotiating in the ‘Original position’
envisages a situation where each of them is trying to maximize his self-interest. This conforms to liberation point of
view. Secondly, his first principle of justice accords priority to liberty which cannot be compromised for any other
benefit.

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 Then Rawls is an egalitarian because he concedes ‘equal liberty for all. Further, he insists that social-economic
inequalities can be allowed only if they satisfy the condition of fair equality of opportunity for all. In other words, he
accepts equality as the cardinal principle, and insists that only inequalities shall be required to be justified. Again, he
rules that any reward for merit and effort must satisfy the condition that it yields greatest benefit to the least advantaged.
Why should the meritorious accommodate the interests of the least advantaged? Here Rawls invokes the principle of
the ‘chain connection’ operating between different individuals. More meritorious enjoy the benefits of their merit in
association with the less meritorious lot. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Rawls shows that society can
be strengthened by strengthening its weakest parts successively. The idea of ‘chain connection’ brings Rawls very
close to the image of a communitarian.
It is true that Rawls contemplates to retain the capitalist system on some specified conditions. However, it
should not be forgotten that once these conditions are fulfill, the capitalist system is bound to assume a new humane
look. In fact, Rawls has discovered a method for making procedural justice an instrument of meeting the
requirements of substantive justice. By insisting on the emancipation of the least advantages on priority basis, he has
advanced the principle of moral individualism which prevents the better-placed members of the backward classes
from taking undue advantage of their class position.
14.3 Rawls’ concept of Political Liberalism
Rawls’s Political Liberalism (1993) seeks to introduce structural changes envi-sioned in his previous book
Theory of Justice (1971). Political Liberalism is not a natural sequence of Theory of Justice, but a revision of
specific points raised in it. At that time, Theory of Justice was widely criticized by libertarians and communitarians,
and even Rawls understood that he had not addressed the complex political issues which were missing in Theory of
Justice. Therefore, Political Liberalism is an attempt to compensate for the shortcomings evident in Theory of
Justice as well as to respond to some critics.
Rawls’s Theory of Justice was a blend of moral and political philosophy; they complemented each other.
Yet, in Political Liberalism there is a clear distinction between the two. The notion ‘political’ was separated from
‘moral’ and Rawls put the former in the epicenter of the concept of ‘political liberalism’. Citizens as moral persons
have different conceptions of what is good, but in the public sphere - which lies in the political domain they cannot
impose their conceptions of good as common. Questions and problems of social inequality and distribution of goods
are neglected, and citizens affirming different philosophical, moral and religious comprehensive doctrines are in the
centre of the polit-ical sphere. Rawls’s Theory of Justice, through the two principles of justice, has affirmed a
comprehensive doctrine applied to the whole society. Modem democratic societies are made of plural ism of very
heterogeneous comprehensive doctrines. They are comprehen-sive because they determine a wide sphere, ranging
from the establishment of norms, customs and systems of values, to the manner in which social, economic and
political systems work.
The aim of the conception of political liberalism is to regulate pluralistic coexis-tence of comprehensive
doctrines, including the elimination of the possibility that one comprehensive doctrinal system shall prevail over the
other, as well as to impose its inner logic to be born as one potentially repressive unifying social-political system
neglecting different philosophical, moral and religious differences. The model that is sought after is the establishment
of a political concept of justice which means that none of the aforemen-tioned doctrines is going to be generally
applied to the whole society, but only where the overlapping consensus will be achieved. In this overlapping consensus,
different reason-able comprehensive doctrines will coexist by accepting the political principle of justice.
Accordingly, the very basis of political liberalism consists of the political concept of justice as fairness that
is implemented as a basis structure of a society. The basic structure of a society is limited to only political, economic
and social aspects of an individual’s life rather than individual’s whole life, and therefore it should guarantee fair
relations among different citizens who are considered to be free and equal, and who recognize a society as a system
of cooperation and collaboration among different individuals and groups.
Political concept of justice as fairness does not generally affirm any doctrine as society’s common good
and system of values that should be supported by all citizens - rather, it guarantees pluralism and freedom in choosing
different life concepts of good which spring from moral, religious and philosophical doctrines. The central issue and
question which the concept of political liberalism seeks to resolve is the question ‘How is it possible that there is a
well-ordered and stabile society that makes pluralism of different opposing comprehensive doctrines?’
In examining this issue, Rawls’s starting point is the premise of a democratic society and conception of
personality, that is, a citizen who is free and has the same rights and freedoms in comparison with other citizens.
Every person is free on the basis of two moral powers: sense of justice and specific conception of good. When
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addressing the sense of justice, Rawls has in mind the political conception of justice as fairness. Based on such
viewpoint, individuals are capable of perceiving society as a field of social coop-eration among different citizens
having different conceptions of good. On such a premise we arrive at the notion ‘reasonable’ which is supposed to
become the main virtue of an individual and the concept of justice itself, affirmed by free individuals. At this stage
Rawls makes a difference between reasonable and rational. As was stated, reasonable refers to a fair system of social
cooperation among free and equal citizens able to obey the rules of interrelationship in accordance with the political
concept of justice. But, rational is referred and applied to a citizen as an autonomous person. Such a citizen has his/
her own goals and interests that he/she can change over time or can strictly obey. His/her goals and interests are
different conceptions of good which spring from different moral, religious and philosophical doctrines.
Rational is applied to the private sphere in which an individual has diverse con-victions, while reasonable
represents a sphere of public and political which cherishes rules of cooperation, tolerance and social pluralism in
accordance with ‘public reason’.
Public domain should be free from the influence of comprehensive doctrines and it should represent a place
of movement of diverse comprehensive doctrines out of which none should be dominant or privileged, that is, the
place where the rule of fair system of cooperation applies. A fair system of cooperation means exactly the congruence
of ratio-nal and reasonable: if an individual acted only reasonably, he/she wouldn’t have his/her own goals that would
be affirmed in the system of social cooperation. If he/she was only rational, then he/she wouldn’t be able to accept the
virtue of reasonable in order to pre-serve the social-political system and confirm the loyalty to the constitutional
regime guar-anteeing freedom and equality on condition of fair cooperation.
Hence, comprehensive doctrines must be reasonable and they must embrace the principle of pluralism and
fair cooperation. Doctrines which are comprehensive but not embracing their reasonability threaten to erode the
principle of democratic institutions and well-ordered society. Doctrines that are imposed as universal social values,
according to Rawls, are anticipated as threats and must be eliminated from the overlapping consen-sus. The overlapping
consensus contributes to the prevention from potential conflicts of comprehensive doctrines. Accordingly, a concept
of political justice bearing overlapping consensus is viewed as ethically neutral because it does not approve the
universal concep-tion of good.
The idea of overlapping consensus is an inevitable part of political liberalism, and political conception of
justice as fairness has been reached with overlapping consen-sus. It is a guarantee of social stability and integration
because it assumes that it will be affirmed by reasonable individuals protecting the rules of the game within which
every-body is guaranteed the primacy of equal rights and freedoms. Rawls viewed social inte-gration and stability as
the amalgamate of the conception of good and principle of justice. Later on, Rawls changed his view and turned
towards the overlapping consensus which supports only the conception of justice, while the issue of good remained
reserved for the sphere of an unpublic or private identity. The overlapping consensus should contribute to the creation
of common goal reflected in the maintaining of fair institutions. By supporting the conception of justice through the
overlapping consensus, different contrasting comprehensive moral, philosophical and religious doctrines treasure
their independence which is in line with the conceptions of good. Accordingly, by reaching the overlapping consensus,
a society is stable and well-ordered because it is based only on acceptance of the common conception of justice,
instead of the mixture of justice and good, because the accepted argument is that there are different conceptions of
good. The overlapping con-sensus represents only political conception of justice which applies to all and cannot be
identified as comprehensive doctrine which is applied to a particular social group or indi-vidual harboring their own
scale of values. On the one hand, the overlapping consensus is by value neutral, but on the other it allows the affirmation
of different values provided that all fair rules based on the conception of justice be obeyed.
Ensuring social stability find well-ordered society is not a matter of pure com-promise - or modus vivendi
as referred to by Rawls - between different comprehensive doctrines. The overlapping consensus embodies much
more than modus vivendi, because modus vivendi has a temporary effect and reaches social stability in a specific
moment which is really dependent on external circumstances. When external changes occur, mo-dus vivendi is
disturbed. In such case one comprehensive doctrine threatens to disturb social stability and to impose domination
over other conflicting doctrines. On the other hand, the overlapping consensus can be developed from modus vivendi,
but it is essential that the overlapping consensus makes a society stable even when external changes take place. For
example, if one religious group was to outnumber other religious groups, it would disturb a fragile modus vivendi
and establish the universal conception of good. But, when the overlapping consensus is in question, a religious group
- even one large in num-ber - would reasonably accept the principle, of justice establishing a system of social balance
and neutralizing unilaterally imposed universal conception of good.
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Neutralization of the universal conception of good is also based on the concep-tion of good, but of good that articulates
ethical neutrality in the form of justice as a fair system of cooperation. Citizens are free to express their interests and
goals in line with their own conception of good, but, they must respect other citizens’ interests and goals which differ
in conception of good. In contrast to Theory of Justice, which has affirmed comprehensive doctrine in form of
acceptance of two principles of justice, in Political Liberalism Rawls rejects such a view and accepts the political
conception of justice which contains pluralism of different and incompatible yet reasonably comprehensive doctrines.
Political liberalism - representing a political conception of justice guaranteed by the overlapping consensus
- involves a key element ‘pubic reason’. Public reason is very important for the concept of political liberalism because
it provides guidelines and rules through which criteria for evaluation of principles of justice are reviewed. Public
reason refers to all citizens who have the opportunity to debate freely and publicly within the political conception of
justice. It guarantees constitutional principles which legitimize social order involving political and civil rights, including
everything that is necessary for a society to be perceived as a system of cooperation among free and equal citizens. It
is highly important that the idea of public reason does not neglect comprehensive doctrines - it should assume them
- but also reject any other doctrine that is not compatible with the rules of a democratic society. Public reason is
applied to the issues in public forms that cover a spectrum ranging from the association of civil society to all levels
of power, with judicial power being the most important but not the ultimate interpreter of public reason. The idea of
public reason is complementary to the ideas of political justice and the overlapping consensus, which legitimize
pluralism of different conceptions of good based on reasonability.
Rawls makes a clear distinction between his ‘political liberalism’ and ‘comprehensive liberalism’ associated
with classical liberals Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. The ideas of autonomy and tolerance were in the focus of
classical liberals. Autonomy includes a person free from external force, free to choose their conception of good and
question conceptions of good which they previously adopted. On the other hand, tolerance meant that those people
respected other people’s freedom and that they autonomously chose their goals.
It would be ideal that in a well-ordered society autonomy and tolerance were the highest social values that
should be adopted by all citizens. However, Rawls is aware of another fact: there are individuals and groups who
simply do not want to be autonomous. They have accepted specific moral, philosophical or religious doctrine offered
by the conception of good; they are by no means willing to question it, let alone reject it. Political liberalism is based
on equal freedoms and rights extended to all individuals in a society - this is as far as Rawls goes - because the
potential linking freedom to autonomy would mean denial of the right of some individuals or groups to reject the idea
of autonomy related to their personal identity. Freedom of choice can mean choice to reject autonomy. According to
Rawls, it is quite legitimate that some people reject autonomy. But, when it concerns the public sphere, individuals
should acknowledge the autonomy of other people, that is, they must be tolerant to social differences. That means
that Rawls has rejected the social conception of good according to which all people should be liberals because that
carries potentially totalizing effects towards those having different conceptions of good, which assume the rejection
of autonomy.
Such reduced political liberalism offers an answer to the critique addressed to Rawls by the communitarians
who criticized liberal autonomy which disturbs unity and values of a group within a society. Rawls accepted this view
by claiming that there are really individuals and groups who do not respect autonomy. Political conception of justice
as fairness refers only to the basic structure of society harboring principles of tolerance and reciprocity among
citizens. It is not applied further than the basic structure because that would imply entering the private sphere that
allows existence of different conceptions of good. Affirmation of comprehensive conceptions of good is allowed
only in private life, but in public life those differences should follow rules of justice as fairness.
Another communitarian critique addressed to Rawls was that his well-ordered society in Theory of Justice
is non historical and out of context. In Political Liberalism Rawls shows how the principles of justice have developed
from the political culture cultivated in democratic societies. In time, different doctrines adjusted to a democratic
society have become tolerant to one another. As an example Rawls takes violent conflicts between Catholics and
Protestants who have eventually accepted rules of religious tolerance. Political concept of justice as fairness does
not spring from intuitive ideas behind the veil of ignorance, but from real historical foundation which over a long
period of time caused different, contrasting doctrines to accept the idea of fair political cooperation.
Rawls’s well-ordered society, based on political liberalism assuming political conception of justice, fully
rejects the idea of political community. Political community is established on specific conception of good, which is
suppressed by the pluralism of different conceptions of good. Rawls claims that, even if such community was
established on the liberal principle of autonomy, it should be rejected. Rejection of common conception of good
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does not mean the denial of common goals which citizens share while maintaining fair political institutions. Common
goals must be separated from the common conception of good, and it is necessary that these two terms differ from
each other. Justice as fairness is free from the impact of comprehensive doctrines, but it is not free from the idea that
citizens support institutions enabling fair cooperation among different doctrines Justice as fairness enables citizens
to follow their life goals in line with their own concep-tion of good which cannot aspire to become a dominant social
doctrine.
Concept of political liberalism is getting close to classical republicanism, because the political conception
of justice as fairness strives to achieve a common goal which is the preservation of institutions of the basic structure
which guarantee freedom and equality of citizens. Classical republicanism also means civil participation aiming to
contribute to the affirmation of the basic rights and freedoms that are in line with the different individuals’ conceptions
of the good. In this way the civil virtues that are in congruence with the virtue of reasonable of the Rawls’s political
liberalism are encouraged. What Rawls disapproves of and refuses is a form of ‘humane republicanism’ which advocates
participation in political life based on substantial reasons having perfectionistic goal, that is, achieving common good
in accordance with specific moral, religious or philosophical doctrine.
Finally, it is important to remember that Rawls, when he was writing political liberalism, had in mind a
democratic society with a stabile constitutional regime that can be legitimized through the political principle of
justice and everything that comes with it. The issue of confronting comprehensive doctrines can be transcended by
accepting elements of justice which are encouraged by the existence of the overlapping consensus and use of public
reason. They guarantee free existence of pluralism of reasonable comprehensive doctrines out of which none can be
dominant. Rawls is aware of the non-liberal character of specific individuals or groups in a society, and of the fact that
they are accepted as such unless they jeopardize the basic structure of a society and the manner in which a social-
political system works.
14.4 Summary
John Rawls’ theory of justice has had a per found role in defining justice in one of the closest ways possible.
Though it is near impossible to come across a real life circumstances supporting the hypothetical situation illustrated
by him, Rawls has successes in elucidating the concept of justice as fairness to a great extent. Most importantly, his
theory sheds light on the rights and liberties of minorities, which utilitarianism failed to do. His “political liberalism’
is an attempt to compensate for the short comings evident in the theory of justice as well as to respond to some
critics. The aim of the conception of political liberalism is to regulate pluralistic co-existence of comprehensive
doctrines, as well as to impose its inner logic to be born as one potentially repressive unifying social-political
system neglecting different philosophical, moral and religious differences.
14.5 Check Your Progress
1. What does the veil of ignorance in John Rawls’ theory of Justice Mean?
2. Explain the three principles of Justice according to Rawls.
3. How Rawls has differentiated between ‘Reasonable’ and ‘Rational’ in his concept of Political Liberalism.
4. How ‘Political Liberalism’ answers the critique of ‘A theory of Justice’.
14.6 Glossary
• Libertarianism: Refers to a contemporary principle of politics which seeks to remove all impediments in
the way of individuals liberty as the basic principle of public policy. It rejects welfare state and treats free
market economy as an essential condition of liberty. It stands for minimum intervention of the state in
mutual dealings of individuals.
• Communitarianism : Is a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the
community. Its philosophy is based upon the belief that a person’s social identity and personality are largely
molded by community relationship.
• Egalitarianism: The doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
• Moral Individualism: A philosophical principle which regards individual as an end-in-itself endowed with
‘dignity’. No wordly thing can be treated as more valuable than a human being.
• Pluralism:
• Modus Vivendi : “Mode of Living” or “Way of Life” arrangement that allows conflicting parties to co-
exist in peace.

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14.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
1. See Sub Section 14.2.2
2. See Sub Section 14.2.3
3. See Section 14.3
4. See Section 14.3
14.8 Suggested Readings
1. N. Daniels (ed.) Reading Rowls: Critical Studies on John Rowls, A theory of Justice, New York: Basic
Books, 1989.
2. C. Kukathas (ed.), John Rawls: Critical Assessment of Leading Political Philosophers, 4 Vol, London
: Routledge, 2003.
3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
4. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
5. O.P. Gamba, Western Political Thought, Mayur Paper Back, 2016.
14.9 Terminal Questions
1. Critically evaluate John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.
2. Examine John Rawls’ concept of Political Liberalism.

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 Lesson-15
Paul Michel Foucault (1926-1984 A.D.)

Structure
15.0 Introduction
15.1 Learning Objectives
15.2 Genealogy of Power and its Relation to Knowledge and Truth
15.3 Discipline : The New Modality of Power
15.4 Summary
15.5 Check Your Progress
15.6 Glossary
15.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
15.8 Suggested Readings
15.9 Terminal Questions
15.0 Introduction
Paul Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian, writer, political activist and literary critic. Foucault’s
theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge and how they are used as a form of social
control through societal institutions. Foucault was born on 15th October 1926 in the provincial town of Poitiers,
France. HE hailed from an Educated, affluent family that was also well connected. Both his parents were ambitions
for their children and not shy about using their connections to help their offspring Foucault did very well at studies.
He earned his doctorate in 1961. He got an opportunity to teach in various universities like Lille, Prestigious ENS
Institute, University of Clermont-Ferrand Tunisia, Vincennes, Paris, California, Berkeley, etc. He also undertook a
series of foreign assignments. He wrote a series of path breaking books-from ‘Madness and Civilization’ to “Birth of
a Clinic”; from ‘The Order of the Things’ to ‘the Archaeology of knowledge’; from ‘Discipline and Punish’ to the
multivolume and incomplete ‘History of Sexuality’. He was one of the most cited figure of 20th century across the
humanities and social sciences. Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS.
15.1 Learning Objective:
After reading this lesson, the students will be able to explain Foucault’s understanding of Genealogy of
power and its relation to knowledge and truth.
15.2 Genealogy of Power and its Relation to knowledge and Truth
Foucault’s early works are dedicated to the “archaeology of knowledge.’ His most influential as well
contentious articulations have been about power. Around the time of Discipline and Punish (1979) and after, Foucault
began to develop a more sustained enquiry into the nature and modes of power and its imbrications with knowledge
and truth. What resulted was a distinctive thoroughgoing analytic of power and an influential rewriting of its conjunction
with knowledge.
According to Foucault, the dominant discourse on power in the Humanities reveals significant lacuna and
misrepresentation. On the one hand, “Mechanisms of power in general have never been much studied by history.
• History has studied those who held power-anecdotal histories of kings and generals.
• Contrasted with this there has been the history of economic processes and infrastructures.
• Again, distinct from this, we have had histories of institutions, of what has been viewed as a super structural
level in relation to the economy.
But power in its strategies, at once general and detailed, and its mechanisms, has never been studied” (Foucault,
1980c, p. 51).
This neglect in the study of how power functions is compounded by a persistent misreading of the relation
between power and truth. “What has been studied even less” Foucault says, is the relation between power and knowledge,
the articulation of each on the other. It has been a tradition for humanism to assume that once someone gains power
he ceases to know. Power makes men mad, and those who govern are blind; only those who keep their distance from
power, who are in no way implicated in tyranny, shut up in their Cartesian poele, their room, their meditations, only
they can discover the truth. (Ibid)

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 The dichotomous reading of power and know ledge/truth has been a salient feature of Western scholarship,
which, Foucault asserts, needs to be arrogated:
The great myth according to which truth never belongs to political power.... needs to be dispelled. It is this
myth which Nietzsche began to demolish by showing, in the numerous texts that, behind all knowledge (savoir),
behind all attainment of knowledge (connaissance), what is involved is a struggle for power. Political power is not
absent from knowledge, it is woven together with it.
According to Foucault, traditionally power has been analysed through two schemes:
i) the economistic “contract-oppression schema,” and
ii) the domination-repression or war—repression schema”
The former is based on the idea that political power follows a legal contractual model of exchange. In such
a model power is taken to be a right, which one is able to possess like a commodity, and which can in consequence
transfer or alienate ...through a legal act.” In other words, “Power is that concrete power which every individual holds,
and whose partial or total cession enables political power or sovereignty to be established”.
The second non-economist analyses of power combines two strands of thinking. Foucault calls the former
Reich’s hypothesis. This hypothesis “argues that the mechanisms of power are those of repression.” The second one,
which he calls Nietzsche’s hypothesis, argues that the basis of the relationship of power lies in “the hostile engagement
of forces”. While drawing inspiration from Nietzsche, among others, Foucault sets about providing a necessary
corrective to these prevalent misunderstandings of power in the Western world.
Foucault’s single most significant intervention on power remains in radically rewriting this age-old script by
emphasizing the function of power as a positive force. The way Foucault puts it, “...power would be a fragile thing if
its only function were to repress, ... If, on the contrary, power is strong, this is because...it produces effects at the
level of desire and also at the level ^knowledge. Far from preventing knowledge, power produces it”. As for what is
power itself, Foucault asserts that power qua power is a myth: “Power in the substantive sense, doesn’t exist.... In
reality power means relations, a more or less organised, hierarchical, co-ordinated cluster of relations”. In other
words, “there is no such entity as power, with or without a capital letter: global, massive or diffused; concentrated or
distributed. Power exists only as exercised by some on others, only when it is put into action, even though, of course,
it is inscribed in a field of sparse available possibilities underpinned by permanent structures”.
Clarifying the specific nature of power relationships, Foucault maintains that power is not to be confused
with violence: “A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it breaks, it destroys or
it closes of all possibilities.” A power relationship, on the other hand, requires that over which power is exercised be
“recognized and maintained to the very end as a subject who acts.” Also, far from shutting off options, a power
relationship enables “a whole field of responses, reactions, results and possible Inventions” remain in play.
Foucault also emphasized the necessary and inextricable inter-articulation of power and knowledge/truth.
He claims that “truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power ...Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by
virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Further defining his meaning, Foucault
asserts that ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects
of power which it induces and which extend it”.
Foucault credits his understanding of power/know ledge to a distinctive methodology he adopted. According
to Foucault, instead of asking what and why with regard to power, he concentrated on the how of power: ‘“How is it
exercised?’ and ‘What happens when individuals exert (as we say) power over others?. The chief advantage of pursuing
this trajectory of thought is that it does not a priori assume the object which it sets out to study. Rather, it is based on
“the suspicion that power as such does not exist”.
In practical terms, Foucault argues that any effective study of power relations as it obtains at a given historical
moment would clarify the following five key matters:
• “The system of differentiations that permits one to act upon the actions of others...”.
• “The types of objectives pursued by those who act upon the action of others...”.
• The “Instrumental modes” through which power is exercised.
• The “forms of institutionalization” in evidence; and finally.
• “The degrees of rationalization” that mark the exercise and ambit of power.

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 Thus, Foucault studies the way in which power has been exercised at various times through Western history,
all the while proclaiming why it is imperative to engage with the operations of power. Foucault attempts neither to
naturalize the particular power relations that exist in a society, nor to make of power an unassailable core of society.
Rather, through his analysis, he seeks to draw out the relations between power and freedom in the form of a political
task. Thus, one of the many significant insights to emerge from Foucault’s researches concerns the nature of power
in the modern Western world.
15.3 Discipline: The New Modality of Power
According to Foucault, from roughly the eighteenth century onwards a new modality of power comes to the
fore. He calls this discipline. According to him, the modern state is a new form of the Christian pastoral power, which
is “ salvation-oriented” (as opposed to political power”)...; “ablative (as opposed to the principle of sovereignty)”; ...
“individualizing (as opposed to legal power)” and is ‘linked with a production of truth-the truth of the individual
himself” (Foucault, 1994b, p. 333). In the modern world, this types of pastoral power witnesses a change of objectives.
• It was not oriented towards salvation in the next world but in this world through ensuring health, security, etc.
• Likewise the administrators of pastoral power undergo a telling increase extending to various state
functionaries and experts.
• Further, there is a bifocal accumulation of knowledge about man around the population/individual axis.
In addition to highlighting the diffuse nature of power relations in the modern world, Foucault also comments
on the specific nature of the power truth/knowledge nexus that prevails. Based on his analysis, Foucault proposes
genealogy as the preferred method of resistant practice to be used by the (modern, class and professionally located)
specific intellectual. Foucault contends that genealogy is emancipatory insofar as it excavates the critiques of subaltern
knowledge bodies and uses these against the reductive and repressive, homogenizing and hierarchizing tendencies of
modern scientific discourse. What genealogy “really does is to entertain the claims to attention of local, discontinuous,
disqualified, illegitimate knowledge’s against the claims of a Unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchize
and order them in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its
objects”. The task for the modern intellectual is to disengage “the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social,
economic, and cultural, within which it operates at the present time”.
Whether one agrees with the particulars of Foucault’s assertions on power, truth and knowledge or not, what
is beyond debate is that it constitutes a new perspective on modern social relations. This perspective not only proved
influential among scholars, thinkers and practitioners across disciplines internationally, but also provided the inspiration
for a new politics.
15.4 Summary
Foucault uses the term ‘power/knowledge’ to signify that power is constituted through accepted from of
knowledge, scientific understanding and ‘truth’. Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of multiple
forms of constraints. And it forms of constraints. And it reduces regular effects of power.
Foucault understands power to be a positive force, which, far from being antagonistic to knowledge/ truth,
actually both constitutes the later, and is constituted by it.
15.4 Check Your Progress
1. According to Foucault, who can discover the truth?
2. What are the two models of understanding power? Briefly explain each one in your own worlds.
15.6 Glossary
• Genealogy : The study and tracing the line of descent.
• Cartesian Poele: Those who keep their distance from power, who are in no way implicated in tyranny.
• Postoral: Appropriate to the giving of spiritual guidance.
• Subaltern: A subaltern is same one with a low ranking in a social, political, or other hierarchy; Who has
been marginalized or oppressed.
• Hegemony: Dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.
15.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise
1. See Section 15.2
2. See Section 15.2
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15.8 Suggested Readings:
1. M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York: Pantheon, 1972.
2. M. Foucault, The Order of Things, London: Tavistock, 1970.
3. M. Foucault, Prison Talk, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other writings 1972-77 (Ed.)
Colin Gordon (Trans.) Colin Garden et al; New York, Pantheon, 1980.
4. M. Foucault, Truth and Power. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other writings. 1972-77 (Ed.),
Ibid.
5. M. Foucault, The Subject and Power, Power : Essential works of Foucault 1954-83, III (Ed) James D.
Faubian (Trans.) Robert Hurley et al., London: Penguin Books, 1994.
15.9 Terminal Questions
1. Explain What Foucault means by Power?
2. Clarify how Power and Knowledge/Truth are inextricable and mutually constitutive for Foucault.

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 ASSIGNMENTS

M.M. = 20

Note: Attempt any four questions of the following;

1) Critically examine Plato’s Theory of Justice.

2) Give an account of Aristotle’s Ideas on the causes and prevention of Revolution.
3) Discuss Locke’s theory of Social Contract.
4) Examine Hegel’s views on Civil Society and State.
5) Discuss J.S. Mill’s views on Liberty.
6) Evaluate the views of Hannah Arendt on Political Action.
7) Critically examine John Rawls Theory of Justice.

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M.A. Ist Semester Political Science Course Code - Pols 101
New Syllabus

WESTERN POLITICAL THINKERS

Lesson 1-15

Prof. Bhawana Jharta

INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION

AND OPEN LEARNING HIMACHAL PRADESH UNIVERSITY,
GYAN PATH, SUMMERHILL, SHIMLA-171005

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 CONTENTS
SR. NO. TOPIC PAGE NO.
Syllabus 1
Lesson-1 Plato (427-347 B.C.) 2
Lesson-2 Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) 14
Lesson-3 Machiavelli (1469-1527 A.D.) 25
Lesson-4 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 A.D.) 32
Lesson-5 John Locke (1632-1704 A.D.) 39
Lesson-6 Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778 AD) 46
Lesson-7 Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832 A.D.) 53
Lesson-8 John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 A.D.) 58
Lesson-9 Jmmanuel Kant (1724-1804 A.D.) 70
Lesson-10 G. W. F. Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831 A.D.)) 77
Lesson-11 Karl Mark (1818-1883 A.D.) 84
Lesson-12 Hannah Arendt (1906-75 A.D.) 88
Lesson-13 Jurgen Habermas (1929-) 93
Lesson-14 John Rawls (1921-2002 A.D.) 99
Lesson-15 Paul Michel Foucault (1926-1984 A.D.) 105

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