ENG 316

Seminar Paper and Viva Voce

2018-2019

28 November 2021

The Evolution of Politics in Western Philosophy

Politics is one of the branches of philosophy that is concerned with the study of force and

concepts involved in political opinion. The meaning of the term politics is itself vague in

political philosophy. However, it is often considered that all those practices and institutions are

concerned with the government.

Despite the unique aspects of the contemporary situation, and although ancient political

philosophies were formulated under very different conditions, their study still deals with vital

questions today. Questions concerning the aims of government, the grounds of political

obligation, the rights of individuals against the state, the basis of domination, the relation

between executive and legislative power, and the nature of political liberty and social justice.

They are all fundamental to political philosophy and require answers in terms of modern

knowledge and opinion.

This paper describes how these questions have been asked and answered by representative and

influential political philosophers in the West, from Greco-Roman antiquity through the Middle

Ages, early modern times, and the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. Because of limitations of

space, only political philosophers of outstanding importance have been described in brief.
The main purpose of political philosophy is to limit public power to the extent that help to

maintain survival and enhance the standard of human life. Political philosophy is different from

the study of political and administrative organization. It is infect more theoretical and subjective

than descriptive. It's subjective aspect is concerned with government, addressing questions about

the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between

them. The political philosopher is thus not concerned with how pressure groups work or how, by

various systems of voting, decisions arrive at or with what the aims of the whole political process

should be, in the light of a particular philosophy of life. Thus there is a distinction between

political philosophy and modern political science. Political philosophy, however, is not merely

unpractical speculation, though it may give rise to highly impractical myths. Political philosophy

may thus be viewed as one of the most important intellectual disciplines, as it sets standards of

judgment and defines constructive purposes for the use of public power.

Before the Middle age or during the time of Antiquity, great civilizations arose in Egypt ,

Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, and China. But there was little hypnosis about the problems of

political philosophy in the West. There is no notion about the basis of political obligation and the

purpose of the state, which are the main concern of Western political philosophy.

The first major work of political philosophy in the Western tradition was Plato’s The Republic.

The Republic is the first of the utopias which is the first classic attempt of a European

philosopher to moralize political life. It states the major themes of political philosophy with
poetic power. Further development of Plato’s ideas are described in his Statesman and Laws, the

latter dealing with the ruthless methods how they might be exploited. Plato is indirectly the

pioneer of modern beliefs that only a party organization, inspired by correct and scientific

doctrines, formulated by the written word and interpreted by authority, can rightly guide the

state.

Aristotle was a scientist rather than a prophet, and his Politics, written while he was teaching at

the Lyceum at Athens, is only part of an encyclopedic account of nature and society, in which he

analyzes society as if he were a doctor and prescribes remedies for its ills. Political behavior is

here regarded as a branch of biology as well as of ethics; in contrast to Plato, Aristotle was

an empirical political philosopher. He criticizes many of Plato’s ideas as impracticable, but, like

Plato, he admires balance and moderation and aims at a harmonious city under the rule of law.

Having stated that men-

"is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice he is the worst of

all, since armed injustice is the most dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of

intelligence and wit, moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends." (62, Aristotle)

Aristotle insists that a harmonious city can be achieved only under the rule of law. This doctrine

distinguishes between lawful government and tyranny which survived the Middle Ages. By

subjecting the ruler to law, it became the theoretical discipline of modern constitutional

government.
When Christianity became the predominant and the sole official religion under Theodosius,

political philosophy changed profoundly. St. Augustine’s City of God, written when the empire

was under attack by Germanic tribes, sums up and defines a new division between church and

state and a conflict between “matter” and “spirit". In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, Augustine

assumed that a harmonious and self-sufficient good life could be achieved within a properly

organized city-state where the normal interests of life became insignificant and the Christian

church alone exercised a spiritual authority that could sanction government.

The decline of ancient civilization in the West was severe during the middle ages. Autocracy and

the traditional form of Christianity were inherited by the Christianized rulers. Out of the grand

but impractical visions of the High Middle Ages in the 13th-century climax of Christian

civilization, there emerged the idea of a well-governed realm who's authority was derived from

the community itself, with a program designed to ensure the stability and

administrative efficiency of a secular state. In spite of the decline of the civilization of antiquity

in the West, the Greco-Roman sense of purpose, of the rule of law, and of the responsibility of

power survived in Christian form.

Out of the breakup of the medieval social order, there emerged the humanist but skeptical

outlook of Machiavelli and then the scientific humanist principles of Descartes, Hobbes, and
Spinoza, from which the utilitarian and pragmatic outlook of modern times derives. Another

influential and politically important strain of political philosophy emerged from

the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries.

In Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, Richard Hooker adpted Thomist doctrines of

transcendent and natural law, binding on all human beings, with the authority of the

Elizabethan Church of England. According to him society itself is the fulfillment of natural law,

and human and positive law are reflections of it. Public power is not something personal, as it is

derived from the community under law. Thus,

"the lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men

belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince…to exercise the same of

himself…is no better than mere tyranny."(132, Hooker)

Thus, law makes the king, not the king law.

John Locke was politically one of the most influential English philosopher. His Two Treatises of

Government was written to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, and his Letter

Concerning Toleration was written with a plain and easy refinement. As a philosopher he

accepted strict limitations on the mind, and his political philosophy is moderate and sensible.
A major force in the political and social thought of the 19th century was utilitarianism, the belief

that the actions of governments should be judged simply by the extent to which they encouraged

the “greatest happiness of the greatest number.”(87, Bentham) The founder of the utilitarian

school was Jeremy Bentham, an eccentric Englishman trained in the law. Bentham wrote that the

Fabric of Felicity “must be reared by the hands of reason and Law.”(41, Bentham) Bentham

thought men far more reasonable and calculating than they are and dismissed all the Christian

and humanist ideas rationalizing instinctive loyalty and wonder. He thought society could

advance by calculation of pleasure and pain.

The founders of the United States were deeply influenced by republicanism, Locke, and the

optimism of the European enlightenment. George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas

Jefferson all believed that laws should be the final sanction and that government should be

responsible to the governed.

Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels claimed to understand the “totality” of history

and life as it progressed through a argument of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Marx and Engels

thought that the actions of history were generated by inevitable class conflict which was

economically determined. This was an relevance to the social disorder which was a consequence

of the Industrial Revolution. He was a deeply learned humanist, and his ideal was the fullest

development of the human personality.

The Marxist credo was all the more effective as it expressed the grievances of the poor
with fluent brutality. For the state, which is captured by the class-conscious leaders of the wage-

earners, would take over the means of production from the capitalists, and a brief dictatorship of

the wage-earners would establish genuine communism. The state would wither away, and

individuals would at last become “fully human” in a classless society.

Nineteenth-century European civilization had been the first to dominate and infuse the whole

world and to create a new self-sustaining productivity. But this civilization have a fatal flaw.

The rule of law, accepted within the politically advanced states, had never been achieved among

them. Heavily armed nations and empires had been in a posture of war and Classical

and medieval ideals of world order had long been thrown away. Class conflicts had been

intensified within states and the decline of religious belief had damaged traditional unity. In

1914, when a general European war broke out, the peoples, contrary to the hopes

of global revolutionaries, rallied behind their national governments. When the victorious powers

failed to promote world order through the League of Nations, a second global conflict, even

more horrific than the first, ensued, during which were developed weapons so destructive as to

threaten life everywhere.

In the aftermath of these catastrophes and the worldwide revulsion they occasioned, various

mainstreams of 20th-century political philosophy may be discerned. First, Marxism continued to

inspire revolutionary beliefs. Second, liberalism continued to be developed and refined, partly in

response to libertarian and communitarian critiques. Third, a line of thought pursued by Michel

Foucault and later postmodern philosophers questioned the possibility of objectively valid

political values and genuinely neutral political institutions. And fourth, some feminist
philosophers argued that the historical domination of men over women in the political and

economic spheres reflects the inherently oppressive nature of heterosexual relationships.

To conclude, it can be said that the future direction of political philosophy, like that of political

practice, is uncertain. There will be much for political philosophers to think about in the future.
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