Political Science and International Relations Main directions of political thought

1. Political Science and International Relations Main directions of political thought Operační program Vzdělávání pro konkurenceschopnostNázev projektu: Inovace magisterského studijního programu Fakulty ekonomiky a managementu Registrační číslo projektu: CZ.1.07/2.2.00/28.0326

2. Goals of lecture • To explain main philosopical and political thoughts • To introduce main theoretists of liberalism, enlightenment, conservatism, modernity, realism, so called Frankfurt school of thoughts, critical rationalism etc.

3. Social contract (T. Hobbes, J. Locke) Locke and Hobbes were both social contract theorists, and both natural law theorists. LockeHobbes

4. Francouzské osvícenství (Montesquieu, Rousseau) • Typical of the philosophers seeking to apply science to social reform, they treated governments as conditional, and applied the "state of nature" versus "society" criterion to decide the type of government to be established. Both also tried to find the scientific rules that govern the operation of governments. • Montesquieu's three types of government: • Republican: Small size, small population; moderate but not superb nor very extreme climate; not very fertile soil, country generally poor.  • Monarchical: Bigger than republic, but moderate size; bigger population than republic; climate favorable; fertile soil; richer than a republic.  • Despotic: Huge size; sparse population.  • Rousseau’s idea of government: • Direct participatory politics • To achieve freedom and equality in society, each individual must surrender their individual rights and pool all their rights with the rest of society, generating a "general will" of the people from this common pool of all individual rights, after chopping off the too obvious deviations from the mean

5. Conservatism (Burke) • The father of modern conservatism • Seriously contending with Age of Enlightenment thinkers of the time, Burke raised many astute arguments that are worth noting. With clarity of thought and intuition, he championed the search for truth with as much integrity as his opponents did, but from an entirely different perspective. While Locke and the French philosophers idealized the potential of reason, human nature, and the possibility of creating a better world, Burke eloquently argued for the other side, challenging their ideals with a hefty dose of realism. • Pointed out the limits of reason, while extolling the primacy of intuition, along with the wisdom of the ages, on which tradition is based. • Burke viewed colonialism as bad, radicalism as dangerous, and democracy as a threat to social stability. He considered governmental conventions as spiritually based and not to be tinkered with.

6. Modernity (K.Marx, M.Weber) • Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance. • Whereas the Enlightenment invokes a specific movement in Western philosophy, modernity tends to refer only to the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism. Modernity may also refer to tendencies in intellectual culture, particularly the movements intertwined with secularisation and post-industrial life, such as Marxism, existentialism, and the formal establishment of social science. • In the work of Max Weber, modernity is closely associated with the processes of rationalization and disenchantment of the worl. • For Marx, what was the basis of modernity was the emergence of capitalism and the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which led to an unprecedented expansion of productive forces and to the creation of the world market.

7. Frankfurt school (Jurgen Habermas) • The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties. • Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social change and the establishment of rational institutions. Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on dialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of reality. • Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas's work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity"

8. Political realism(C. Schmitt) • Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political: • The political is seen as independent of and prior to morality • Genuine political theory depends on a view of human beings as evil by nature • Just as the political sometimes demands that morality be overridden, so morality can demand the overriding of political expediency. Moreover, the view of human beings as evil, which serves as the foundation of political realism, itself depends on affirming that human nature must also be, in some sense, good. Political realism is thus shown to have its theoretical foundation within a normative framework that demands the political pursuit of at least some moral aims.

9. Conservatism in 20thcentury (Oakeshott) • Michael Joseph Oakeshott (11 December 1901 – 19 December 1990) was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of law. He is widely regarded as one of the most important conservative thinkers of the 20th century. • For the conservative, government is limited in that it provides general rules of conduct or regulation, and people are permitted the enjoyment of making their own choices. Government should not be an instrument to inflame the passions of men; rather it must strive for moderation—not because moderation is a virtue or a truth about men—but because, pragmatically speaking, moderation is essential if men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration.

10. Critical rationalism (Popper) • Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper. Popper wrote about critical rationalism in his works, The Open Society and its Enemies Volume 2, and Conjectures and Refutations. • Knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. I is either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not falsifiable and thus non-empirical. • Critical Rationalism as a discourse positioned itself against what its proponents took to be epistemologically relativist philosophies, particularly post-modernist or sociological approaches to knowledge. • Critical rationalism turns the normal understanding of a traditional rationalist, and a realist, on its head. Especially the view that a theory is better if it is less likely to be true is in direct opposition to the traditional positivistic view, which holds that one should seek for theories that have a high probability

11. Concepts of freedom (Hayek, Berlin) • Although Friedrich Hayek is the political philosopher most closely associated with Thatcherism he does not call himself a conservative. He says he is a liberal. • Hayek's two general themes are that the managed society does not work and that it is incompatible with freedom. • Two types of order: • CONSTRUCTED ORDER (example: government planning) • SPONTANEOUS ORDER (prime example: the market) • Hayek, believes that whilst the role of the state's constructed order is important, it has to be limited. This is a position very like Adam Smith's and you will find it useful to compare Hayek and Smith. • Hayek says that constructed order generally goes wrong if it does any more than provide favourable conditions for spontaneous order. The most important favourable condition to spontaneous order is the rule of law.

12. New wave of liberalism (Rawls) • John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice.” Rawls’ presents an account of justice in the form of two principles: (1) liberty principle= people’s “equal basic liberties” — such as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience (religion), and the right to vote — should be maximized, and (2) difference principle= inequalities in social and economic goods are acceptable only if they promote the welfare of the “least advantaged” members of society. Rawls writes in the social contract tradition. He seeks to define equilibrium points that, when accumulated, form a civil system characterized by what he calls “justice as fairness.” To get there he deploys an argument whereby people in an “original position” (state of nature), make decisions (legislate laws) behind a “veil of ignorance” (of their place in the society– rich or poor) using a reasoning technique he calls “reflective equilibrium.”

13. New wave of liberalism (Nozick) • Robert Nozick, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia,” libertarian response to Rawls which argues that only a “minimal state” devoted to the enforcement of contracts and protecting people against crimes like assault, robbery, fraud can be morally justified. Nozick suggests that “the fundamental question of political philosophy” is not how government should be organized but “whether there should be any state at all,” he is close to John Locke in that government is legitimate only to the degree that it promotes greater security for life, liberty, and property than would exist in a chaotic, pre-political “state of nature.” 

14. Political Science and International Relations Main directions of political thought Operační program Vzdělávání pro konkurenceschopnostNázev projektu: Inovace magisterského studijního programu Fakulty ekonomiky a managementu Registrační číslo projektu: CZ.1.07/2.2.00/28.0326