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The author or concept searched is found in the following 27 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Absolutism | Hobbes | Höffe I 228 Absolutism/Hobbes/Höffe: The reason leading to civil war in early modern times, the competing claims to absoluteness of religious confessions and political authorities, has often enough appeared since the 20th century as an exclusive claim of political confessions. Consequently, the closer form of Hobbes' philosophy of state, its absolutism, proves to be counterproductive even today. HöffeVsHobbes: For people to be able to be sure of their lives, they certainly need a state order. In contrast to Hobbes, however, human existence is threatened not only in the stateless state of anarchy, but also in the latent or acutely despotic situation of an omnipotent state power: the absolutist sovereign is not suitable for the guiding idea of the political. >Society, >State, >Freedom, >Individuals, >Tyranny, >Liberalism. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Authoritarianism | Levitsky | Levitsky I 31 Authoritarianism/Levitsky/Ziblatt: In "The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes", 1978 (...) [Juan J.] Linz examined the role of politicians and showed how their behavior can strengthen or endanger democracy. He also proposed a "litmus test" to identify anti-democratic politicians (...)(1). Building on Linz's findings, we have identified four behavioral traits that serve as warning signs and can help identify authoritarian politicians. According to these, we should be concerned when a politician (1) rejects democratic rules in word or deed, (2) denies legitimacy to political opponents (3) tolerates or advocates violence or (4) is willing to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Levitsky I 72 Ad 1) [Donald] Trump fulfilled this criterion when he questioned the legitimacy of the election process and made the unprecedented announcement before the election that he might not recognize the election results. >Electoral Fraud/Levitsky. Levitsky I 73 Ad 2) (Denial of Legitimacy): According to historian Douglas Brinkley, no major presidential candidate since 1860 has questioned the democratic system as much [as Donald Trump]. Only in the run-up to the civil war did important politicians deny the legitimacy of the federal government in a similar way. This was a "secessionist, revolutionary motive" that had stood for the attempt "to throw the entire system overboard at once"(2). Levitsky I 74 Ad 3) (Encouragement of violence): Violence emanating from parties or politicized violence is often the harbinger of the collapse of democracy. Well-known examples are the Black Shirts in Italy, the Nazis in Germany, the leftist guerrillas in Uruguay, and the leftist paramilitary groups in Brazil in the early 1960s. In the last century, no presidential candidate of the major parties ever approved of violence (George Wallace did so in 1968, but he ran for a third party). Trump broke with this tradition. In his election campaign he tolerated the use of violence by his supporters (...). Levitsky I 76 Ad 4) (Willingness to curtail the civic freedoms of (...) critics): Trump revealed this willingness when he announced in 2016 that he would appoint a special investigator to investigate Hillary Clinton after the election and declared that she belonged in prison. He also threatened to punish critical media on several occasions. At a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, for example, he announced, directed against Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, "If I become president, oh, they have a problem."(3) Levitsky I 77 Apart from Richard Nixon, neither of the two major parties' presidential candidates has met even one of the criteria of our litmus test in the last century. Levitsky I 93 Destruction of the supreme courts and institutions: Having the arbitrators on your side is always an advantage. Modern states have various institutions that have the right to investigate and punish the misconduct of both officials and private individuals. These include the judiciary, law enforcement agencies as well as intelligence services, tax offices and supervisory authorities of all kinds. In democracies, such authorities are obliged to act as neutral arbitration boards. For prospective autocrats, the judiciary and law enforcement agencies therefore represent both a challenge and an opportunity. In Hungary, for example, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán nominally staffed independent authorities such as the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Court of Accounts, the Ombudsman's Office, the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Constitutional Court with his party supporters after his return to power in 2010(4). Further examples from Poland, Venezuela, Peru, Malaysia(5-10). 1. Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration, Baltimore 1978, 27-38. 2. »Donald Trump, Slipping in Polls, Warns of ›Stolen Election‹«, in: The New York Times, 14th Oktober 2016. 3. »Donald Trump Threatens to Rewrite Libel Laws to Make It Easier to Sue the Media«, Business Insider, 26th Februar 2016. 4. János Kornai, »Hungary’s UTurn. Retreating from Democracy«, in: Journal of Democracy 26, No. 43 (Juli 2015), p. 35. 5. Joanna Fomina/Jacek Kucharczyk, »Populism and Protest in Poland«, in: Journal of Democracy 27, No. 4 (Oktober 2016), p. 62. The Constitutional Court declared the reform law unconstitutional in early 2016, but the PIS government ignored it. His party, proclaimed PIS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczyński, would "not allow anarchy in Poland, even if it is promoted by the courts"; see Bugaric/Ginsburg, "The Assault on Postcommunist Courts," p. 74. 6. Allan-Randolph Brewer Carías, Dismantling Democracy in Venezuela. The Chávez Authoritarian Experiment, New York 2010, p. 58; Jones, Hugo!, p. 241. 7. Brewer Carías, Dismantling Democracy in Venezuela, p. 59. 8. Javier Corrales/Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela, Washington, D. C., 2011, p. 27; Brewer Carías, Dismantling Democracy in Venezuela, p. 236–238. 9. »El chavismo nunca pierde en el Supremo Venezolano«, in: El País, 12th Dezember 2014, http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/12/12/ actualidad/1418373177_159073.html; Javier Corrales, »Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela«, in: Journal of Democracy 26, No. 2 (April 2015), p. 44. 10. Conaghan, Fujimori’s Peru, pp. 154–162. |
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| Bible Criticism | Spinoza | Gadamer I 184 Bible Criticism/Bible/Hermeneutics/Spinoza/Gadamer: The actual problem of understanding obviously breaks open when the question of reflection arises in the effort to understand the content: How does he come to his opinion? For it is clear that such a question poses a strangeness of quite different species and ultimately means a renunciation of common meaning. >Understanding, >Sense, >Hermeneutics. Spinoza's Bible criticism is a good example of this (and at the same time one of the earliest documents). In Chapter 7 of the "Tractatus theologico-politicus"(1), Spinoza develops his method of interpreting Sacred Scripture on the basis of the interpretation of nature. From the historical data one must infer the meaning (mens) of the authors - to the extent that in these books things are told (history of miracles as well as revelations) that cannot be deduced from the principles known to natural reason. Even in these things, which are in themselves incomprehensible (imperceptibiles), everything that matters can be understood, notwithstanding the fact that the Scripture unquestionably has a moral sense as a whole, if we only recognize the spirit of the author "historically", that is to say, by overcoming our prejudices, we can think of no other things than those that the author could have in mind. Gadamer I 185 Euclid would not be interpreted by anyone as to mean that the life, studies and customs (vita, studium et mores) of the author were to be taken into account, and this also applied to the spirit of the Bible in moral matters (circa documenta moralia). Just because there are incomprehensible things (res imperceptibiles) in the narratives of the Bible, their understanding is dependent on the fact that we determine the understanding of the author's meaning from the whole of his writing (ut mentem auctoris percipiamus). And there it indeed does not matter whether what is meant corresponds to our insight, for we only want to recognize the meaning of the sentences (the sensus orationum), but not their truth (veritas). This requires the elimination of all bias, even the bias caused by our reason (all the more so, of course, by our prejudices).(§ 17). Gadamer I 185 Gadamer: The "naturalness" of the understanding of the Bible is thus based on the fact that the insightful (German: "Einsichtige") can be seen and the undiscerning (German: "Uneinsichtige") becomes "historically" understandable. >Bible. 1. Spinoza: Theologisch-politische Abhandlung. Berlin 1870 Höffe I 238 Bible Criticism/Spinoza/Höffe: Spinoza is also an “enlightener” regarding the critical analysis of the Holy Scriptures. Historical-critical biblical scholarship was already well advanced at that time, so that Spinoza's method, compared with Calvin's, for example, is not new. What is new, perhaps even revolutionarily new, is the political mandate given to the hermeneutics of the Bible: It must submit to the political goal of peace, which in turn must be philosophised in the service of freedom. To this end, Spinoza undermines the authority of the learned theologians and declares every person free to interpret Sacred Scripture for himself - provided the person fulfils a political condition: that his interpretation strengthens obedience to (secular) law. For otherwise neither insurrections nor civil wars can be cut short. VsRevelation: To the extent that Spinoza engages with the content of the Holy Scriptures, it takes away the rank of a timeless revelation from their basic idea. Rather, the scripture consists primarily of pictorial speeches that are directed at the imagination and the capacity of the contemporaries of the time. Insofar as the texts are merely pictorial speeches, a further-reaching hermeneutics, a second-level exegesis, seeks out their hidden subtext, the rational core. According to Spinoza, it is moral and only moral: the commandments of Scripture are meant to guide to righteousness, namely to justice and charity. Religion/Spinoza: Here, religion appears as a means of moral cultivation of people, which results in a perfecting tolerance: Whoever, like Spinoza, commits religion to the moral cultivation of man can remain faithful to his or her own religion and denomination, while at the same time recognizing those of others, for their differences have become irrelevant. |
Spinoza I B. Spinoza Spinoza: Complete Works Indianapolis 2002 Gadamer I Hans-Georg Gadamer Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010 Gadamer II H. G. Gadamer The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986 German Edition: Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Civil Rights | Discourse Theories | Gaus I 163 Civil rights/Discourse theories/Bohman: Civil rights, for example, may be interpreted legally so as to establish and guarantee a minimum threshold and the fair value of communicative liberties. of communicative liberties. They can be interpreted, for example, to assure that voting power is more equitably distributed, permitting greater access to representative forums, or they may open up regulations of political speech to diminish the effects of discrepancies in campaign financing. The emergence of new norms or the reinterpretation of old ones may require a period of what Ackerman (1991(1)) calls 'constitutional politics' within an existing democracy. Ackerman thus sees the constitution as an open-ended discursive project subject to paradigm shifts at historical junctures such as reconstruction after the Civil War and the Great Depression. These changes reflect 'discourse moments', to use Gamson's (1992(2): Part I) term, in which the people, the courts, or the executive respond to historical circumstance by reinterpreting and recreating the Constitution. 1. Ackerman, Bruce (1991) We the People, vol. I. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2. Gamson, William (1992) Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bohman, James 2004. „Discourse Theory“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Conflicts | Huntington | Brocker I 843 Conflicts/Huntington: Thesis: The "clash of cultures is a tribal conflict on a global scale". (1) This conflict cannot be resolved by peaceful means. Def Fault Line Conflict/Terminology/Huntington: takes place at a local level. Def Core State Conflict: is a conflict of global scale. Example: Opposition Christianity-Islam. Example: Opposition China-Japan. Some of these conflicts have lasted for more than a thousand years. Brocker I 844 New coalitions/Huntington: could result between Russia and the West; Japan could turn more towards the Asian cultural area; India could position itself against China. Fault line conflicts: can break out between groups, associations and states. Their persistence is linked to unresolved identity issues, most of which involve religious disputes. Problem: the danger of such conflicts lies in the fact that third countries could feel attracted to one of the conflict parties and forced to intervene due to their cultural proximity. Civil War/Huntington: Thesis: about half of all civil wars of the 1940s and 1950s - and about three quarters of such struggles in the following decades - were fought as conflicts over cultural identity. (2) Brocker I 845 Fault line conflicts: typical course: three phases: Intensification, expansion, containment, interruption and - rarely - settlement". (3) Moderate forces radicalized themselves in the course of these conflicts, while the group identity - in most cases religious affiliation - became the dominant characteristic. Community or multiple identities hardly play a role anymore as the degree of radicalisation increases, and the risk of escalation would increase. Neighbouring, virtually unaffected groups as well as more powerful third countries are fighting on one side or the other of the fault line conflict. Fault line conflicts: tend to flare up again and are only discontinued if they are in the interests of neighbouring countries or interested third countries (see "Kin countries", Terminology/Huntington). (4) Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York 1996. Dt.: Samuel P. Huntington, Kampf der Kulturen. Die Neugestaltung der Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert, München/Wien 1998 (zuerst 1996).S. 331 2. Ebenda S. 415 3. Ebenda S. 434 4. Ebenda S. 480 Philipp Klüfers/Carlo Masala, „Samuel P. Huntington, Kampf der Kulturen“, in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
PolHunt I Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order New York 1996 Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Constitution | Ackerman | Gaus I 163 Constitution/Ackerman/deliberative democracy/Bohman: Civil rights, for example, may be interpreted legally so as to establish and guarantee a minimum threshold and the fair value of communicative liberties. of communicative liberties. They can be interpreted, for example, to assure that voting power is more equitably distributed, permitting greater access to representative forums, or they may open up regulations of political speech to diminish the effects of discrepancies in campaign financing. The emergence of new norms or the reinterpretation of old ones may require a period of what Ackerman (1991(1)) calls 'constitutional politics' within an existing democracy. Ackerman thus sees the constitution as an open-ended discursive project subject to paradigm shifts at historical junctures such as Reconstruction after the Civil War and the Great Depression. These changes reflect 'discourse moments', to use Gamson's (1992(2): Part I) term, in which the people, the courts, or the executive respond to historical circumstance by reinterpreting and recreating the Constitution. >Civil rights/Discourse theories. 1. Ackerman, Bruce (1991) We the People, vol. I. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2. Gamson, William (1992) Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bohman, James 2004. „Discourse Theory“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Constitution | Levitsky | Levitsky I 115 Constitution/Democracy/Levitsky/Ziblatt: Are constitutional security measures sufficient alone to protect democracy? We think: no. Even well thought-out constitutions sometimes fail. The Weimar Republic Constitution of 1919 was written by some of the country's best legal scholars. In the opinion of many, the traditional and highly respected constitutional state enshrined in it was sufficient to prevent abuse of power. But both the constitution and the constitutional state collapsed rapidly after Hitler's seizure of power in 1933(1). Levitsky I 116 Latin America: Many of the republics that became independent followed the United States' model and adopted the presidential system, the bicameral parliament and the Supreme Court, and in some cases the electoral college and the federal structure of the country. Some adopted a constitution that was almost a copy of the U.S.(2). Nevertheless, almost all of the young republics slipped into civil wars and dictatorships. Levitsky/Ziblatt: First of all, constitutions are always incomplete. Like any set of rules, they contain numerous gaps and ambiguities. Levitsky I 118 All successful democracies are based on informal rules that are not laid down in the constitution, but are widely known and respected(3). In the case of American democracy, this is a decisive factor. 1. Kenneth F. Ledford, »German Lawyers and the State in the Weimar Republic«, in: Law and History Review 13, Nr. 2 (1995), p. 317–349. 2. George Athan Billias, American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776–1989, New York 2009, S. 124–125; Zackary Elkins/Tom Ginsburg/James Melton, The Endurance of National Constitutions, New York 2009, p. 26. 3. Siehe Gretchen Helmke/Steven Levitsky (Hg.), Informal Institutions and Democracy. Lessons from Latin America, Baltimore 2006. |
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| Economic Development | Acemoglu | Acemogu I 83 Economic Development/Acemoglu/Robinson: Political and economic institutions, which are ultimately the choice of society, can be inclusive and encourage economic growth. Or they can be extractive and become impediments to economic growth. Nations fail when they have extractive economic institutions, supported by extractive political institutions that impede and even block economic growth. But this means that the choice of institutions - that is, the politics of institutions - is central to our quest for understanding the reasons for the success and failure of nations. >Institutions/Acemoglu, >Prosperity/Acemoglu, >Political Institutions/Acemoglu. Acemogu I 106 The divergent paths of English, French, and Spanish societies in the seventeenth century illustrate the importance of the interplay of small institutional differences with critical junctures. >Institutions/Acemoglu. During critical junctures, a major event or confluence of factors disrupts the existing balance of political or economic power in a nation. These can affect only a single country, such as the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, which at first created a critical juncture only for Communist China. Often, however, critical junctures affect a whole set of societies, in the way that, for example, colonization and then decolonization affected most of the globe. Such critical junctures are important because there are formidable barriers against gradual improvements, resulting from the synergy between extractive political and economic institutions and the support they give each other. For economic development see also >Economic growth/Acemoglu, >Technology/Acemoglu, >Economic Institutions/Acemoglu, >Political Institutions/Acemoglu. Acemoglu I 109 The richly divergent patterns of economic development around the world hinge on the interplay of critical junctures and institutional drift. Existing political and economic institutions - sometimes shaped by a long process of >institutional drift and sometimes resulting from divergent responses to prior >critical junctures - create the anvil upon which future change will be forged. E.g., the Black Death and the expansion of world trade after 1600 were both major critical junctures for European powers and interacted with different initial institutions to create a major divergence. Acemoglu I 272 Reversed development in developing countries: E.g., India: The East India Company looted local wealth and took over, and perhaps even intensified, the extractive taxation institutions of the Mughal rulers of India. This expansion coincided with the massive contraction of the Indian textile industry, since, after all, there was no longer a market for these goods in Britain. The contraction went along with de-urbanization and increased poverty. It initiated a long period of reversed development in India. Soon, instead of producing textiles, Indians were buying them from Britain and growing opium for the East India Company to sell in China. >Developing countries/Acemoglu. Africa: The Atlantic slave trade repeated the same pattern in Africa, even if starting from less developed conditions than in Southeast Asia and India. Many African states were turned into war machines intent on capturing and selling slaves to Europeans. The South African state created a dual economy, preventing 80 percent of the population from taking part in skilled occupations, commercial farming, and entrepreneurship. All this not only explains why industrialization passed by large parts of the world but also encapsulates how economic development may sometimes feed on, and even create, the underdevelopment in some other part of the domestic or the world economy. Acemoglu I 282 Development in individual countries: Australia, like the United states, experienced a different path to inclusive institutions than the one taken by England. ((s) For „inclusive institutions“ see >Terminology/Acemoglu.) The same revolutions that shook England during the Civil War and then the Glorious Revolution were not needed in the United States or Australia because of the very different circumstances in which those countries were founded—though this of course does not mean that inclusive institutions were established without any conflict, and, in the process, the United States had to throw off British colonialism. In England there was a long history of absolutist rule that was deeply entrenched and required a revolution to remove it. In the United States and Australia, there was no such thing. The inclusive institutions established in the United States and Australia meant that the Industrial Revolution spread quickly to these lands and they began to get rich. The path these countries took was followed by colonies such as Canada and New Zealand. Literature: The notion that the development of the rich countries of the West is the mirror image of the underdevelopment of the rest of the world was originally developed by Wallertsein (1974–2011)(1), though he emphasizes very different mechanisms than we do. 1.Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974–2011). The Modern World System. 4 Vol. New York: Academic Press. |
Acemoglu II James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy Cambridge 2006 Acemoglu I James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 |
| Economic Development | Robinson | Acemogu I 83 Economic Development/Acemoglu/Robinson: Political and economic institutions, which are ultimately the choice of society, can be inclusive and encourage economic growth. Or they can be extractive and become impediments to economic growth. Nations fail when they have extractive economic institutions, supported by extractive political institutions that impede and even block economic growth. But this means that the choice of institutions - that is, the politics of institutions - is central to our quest for understanding the reasons for the success and failure of nations. >Institutions/Acemoglu, >Prosperity/Acemoglu, >Political Institutions/Acemoglu. Acemogu I 106 The divergent paths of English, French, and Spanish societies in the seventeenth century illustrate the importance of the interplay of small institutional differences with critical junctures. >Institutions/Acemoglu. During critical junctures, a major event or confluence of factors disrupts the existing balance of political or economic power in a nation. These can affect only a single country, such as the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, which at first created a critical juncture only for Communist China. Often, however, critical junctures affect a whole set of societies, in the way that, for example, colonization and then decolonization affected most of the globe. Such critical junctures are important because there are formidable barriers against gradual improvements, resulting from the synergy between extractive political and economic institutions and the support they give each other. For economic development see also >Economic growth/Acemoglu, >Technology/Acemoglu, >Economic Institutions/Acemoglu, >Political Institutions/Acemoglu. Acemoglu I 109 The richly divergent patterns of economic development around the world hinge on the interplay of critical junctures and institutional drift. Existing political and economic institutions - sometimes shaped by a long process of >institutional drift and sometimes resulting from divergent responses to prior >critical junctures - create the anvil upon which future change will be forged. E.g., the Black Death and the expansion of world trade after 1600 were both major critical junctures for European powers and interacted with different initial institutions to create a major divergence. Acemoglu I 272 Reversed development in developing countries: E.g., India: The East India Company looted local wealth and took over, and perhaps even intensified, the extractive taxation institutions of the Mughal rulers of India. This expansion coincided with the massive contraction of the Indian textile industry, since, after all, there was no longer a market for these goods in Britain. The contraction went along with de-urbanization and increased poverty. It initiated a long period of reversed development in India. Soon, instead of producing textiles, Indians were buying them from Britain and growing opium for the East India Company to sell in China. >Developing countries/Acemoglu. Africa: The Atlantic slave trade repeated the same pattern in Africa, even if starting from less developed conditions than in Southeast Asia and India. Many African states were turned into war machines intent on capturing and selling slaves to Europeans. The South African state created a dual economy, preventing 80 percent of the population from taking part in skilled occupations, commercial farming, and entrepreneurship. All this not only explains why industrialization passed by large parts of the world but also encapsulates how economic development may sometimes feed on, and even create, the underdevelopment in some other part of the domestic or the world economy. Acemoglu I 282 Development in individual countries: Australia, like the United states, experienced a different path to inclusive institutions than the one taken by England. ((s) For „inclusive institutions“ see >Terminology/Acemoglu.) The same revolutions that shook England during the Civil War and then the Glorious Revolution were not needed in the United States or Australia because of the very different circumstances in which those countries were founded—though this of course does not mean that inclusive institutions were established without any conflict, and, in the process, the United States had to throw off British colonialism. In England there was a long history of absolutist rule that was deeply entrenched and required a revolution to remove it. In the United States and Australia, there was no such thing. The inclusive institutions established in the United States and Australia meant that the Industrial Revolution spread quickly to these lands and they began to get rich. The path these countries took was followed by colonies such as Canada and New Zealand. Literature: The notion that the development of the rich countries of the West is the mirror image of the underdevelopment of the rest of the world was originally developed by Wallertsein (1974–2011)(1), though he emphasizes very different mechanisms than we do. 1.Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974–2011). The Modern World System. 4 Vol. New York: Academic Press. |
EconRobin I James A. Robinson James A. Acemoglu Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 Robinson I Jan Robinson An Essay on Marxian Economics London 1947 Acemoglu II James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy Cambridge 2006 Acemoglu I James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 |
| Humans | Hobbes | I 218 Human/Hobbes/Höffe: Even if Hobbes speaks the word of absolutism, with him the human being as a person already becomes the subject and measure of the political order. But it is not the essence of equal dignity, neither in its secular determination as a gift of language and reason nor in its religious determination as an image of God. Human rights: In any case, there can be no talk of human rights or fundamental rights in the natural state. What matters is the same weakness and vulnerability. After all, through cunning or through association with others, the weaker ones can kill even the strongest. As a result, the natural desire for happiness runs the risk of people throwing each other into misery. >Civil war, >Natural state. Hobbes/VsMachiavelli: Unlike Machiavelli, this danger does not arise from a pessimistic view of humanity (fed by political realism). According to Hobbes, people are not, as Machiavelli says in the Prince, "ungrateful, fickle, mendacious, hypocritical and greedy" (1). War of all against all/Hobbes: The misery is rather the result of living together without a community: without statehood people live in a state of war of all against all. Aggression/Civil War/Hobbes/Höffe: (...) with the latent, not necessarily actual violence in the natural state, Hobbes does not claim that the human being is inherently aggressive and destructive. >War/Hobbes. For him, human passions are non-judgmental driving forces that are realistically accepted as they are. The human is not antisocial in a moral sense, that is to say evil; he is not even innocently evil. His basic passion, the striving for free self-preservation and for happiness (...) leads to the (...) inevitable antisocial tendency, the tendency to violence. 1. Machiavelli, Il Principe Chap. XVII |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 |
| Institutions | Acemoglu | Acemoglu I 74 Institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: A. Def Inclusive institutions: (...) such as those in South Korea or in the United States, are those that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish. To be inclusive, economic institutions must feature secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; it also must permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers. Property: Secure private property rights are central, since only those with such rights will be willing to invest and increase productivity. Acemoglu I 75 Secure property rights, the law, public services, and the freedom to contract and exchange all rely on the state, the institution with the coercive capacity to impose order, prevent theft and fraud, and enforce contracts between private parties. Infrastructure: To function well, society also needs other public services: roads and a transport network so that goods can be transported; a public infrastructure so that economic activity can flourish; and some type of basic regulation to prevent fraud and malfeasance. State: The state is thus inexorably intertwined with economic institutions as the enforcer of law and order, private property, and contracts, and often as a key provider of public services. Inclusive economic institutions need and use the state. B. Def Exctractive Institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: (...) such institutions are designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset. Cf. >Pluralism/Acemoglu. Acemoglu I 80 There is strong synergy between economic and political institutions. Extractive political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power. Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of the society. Acemoglu I 81 [The] synergistic relationship between extractive economic and political institutions introduces a strong feedback loop: political institutions enable the elites controlling political power to choose economic institutions with few constraints or opposing forces. When existing elites are challenged under extractive political institutions and the newcomers break through, the newcomers are likewise subject to only a few constraints. Inclusice institutions: Inclusive economic institutions, in turn, are forged on foundations laid by inclusive political institutions, which make power broadly distributed in society and constrain its arbitrary exercise. Such political institutions also make it harder for others to usurp power and undermine the foundations of inclusive institutions. Those controlling political power cannot easily use it to set up extractive economic institutions for their own benefit. Inclusive economic institutions, in turn, create a more equitable distribution of resources, facilitating the persistence of inclusive political institutions. Acemoglu I 82 (...) inclusive economic institutions will neither support nor be supported by extractive political ones. Either they will be transformed into extractive economic institutions to the benefit of the narrow interests that hold power, or the economic dynamism they create will destabilize the extractive political institutions, opening the way for the emergence of inclusive political institutions. Acemoglu I 92 Extractive institutions: There are two distinct but complementary ways in which growth ((s) even) under extractive political institutions can emerge cf. >Economic growth/Acemoglu. Acemoglu I 328 Inclusive Institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: Inclusive political institutions not only check major deviations from inclusive economic institutions, but they also resist attempts to undermine their own continuation. [E.g.,] It was in the immediate interests of the Democratic Congress and Senate to pack the court and ensure that all New Deal legislation survived. But, [e.g.] in the same way that British political elites in the early eighteenth century understood that suspending the rule of law would endanger the gains they had wrested from the monarchy, congressmen and senators understood that if the president could undermine the independence of the judiciary, then this would undermine the balance of power in the system that protected them from the president and ensured the continuity of pluralistic political institutions. Acemoglu I 365 Extractive institutions/vicious circle: extractive political institutions create few constraints on the exercise of power, so there are essentially no institutions to restrain the use and abuse of power by those overthrowing previous dictators and assuming control of the state; and extractive economic institutions imply that there are great profits and wealth to be made merely by controlling power, expropriating the assets of others, and setting up monopolies. Acemoglu I 366 Reproduction of extractive institutions: When extractive institutions create huge inequalities in society and great wealth and unchecked power for those in control, there will be many wishing to fight to take control of the state and institutions. Extractive institutions then not only pave the way for the next regime, which will be even more extractive, but they also engender continuous infighting and civil wars. Acemogu I 372 Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate. Extractive political institutions support these economic institutions by cementing the power of those who benefit from the extraction. Acemoglu I 463 Literature: The notion of extractive institutions originates from Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001)(1). The terminology of inclusive institutions was suggested to us by Tim Besley. The terminology of economic losers and the distinction between them and political losers comes from Acemoglu and Robinson (2000b)(2). In the social science literature there is a great deal of research related to our theory and argument. See Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2005b)(3) for an overview of this literature and our contribution to it. The institutional view of comparative development builds on a number of important works. Particularly notable is the work of North; see North and Thomas (1973)(4), North (1982)(5), North and Weingast (1989)(6), and North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009)(7). 1. Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Develo 2.Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A. (2000b). “Political Losers as Barriers to Economic Development.” American Economic Review 90: 126–30. 3.Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (2005b). “Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth.” In Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, eds. Handbook of Economic Growth. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 4. North, Douglass C. and Robert P. Thomas (1973). The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. New York: Cambridge University Press. 5.North, Douglass C. (1982). Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 6.North, Douglass C., and Barry R. Weingast (1989). “Constitutions and Commitment: Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England.” Journal of Economic History 49: 803–32. 7.North, Douglass C., John J. Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast (1989). Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Mause I 107f Institutions/Robinson/Acemoglu: From the second half of the 1990s onwards, an economic mindset has been established that deals with institutions as determinants of growth and development from a macro-perspective. Robinson and Acemoglu distinguish between "extractive" and "inclusive" orders. The decisive point here is: Where political rule is monopolised, it is regularly in the interest of the rulers to specifically suppress innovations, because the "creative destruction" (Schumpeter) associated with it could destabilise not only economic sinecures, but also the rule of the political elite.(1) 1. Acemoglu, James A., and James A. Robinson, Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. New York 2012. |
Acemoglu II James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy Cambridge 2006 Acemoglu I James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 Mause I Karsten Mause Christian Müller Klaus Schubert, Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018 |
| Institutions | Robinson | Acemoglu I 74 Institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: A. Def Inclusive institutions: (...) such as those in South Korea or in the United States, are those that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish. To be inclusive, economic institutions must feature secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; it also must permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers. Property: Secure private property rights are central, since only those with such rights will be willing to invest and increase productivity. Acemoglu I 75 Secure property rights, the law, public services, and the freedom to contract and exchange all rely on the state, the institution with the coercive capacity to impose order, prevent theft and fraud, and enforce contracts between private parties. Infrastructure: To function well, society also needs other public services: roads and a transport network so that goods can be transported; a public infrastructure so that economic activity can flourish; and some type of basic regulation to prevent fraud and malfeasance. State: The state is thus inexorably intertwined with economic institutions as the enforcer of law and order, private property, and contracts, and often as a key provider of public services. Inclusive economic institutions need and use the state. B. Def Exctractive Institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: (...) such institutions are designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset. Cf. >Pluralism/Acemoglu. Acemoglu I 80 There is strong synergy between economic and political institutions. Extractive political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power. Economic institutions are then often structured by this elite to extract resources from the rest of the society. Acemoglu I 81 [The] synergistic relationship between extractive economic and political institutions introduces a strong feedback loop: political institutions enable the elites controlling political power to choose economic institutions with few constraints or opposing forces. When existing elites are challenged under extractive political institutions and the newcomers break through, the newcomers are likewise subject to only a few constraints. Inclusice institutions: Inclusive economic institutions, in turn, are forged on foundations laid by inclusive political institutions, which make power broadly distributed in society and constrain its arbitrary exercise. Such political institutions also make it harder for others to usurp power and undermine the foundations of inclusive institutions. Those controlling political power cannot easily use it to set up extractive economic institutions for their own benefit. Inclusive economic institutions, in turn, create a more equitable distribution of resources, facilitating the persistence of inclusive political institutions. Acemoglu I 82 (...) inclusive economic institutions will neither support nor be supported by extractive political ones. Either they will be transformed into extractive economic institutions to the benefit of the narrow interests that hold power, or the economic dynamism they create will destabilize the extractive political institutions, opening the way for the emergence of inclusive political institutions. Acemoglu I 92 Extractive institutions: There are two distinct but complementary ways in which growth ((s) even) under extractive political institutions can emerge cf. >Economic growth/Acemoglu. Acemoglu I 328 Inclusive Institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: Inclusive political institutions not only check major deviations from inclusive economic institutions, but they also resist attempts to undermine their own continuation. [E.g.,] It was in the immediate interests of the Democratic Congress and Senate to pack the court and ensure that all New Deal legislation survived. But, [e.g.] in the same way that British political elites in the early eighteenth century understood that suspending the rule of law would endanger the gains they had wrested from the monarchy, congressmen and senators understood that if the president could undermine the independence of the judiciary, then this would undermine the balance of power in the system that protected them from the president and ensured the continuity of pluralistic political institutions. Acemoglu I 365 Extractive institutions/vicious circle: extractive political institutions create few constraints on the exercise of power, so there are essentially no institutions to restrain the use and abuse of power by those overthrowing previous dictators and assuming control of the state; and extractive economic institutions imply that there are great profits and wealth to be made merely by controlling power, expropriating the assets of others, and setting up monopolies. Acemoglu I 366 Reproduction of extractive institutions: When extractive institutions create huge inequalities in society and great wealth and unchecked power for those in control, there will be many wishing to fight to take control of the state and institutions. Extractive institutions then not only pave the way for the next regime, which will be even more extractive, but they also engender continuous infighting and civil wars. Acemogu I 372 Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate. Extractive political institutions support these economic institutions by cementing the power of those who benefit from the extraction. Acemoglu I 463 Literature: The notion of extractive institutions originates from Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001)(1). The terminology of inclusive institutions was suggested to us by Tim Besley. The terminology of economic losers and the distinction between them and political losers comes from Acemoglu and Robinson (2000b)(2). In the social science literature there is a great deal of research related to our theory and argument. See Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2005b)(3) for an overview of this literature and our contribution to it. The institutional view of comparative development builds on a number of important works. Particularly notable is the work of North; see North and Thomas (1973)(4), North (1982)(5), North and Weingast (1989)(6), and North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009)(7). 1. Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Develo 2.Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A. (2000b). “Political Losers as Barriers to Economic Development.” American Economic Review 90: 126–30. 3.Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (2005b). “Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth.” In Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, eds. Handbook of Economic Growth. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 4. North, Douglass C. and Robert P. Thomas (1973). The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. New York: Cambridge University Press. 5.North, Douglass C. (1982). Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 6.North, Douglass C., and Barry R. Weingast (1989). “Constitutions and Commitment: Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England.” Journal of Economic History 49: 803–32. 7.North, Douglass C., John J. Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast (1989). Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Mause I 107f Institutions/Robinson/Acemoglu: From the second half of the 1990s onwards, an economic mindset has been established that deals with institutions as determinants of growth and development from a macro-perspective. Robinson and Acemoglu distinguish between "extractive" and "inclusive" orders. The decisive point here is: Where political rule is monopolised, it is regularly in the interest of the rulers to specifically suppress innovations, because the "creative destruction" (Schumpeter) associated with it could destabilise not only economic sinecures, but also the rule of the political elite. (1) 1. Acemoglu, James A., and James A. Robinson, Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. New York 2012. |
EconRobin I James A. Robinson James A. Acemoglu Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 Robinson I Jan Robinson An Essay on Marxian Economics London 1947 Acemoglu II James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy Cambridge 2006 Acemoglu I James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 Mause I Karsten Mause Christian Müller Klaus Schubert, Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018 |
| Liberalism | Communitarianism | Gaus I 172 Liberalism/Communitarianism/Dagger: Those enlisted on the communitarian side of the Debate [between liberals and communitarians] have pressed four major objections against their 'liberal' or 'individualist' opponents. 1) the first is the complaint, already noted in Walzer, that abstract reason will not bear the weight philosophers have placed on it in their attempts to ground justice and morality. This 'Enlightenment project' (MacIntyre, 1981(1)) is doomed by its failure to recognize that reasoning about these matters cannot proceed apart from shared traditions and practices, each with its own set of roles, responsibilities, and virtues. 2) second, the liberal emphasis on individual rights and justice comes at the expense of civic duty and the common good. In Sandel's words, 'justice finds its limits in those forms of community that engage the identity as well as the interests of the participants. LTJo some I owe more than justice requires or even permits in virtue of those more or less enduring attachments and commitments which taken together partly define the person I am' (1982(2): 179, 182). 3) Contemporary liberals are blind to these enduring attachments and commitments, according to the third charge, because they too often rely on an atomistic conception of the self - an 'unencumbered self' in Sandel's terms - that is supposedly prior to its ends and attachments. Such a conception is both false and pernicious, for individual selves are largely constituted by the communities that nurture and sustain them. When Rawls and other 'deontological liberals' teach individuals to think of themselves as somehow prior to and apart from these communities, they are engaged quite literally in a self-defeating enterprise. >M. Sandel. 4) the fourth objection, then, is that these abstract and universalistic theories of justice and rights have contributed to the withdrawal into private life and the intransigent insistence on one's rights against others that threaten modern societies. There is little sense of a common good or even a common ground on which citizens can meet. In MacIntyre's words, the conflict between the advo- cates of incommensurable moral positions has so riven modern societies that politics now 'is civil war carried on by other means' (1981(1): 253). For a valuable, full-length survey of this debate, see Mulhall and Swift, 1996(3). >Communitarianism, >Communitarianism as an author, >A. MacIntyre. 1. MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981 ) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2. Sandel, Michael (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3. Mulhall, Stephen and Adam Swift (1996) Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Dagger, Richard 2004. „Communitarianism and Republicanism“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Marx | Rothbard | Rothbard II 317 Marx/Rothbard: Marx emphatically rejected those Utopians who aimed to arrive at communism through a gradual and evolutionary process, through a steady advancement of the good. No, Marx harked back to the apocalyptics, the post-millennial coercive German and Dutch Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, to the millennial sects during the English Civil War, and to the various groups of pre-millennial Christians who foresaw a bloody Armageddon at the Last Days, before the millennium could be established. Rothbard II 320 Prehistory/Rothbard: In the typical communal millennial future, an epoch of bliss and harmony, work, the necessity to labour, becomes de-emphasized or disappears altogether. Labour, at least labour in order to maintain and advance one's living standards, does not ring true with very many people as a feature of Utopia. Thus, in the vision of Joachim of Fiore, perhaps the first medieval millennialist, no work would be required to disturb the endless round of celebration and prayer, because mankind would have achieved the status of immaterial objects. If man were pure spirit, it is true that the economic problem - the problem of production and living standards - would necessarily disappear. Unfortunately, however, Marx, being an atheist and materialist, could not exactly fall back on a Fiore-like communism of pure spirit. How could solidly material human beings solve the problem of production and of maintaining and expanding their living standards? Solution/Rothbard: On the one hand, Marx assumed and asserted that goods in the future communist society would be superabundant. If so, there would of course be no need to refer to the universal economic problem of scarcity of means and resources as applied to ends. But by assuming away the problem, Marx bequeathed the puzzle to future generations, (…). Rothbard II 321 On the other hand, Marxist elites already entrenched in power have prudentially put off the ultimate goal of communism ever further into a receding future. And so the Soviets were quick to stress hard work and gradualism in persevering toward the ultimate goal.(1) Rothbard II 335 Communism/Marx/RothbardVsMarx/MisesVsMarx/Rothbard: {Marx] did not propose to leave the attainment of communism to the imperfect free wills of mankind. He demanded a certain, 'inevitable' path, a 'law of history' that would demonstrate the absolute inevitability of history's reaching its final glory in a communist society. Rothbard II 336 (…) Marx's obstetrical analogies are only a feeble attempt to evade the self-contradiction between the idea of inevitability and action to achieve the inevitable. For according to Marx, the timing as well as the nature of events is determined by the material dialectic ofhistory. Socialism is brought about, wrote Marx in Capital, by the 'operation of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself. MisesVsMarx: As von Mises points out, to Marx Ideas, political parties, and revolutionary actions are merely superstructural; they can neither delay nor accelerate the march of history. Socialism will come when the material conditions for its appearance will have matured in the womb [obstetrics again!] of capitalist society, neither sooner or later. If Marx had been consistent, he would not have embarked upon any political activity. He would have waited quietly for the day on which 'the knell of private capitalist property sounds'.(2) 1. 'The C.P.S.U. [Communist Party of the Soviet Union], being a party of scientific communism, advances and solves the problems of communist construction as the material and spiritual prerequisites for them become ready and mature, being guided by the fact that necessary stages of development must not be skipped over...'. Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism (2nd rev. ed., Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963), p. 662. Also see ibid., pp. 645-6, 666-7, 674-5. 2. Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History, (1957, Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1985), p. 81. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Memes | Dawkins | I 307 Meme/Dawkins: Thesis: In view of the great cultural differences, we must free ourselves from the notion that genes are the only foundation of evolution. - ((s) Vs: Dawkins refers to Margaret Mead's description of gentle Arapesh Indians, which is disputed today.) Dawkins's thesis: Darwinism is too powerful a theory to be confined to the narrow framework of the gene. I will include the gene as an analogue in my thesis, no more. I 308 Meme/Dawkins: For a short time, there has been a new type of replicator on our planet. The new "primordial soup" for its emergence is human culture. I 309 If a thought finds new followers, it multiplies by spreading from one brain to another. N. K. Humphrey: Memes should be understood as living structures, not only in the transmitted, but also in the technical sense. Dawkins: Memes are parasites in human brains. For example, the meme for believing in life after death. Memes are vehicles for their own distribution. I 313 Meme/tradition/replication/Gene/Dawkins: Everyone will change the idea a bit by passing it on, and in the rarest of cases use the same vocabulary. Thus, memes do not seem to have the particle characteristic of genes. I 314 Meme/Dawkins: For example, if part of a melody serves as jingle for a radio station, it deserves the designation Meme. I 318 Meme/Dawkins: Part of the mem of God is faith which renounces evidence. Nothing is as deadly to some memes as the search for evidence. Blind faith is a strong partner for spreading memes: e.g. civil war, religious hatred, retaliation, mutually reinforcing unscrupulousness. I 320 Gene/heredity/Dawkins: Queen Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. But it is quite likely that she does not carry a single gene from him. Meme/Dawkins: On the other hand, many memes of Socrates still exist. And unweakened at that! Perhaps one or two genes as well, but who is interested in the genes in this context? Memes spread, because it is useful for them! Nothing else is needed for that than brains capable of imitating. Then memes will be formed, which will exploit this ability to the utmost. Cf. >Genes/Dawkins. |
Da I R. Dawkins The Selfish Gene, Oxford 1976 German Edition: Das egoistische Gen, Hamburg 1996 Da II M. St. Dawkins Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness, Oxford/New York/Heidelberg 1993 German Edition: Die Entdeckung des tierischen Bewusstseins Hamburg 1993 |
| Modernism | MacIntyre | Brocker I 660 Modernism/Moral/MacIntyre: Thesis: Despite the efforts of three centuries, there is still no uniform, rationally justifiable explanation of a liberal, individualistic point of view(1). Dilemma: either one follows the efforts and the collapse of the Enlightenment (see Enlightenment/MacIntyre) until only Nietzsche's diagnosis remains, or one must say that the project of the Enlightenment should never have been tackled. (2) >Morals/MacIntyre, Enlightenment/MacIntyre, Nietzsche/MacIntyre. Brocker I 661 Modernism Politics/MacIntyre: is nothing more than a "civil war by other means".(3) Solution/MacIntyre: as a last resort, MacIntyre proposes to develop local forms of community "in which civilisation and intellectual and moral life can be maintained beyond the new dark age that has already come upon us.“(4) Brocker I 664 Modernism/MacIntyre: modernism does not understand itself. Modern fake morality is the result of a catastrophe that was not recognizable as a catastrophe (...) (5) Solution/MacIntyre: MacIntyre mobilizes the power of the saving narrative rather than rational arguments against the epochal context of delusion. Brocker I 665 For MacIntyre, the human is a "narrative animal".(6) We are the story we live. Solution/MacIntyre: an affirmative confirmation of one's own dependence on tradition. Brocker I 666 This would be a new virtue which should not be confused with a form of conservative enthusiasm for the old. Instead, an adequate sense of tradition manifests itself in the access to those future possibilities that the past has made available for the present. (7) MacIntyre has no hope of salvation from the unease of modernism. A feeling of sentimentality or even grief is intended. (8) 1. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame, Ind. 1981. Dt: Alasdair MacIntyre, Der Verlust der Tugend. Zur moralischen Krise der Gegenwart. Erweiterte Neuausgabe, Frankfurt/M. 2006 (zuerst 1987), p. 345 2. Ibid. p. 160 3. Ibid. p. 337. 4. Ibid. p. 350. 5. Ibid. p. 16 6. Ibid. p. 288 7. Ibid. p. 297f. 8. Ibid. p. 201. Jürgen Goldstein, „Alasdair MacIntyre, Der Verlust der Tugend“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Montesquieu | Höffe | Höffe I 260 Montesquieu/Höffe: Two generations after Locke's treatises on government, a French Enlightenment philosopher and brilliant exponent of morality produced the basic work of a new kind of political thought: the spirit of the law (De l'Esprit des lois, 1748). Sociology: The interest of state theory in the justification of political rule and with it the figure of legitimation of the social contract loses their significance in favour of political sociology and comparative legal anthropology (Ethnology of Law). MontesquieuVsAbsolutism: Montesquieu certainly does not deny his own political views, his preference for a liberal order and his rejection of any despotic absolutism. >Absolutism. MontesquieuVsEurocentrism: Against a European hubris, a Eurocentrism, [Montesquieu] portrays the members of a non-European culture, the Persians, as tolerant and cosmopolitan, capable, where necessary, of criticising themselves and others. While they particularly appreciate Europe's freer position of women, they criticize European customs, the many civil wars, including the Inquisition and the Papacy(1). 1. Montesquieu, Persian Letters 1721, anonymous. |
Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Natural State | Hobbes | Höffe I 216 Natural State/State of Nature/Hobbes/Höffe: In Chapter 13 of the Leviathan, which is central to the first anthropological part, Hobbes presents a consideration that has been famous ever since under the title of the state of nature. It has the methodological status of a thought experiment. Höffe I 217 With the state of nature, Hobbes does not sketch a historical or prehistoric phase of humanity. Rather, he examines the potential for conflict inherent in the coexistence of rational sensory beings, provided there are no binding rules and no public powers among them. HobbesVsAristoteles: In radical contrast to Aristotle's definition of humans as a political being by nature, the state (...) is not created by nature, but by art. "Homo homini lupus": Hobbes' answer to his novel question has become proverbial as a formula: "The human is the humans’ wolf" (homo homini lupus: from the citizen, dedication). The formula, of course, originates from pre-Christian antiquity and is already quoted by Bacon in the generation before Hobbes. (see below "The human is a god to humans"). Natural State: Because now, in the absence of state power, as the thought experiment presupposes, the comrades-in-arms act in complete freedom, they become opponents in the event that they fight over the same means: people are afraid of each other. There are three reasons for this. 1) competition, 2) distrust, 3) striving for glory. Civil war: Surprisingly, the decisive cause of civil wars, the dispute over religious truth, is missing here. For this dispute does not fall under any of the three causes of conflict mentioned: Oriented towards the salvation of souls, it does not stem from the desire for profit, security or fame. Höffe I 219 Positive Passions/Hobbes: Höffe: Fortunately, in the state of nature there are other passions besides the three causes of conflict. Those who, like many performers, suppress them not only make a considerable cut, since they only take into account the first half of Hobbes' natural state. Nor does he understand how the natural state can be overcome. Hobbes refers to three motivational forces that seek peace: the fear of death, the desire for things that are necessary for a pleasant life, and the hope of achieving them through one's own efforts (ibid.). >Peace/Hobbes. The right to everything in the state of nature proves on closer examination to be a right to nothing. Because this insight in itself lacks any driving force, it needs another factor, both energetic and purposeful, precisely the three passions that promote peace. >Hobbes. Ruler: Because of [his] omnipotence, Hobbes calls him a god, Höffe I 221 but only "mortal" God because of his transitoriness. He claims that the enlightened self-interest, the >reason in the sense of wisdom of life, requires to establish it. "The human is a god to humans": in this context, Hobbes - which many interpreters fail to mention - introduces the competition formula to the Wolf formula. It too comes from antiquity and is also already quoted by Bacon: "The human is a god to humans" (homo homini deus), so it says already in the dedication of the Scripture On the citizen. Danto III 229 Natural State/Hobbes/Danto: According to Hobbes, there was no sign of civilization in the natural state and the story of bare life would have to be a monotonous repetition of beating and rape: If there has been a history in itself, then it is due to religion, and according to Nietzsche it is also due to the "spirit that came into them from the powerless (Danto: the priests). (F. Nietzsche(1)). Sense/Life/Nietzsche/Danto: from here, the meaning of religion can only be properly estimated: "The human being, the animal human being, has so far had no sense. His existence on earth had no purpose; he did not know how to justify, explain or affirm himself."(2). 1. F. Nietzsche Jenseits von Gut und Böse, VI. 2, S 281. 2. Ibid. p. 429. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 Danto I A. C. Danto Connections to the World - The Basic Concepts of Philosophy, New York 1989 German Edition: Wege zur Welt München 1999 Danto III Arthur C. Danto Nietzsche as Philosopher: An Original Study, New York 1965 German Edition: Nietzsche als Philosoph München 1998 Danto VII A. C. Danto The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (Columbia Classics in Philosophy) New York 2005 |
| Opposition | Policy of Spain | Levitsky I 122 Opposition/Policy of Spain/Levitsky/Ziblatt: When (...) Spain made its first truly democratic turn in 1931, hopes were high. The new leftist government under Prime Minister Manuel Azaña stood for parliamentary democracy,(1) but it was confronted with a deeply divided society, between anarchists and Marxists on the left and monarchists and fascists on the right. Both sides regarded each other not as competing parties, but as mortal enemies. On the one hand, right-wing Catholics and monarchists watched in horror as the church, army and monarchy, social institutions they held in high esteem, were deprived of their privileges. In their eyes, the new republic had no right to exist. They saw themselves, as one historian writes, as fighters in a battle against "Bolshevik foreign agents"(2). On the other hand, many socialists and other left-wing republicans regarded right-wing politicians such as the leader of the Catholic-conservative Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), José Maria Gil-Robles, as monarchist or fascist counter-revolutionaries(3). At best, they saw in the CEDA a façade behind which ultra-conservative monarchists planned the violent overthrow of the Republic. Although the CEDA was apparently prepared to Levitsky I 123 participate in the democratic process and to compete with their political opponents in elections, their leaders refused to stand unreservedly behind the new regime(4). Consequently, mistrust of them remained high. In short, neither the Republicans on the left nor the Catholics and monarchists on the right accepted the other side as legitimate opponents. Lack of mutual respect led to the collapse of the Spanish Republic. Since many socialists and leftist republicans saw the center-left government from 1931 to 1933 as the embodiment of the Republic, they regarded attempts to change or withdraw its policies as fundamentally "disloyal" to the Republic(5). Cf. >Opposition/Policy of the United States, >Opposition/Levitsky/Ziblatt, >Polarization/Levitsky/Ziblatt. 1. Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939, Princeton, New Jersey, 1965, p. 52. 2. Shlomo Ben-Ami, »The Republican ›Take-Over‹. Prelude to Inevitable Catastrophe«, in Paul Preston (Hg.), Revolution and War in Spain, 1931–1939, London 2001, p. 58–60. 3. Raymond Carr, Spain 1808–1939, Oxford 1966, p. 621. 4. Michael Mann, Fascists, Cambridge 2004, p. 330. 5. Juan J. Linz, »From Great Hopes to Civil War. The Breakdown of Democracy in Spain«, in Juan J. Linz/Alfred Stepan (Ed.), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Europe, Baltimore 1978, p. 162. |
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| Order | Hobbes | Habermas IV 314 Order/Hobbes/Habermas: as later Utilitarianism, so Hobbes also proceeds from isolated subjects endowed with the capacity for pupose-rational action. Rational skills should serve passions that dictate the purposes of action. The pursuit of one's own interests leads to a struggle for security and scarce goods. If one only considers the natural equipment of interested and purpose-oriented individuals, social relationships cannot take the form of peaceful competition. Habermas IV 315 The actions of other individuals can only be understood as a means or condition for the realization of their own purposes. Therefore, all artificial regulations are governed by the natural maxim that everyone seeks to exert influence on everyone and to gain generalised influence, i.e. power. See >Order/Parsons. Solution/Hobbes: a contract of power with the unconditional subjugation of everyone to the absolute power of one. However, this presupposes a situation in which the subjects acting in a rational manner are already prepared to fulfil the conditions necessary for the conclusion of a contract.(1) ParsonsVsHobbes. 1.Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, NY, 1949, S. 93f. Höffe I 228 Order/State/Society/Hobbes/Höffe: Hobbes formulates the characteristic challenge of his epoch as a generally valid basic problem: "Why at all and in what form do we need an institutional political order, why a state with powers of coercion? Since the answer also comes from general principles, from real principles, especially from the idea of the state of nature, both Hobbes' question and his proposed solution transcend the historical context, i.e., once again, the British Civil War and the early bourgeois market society. ((as) But, because of problems: see >Absolutism/Hobbes.) Cf. >State/Hobbes, >Governance/Hobbes. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 Ha I J. Habermas Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne Frankfurt 1988 Ha III Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. I Frankfurt/M. 1981 Ha IV Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. II Frankfurt/M. 1981 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Politics | Hobbes | Adorno XIII 239 Politics/Hobbes/Adorno: The power struggles within which Hobbes' materialism is to be understood were, in essence, the power struggles between the state as an organization that affects the real coexistence of people, against the power of the churches. The inner pathos of the whole Hobbes' thinking goes - this is wholly Renaissance-like - into the direction of strengthening the power of the state against the interference of the Church. >State, >Christian Church, >Society, >Power, >Contract theory, >Contracts/Hobbes. Therein he is quite similar to Macchiavelli. Cf. >Machiavelli. How does Hobbes' extremely authoritarian state philosophy combine with a certain materialistic basic conception in metaphysics or natural philosophy? Adorno XIII 249 Politics/Power/Hobbes/Adorno: The idea of ruling nature is extended by Hobbes also to the inner-human nature. He equates human nature with the animal world, as it becomes clear in his famous parable, that a human is to another human like a wolf, homo homini lupus. XIII 250 HobbesVsAristoteles: The Aristotelian concept of zoon politikon, the human as a political animal, is denied by Hobbes. For the nominalistic Hobbes, there are only the pure, natural, self-sustaining individual beings. Certain moments of this view are not so different from the ethics of Spinoza - e.g. the principle that every being is first determined by the need to preserve itself. XIII 251 State contract/Hobbes/Adorno: according to Hobbes freedom is not good for anything. The evil animals, the human beings, transfer them to the sovereign, who keeps them as far as he still guarantees to them the possibility of self-preservation. It is materialistic in the fact that humans as natural beings are constituted only by the bare need and the only chance to get beyond the possibility of the conflict is that the fulfillment of the needs is made dependent on the renunciation of the original war of all individuals against all individuals - the original bellum omnium contra omnes. >Civil war. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 A I Th. W. Adorno Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung Frankfurt 1978 A II Theodor W. Adorno Negative Dialektik Frankfurt/M. 2000 A III Theodor W. Adorno Ästhetische Theorie Frankfurt/M. 1973 A IV Theodor W. Adorno Minima Moralia Frankfurt/M. 2003 A V Theodor W. Adorno Philosophie der neuen Musik Frankfurt/M. 1995 A VI Theodor W. Adorno Gesammelte Schriften, Band 5: Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie. Drei Studien zu Hegel Frankfurt/M. 1071 A VII Theodor W. Adorno Noten zur Literatur (I - IV) Frankfurt/M. 2002 A VIII Theodor W. Adorno Gesammelte Schriften in 20 Bänden: Band 2: Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen Frankfurt/M. 2003 A IX Theodor W. Adorno Gesammelte Schriften in 20 Bänden: Band 8: Soziologische Schriften I Frankfurt/M. 2003 A XI Theodor W. Adorno Über Walter Benjamin Frankfurt/M. 1990 A XII Theodor W. Adorno Philosophische Terminologie Bd. 1 Frankfurt/M. 1973 A XIII Theodor W. Adorno Philosophische Terminologie Bd. 2 Frankfurt/M. 1974 |
| Power | Locke | Höffe I 255 Power/Locke/Höffe: Hobbes' basic question was: "How do you protect the individual from violence from fellow human beings, the potential enemy of civil war?" Locke poses the follow-up question to the threat of abuse of power: "How do you protect the protected from their protector?" He gives three answers: 1) (...) Separation of powers: The supreme but not sovereign power, the legislature, must be separated from the executive power, which is responsible for law enforcement. 2) In addition, there is a third power, which, however, does not exist in the judiciary as is usual today, but is assigned to the executive. 3) The third power, called "federal", decides on war and peace, on alliances and all other foreign policy issues. Because it is responsible for the external perspective, it is different in nature from the executive power, but, Locke admits, it is difficult to separate from it in terms of personnel. Ad 2): The second answer subjects the two non-legislative powers to the law (principle of legality). If it is violated, one acts tyrannically. Without mentioning here the "arch-philosopher" (§74, FN)(1), i.e. Aristotle, Locke adopts the distinction, which goes back to him, of a power serving either the common good or the ruler's good. >Authority, >Governance, >Legislation. 1. J. Locke, Second treatise of Government |
Loc III J. Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Racism | Economic Theories | Landsburg I 55 Racism/Economic theories/Landsburg: (…) consider the history of the American south in the hundred years following the Civil War, where the so-called “Jim Crow” laws made it difficult and often impossible for black citizens to find jobs, to be served in restaurants, to ride buses, and to start businesses. Why were these regulations thought necessary? Because it was widely recognized that in their absence, black customers and black workers who were turned away at one location would find themselves welcomed at another. In order to deny black Americans their personal and political freedoms, politicians needed to constrain the operation of the free market. >Markets, cf. >Full Employment, >Free market, >Freedom/Friedman. Capitalism/solution/Friedman: Indeed, Friedman makes the point that capitalism is particularly hostile territory for racial, religious and political discrimination precisely because it disperses economic activity so widely that you usually know absolutely nothing about the race, religion, or politics of the people you’re trading with. |
Landsburg I Steven E. Landsburg The Essential Milton Friedman Vancouver: Fraser Institute 2019 |
| Revolution | Trotsky | Brocker I 206 Revolution/Trotzky: Thesis: If the revolutionary dynamic does not spread to other more highly developed countries ((s) than Russia), the experiment of the working class taking control of the production and distribution of wealth is doomed to failure.(1) (TrotskyVsStalin). Trotsky developed a two-stage scheme of the Russian Revolution: First, the landowner nobility as a social class was to be overcome by comprehensive land reform, then the economic rule of the capitalist class was to be broken by the transfer of industry and banks into public ownership and by a state monopoly on foreign trade. Workers' councils, the Soviets, which were to be supported by the peasants, served as a political instrument for carrying out these tasks. Since the de facto division of the Russian social democracy in 1903, the Mensheviks have maintained that the bourgeoisie must first overthrow the tsar regime and complete the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. >Socialism/Trotzky. Brocker I 210 Permanent Revolution/Trotzky: Within [the] development, one transformation stage of society emerges from the other. "Outbreaks of civil wars and external wars alternate with periods of 'peaceful' reform. Revolutions of the economy, technology, science, family, customs and traditions develop in complicated interactions and do not allow society to strike a balance. This is the permanent character of socialist revolution as such.(2) This revolutionary process goes beyond the national framework of even the largest country. Like capitalism, socialism could only exist as a world system, and the theory of permanent revolution necessarily goes hand in hand with socialist internationalism. 1. Leo Trotzki, »Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Die treibenden Kräfte der Revolution« [1906], in: ders., Die permanente Revolution. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven, Essen 2016, 15-107. 2. Ibid. p. 133. Mario Keßler, „Leo Trotzki, Die permanente Revolution (1930)“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018. |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Social Goods | Demsetz | Henderson I 39 Social goods/Demsetz/Henderson/Globerman: Demsetz (…) analyzed the tragedy of commons a full year and a half before the famous Science article, "The Tragedy of the Commons," by biologist Garrett Hardin(1). >Social goods/Garrett Hardin. Hardin: The Hardin article had introduced the concept of the tragedy of the commons. The core idea is that if a commons, that is, an area that no one owns, is unmanaged, people will overuse it. If, for example, no one owns land on which cattle graze, and no one manages the land, cattle owners will overgraze the land and reduce its value. The Hardin article is one of the most-cited Science articles ever. Demsetz: In his version of the idea published earlier in relation to the fur trade(2), Demsetz wrote: „Because of the lack of control over hunting by others, it is in no person's interest to invest in increasing or maintaining the stock of game. Overly intensive hunting takes place. Thus a successful hunt is viewed as imposing external costs on subsequent hunters - costs that are not taken into account fully in the determination of the extent of hunting and of animal husbandry.“ (p. 351) Later in his article, Demsetz wrote: „It will be best to begin by considering a particularly useful example that focuses our attention on the problem of land ownership. Suppose that land is communally owned. Every person has the right to hunt, till, or mine the land. >Collective goods, >Public goods. Henderson I 40 This form of ownership fails to concentrate the cost associated with any person's exercise of his communal right on that person. If a person seeks to maximize the value ofhis communal rights, he will tend to overhunt and overwork the land because some of the costs ofhis doing so are borne by others. The stock of game and the richness of the soil will be diminished too quickly. It is conceivable that those who own these rights, i.e., every member of the community, can agree to curtail the rate at which they work the lands if negotiating and policing costs are zero. Each can agree to abridge his rights. It is obvious that the costs of reaching such an agreement will not be zero. What is not obvious is just how large these costs may be. (1967(2): 354) Hardin/Demsetz/Henderson: Notice how this anticipates Hardin's later article in Science. Demsetz wrote, "The geographical or distributional evidence collected by Leacock(3) indicates an unmistakable correlation between early centers offur trade and the oldest and most complete development of the private hunting territory." (p. 352)(2). Tribes agreed to hunt in their own well-defined areas. Since furry animals aren't migratory, the agreed-upon territorial rights had value. Conversely, grazing animals in the Southwest wandered all over the land, so territorial rights there didn't have as much value. Costs: Put differently, in the Southwest, the costs of enclosing grazing animals in a specific geographical area were prohibitively high. Recall that this was many decades before the post-Civil War invention of barbed wire. The Iower costs of husbanding fur-bearing forest animals together with the higher commercial value of fur-bearing animals made it productive to establish private hunting lands. Externalities: „Hence both the value and cost of establishing private hunting lands in the Southwest are such that we would expect little development along these lines. The externality was just not worth taking into account.“(1) (p. 353) Property rights: What is particularly interesting in the hunting example is that the property rights arrangement in Quebec that Demsetz cited arose voluntarily in response to circumstances that made the arrangement effcient. Property rights did not come about by government fiat. In furthering their economic interests, people typically choose the property rights regime that best promotes their economic interests. Henderson I 41 Private goods/Demsetz: Among wandering primitive peoples, the cost of policing property is relatively Iow for highly portable objects. The owning family can protect such objects while carrying on its daily activities. If these objects are also very useful, property rights should appear frequently, so as to internalize the benefits and costs oftheir use. It is generally true among most primitive communities that weapons and household utensils, such as pottery, are regarded as private property. Both types of articles are portable and both require an investment of time to produce.(2) (p. 353). 1. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (3859), December 13, 1968, pp. 682-83. www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html). 2. Demsetz, Harold (1967). Toward a Theory of Property Rights. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 57, 2: 347-359. 3. Leacock, Eleanor Burke. (1954). The Montagnais „hunting territory“ and the fur trade. (tDAR id: 256329). National Archeological Database (NADB). Mause I 154f Social Goods/Demsetz: since common goods are scarce, they cannot simply be consumed free of charge, but their benefits must first be appropriated by using time and other scarce resources. (1) See Social Goods/Hardin. 1. Alchian, Armen A., and Harold Demsetz. 1973. The property rights paradigm. Journal of Economic History 33 (1), 1973, pp. 16– 27. |
EconDems I Harold Demsetz Toward a theory of property rights 1967 Henderson I David R. Henderson Steven Globerman The Essential UCLA School of Economics Vancouver: Fraser Institute. 2019 Mause I Karsten Mause Christian Müller Klaus Schubert, Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018 |
| State (Polity) | Hobbes | Höffe I 209 State/justification/legitimation/Hobbes/Höffe: Hobbes justifies the domination character of the state with the Höffe I 210 thought of the social contract: that a rule can only be legitimized by each person concerned. In his political thinking he seeks to fulfil the civilisational-political hope of the epoch, the state as guarantor of inner peace. As the inner form of the state, he believes he should justify absolute sovereignty. Problem: A state power that is not committed to either the separation of powers or fundamental rights cannot convince either argumentatively or politically. >Legitimacy, >Social contract, >Law, >Governance. VsHobbes: Consequently, Hobbes provokes sharp criticism from his contemporaries. Courtyards I 212 Philosopher’s Rule: The philosopher Hobbes does not want to rule himself. But he does expect the ruler to adopt his political views. Problem: [The] politically highly ambitious project turns out (...) to be a grandiose failure. Hobbes' first political writing, the initial reasons, predictably fuel the war. For instead of being a philosophy Höffe I 213 above the parties, it sides with the crown and against the opposing parliament. In addition, Hobbes defends the Anglican state church against both the Catholics and the Protestants who oppose a state church. [Responsible for the failure] is (...) a 'biased' diagnosis that does not see the causes of the civil war in the violation of ancestral rights. [Hobbes] goes to Paris, where he spends eleven years in exile from November 1640. >Social Contract/Hobbes, >Governance/Hobbes. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| War | Hobbes | Höffe I 218 War/Civil War/Hobbes/Höffe: (...) the human’s natural desire for happiness runs the risk of people throwing each other into misery. War of all against all/Hobbes: Misery is rather the result of living together without a community: without statehood, people live in a state of war of all against all. By this state of affairs, Hobbes expressly does not understand a civil war perpetuated in eternity. Rather, he assumes a state in which, due to the equality of weakness and the lack of state power, one cannot be sure of one's own body and life in principle. In this way, he gives his historical situation, the English Civil War, a more fundamental description and explanation that is valid both beyond the economic circumstances, pre- and early capitalism, and beyond the period of the European Wars of Confession. Religion: Although religious issues still play an important role, the state sovereign is only responsible for the public side of religion, while personal faith, an internal phenomenon anyway, is left to the citizens. >Natural state, >Civil war, >Religion. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
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| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
Entry |
Reference |
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| Hobbes, Th. | Locke Vs Hobbes, Th. | I 82 Law of Nature/Locke: it follows from the law of nature that the individual may not destroy itself or other creatures (unless a higher purpose allows this) and that everyone must preserve not only oneself but also the rest of humanity, i.e. life, freedom, health and goods of fellow human beings. If the law of nature is respected by all, then the State of nature: is a "state of peace, goodwill, mutual help and preservation" (LockeVsHobbes: no civil war!) There are also lawbreakers in the state of nature. The decision is left to the injured party. |
Loc III J. Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding |
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