In this chapter, we will examine different notions of justice in society. We will commence with Plato’s assertion that justice involves a harmonious state when each does that which best suits them; everyone in society has a role, but these roles are not equal. This will be contrasted to Aristotle’s notion of justice as balance. We will then examine justice more in terms of the distribution of goods, and outline John Locke’s famous defence of a natural right to private property, and show how this was critiqued by David Hume and Thomas Paine. Next, we will move on to the debate between John Rawls and Robert Nozick, two Harvard colleagues, about the nature of justice. We will see that Rawls argues that justice is arrived at via a mind game in which the participants do not know how they will be affected as individuals, which ends up as a defence of the social democratic state. Nozick, on the other hand, will argue that justice means that the only permissible state is that which defends individual property rights.
Why have women been ignored in the history of political thought?
This chapter will attempt to show why so many of the thinkers mentioned above are men. It will begin with Rousseau’s argument about the natural inequalities between men and women, before critiquing this with the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Wollstonecraft and Mill will argue that there are no natural differences between men and women, and, where differences exist, it is due to women’s inability to access social goods such as education and improving work, as well as their lack of rights. The chapter will conclude with I.M. Young’s contention that there are differences between men and women when it comes to ethical and political reasoning, but the male forms of reasoning are universalized. So liberal democratic culture is inherently biased towards men.
When is revolution against government justified?
Here we will overview a number of responses to when it is acceptable to overthrow the government. It will begin with the debate between Edmund Burke, who argues that revolution is only justified if one is restoring a set of rights and privileges that have been denied you, and Thomas Paine, who argued that only political institutions based upon reason are permissible. The chapter will end with a long overdue examination of Karl Marx, who will show that revolution is the natural driving force of societies, and overthrowing the capitalist regime is not only justifiable, but the only way one will achieve a communist society.
Conclusion: Ideologies
The book will conclude by highlighting the links between thinkers outlined in the discussions above, and the main world ideologies, namely liberalism, conservatism and socialism.
Methodology
Some methodological liberties have been taken with the contents of this book in an attempt to make it accessible and user friendly. One criticism that can easily be levelled at the chapter structure above is that I am taking thinkers from different societies, in different ages, responding to different political events, and moulding them together as if they were discussing the same political issues when they clearly were not. The history of political thought then becomes a dinner party with the various thinkers talking to one another, which is, of course, highly anachronistic. The only marginal defence I can make of my position here is that, in a number of the debates, people were responding to near contemporaries. John Locke was responding to Hobbes, Aristotle to Plato, Paine to Burke, Wollstonecraft to Rousseau and Nozick to Rawls. Rousseau was addressing Hobbes, although there was a century between them, and Nietzsche was addressing Socrates from the distance of well over a millennium. The convenience of structuring the book in this manner to use as an introductory text does, I hope, partially absolve any methodological qualms the reader may have.
Also, the book does focus on what might be referred to as the received canon of texts. Of course, these canonical texts are only elevated amongst others as we continually address them as such; we teach those texts that we have been taught ourselves and so the canon is perpetuated. Again, my only defence against this charge is that as this book is intended to provide an introduction to beginners to political theory it is best to focus our attention on those texts considered central to understanding the discipline. Readers might do well to reflect upon why dead, white, European males dominate this canon and challenge this.
Works cited
Rousseau, J.J. (1953) The Confessions. London: Penguin.
Notes
1 1. I use man here as it is the word that Rousseau uses – we can be pretty sure that he does mean man, rather than as a misguided shorthand for people. This is normal in the history of political thought until relatively recently. I can understand how you might find this irritating, but there is no sense in dressing up the sexism of the time as anything else.
2 What is the nature of politics?
KEY QUESTIONS
1 Does living a political life involve constant reflection on the nature of justice?
2 Does glory act as a constraint to what a prince may do in Machiavelli’s writings?
3 Is morality derived from the motivations behind an act, or the consequences of them? How might this apply to politics?
4 Can one become a politician and remain morally innocent, or must one get one’s hands dirty?
5 Is passion a good thing in politics?
We all think we know what politics is; but what is the purpose of it? Why do we, as a species, do it, and what is its end? If you went up to the first person you met on the street and asked them what politics is, the likelihood is that they would give the response that it is the stuff that goes on in Washington, DC/Westminster/Canberra/Brussels or similar; and that is a perfectly plausible account of what politics is in the contemporary world, but it doesn’t really help us with what it is for.
In 2012, the city of New York proposed a change to its health codes prohibiting sales of sugary drinks in sizes of more than 16 ounces (around 0.5 of a litre) in the city upon health grounds. One would be able to buy/sell diet or milk-based drinks in any size you liked, but sugary drinks would be limited to 16 ounces due to the calories contained therein, in an attempt to limit citizens’ sugar intake and promote healthy living. There is an inbuilt assumption here that one of the purposes of politics and government is to protect the health of the citizens of a country, and the attempt by the City of New York to limit the sales of large sugary beverages is hardly new in this regard. Around the world cigarettes are taxed (often heavily) to discourage smoking, alcohol is restricted and taxed, many drugs are flat out banned, whilst subsidies might be given to organizations that put on physical activities. One can prohibit certain things that may lead to poor health to actively stop someone gaining access to them, one can tax them to discourage people from buying them, or, in New York’s case, one can restrict the size of sale; of course, one could always buy two or three drinks, but perhaps this is unlikely. Poor diet and lack of exercise lead to poor health in the population, increased strain on medical budgets, and many/most governments see it as their business to combat this. To put it another way, many/most governments see the overall health of the population to be one of the things that politics is for; it is one of the tests of a successful administration