Tai Lieu Chat Luong Political Philosophy Political Philosophy is a comprehensive introduction to the major thinkers and topics in political philosophy. It explores the philosophical traditions which have formed and continue to inform our political judgements. Dudley Knowles introduces the ideas of key political thinkers including Hobbes, Locke, Marx and Mill and influential contemporary thinkers such as Berlin, Rawls and Nozick. The individual chapters discuss and analyse the ideas of utili- tarianism, liberty, rights, justice, obligation and democracy.
As well as outlining central problems in political philosophy, Knowles encourages the reader to critically engage with all the issues discussed. Political Philosophy is written in a fresh and easily readable style and is ideally suited to students taking introductory courses in political theory and philosophy as well as the general reader. Dudley Knowles is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Uni- versity of Glasgow. He is the author of the Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hegel and the Philosophy of Right.
Fundamentals of Philosophy Series Editor: John Shand This series presents an up-to-date set of engrossing, accurate and lively introductions to all the core areas of philosophy. Each vol- ume is written by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable teacher of the area in question. Care has been taken to produce works that while even-handed are not mere bland expositions, and as such are original pieces of philosophy in their own right. The reader should not only be well informed by the series, but also experience the intellectual excitement of being engaged in philosophical debate itself.
The volumes serve as an essential basis for the undergradute courses to which they relate, as well as being accessible and absorbing for the general reader. Together they comprise an indispensable library of living philosophy. Published: Dudley Knowles Political Philosophy Piers Benn Ethics Alexander Bird Philosophy of Science Stephen Burwood, Paul Gilbert and Kathleen Lennon Philosophy of Mind Colin Lyas Aesthetics Alexander Miller Philosophy of Language Forthcoming: Richard Francks Modern Philosophy Greg Restall Logic Suzanne Stern-Gillet Ancient Philosophy Simon Glendinning Continental Philosophy Political Philosophy Dudley Knowles London First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 2001 Dudley Knowles All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1–85728–760–6 (hbk) ISBN 1–85728–550–6 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-18788-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-18911-6 (Glassbook Format) To my mother, Margaret Knowles, and, in memoriam, GRK, DAK, AK, KC and EJC Contents Preface xi 1 Introduction 1 The methods of ethics and political philosophy 3 A methodological impasse? 3 Reflective equilibrium 9 Political philosophy 14 2 Utilitarianism 23 The foundations of utilitarianism 24 Formal theory 25 Value theory 38 Utilitarian political philosophy 45 Liberty 45 Rights 49 Distributive justice 51 The state 58 Conclusion 64 3 Liberty 69 Introduction 69 vii CONTENTS Liberty, liberalism, libertarianism 70 Analysis 71 Isaiah Berlin: negative and positive liberty 74 The republican theory of freedom 85 The value of freedom 88 Freedom of action 90 Autonomy 92 Moral freedom 98 Toleration 100 Free states and free citizens 104 Democratic freedom 105 Civil liberty 107 Mill’s harm principle 108 Supplementary principles 113 Conclusion 129 4 Rights 133 Introduction 133 Analysis and definition 135 Preliminaries 135 Hohfeld’s classification 138 The justification of rights 155 Lockean themes: modes of ownership 155 Autonomy again 159 Rights and interests 165 Rights and utility 169 The no-theory theory 174 5 Distributive justice 177 Entitlement 178 Nozick’s theory of entitlement 179 F. Hayek 188 Private property 192 Human needs 195 viii CONTENTS Equality of what? 206 John Rawls’s theory of justice 215 Justice as fairness 215 The Original Position 220 The principles of justice 225 Desert 232 The communitarian challenge 235 6 Political obligation 239 The problems 239 Anarchism and communitarianism 248 Consent and contract 260 Original contracts 263 Express consent 264 Tacit consent 266 Quasi-consent 271 Hypothetical consent and hypothetical contract 276 The benefits of good government 282 The principle of fairness 283 Gratitude and good government 288 Conclusion 296 7 Democracy 299 Introduction 299 Rousseau: freedom, equality and the general will 302 Direct and representative democracy 311 Democracy and majority tyranny 319 Democracy, deliberation and disagreement 326 Notes 343 Bibliography 375 Index 387 ix Preface Political philosophy is a hard subject of study, but an attractive one, too. It is hard because the central concepts have been fash- ioned as much in the hurly-burly of political dispute as in the philosopher’s study.
These concepts have served as flags around which contending causes have rallied, banners for which opposing parties have fought – too often literally. Unlike many of the topics of metaphysics, say, they always have a resonance for issues of active controversy. They are the recognized currency of political argument and debate. This immersion in our practical concerns might be thought to contaminate the discipline, ensuring that no work in political philosophy is without the taint of allegiance.
But this would be to suppose that there is a pristine science of political concepts waiting to be unearthed from the debris of interminable conflict, that the concepts can be scrubbed down and examined free of the scrapes and bruises inflicted by their rhetorical employment. There is no such science; there is no ‘first philosophy’ of political life. Yet it is vital that political philosophy be a careful academic discipline precisely because it is never merely that. It is vital that it be as scrupulous and transparent as its maker can manage because it will always be taken to be a contribution to struggles for power and campaigns for policies.
This makes it hard to do well. No one with a passion for political ideas can be detached from the circumstances of their employ- ment. Political philosophy is attractive because it promises a deep understanding of the values at stake in daily strife, it promises a xi PREFACE defence of causes that are dear to us. But careful thought may reveal that the defences are flimsy or that the values are confused.
Most political philosophers will have a political agenda which governs their personal contribution to public affairs, and no doubt you will have worked out elements of mine by the time you finish this book. But philosophy is an open-minded discipline, so, para- doxically, personal commitments must be regarded as provisional, having no more credibility than is conferred on them by the strength of their supporting arguments. I am particularly conscious of this since I have to report that my philosophical position has changed during the course of writing this book. When I began it, too long ago, I believed that the basic principles of liberal democracy should find universal acceptance.
The grounding beliefs, that mankind is born free and equal, seemed to me to be basic elements of a common culture that have anchored themselves in the mind-sets of modern men and women. We think of ourselves in this fashion, willy-nilly. These are the guiding principles history has bequeathed us. So I didn’t think of liberalism as a radical point of view.
I thought of it as mother’s milk to the political sentiments of all good citizens. I believed, in the modern world, that the true conservative who is respectful of the traditions of thought that have formed us and our political environment, would be a liberal at least in the sense of accepting some story about universal freedom and equality, and distrustful of claims to authority. Of course, I recognized that values as loosely conceived as these require clarification and analysis, that tensions and confusions would be revealed as the grounding intu- itions were worked up into principles and theories of a specificity that could bear examination and assessment. But I didn’t doubt that some cogent articulation of these values was the prospectus of philosophers and thoughtful citizens alike.
What I had ignored was the dire effects of religious belief, in particular the power of religion to corrode sentiments as crucial to peaceful social co-existence as mutual respect and relaxed tol- erance. The most noxious human capacities, agression, hatred and cruelty, seem to coagulate around religious beliefs which advertise their necessary distinctiveness, and then are transmuted into communal militancy. As the hatreds expressive of conflicts between political ideologies seem to have dried up, militant xii PREFACE religion has stepped into the breach and now fuels murderous internecine conflicts worldwide – last year the former Yugoslavia, last month Indonesia, this week Nigeria. Doctors are murdered outside abortion clinics in the USA, and shoppers are blown up in Omagh.
Hegel makes us shiver when he describes the mentality of the Terror in Revolutionary France as death, ‘the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage’.1 Rarely does a week go by nowadays without our seeing some TV footage of bodies piled into trenches, disposed of in the manner of waste vegetables. So now I am a partisan, even militant, liberal. I despair of the prospect of finding common ground with those whose religious beliefs prescind from civility, from the task of seeking, minimally, a modus vivendi or, maximally, substantial agreement. I no longer see the sole task of political philosophy as the Hegelian enterprise of exploring and refashioning a consensus.
Nowadays, we have to give as much attention to the dire task of drawing lines in the sand, marking off values which we recognize that only some of our fel- lows deem worthy of defence, values that are all the more crucial for being seemingly parochial. When my efforts are set against this agenda, I don’t claim to have accomplished much. On reflection, rarely do I reach definitive con- clusions. What I do hope is to have placed some intellectual resources at the disposal of openly enquiring minds, raising ques- tions, drafting lines of argument, provoking the kind of disagree- ment that challenges the reader to respond.
I have concentrated on what I believe are the central areas of investigation. Though I am no card-carrying utilitarian, I examine the utilitarian theory in detail because I believe it is the most powerful, sophisticated and influential normative theory which is available to us, for better or worse. Next, I examine the core ideals of liberty, rights and justice in the distribution of goods. Next, I study the problem of political obligation, asking whether the state can make good its claim to rightful authority over its citizens.
Finally, I look at constitutional issues, investigating the ethical credentials of democracy. This self-directed focus has made it impossible for me to discuss many issues in political philosophy which have a direct bearing on practical and often urgent policy issues. So I don’t discuss separately the politics of race, the particular injustice of racial xiii PREFACE discrimination or the legitimacy of affirmative action or reverse discrimination. I don’t discuss justice between the sexes or the feminist contribution to political philosophy.
I don’t discuss the acceptability of nationalism, the ethical implications of multi- culturalism, or the proper conduct of international relations, except by way of example when other issues are in focus. I regret all of these omissions, but hope that those who are encouraged to tackle the questions I haven’t raised may find in the book materials to help them in their efforts. It is impossible to complete a work of this sort without accumu- lating debts. Some of them are acknowledged in the text, some unfortunately not.
The bibliography furnishes a partial guide to my reading, but I should record the books I have had alongside my desk throughout the period of composition.