Hobbes:
3 laws of nature:
- strive for freedom
- for peace relinquish rights
- you must respect your covenant
- Critiqued Aristotle’s idea of the political animal, politics is man made, not natural
Locke:
- war = violation of natural rights by one group, against another
- money: boosts society beyond the basic laws of nature, wealth beyond spoilage limits
Rousseau:
- lawgiver: the man who provides laws in accordance with republicans, but later on relinquishes power
- division of the self: conflict between conscience for common good in SoN & egotism in a corrupt civil society
- amour propre: self-love that can turn social; amour de soi: purely private love
- civic religion: in ideal state you need perfect, best religion that does not create divide
- will of all: divided wills; general will: united wills willing together
- pity: natural pre-social compassion for others
- claims valid only if justifiable by public reason
Bentham:
- negative laws are natural, positive laws are always man-made, always for greatest happiness principle; laws are never derived from natural law
- punishment is only good if it deters person from further crimes, if it improves overall utility
- Bentham had complex plesure-calculations, but saw all of them as equal, Mills thought certain ones were better, etc.
Arendt:
- emergence of modernity: 16th-19thC: rise of the social, world alienation; 20thC: earth alienation
[pure reason-based thinking IS the social] - polis: free action, initiate actions with others, right to have rights
- political is based on ACTION & PLURALITY
- POWER emerges from collective, plural ACTION (different from force&violence)…
- FREEDOM MEANS TO START SOMETHING NEW!
Fanon:
3 forms of colonization:
- worker provides for the colony and is oppressed
- intellectual speaks the language of the colonizer, and cannot think himself
- lumpen proletariat: dangerous! don’t depend on colony!
- negritude: social movement, promoted black solidarity/identity; against it because it essentializes black culture (but it improved population)
- Marxist with it, we need revolution; transcendental ideal changes will never change society; we need violence for the colonizer to be shocked into recognizing the humanity of the individual
Glissant:
- creolization: mixing of cultures, perhaps a tool for freedom, not violence
- opacity: to understand the other you need to relate to them, not to actually understand their language
Rawls:
- strains of commitment: sociological fact that certain groups will take on more commitments than others under liberal justice
- public political culture: just the shared social values of a given society
- property-owning democracy: wide distribution of property is the best system, so that there isn’t crazy inequality
- liberal socialism: second fav type of liberalism, Democratic Socialism; democratic society + cooperative productive institutions, unions, etc.
- background culture: cultures, etc., all that has happened behind the political, place for comprehensive doctrines
- procedural justice: justice that emerges from the fundamental procedures of the state
Kymlicka:
- societal culture needs language and shared territory
- we need a sweet spot between social protections and internal cultural restrictions
NATIONAL MINORITIES: deserve self-governance, protections from external influences
POLYETHNIC MINORITIES: deserve more limited rights, consideration, social assistance
Young:
Anderson:
- against hierarchies fundamentally (no social equality)
- hierarchies emerge from unequal distribution of a good, imposed on the lower segments of the hierarchy by a leading group
- interpersonal justification: if you want to argue abt smt, argue it in a way respecting everyone, in a non-personal manner