Editorial: 15th Issue January 29th 2018

Blog: http://michaelrdjames.org/

Journal site https://www.aletheiaeducation.eu/

https://joom.ag/O8Aa

The first lecture is entitled “ A Critique of The Conceptual Foundations of

International Politics: Lecture Two”. The lecture outlines an Aristotelian and
Kantian account of normative based Political Philosophy that regards the
schema of realism, liberalism, and constructivism as a schema that falsifies
many of the major historical concerns of Political Philosophy.

There is much at stake in the choice of the above schema to characterise

political thinking in our modern period. Modern Hobbesian inspired politics is a
politics of power and security forever preparing for war and the Kantian moral
based political theory is a politics of ethics asssuming peace as the natural
political position. Ariistotelian political theory is a normative-principle based
ethics aiming at the middle ground betwee Hobbesian power politics and
Kantian peace politics: the middle ground namely of a prevailing state of justice
within the state.
The lecturer Richard Betts defines the assumptions of Realism in the following
manner:

“Realism is an attitude toward the human condition and a general theory about how the
world usually works, held, for example by thinkers like Thucydides, Machiavelli, and
Hobbes. This type of political thinker emphasizes flaws in Human Nature and the natural
conflicts of interests that occur between states. There is involved in such positions
domination of material interests over legal and moral norms in the determination of the
actions of political units like nation states. Robert Guildford pointed to three
assumptions of Realism:
1.The conflictual nature of International affairs.
2.That the essence of social reality is the group and not the individual
3.The primacy in all political life of power and security.

The arguments against these assumptions are contained in the following

paragraph:

Following Plato’s distinction in “The Republic” between assumptions that work through to a
conclusion without attempting to establish the validity of the assumption in terms of the
principle embodied in it and assumptions that embody a valid principle, it would seem that
accepting this distinction requires us to question the above three assumptions of Realist
theories. We can begin by asking why the theory appears a-historical, i.e. why it seems to
assume that the political realm is an unchanging realm of natural international conflict
involving flawed individuals in communities fighting for power and security. Why one may
wonder, can one not, for example, claim that politics aims to end international conflict
through individuals striving for the good which may minimally involve power and security
but so much more. Why, that is, can we not begin our political reflections at the beginning of
reflection on political issues, namely with Plato and Aristotle. For reasons that are obscure,
we are invited instead to begin our reflections on political theory in the middle with the
assumptions of Hobbes and Machiavelli. Aristotle’s theory of change obviously would seem
best equipped to deal with processes of transformation typical of political processes. The state
for Aristotle was less the ship of state from earlier Greek politics and more like a living
organism transforming itself on a curve of development culminating in a telos or of self-
sufficiency characterized by Eudaimonia (good-spiritedness). This developmental process is
obviously characterized by both state descriptive is-statements and teleologically oriented
normative ought-statements and primacy(in the Aristotelian system of ethical and political
statements) falls on those normative judgments of what the organism is-to-be, i.e. descriptions
of states of the organism are teleological. Man may never actualize his potential to become
fully rational but because that is his telos, rationality is the primary term in the definition of
man : rational animal capable of discourse.

The second lecture is a critique of Lectures 12,13 and 14 of Professor Smiths

Yale Series of Lectures on Political Regimes. He begins thus:
“The modern system of European states was just beginning to emerge. In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia brought
an end to more than a century of religious war ignited by the Protestant Reformation. The treaty ratified two
doctrines: firstly, individual states would henceforth become the highest level of sovereign authority, putting an
end once and for all to the universalist claims of the Holy Roman Empire. Secondly, the head of each state
would have the right to determine the religion of the state, thus putting an end to the claims of a single
universalist church. In 1651 Leviathan was published.

The critique responds thus:

This introduction deserves discussion from the point of view of the Kantian Enlightenment because it was in
Kant's work that universalism in the form of Cosmopolitanism was restored along with a renewed respect for
Religious universalist ethics that aimed to create a brotherhood of all mankind transcending the so-called
sovereignty of nation states. Kant pointed clearly and distinctly to the failure of the nation state to achieve a
peaceful coexistence of nations. Wars would continue he predicted until international cooperation and law was
an acknowledged regulator of interstate activity. Apparently, Napoleon's troops visited the site of Kant’s grave
shortly after he died but as to the reason why we can but speculate. And so wars continued into the 20th century
where we witnessed two world wars, the use of weapons of mass destruction twice on civilian populations, and a
cold war which with its threat of mass destruction brought the world to the brink of annihilation. Given this look
at these events through the Kantian telescope, one can but wonder whether there is a case for embracing a
Kantian Cosmopolitanism: a Kantian kingdom of ends transcending any kind of temporary peace that any
nation-state can promise its citizens. Such a kingdom is, of course, reminiscent of Aristotle´s proposal of a
kingdom of friendship among citizens in a unit of political organization much smaller than the state. Aristotle
possibly saw this as a model for cooperation between city-states but the model was obviously going to fail once
city-states with cultures very different to one's own were encountered. What grounds could there be for
regarding the citizens of such states as siblings which one trusts? One of Aristotle’s pupils, Alexander the Great,
attempted to solve the problem of warring city-states with the idea of an Empire of city-states but the idea failed
probably because of the absence of universalist ethics transcending the instrumentalism of military occupation.
Alexanders Project would certainly be more sympathetically appreciated by a Hobbesian political philosopher
interested in analyzing the Alexandrian phenomenon into the components of security and power, although
Hobbes may have been dumbfounded by an absolute sovereign who insisted on dressing in the same way as the
inhabitants of the parts of his Empire he is visiting.

The lecture continues with contrasting Hobbes’s Political Philosophy with both
that of Aristototle and Kant

The third lecture is an Introduction to Philosophical Psychology. Socrates and

the Sophists are contrasted. The theme of the exchange concerns the relativism
of Sophism and the categorical Knowedge–related truths Socrates and his
followers were striving after:
In Plato's "Republic" Glaucon, Plato's brother, is not happy with the outcome of Socrates' use of elenchus in the
discussion with Thrasymachus. He insists that Socrates has not proved that knowledge of the good is necessary
if one is to lead a flourishing life. He demands that Socrates prove that "The Good" is not just good in itself as
Socrates has been trying to prove but that it also has good consequences. This then seems to be a logical
culmination of discussions in earlier dialogues. Indeed Glaucon appears here to be the bearer of the mantle of
Sophism and this demand appears to be the logical consequence of all the earlier exchanges between Socrates
and the Sophists. Glaucon prior to this demand had argued that people only respect and follow the law because
they are afraid of the consequences. Were they to possess the quality of invisibility and thus the impossibility of
detection they would commit the most heinous crimes. Socrates, it is important to note here does not object to
Glaucon on the grounds of truth, rather he merely claims that this behaviour based on a fearful reaction does not
constitute "knowledge of the good". It seems rather, to be following the Protagorean principle that virtue is the
art of calculating or measuring the consequences in accordance with the pleasures one naturally seeks and the
pains one naturally seeks to avoid. Modern scholars, in Socratic spirit, regularly accuse Protagoras of being a
relativist, especially in relation to his claim that man is the measure of all the things that are and of all the things
that are not. This has not prevented ethical theorists from embracing consequentialist positions that have ignored
the earlier Socratic objections and later Kantian objections that would appeal in the name of knowledge of the
good to the understanding of the good intention. For Kant, it is the good intention that binds the "measure" to the
chain of consequences that might flow from any action. It is indeed difficult to "measure" ethical circumstances
such as the soldier throwing himself on a hand grenade about to explode. He saves some children but loses his
own life. Obviously, any reasonable calculation would reveal the former to be a good consequence and the latter
to be a bad consequence. The question that arises from such a "calculation" is: "Does the action, then, possess
both characteristics (of the good and the bad) simultaneously? Or do we need recourse to the knowledge of the
soldier to resolve this matter, the knowledge namely that he knew firstly of the consequence of saving the
children and desired that and he also knew secondly of the consequence of the loss of his life and he accepted
that(on the grounds of his own complex understandable reasons). We praise this act as virtuous because we
know about his "knowledge of the good". Contrast this with Glaucon's "fear of the consequences": a soldier
fearful of the consequences would refrain from the action but would not be praised for preserving his own
life(praising a soldier for such behaviour would be an example of an "inversion of values").

Brett’s general view of the Enlightenment refuses to acknowledge the ethical

input of Socrates, Aristotle and Kant, and Socrates in particular is regarded as
failing to contribute to the development of the science of Psychology. His
positive view of the Enlightenment is that it provided a good foundation for a
scientific story about an individual. This story may, however, in the end have no
other outcome than relativism.