Political Science 100 – Midterm Review

Aristotle – ‘Classical View’

Aristotle ethics views politics as the ‘master science of the good’  thus, a science and practice
that is concerned ultimately with all forms of knowledge and understanding that might involve
the pursuit of human well-being and justice throughout society.
Aristotle politics, Book 1  the basis of human associations. Had thoughts on families and
villages as the ‘mere life’.
 The Polis - Defines the polis as a political community, using a city as an example. Within
it, society is kept safe and all citizens have a job that is necessary they work on to ensure
the smooth running of society towards a common good.
o Called the polis the ‘good life’.
 People as ‘political animals’ – Describes humans as being, by nature, political animals.
He begins his theory by arguing that the political rules are all natural. As humans are
creatures who exist in order to reproduce and preserve the race, the term animals came
forward. This self-preservation alongside with intellect that humans are born with, the
word political was added as well. Humans use this knowledge and instincts to bond and
form a community that grows and emerges from the labour and rules built by the city-
state.
o Humans approach politics by asking questions about lives & well-being through
the power of speech: “the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient
and the inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and unjust”.

Aristotle’s three main points about his theory:

1. The city-state exists by nature as it is associated with human instincts of survival.
2. Humans are, by nature, political animals as they are given the ability to communicate and
build rules that form concepts of justice.
3. Humans use their intellect of natural reproduction before forming a political state.

Feminist Politics – ‘the Personal is Political’

Suggests that we can find politics within our most intimate relationships.
Emerged in countries typically where women had the right to vote  belief that right to vote
didn’t equate to equality.
Intimate relationships are shaped by broader ‘norms’ regarding gender and power: the politics of
housework, child bearing, and sexuality.

Plato – Thrasymachus
Holds view that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger”.
 Justice being a false term solely employed by politicians: democracy, tyranny, etc. have
their own definitions of justice, virtually any regime will claim to be just and fair.
  States that justice is those in power, exercising their power over those without it.
 The rulers use their laws to take advantage of people.
 Example: segregation was once used to take advantage of many African Americans. Was
once written in law as being just, now is considered severely unjust. Thus, it is all
subjective to those creating the laws.

Thrasymachus’s second argument is that “injustice is more profitable than justice”.

 Those willing to be unjust (by corruption, cheating…etc.), if they are able to get away
with it, are advantageous to those who live a just life.
 Reduces justice and injustice down to simply good or bad.
Thrasymachus does not clearly define justice, he is simply trying to delegitimize justice.

Plato – Socrates’s Counter Claim

Legality does not mean justice.
Thrasymachus is stating that it is virtuous and advantageous to be unjust, however Socrates
argues it is unwise to act unjust  yes it is profitable but it will/can come back to plague us.
Argues that it is to our own personal disadvantage for one to act unjust.
 Uses example of excellence and end: achieving excellence of the soul would equal to a
happy end. However, one would never achieve excellence of the soul by acting unjust,
therefore it would be disadvantageous to act unjustly.
Socrates also amends the view that justice is giving each power what is ‘owed’ to him or her.
 Uses example in which you owe a man a weapon, but he is mentally insane. Thus, giving
back the weapon would not be just. Doing well to your friend and harm to others is not
justice. By giving someone what they are owed, you are helping your friend, and harming
your enemy.

Machiavelli – Political Virtu as Distinct from Everyday Moral Virtue

Political virtu (similar to virtuosity) vs. personal virtue (e.g. Christian or Confucian).
The term virtu itself was created by Machiavelli to create a new meaning to the term virtue:
highlights a distinction between virtu in the political sense and virtue in an everyday moral sense.
 Virtue – Virtue in the everyday sense is described as a sense of moral goodness. In a
Christian or Confucian sense, it is when right behaviour is distinguished from the wrong
and the goodness of human character succeeds the bad. A person with virtue is one that
acts and behaves upon these principles where morality is concerned in the way a human
caries or presents themselves in everyday life.
 Virtu - Machiavelli expresses that in order to be a successful political leader, it isn’t
possible to be morally virtuous. In order to gain and maintain power and thus allow for
things to get done for the greater good of the state, it is unrealistic that a leader always act
upon his moral sense. Machiavelli considers things such as being dishonest, scaring,
using force, betraying, and breaking one’s word as being justifiable as long as the
 political leader is doing so beneath a vison for the greater good of the state or a good
political end and not for the goal of personal glory of power. In order for political leaders
to achieve noble or glorious ends for the good of the state, it is necessary for them to act
without virtuosity in ways that contradict individual morality; this is the principle of
political virtu that Machiavelli believes in.
Prince with virtu: Caesar Borgia, political leader that ruled by doing immoral things when
necessary in order to gain and maintain power. In order to get work done for the sake of the state,
he employed unjust methods when needed.
Wicked prince: Agathocles, his cruel actions were not justified as he used his power for his own
good as opposed to for that of the state as a whole.

Machiavelli – Cruelty Well Used vs. Cruelty Abused

Believes in the principle that the ends justifies the means  acknowledges that while mean tend
to respect the rules of fight while animals fight with “no holds barred”, yet he claims that a
successful and virtuous leader must know how to apply both those fashions into his rule.
Machiavelli stresses the view of a ruler as a ‘beast’: “A ruler, in particular, needs to know how to
be both an animal and a man”.
 As a ruler one must abide by rules and pursue worthy moral ends yet also fight with “no
holds barred”.
Machiavelli believes that cruelty used when necessary for the greater good of the state, is cruelty
well used, as in the case of Borgia.
Cruelty abused is the maintaining of power for its own sake instead of for the state’s glory, as in
the case of Agathocles.
This leads to the Machiavellian perspective in which a ruler’s un-virtuous means are justified as
long as the desired end of what is best for the state is realized.
An honorable ruler and one that is deserving of praise is determined if through his power, he
employed means that allowed him to win wars and maintain power.
Machiavelli draws the line between justifiable cruelty (used sparingly and when necessary for
glory of the state) and abused cruelty (when it is frequent and extreme for the personal glory of
the ruler).

Gaventa’s Three Dimensions of Power

1. One Dimensional View – Power is manifested in the capacity of an individual/group to
prevail over another. According to Gaventa, A has power over B to the extent that he can
get B to do something beneficial to A at the expense of B.
a. It is a dyadic hierarchical relationship (e.g. master/slave, settler/indigenous,
ruler/ruled).
b. Involves use of brute force.
c. Example from the film: segregation laws.
 2. Two Dimensional View – Also known as ‘Structural Discourse’, occurs as the group is
now oppressed, depressed and silenced. Involves the ‘Mobilization of Bias’: when a
specific group has kept a sustained amount of power, they employ this power to win
certain contested issues and pass policies, laws and set up institutions that solely
represent themselves.
a. Structural oppression formed through time.
b. It is more about setting an agenda/discourse that leads to certain decisions being
made  only specific societal groups are making decisions.
c. The power of the oppressors becomes more spread out and the oppressors become
less visible  harder to see who is responsible for the decisions and who the
oppressor should blame (e.g. capitalism, sexism, racism).
d. Example from film: the preconceived bias held by the jury that favored the white
men over Emmet Till.
3. Three Dimensional View – According to Gaventa, power “may also serve to shape the
conceptions of the powerless about the nature and extent of the inequalities themselves”.
Certain oppressed groups may feel as if they have no voice.
a. Also known as ‘psycho-affective’ – when the oppressor is not a leader,
government or institution, it becomes you.
b. Coined the ‘inferiority complex’, deflecting blame onto the victim, which begin
self-internalized narratives that bring the oppressed down.

Foucault – Relationship Between Truth and Power

“Truth isn’t outside power… Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of
multiple forms of constraint and it induces regular effects of power”.
There exists a close relationship between power and thought.
Suggests that scientific claims between truth and knowledge must be thought about/assessed.
Foucault focuses on a different dimension of power than that of Gaventa, although has some
resemblance to Gaventa’s third dimension of power.
The differences existing between humans only exist from history.
 “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: the mechanisms and
instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which
each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of
truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true”.
The ideas of Aristotle and modern ‘race’ ideas were shaped by the prevailing power inequalities
or asymmetries between groups in ancient Greece (Aristotle) and in the modern world
(colonialism  Linnaeus). Just views also provided scientific justification for these
unequal power relationships.

Foucault’s ‘Five Important Traits’ That Characterize the “Political Economy of Truth”
1. Truth is centered on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it.
 2. It is subject to constant economic and political incitement.
3. It is the object, under diverse forms, of immense diffusion and consumption (circulating
through apparatuses of education and information whose extent is relatively broad in the
social body).
4. It is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great
political and economic apparatuses (university, army, writing, media).
5. It is the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation (‘ideological’
struggles).

Mill – Indirect Utilitarianism

Mill understands the ‘greatest good’ of society in terms of the greatest happiness.
Understood happiness as something different than pleasure:
 Seeking the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ indirectly – by leaving individuals
with the freedom, within certain limits, to pursue ‘their own good in their own way’.

Mill – Principle of Liberty

Liberty – the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by
authority on one way of life, behavior of political views.
Social liberty – the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by
society over the individual.
By liberty, protection against tyranny of the political rulers: aim was to set limits to
power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community.
Two attempts:
 By obtaining a recognition of certain immunities called political liberties or rights,
which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe and which if
he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion was head to be justifiable
(right to protest).
 The establishment of constitutional checks, by which the consent of the
community or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was
made a necessary condition of some of the more important acts of the governing
power.
Liberty of opinion and discussion allows growth of the state and community and the
ability of assuring this liberty succeeds in such act.

Mill – Political and Social Tyranny

Political Tyranny:
 Liberty, according to Mill, is the protection against the tyranny of political rulers.
 The rulers were considered antagonists by their people, they inherited and conquered for
their power and thought little about the consequences on their people.
  The ruler’s power was regarded as necessary yet very dangerous, something used to keep
people down.
 Political liberties or rights and constitutional checks were put in place to protect the
people from the ruler.

Social Tyranny:
 People realised it didn’t make sense for one individual to rule a collective group of
people, so they adapted the idea of a temporary leader elected out of the most popular
party.
 Those involved were people who represented a majority of the population  ruled over
the minorities, this power was considered the “tyranny over the majority” or social
tyranny.
 Now the society represented can execute their own rules as well, which may be at fault
when it improves their well-being and not the minorities: because majority is happy with
one mandate, it is harder for the minority to be protected from it.

Ulrich Beck – Redefining Power in the Global Age

Basic theme: “The world economy stands in relation to the state as a kind meta-power; it can
change the national and international rules. The economy has broken out of the cage of
territorially and nationally organized power conflict and has acquired new power moves in
digital space”.

Beck - World economy as a kind meta-power.

Beck: “the pawn – the economy – suddenly becomes the knight and can thus check the king – the
state”.
- The state historically as the king, or directing force, to decide how we want to live
collectively.
- The state birthed the economy and yet now it is suddenly becoming the knight holding all
the power and even trumping the state.
Weber: “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly on the legitimate use of
physical force within a given territory”.
- Idea being that the law will uphold some sense of justice.
- Apparatus that we can all relate to that abides to the rule of the law.

Beck - The Deterritorialization of Power.

The power of the nation states is territory based power, e.g. the power of the Canadian
Government can only extend its power to Canadian territory.
Economic power is not limited by territory.
- Military use by the state is decreasing, large corporations simply move their capital as a
force of power to a new location, rather than engaging in wars.
When corporations become restricted by the laws of the state, they simply move their capital to a
location with less legal restrictions.
Political ways of practicing power has changed, less military conflicts and more capital shifts.

Beck – Idea that “the Retreat of Investors is what Constitutes the Nucleus of Global
Economic Power
“Investment capital is the equivalent of firepower”.
Retreating investment capital is equivalent to use of firepower against a nation.
- Without capital coming from investor, a nation could face economic downtrends, causing
the nation to lose say in the global community.
- By leveraging this tool, an investor can affect political decisions.

Beck – State Autonomy vs. State Sovereignty

The nationality trap – losing autonomy might increase sovereignty.
- Distinguishes between autonomy and sovereignty.
No way that any one country going at it alone can solve global problems, must work with others.
Example: to solve the problem of terrorism, one country cannot simply solve the issue by acting
on their own.
By working together as a global community, the problem would be solved and sovereignty will
increase.

Locke – Natural Rights

Natural rights dictate that we are in a state of freedom (actions/possessions), and in a state of
equality (mutual power and authority).
It is important to understand that there is a difference between license (uncontrollable liberty)
and liberty.
- The former goes against the natural rights since the practice of it has potential to hurt
oneself and others (in terms of life, liberty, and possession).
In the aforementioned state of freedom and equality, life, health, liberty, and possessions of one
and others have to be respected: if these are not respected, one has the right to take action against
the one who is not respecting them.
- This builds onto the state of war.
According to Locke, respecting the natural rights will preserve peace and mankind.

Locke – View of the Right to Accumulate Property in a World with Money

Locke claims that labor is the moral foundation of property rights.
Describes the value of labor, as determined by the market price, rather than showing the price as
being determined by the amount of labor that goes in.
This theory of labor is found and well known in the Second Treatise.
Locke argues for property natural rights, limited government dependent on the people, separation
of power, as well as social benefits.
Natural rights state that self-ownership is also ownership of items created by man.

Michael Walzer – The Problem of ‘Dirty Hands’ in Politics

Michael Walzer argues that the world of politics isn’t perfect and if necessary (and thus
inevitably) politicians must use cruelty to achieve a greater end.
He furthermore elaborates on this idea by saying that not only cruelty in such cases would be
justified but would also be preferred as a mean for reaching a greater goal especially if the
alternative paths are unavailable.
He calls this kind of cruelty (or actions outside of the normal ethical set of actions open to
politicians) the notion of having ‘dirty hands’ and he finds its prevalence in the world of politics
as an acceptable requirement.
He reasons his approach by saying that we don’t live in a perfect world but rather an imperfect
one where there are politicians with ethically unacceptable agendas and in order for the ‘good’
politicians to be able to compete against them and direct society towards a greater end, they need
to employ cruelty if needed as their opponents will regardless.