Social and Political Philosophy: What is the Best Society? States and Societies.

Social and Political Philosophy: What is the

Best Society? States and Societies

Humans are social creatures: We like to do things in groups.

varying sizes, including families, schools, sports teams, work shifts, church groups, social networks, neighbourhoods, towns, and cities

At the largest macro levels, we organize ourselves into nations, states, and international communities, such as the United Nations or the Commonwealth.

These groups have a variety of functions, including nurturing us, protecting us, or helping us in our quest for the "good life“

In fact society is a term that refers to these groups, how they operate, and our place within them

The area of Philosophy that examines theories of how and why societies operate is Social Philosophy. An adjunct of Social Philosophy is Political Philosophy, which focuses on states, political systems, and human rights.

What is a Society? What is a State?

Society: A set of individuals and/or institutions in relations governed by practical interdependence, convention, and perhaps law.

State: The political organization of a body of people for the maintenance of order within its territory by coercion.

Societies, then, are groups of individuals working together, in some form.

The state is a legalistic expression of this organization, with the ability to coerce (force) the compliance of individuals to this organization to maintain order.

This force keeps the society functioning by regulating the relations between the individuals and institutions. This use of force, either agreed to by the individuals in the state or imposed upon them, is the law, the basic rules governing how society operates.

How did states come to be?

At one time our ancestors lived in small bands. ◦These bands had rules and laws governing

relations between members, based on their needs.

As societies evolved and grew larger and more complex, the need for rules to more efficiently organize larger social units also evolved, leading to such forms of government as:◦monarchy (rule by a king or queen)◦oligarchy (rule by a small group)◦empire (rule of one group over others)

◦theocracy (religious government)◦ democracy (the people rule themselves)

The terms we use for these types of government are derived from Ancient Greek, because the theory of government we use derives from them.

A variety of prefixes are added to the suffix ◦archy, meaning a form of rule or government

such as mono (one) olig (few) theo (god) demo (people)

In Social and Political Philosophy, one of the main questions is how society should be organized.

What is the ideal form of government and society?

What is the Best Society?

utopia (Greek meaning, not any place): the term is now used to describe any vision of an ideal society.

There have been innumerable utopias proposed, including many visions for future societies.

The literal meaning of the term is appropriate, as utopia is less a destination than a direction, as the ideal society will never be realized.

However, people will continue to construct societies and states that reflect their vision of the ideal.

The examples that follow are a few of the more famous utopian social visions.

The opposite of utopia is dystopia, the most undesirable society. Of course, one philosopher's utopia may well be another's dystopia.

Plato's Republic

In the Republic, the character Socrates discusses various examples of just societies.

Through this character, Plato proposed an ideal state designed to maximize social harmony and reduce conflict. Plato was leery of democracy having seen that if not exercised responsibly it could lead to corruption and tyranny, as it had in his city of Athens in the 5th century.

Athens had a system of direct democracy, in which every citizen was entitled to attend the legislature and vote on every measure proposed. The assembly was enormous and could not even conduct business without a minimum of 6000 citizens present!

Anyone skilled in oratory, the art of making clever speeches, could sway the crowd, in a manner similar to today's politicians who look good on TV.

One of the criticisms of this form of democracy is that it was too democratic, did not protect the rights of individuals against the masses, and represented a "tyranny of the majority".

• Plato proposed a system that would correct this and ensure harmony and peace. Society would be strictly organized; each citizen would belong to one of three social classes:

• Guardians, who ruled the state for the benefit of all; • Soldiers, who would defend the state and

enforce the rules; and • Workers, who would supply the needs of the

others and enjoy the benefits of society.

In Plato's republic, there would be no private property and all goods would be owned in common.

This would eliminate the corrupting effects of material possessions and the desire to have more, and would eliminate the differences between rich and poor, since everyone would be economically equal.

Each person would know his/her role in society. The family would not exist as a social unit and children would be nurtured and educated by the state to maximize their talents and for the specific role they would have, based on their individual characteristics.

Plato's political theory of the tri-partite state is based on his notion of the tri-partite human soul, with its ruling elements.

◦Guardians represent reason, the highest element;

◦soldiers are spirit, aggressive and passionate; ◦workers are ruled by appetite, by the desire to

have and make.

In his theory of the human soul, Plato argues that reason needs to rule the other two, which are necessary to a healthy balance, in order to control and harness their ability, which, if left unchecked, will cause chaos.

In this utopia, everyone would be happy, because everyone would be doing what he/she was best suited to do.

Because ruling is a complex and difficult task, only the best and brightest children would be educated to become guardians.

Their education would lead them to become philosopher-kings, dedicated to ensuring justice for all.

Naturally, the guardians would be accountable to themselves alone, since only they were capable of ruling wisely or understanding what they were doing. They would have absolute power and would control every aspect of life.

This would include censoring art and literature, selective breeding of workers to produce the best workers, and deciding who would be educated as a guardian.

The workers would be controlled by the noble lie of religion, in which the guardians would claim that the gods had mixed a precious metal in each person's soul, that is, gold for the guardians, silver for the soldiers, and bronze for the workers. By appealing to the gods and the natural order of things, the workers would be content with their place in society, even though the guardians were aware it was a lie.

Contrary to the standard of the time, which was staunchly misogynistic (woman-hating) Plato believed that women would be as suited to being guardians as men.

Plato's utopian republic has been criticized for its anti-democratic basis, and it has been often cited as an inspiration for totalitarian forms of government such as fascism and communism.

The Republic itself raises concerns about how to curtail the unlimited power of the guardians.

Aristotle: The Politics

Aristotle, not surprisingly, differs from Plato in his approach to political organization. His views flow from his Ethics which are presented at the end of Nicomachean Ethics.

Just as Aristotle argues that the best life for each person to live should be based on their individual strengths, the best political system for each state will be based on the needs of the state.

Thus, he does not propose one utopian system, as does Plato, but a range of possibilities. His work, The Politics is more a study of political systems and their theories than a proposal of a utopia.

Aristotle was not so negative on democracy as Plato, but was concerned about its excesses, particularly with an uninformed or uninvolved populace.

Aristotle argued that while individuals might be unwise, as a group, they possessed a sort of wisdom.

The range of opinions would lead to a "golden mean" of wisdom, which would allow them, as a group, to make good decisions.

However, there could be "too much democracy" and Aristotle favoured a system mixing oligarchy and democracy, with each working to balance out the other and keep things working smoothly to benefit all.

Examine the diagram (handout) to better understand Aristotle's analysis of various political forms.

Thomas More: Utopia

Thomas More is best remembered for being beheaded by King Henry VIII for refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of Henry's marriage.

wrote Utopia at a time (1516) when the Christian church was in the midst of the crisis of the Reformation brought about by Martin Luther's new Protestant concept of salvation

In Utopia, More used the story of a shipwrecked traveller as means to explore notions of how society should operate.

"Utopia" has been described as a "Christian communist" state, because there would be no ownership of private property and society would be organized along Christian lines.

With no private property, there would be no rich or poor, hence no class conflict. Equality was taken to an extreme: Everyone would dress identically, all houses would be the same (and people would swap them at regular intervals to discourage notions of "mine-ness"), each town would be identical, and everyone would work exactly six hours a day.

The ruler would be elected, based on merit, and removed when not ruling properly.

Slavery was part of Utopian society, slaves being criminals serving out sentences for breaking any of the many, many rules of Utopia, their sentence being to perform any undesirable jobs in society (for example, slaughtering animals)

Religious differences would be tolerated, but atheism was punishable by death. More felt you could not trust someone who did not believe in God of concepts of Christian justice to be found in the afterlife.

Any criticism of the social and political order, likewise, would not be tolerated, it too would lead to death.

While impressively just, More's Utopia has been criticized both for encouraging totalitarianism and authoritarianism and for promoting an incredibly dull place to live.

Socialism and Nihilism

One of the major issues in Social and Political Philosophy relates to property ownership.

The wanting and having of material possessions can lead to inequality in society and politics. ◦For example, it is usually the case that the

wealthier citizens have more of a say in governing society and live easier lives than the poor. Often, the poor resent this and engage in activities like peasant uprisings or political revolutions to topple the existing socio-political order.

The utopias of Plato and More addressed this concern by imagining the banning of private ownership, replacing it with communal or common ownership. In its most basic form, this is known as communism.

many forms of communism, and many varieties of communist utopias

most basic, communism involves living communally, a group of people (a community) sharing all resources (in common)

the emphasis in communism is on the material equality of all-no one is richer or poorer than anyone else, and all work and profit is shared equally

The communist ideal has strong roots in Christianity, and examples of communalistic societies include Christian monks and nuns, and Mennonite colonies

Other examples of communist solutions are the Kibbutzum of Israel, as well as the hippy communes of the 1970s

During the 19th century, the term socialism was used to describe this sort of society: ◦a socialist society will include communal

ownership of property. Socialism is the political expression of a communist society

The Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, created vast wealth and vast inequality between classes.

The ideology of laissez-faire capitalism, in which there were no regulations regarding how wealth could be made and no protection of the workers, allowed the upper classes to make tremendous amounts of money from the new technology, while the working classes grew impoverished.

This created class conflict between rich and poor and led to a string of political and social revolutions in European countries that lasted from the time of the French Revolution (1789) until the end of the Second World War (1945).

Anarchism

A more radical solution to the problems caused by unequal ownership was anarchism, a term which means an absence of government.

Anarchism tends to be associated with nihilism, the belief in nothing. Nihilists feel any and all values are meaningless and should be avoided.

Only by holding nothing valuable, neither material possessions nor moral values, can we be free to create ourselves as we wish to be.

Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) argued that "Property is theft", because your private ownership of something (a car, a house, an iPod) steals its use away from the rest of society.

Russian Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) had a simple message to address inequality: "destroy everything". Fixing the problems of society using socialist methods would not work; all had to be swept away. To anarchists, society itself is corrupting.

Handout on Communism and Fascism

Contemporary Utopianism

The politically tumultuous 20th century led many to abandon thinking about theories of the ideal society.

There had been plenty of examples of utopian theories put into action and the result was a century of anxiety and a horrific global crisis brought on by two catastrophic world wars and the Cold War.

However, in the 1970s, one philosopher revitalized the debate about utopianism and came to dominate contemporary thinking about the "best society".

Rawls (1921-2002), an American philosopher, was the most influential political theorist of the later 20th century. His 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, redirected discussion about the ideal society.

It was tremendously influential, and many other philosophers became involved in the questions it posed, both in agreement and opposition.

While Rawls was a member of the "social contract tradition" (which will be discussed later), he used the idea of society as an agreement among its members in a radically different form than it had been previously put forth.

For Rawls, as for Plato, the ideal society would be a just society, fair to all its members. In trying to establish guidelines for the ideal society, Rawls began with a thought experiment called the Original Position.

This thought experiment was a completely abstract exercise, and Rawls pointed out that it was unworkable in practice. It was designed only to demonstrate what principles people would naturally choose if they had to design the just society.

In the Original Position, people would have to decide what kind of society they would want to live in, without knowing what position in society they would occupy.

This lack of knowing where they would be in society is known as the "veil of ignorance". The designers could end up anywhere in the new society. For example, they could end up in the ruling class, or they could end as someone severely ill, in a hospital. They could have a "nice" job or a "dirty" job. There would be no way to know.

Rawls argued that people would design the ideal society based on a decision-making principle called maximin (or minimax), which involves maximizing the minimum benefit you would receive.

Thus, if the veil of ignorance kept you from knowing what you would get from this new society, you would want to make sure that no one in the society was too badly off, because you could just be that person.

For instance, you would want to make sure that the people doing the less desirable "dirty" jobs had some chance for happiness, even if it cost the people doing the "nice" jobs some of their benefits.

As well, you could not know if you were to be sick or healthy, so you would take care to ensure adequate health care for sick people. Since people would not want to gamble with their life and place in society, they would ensure that if they occupied a less desirable position, society would be structured so as to be appropriate concerned with the welfare of all of its members.

Using maximin would lead to what Rawls called the liberty principle, which would be that the ideal society would maximize the rights of all its citizens.

It would lead as well to the difference principle, which would mean that, so much as possible, the ideal society would allow equality of opportunity and material wealth-no one would be terribly advantaged or disadvantaged.

However, some would have more than others, due to their positions in society and Rawls accepted that there would be inequalities that were inescapable. To lessen this injustice, Rawls argued that this difference should be minimized by allowing for maximum opportunity. ◦For example, if you were born poor, you should

not be stuck in poverty, but be able to work your way out of it into a more comfortable life. As well, Rawls did not agree that making life better for the least well-off should be done at the expense of the better-off (so that society reduced their incentive to create and produce)-a balance would need to be found.

Rawls argued that the Original Position, based on the maximin theory, would result in a society based on the notion of justice as fairness.

However, the Original Position is just a thought experiment, and the veil of ignorance merely a handy device to help us envision what the hypothetical just society would be. To put into practice the principles of the justice as fairness society that the Original Position helped reveal, Rawls argued that the state must intervene to help the disadvantaged.

This distributive justice would smooth out the inequalities that our actual society has and lead to greater fairness, in keeping with what the Original Position revealed is the ideal society.