The Origins and Justification of Political Power
Ethics and Moral Conduct
Ethics is a philosophical discipline that examines morality and seeks to establish its foundations. Moral conduct is behavior guided by rules and moral values, encompassing norms and values consciously embraced. A prerequisite for moral behavior is freedom. When default behavior contradicts laws due to rigid nature or uncontrollable instincts, judgment is unwarranted. However, freely chosen moral behavior can be judged or valued by others as good or bad, considering the individual’s freedom to decide.
Origins of Political Power and Legitimacy
Society and State
Humans are social creatures, existing as human beings only within groups. This social nature drives the development of values, rules, and institutions. While humans are products of their societies, societies are products of human decisions. Two basic models of social organization exist: primitive tribal societies with small memberships and rudimentary technology, and modern societies with states and institutions managing political power.
Modes of Legitimation of Political Power
State laws emanate from the state’s claimed right to punish violators. This grants those in power significant influence over individuals’ lives, raising questions about the justification for obeying political power. The capacity to enforce is factual, but its legitimacy—its moral justification—is debatable. Two criteria legitimize political power: its origin (e.g., divine right) and its purpose (e.g., justice for Plato and Rawls, the common good for Aristotle, security for Hobbes, and defending natural rights for Locke).
Justice as the State’s Purpose: Plato
Some thinkers, like Plato and Rawls, posit justice as the state’s primary function.
Justice as a Virtue of the Soul
Plato views humans as composed of body and soul. The soul has three parts: rational, volitional, and appetitive, each with a corresponding virtue. Wisdom is the virtue of the rational soul, courage of the volitional, and temperance of the appetitive. Individual justice arises when each part fulfills its virtue.
Justice and Social Order
Plato’s just community mirrors the soul’s structure, comprising three estates: philosopher-rulers leading citizens, warrior-guards defending them, and producers providing necessary goods. Social harmony and justice prevail when each estate fulfills its function.
The Common Good as the State’s Purpose: Aristotle
Many political theories, including those of Aristotle, Stuart Mill, and contemporary social democratic reformers, see the state’s purpose as achieving the common good.
Aristotle: Ethics and Politics
Aristotle’s ethics posits happiness, achieved through intellectual and moral virtues, as the ultimate human goal. Happiness requires community, as humans are inherently political animals. Families, villages, and states arise from this social nature. The polis, the perfect community, provides all necessities for full human realization and happiness. For Aristotle, the polis comprised free men, excluding women, foreigners, and slaves.
Aristotle: Political Regimes and Potential Misuses
Political regimes organize society, varying by government form. Government is correct when aligned with the polis’s aims and incorrect when serving individual or group interests. Six forms exist: three correct forms (monarchy, aristocracy, republic) benefiting all, and three incorrect forms (tyranny, oligarchy, democracy) benefiting specific individuals or groups.
Security as the State’s Purpose: Hobbes
Some doctrines, notably Hobbes’s monarchical absolutism, prioritize security as the state’s purpose.
The State of Nature
Hobbes explores the origins of civil society and the pre-state human condition, termed the state of nature. In this state, men live freely, driven by self-preservation and appetite satisfaction. This creates a “war of all against all,” hindering progress.
The Constitution of Civil Society
To escape this war, men form a social contract, creating the state. Individuals relinquish their natural right to freely use power, granting it to the monarch. The monarch’s power, the source of all legislation, is unquestionable. Questioning it breaks the covenant, returning individuals to the state of nature.
Locke and Natural Rights
Locke defines natural rights as inherent human rights, including life, liberty, property, and punishment of violators. For Locke, society and the state defend these rights.
The State of Nature and Civil Society
Locke’s state of nature, unlike Hobbes’s, is not a state of war but one of equality and freedom. God-given natural rights prevail. Conflict arises with property development and resulting inequalities, necessitating an impartial power to enforce laws and protect individual rights. The state’s objectives are defending natural rights and mediating conflicts.
Political and Economic Liberalism
Liberalism emerged as a political and economic doctrine.
Liberal Political Theory
Key features include separating civil society and state, limiting state power, maximizing individual freedom, separating powers within the state, legislative election by citizens (with debate over suffrage), state resolution of individual conflicts, and the right of rebellion against tyranny.
Liberal Economic Theory
Adam Smith advocated free markets, private property, minimal state intervention, and individual pursuit of self-interest for progress and balance.
Liberalism and Democracy
Liberalism’s triumph, with separated powers and citizen-elected legislatures, didn’t immediately signify democratic triumph. Advocates, including those supporting equal and universal suffrage, led to liberal democratic state conceptions.
Rousseau and the General Will
Today, popular will legitimizes political power. Rousseau pioneered this concept, inspiring contractualism.
The State of Nature and the Critique of Civilization
Rousseau, contrary to Enlightenment thinkers, argued that science and arts created artificial societies dominated by inequality. He sought to understand untainted human nature to reform society.
The State of Nature as Hypothesis
Rousseau envisioned man in a state of nature, believing man is good but corrupted by society (opposite of Hobbes). He aimed to uncover human nature to guide societal reform.
Characteristics of Natural Man
Natural man lives in isolation (family being the only natural community), uncorrupted by vice, equal (inequalities stemming from physical conditions), and driven by self-preservation and pity. Two distinguishing features are natural liberty (choosing freely) and self-improvement (transforming lives).
Private Property and its Abandonment
Rousseau describes the transition from the state of nature to political society. Recognizing the benefits of union, men developed bonds. Private property emerged, causing inequality and conflict (like Marx). The state of nature yielded to conflict, prompting state and law creation. States and institutions consolidated inequality, restricting freedom.
Reform of the Political Community: The Social Contract
Rousseau aimed to reform societies, creating an organization preserving societal advantages while aligning with human nature. The social contract, an agreement of mutual submission to general conditions, addressed this.
The General Will
The general will arises from individuals uniting to establish equally applied laws, promoting the common good. This aligns with today’s popular will, the foundation of democratic systems, making Rousseau a defender of democracy.
Benefits of Marital Status
Rousseau believed transitioning from the state of nature to civil society brought losses and gains. Natural liberty is lost, but civil and moral liberty are gained. Natural equality is lost, but moral/civil equality under law is gained. The right of first occupancy is lost, but the right to property guaranteed by law is gained.