Political Concepts And Political Theories

Gerald Gaus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429977862
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents an analysis of the political concepts. It focuses on enduring disputes about the nature of freedom, power, equality, justice, democracy, and authority. The book is useful for both first year and advanced students who seek to learn more about political theory.

PART ONE
CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS AND POLITICAL THEORIES

1
WHAT ARE POLITICAL CONCEPTS?

1.1 Socrates’s Question

Political Theory and Political Concepts

Western political philosophy begins with Socrates and Plato, and especially the Republic.¹ In this imaginary conversation among a group of Athenians, Socrates poses what may be the most fundamental of all questions in political philosophy: “What is justice?” Indeed, one of the great legal theorists of the twentieth century called this “the eternal question of mankind.”² We all wish a government that is just—but what is justice?

To a large extent, the study of political theory is an exploration of different ways of understanding core political concepts such as justice, liberty, power, equality, and authority. From Plato onward, political theorists have asked—and have provided conflicting answers to—questions such as “What is justice?” “What is liberty?” “What is power?” and “What is equality?” In the first part of this book, I shall try to get a bit clearer about what sorts of questions these are. Are we asking for a definition, and if so what constitutes a good definition? Or do we seek something other than a definition when we inquire, “What is justice?” Unless we know what we are asking for, we shall not be able to distinguish good from bad answers. After this clarification of what sort of question we are asking, Part II of the book will explore some of the enduring answers that have been advanced in political theory.

Three Definitions of Justice

Let us return to the beginning: Socrates’s inquiry, “What is justice?” The first proposal in the Republic is made by Cephalus, who has had a long and honorable life in business. To Cephalus, justice is a straightforward matter of telling the truth and paying one’s debts—a view, no doubt, that has guided his own life. But Socrates immediately casts doubt on whether this is all there is to justice. Suppose, says Socrates, that a friend from whom you have loaned a weapon has gone mad and now demands the return of the weapon. Would it be right to return it? Cephalus agrees that it would not be right to do so; and if it is not right, it cannot be what is required by justice.

At this point, another Athenian, Polemarchus, speaks up; he believes that he can provide an account of justice that rescues the crux of Cephalus’s definition while also showing why it would not be just to return the weapon. He suggests an abstract definition of justice—giving each man his due. But, asks Socrates, is not the mad friend due his weapon? It is, after all, his weapon. Polemarchus invokes a view that was common among the Greeks, that justice demands doing good to friends (since that is what is due to friends) and harming enemies (since that is what is due to enemies). Thus, since the madman is a friend, and it would harm him to return the weapon, it cannot be just to do so; it would not be appropriate to return the weapon because it would not be giving him what is his due. Socrates also rejects this view, though his argument against it is not as straightforward as his criticism of Cephalus’s definition (that is, that justice is simply repaying one’s debts):

Socrates: Can it really be a just man’s business to harm any human being?

Polemarchus: Certainly; it is right to harm bad men who are his enemies.

Socrates: But does not harming a horse or a dog mean making it a worse horse or dog, so that each will be a less perfect creature in its own way?

Polemarchus: Yes.

Socrates: Isn’t that also true of human beings—that to harm them means making them worse men by the standard of human excellence?

Polemarchus: Yes.

Socrates: And is not justice a peculiarly human excellence?

Polemarchus: Undoubtedly.

Socrates: To harm a man, then, must mean making him less just.

Polemarchus: I suppose so.

Thus, Socrates concludes that “if the just man is good, the business of harming people, whether friends or enemies, must belong to his opposite, the unjust.”³

It is important to see that Socrates is not appealing to a widely accepted definition of justice; rather, he is rejecting a popular Greek view (that a just person does good to his friends and harms his enemies) by appealing to (what he sees as) a necessary connection between being just and doing good. If a just person is inherently one who does good and who never makes others less just, then this widely held Greek view of justice must be wrong.

At this point, Thrasymacus breaks in on the conversation. Thrasymacus is a teacher of rhetoric—effective public speaking—and questions whether all this philosophical argument really makes sense. Thrasymacus advances an apparently hardheaded and skeptical definition: “justice” is whatever promotes the interests of the stronger. As a man of the world, rather than a philosopher, Thrasymacus insists that he sees the hard truth that the stronger make the laws, these laws serve their interests, and “justice” is simply the name we use for what these laws require of us. Socrates immediately points to a problem. Suppose the stronger make a mistake and pass a law that is not in their interest. If justice involves obeying the law, then justice would require an action that is not in the interests of the stronger. Thrasymacus replies by switching his notion of a “ruler”: if a ruler makes an error and proclaims a law that does not promote his interest, then at that point he is not really a ruler:

Would you say a man deserves to be called a physician at the moment when he makes a mistake in treating his patient and just in respect of that mistake; or a mathematician, when he does a sum wrong and just in so far as he gets the wrong result? Of course we do commonly speak of a physician or a mathematician or a scholar having made a mistake; but really none of these, I should say, is ever mistaken, in so far as he is worthy of the name we give him. So strictly speaking—and you [,Socrates,] are all for being precise—no one who practices a craft makes mistakes. A man is mistaken when his knowledge fails him; and at that moment he is no craftsman.⁴

Thrasymacus now depicts a ruler as someone not simply with superior force, but with superior knowledge. This leaves him having to explain what type of knowledge is required for a (true) ruler. Thrasymacus has compared a ruler to a mathematician or a physician, but Socrates quickly points out that the knowledge that they must possess is not knowledge about how to advance their own interests, but knowledge of their craft; although they benefit from the exercise of their craft because they are paid, when exercising their skill they are seeking the good of others, as physicians seek the health of their patients not their own. If this is the case, however, the “ruler” is one who, in the appropriate way, seeks the good of the subjects over whom he exercises authority. Socrates thus turns Thrasymacus’s conception of justice upside down: rulers rule for the sake of justice, rather than justice serving the interests of the rulers. This last move by Socrates leads to the subject of the rest of the Republic, which is concerned with the nature of the ideal state and the tasks of rulers and citizens in such a state.

What Socrates Is Looking For

We shall return to Socrates’s own proposal in Section 9.3. Right now, I want to draw attention to the sorts of criticisms Socrates makes of others’ answers to “What is justice?” This will help show us the sort of answer he is seeking. Cephalus, the honest merchant, illustrates what Socrates takes as our normal condition: he can identify instances or examples of justice but confuses this with an understanding of what justice (itself) is. As an honorable person, he has acted justly throughout his life, but when asked, “What is justice?” he provides a definition (justice as repaying debts) that is based on his own experience and is easily shown to be inadequate as a general definition. Socrates, though, is not interested in particular examples—he is searching for that common element that all instances or examples of justice share, and by virtue of sharing it are cases of justice.⁵

Polemarchus does better at providing a general account. His first proposal—giving each his due—is a vague formula, and Socrates is unclear what it means; even worse, it does not seem to explain why it is not just to return the weapon to the mad friend. To clarify it, Polemarchus relies on a commonly accepted view (among the Greeks), that justice consists in doing good to friends and harm to enemies. Socrates shows here that traditional or widely accepted views can be, indeed usually are, defective. One can imagine Polemarchus saying to Socrates that “doing good to friends and harm to enemies is what we Greeks mean by ‘justice.’” Socrates points out, however, that relying on shared, common views is objectionable because they can be inconsistent or incoherent. It is clear, Socrates says, that a just man does not make others less perfect, and true harm to another makes the other a worse man. Since this firm conviction about justice is inconsistent with the widely held view, Socrates believes that we must reject the widely held view. Socrates, then, is seeking neither examples of justice nor popular definitions about what “we think”; he is seeking the correct definition that locates that common feature or property of actions, people, and conditions that renders them just.

Last, Socrates shows the inconsistencies of those who analyze concepts such as justice by debunking them—that is, those such as Thrasymacus who insist they are simply masks for power or domination. If Thrasymacus was content to say that talk of justice is simply nonsense or babble (as, we shall see, some have indeed claimed; see Section 1.2), he could avoid Socrates’s criticisms. Instead he tries to show that “advancing the interests of the stronger” is what “justice” means—rather than ignoring the question, “What is justice?” he seeks to answer it in a hardheaded way that reduces it to the pursuit of interests. As Socrates shows, however, as soon as one accepts that terms like “justice” make sense, efforts to explain that sense in terms of mere interest or power lead to muddles and inconsistencies. Whatever we mean by “justice,” we surely do not mean that which promotes the interest of the stronger. Thrasymacus finally learns this lesson and walks away from the conversation; unable to explain what justice is, he ignores it.

To sum up, then, we can identify three basic convictions of Socrates about concepts such as justice:

•Rather than examples of justice, he seeks that common element that all just things share; it is because it possesses that element that anything can be rightfully be said to be just.

•The correct account is coherent and explains all genuine examples; we cannot arrive at it simply by rehearsing what “we say” justice is. Ordinary conceptions can be confused and contradictory.

•“Justice” is a meaningful and important term. As soon as we take it seriously, we see that it is not plausible to debunk it by showing that it reduces to something hardheaded or more obviously “real,” such as interests.

1.2 Words, Definitions, and Things

Plato’s Conceptual Realism

The three convictions listed at the end of the previous section led Plato and Socrates (it will be recalled that Plato wrote the Socratic dialogues) to a distinctive, if not especially plausible, view that I shall call “conceptual realism.” Simply put, Plato believes that conceptual terms such as “justice” refer to a special realm in which the concepts themselves exist. As Plato put it, our conceptual terms refer to the world of “forms”—pure instances of the concepts.

To better see what Plato has in mind, let us focus on an example outside of politics. In another dialogue, the Meno, Socrates asks, “What is shape?” Now, the first impulse might be to point to examples of shapes—round, square, oblong, and so on. But as we saw in the case of Cephalus’s definition of justice, this will not do; Socrates wants to discover that property shared by round things, square things, oblong things, and so on, such that all can be said to be “shapes.” There must, Socrates is convinced, be some feature that makes round things, square things, and oblong things all shapes. A definition of shape would identify this “shape-making” feature. Socrates ultimately proposes this definition: “Shape is the only thing that always accompanies colour.”⁶ Plato is seeking a similar definition of justice.

For Plato, then, a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Part One: Conceptual Analysis and Political Theories
• Part Two Political Concepts
• Concluding Remarks: From Political Concepts to Political Theories
• Index