Political Theory: The School of Natural law

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Section 7.35

• Political Theory The School of Natural law

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Political theory is not scientific

• Science deals with what does exist
• Political theory deals with what ought to exist
• Yet science was applied to political theory
• Machiavelli
• Government ought to be republican
• Citizens ought to have attachment to the state
• Rulers ought to behave in such way as to sustain
  their rule
• Machiavelli disregarded the ought and separated
  politics from theology and moral philosophy
• Described how gov and ruler really behaved
• Told truth or lied, etc. , whatever seemed to be
  the best means of advancing their political
  interests
• Was he advocating immorality?

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Natural Right and Natural Law

• What is right?
• According to 18th Century philosophers, a law
  that distinguishes right from wrong exists and is
  not a mere human invention
• Right is not determined by heritage, tradition,
  nor by
• The law that exists is a natural law
• actual (positive) law may or may not be just (man
  made)
• natural law exists as the reference point for the
  justness of all positive law
• cannibalism is bad
• forced labor is bad
• Natural law supercedes all people and is
  universal (exists for all people, Cosmopolitan)
• Cannot make a bad law a just law

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How do we discover natural law?

• Reason will guide the ability to recognize
  natural law
• The intellect will have to be cultivated
• Such cultivation will bring all to the same
  understanding independent of cultural background
• This concept is challenged by Freud
• human mind is not rational, it is motivated by
  drives, urges, instincts

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Reason applied to Nations

• Hugo Grotius (Law of War and Peace, 1625) and
  Samuel Pufendorf (Law of Nature and of Nation,
  1672)
• Both said that sovereign states should work
  together for the common good
• A community of nations in the absence of a higher
  authority must subordinate self interests to
  natural reason and justice
• they recommended freedom of the seas, immunity of
  ambassadors

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Hobbes and Locke

• philosophy of natural law justified both
  constitutional and absolutist governments
• state had to be justified
• Absolutism (justified by Hobbes)
• constitutionalism (justified by Locke)
• Neither satisfactorily answered the question of
  legitimacy

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• Absolutism
• had a materialistic and atheistic philosophical
  system
• violence and disorder of the English Revolution
• he favored the king over the parliament (1640s)
• Humans have no capacity for self government
• Life in the state of nature was solitary, nasty,
  brutish, and short
• out of fear from each other, people surrendered
  freedoms and formed a contract with a ruler

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• Leviathan (1651)
• People contract with the government to prevent
  disorder
• Ruler has unrestricted or absolute power
• Ruled must have stability and effective
  institutions
• Government is a device created by man not from
  Gods dispensation (secular view)
• Absolute power was to be used to promote
  individual welfare
• Hobbes did not support totalitarianism

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• Good government is an expedient of human purpose,
  not provided by God or even national tradition
  (secular)
• Government is based on a contract Two Treatises
  of Government(1680)
• People could learn from experience and be
  educated and enlightened
• In a state of nature were reasonable and moral
  independent of government
• People had the natural (outside of gov.) right to
  life, liberty and property
• Property is a natural right that he emphasizes
• government is set up to protect property

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• Mutual obligations
• Government must protect rights
• Governed must support the government
• Right of Rebellion
• Says that if natural rights are violated governed
  had the right to rebel
• Politically Locke is arguing that the Parliament
  had done right to eject James II and placed the
  whole revolution on a level of reason, natural
  right
• He gave prestige to constitutionalism and
  individual liberty
• freedom to act without compulsion by another
• education is the key to rational and responsible
  behavior
• draws his conclusions not from the Bible but from
  observed, experienced events

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• Lockes influence is widespread and varied
• Slavery
• Using Locke it was argued that certain races
  lacked the capacity to benefit from education
• Later Locke was used to effectively challenge
  slavery
• Limiting the power of a monarch was deemed modern
  and forward looking
• Checked the power of absolutists
• Constitutional government is not the will of God
• rested on the natural law of individual rights
• Locke launches into the modern world the
  tradition of constitutional government

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By 1700Europe has

• Faith in science
• Faith in human reason
• Faith in the existence of natural human rights
• Faith in progress