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Tammy Mezera Dr. Rob McDaniel PS 4920 April 30, 2012
Modern Political Theory Study Guide for the Final
Key Names and Terms
Hegel:
GWF Hegel— He’s not a communist or a socialist. He’s a very influential German philosopher. Young Hegelians try to adapt Hegel’s though to all areas of life. Marx grew up as a young Hegelian. The Romantics influenced Hegel, so did Rousseau and Kant. Kant argues if the world moves toward self-determined republics, there might develop worldwide peace. Kant is a Liberal Republican. Hegel is ambitious and radical. He’s simple and complicated. He explains history as a development of self-consciousness. As history goes on we become more aware of who we are as individual and societies. His theory developed during the French Revolution when Napoleon is ruling. He sees this as an embodiment of human progression. Hegel takes Locke and flips him around. Hegel says Locke’s idea of human origin in peace, freedom and equality is not where we cam from, but where we’re going. When Napoleon rides into Germany declaring self- governance, equality, and nationality it was the first fruits. We are emerging out of a world of barbarism and into a world of freedom and rationality. Hegel believes History has a teleological direction led by the hand of God, not through church but through politics. Metaphysics—Geist=soul and mind, reason, God. History is the unfolding of reason and God showing himself. He said God lacked self- awareness, but got it when humanity got it. We are autonomous human beings who are free and cooperative when we are more self-aware. They arrive at self-awareness though the bloody mess of conflict. Hegel says God is reason, soul, mind, and Spirit. He is the unfolding of reason in Human experience. We are manifestations of God’s self- awareness. Hegel throws out the Father and Son and embraces only the Holy Spirit. Not really the Christian God. It’s a divine, metaphysical existence. Master-slave dialectic —Hegel describes a process of dialectic. We must make all factual reality more rational. At first humans are little more than animals who are free but ignorant. As a result of freedom, we decide which desires to gratify and which to ignore. We look to other people to decide what is right. We lose the privacy of our own existence. Rather than wanting food, we want the food others want. We establish our won identity in relation to the people surrounding us. We understand ourselves by relation to others (Father, sister, lawyer, etc.)
We begin in childhood obedience. That leads to teenage rebellion. It’s a destructive negative moment. We reject what we are given. We become someone different. We begin to know something then we begin to reconcile some of what was negated to reach adult maturity. Dialectic looks like this: Childhood (+ )Teenage Rebellion (- )Adulthood (the sum) Thesis Antithesis Synthesis Societies are formed the same way as individual human beings. Hegel argues we begin in barbarism. Humans are driven by conflict. Each really wants to be recognized by the others, which results in a battle to the death. Hegel says true society begins when somebody does not want to die, “if you don’t kill me I will be your slave.” So slave/master relationship emerges from barbarism. Consciousness— This is what drives History. Throughout history, lines are drawn by those who recognize themselves as humans and those who recognize that person as human. The human must be recognized by a sub-human, but that is not all that satisfying. The slave knows he’s human but no one recognizes him as such. The slaves develop a plan to trick the master into thinking real freedom is to be a slave. It’s a peaceful slave rebellion. Stoicism is an example of this. Epictetus was a slave. Christianity says real freedom is n being a slave to God. The dialectic is Master (thesis) Slave (antithesis) Christianity (synthesis). The aim of Christianity is to unite all men and women in brotherhood. Hegel says slaves made up Christianity to get free. It’s the cunning of reason. The slaves may or may not know what they are doing. Hegel says that being a slave is such an unsatisfying position that slavery will be abolished.
Karl Marx: 1818—
Marx’s critique of Hegel— Marx thinks Geist (holy spirit) is abstract metaphysical garbage. He says to stand Hegel on his feet. Contradictions are less spiritual, but more material. It’s not consciousness driving history, but its labor. Its Economics. We come to know who we are by what we make. Like Locke, man is known by what he makes. Hegel is too conservative. We have not reached the end of history by arriving at this conscious state. Marx says we are not at the end of History, as Hegel believed when Napoleon came to Prussia and Germany became a nation. He says we are in the next to the last stage of an economically driven history. We have to work out the final master/slave contradiction between owners and laborers. There are Modes of Production or stages of class conflict. 1) Tribe: men dominate as hunters. Patriarchal society where there are Chieftains who rule the family/tribe with slaves below the family tribal structure;
- City: a united group of tribes where chieftains organize production. There is a line between the citizen class and the slave class. 3) Feudalism. Tribe gives way to a more complex organization in the city and in the country. Antagonisms develop between town and Country. They clash until empires arise. The countryside becomes dominant because of what is produced from the land. 4) Capitalism: There are emergences of guilds and tradesmen who are apprentices, Journeymen, masters. This leads to a new antagonized middle class who revolts and creates the new rich. Capitalism is collapsing and leading to: 5) Communism.
state will disappear to be replaced by voluntary worker republics to free men from individual drives to free them to pursue creativity where work is revelatory. The Dictatorship of the proletariat— The revolution will mostly be bloody to get rid of the wealthy class or they will be absorbed to usher in Socialism. Socialism is a violent exploitative stage. Socialism is inverted capitalism. The reforms include: Abolition of property in land, Abolition of inheritance of wealth, progressive tax structiure, centralization of transportation, centralization of communication, centralization of banking, nationalization of all industry, Liability of ALL for labor (capitalists must work), free education fro all children, abolish town and country distinctions. Socialism sets up rewards for work. The bourgeois state— The dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. The ideas that dominate in capitalism are the interests of the holders of capital. Freedom is a radically individual atom trying to bounce around and accumulate property with no limits in the nature (Hobbes). Men only have a market value based on what others think your price is. Locke says you own yourself and what you work on is an extension of you in a market driven system. Capitalist citizenship is to protect the rights of ownership. It protects the power of dominant groups and their exploitations of the people on the bottom. The apparatus of the state is to crush revolt of workers. At first the federal government squashed all worker rebellion. Capitalism consolidates all class conflict into tow groups The middle class bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In capitalism the Bourgeoisie who threw off feudalism are now the ruling class or property owners. Family under feudalism was led by the patriarch (oldest male), whose authority ultimately comes from God. That doesn’t work in Capitalism. You can do better than your father. You only have the amount of children you can afford. You meet and marry people in your won class. Everything is an economic exchange. Marriage is not lasting. It’s a contractual relationship. Kids are an economic calculation designed to provide for your future. We want to recreate the nuclear family, but that is still smaller than the extended feudal family. Consumer markets are about choice, so if you promote more capitalism you have to accept the market choice of homosexuality. Capitalism arrives in revolution and continues to seek to extend itself outward. Colonialism and imperialism are part of the way capitalism is spread. Feudalism is stagnant. Capital is rapidly moving outward always trying to sell something people are not even aware they needed or wanted. Every aspect of your life is thoroughly marketized. Free trade the word for exploitation, veiled in religious and political illusions, naked shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. Capitalism sows the seed of its own destruction. It’s a fast burning flame. Feudalism was slow. As capitalism develops the bourgeoisie becomes smaller and the proletariat becomes larger. Boom and bust cycles create more instability. Subsistence becomes more difficult to manage. Workers begin to organize for higher wages and less hours. It eventually is overthrown by violent revolution, when the workers become so miserable, they rise up and kill the capitalists.
Kierkegaard: 1815-1855 Danish contemporary of Marx
The “Present Age”— The present age is like a bored and lazy fat emperor. The age of publicity and advertisement and people gossip constantly. He is trying to find the truth for which he could live and die. His perspective is a sacrificial Christianity. So bored and pathetic we no longer experience the world through the tensions of good and evil. It’s bland and passive. He’s a bit fundamentalist. Religion is paradoxical and irrational.
Reflection vs. Passion— Kierkegaard would like a truth for which he could live and die. He hates the present age that is a world of reflection without passion. Without passionate intensity we get lost in our own subjectivity. “We give ourselves the illusion of being risk takers but it is an orchestrated spectacle.” He celebrates the individual who breaks from conformity. He’s tired of fake Christian goodness. Loss of Authority— Religion gives authority that transcends the barrenness of modern life. We have lost all sense authority; there is no authority of which we can rebel. When you don’t have anything to rebel against, what do you do? The church has become so like the world, there is nothing for it to rebel against the world because it is the world. Thinking that we have achieved progress leaves us with nothing. Ressentiment-- is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justify value system or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability. Christian inwardness— Kierkegaard is a religious revolutionist and existentialist. Many of the most important Christian thinkers have been tortured souls. In order to get right with God they have to repent the inner darknesses of their souls. They become students of human psychology due to this. Those who look into their darkness even farther see themselves. Life’s stages— Stage 1 is the Aesthetic where man seeks to find himself in worldly pleasures. Stage 2 is the Ethical Stage, when man realizes he can’t find himself from the outside, so he looks inward and evaluates his moral choices and begins to live ethically, as opposed to the aesthetic man. Stage 3 is the Religious stage. This is where you take the leap of faith to have a deep experience with God and live a truly Christian life. What you are is less important than knowing whether you exist at all. Existentialism. The Leap of Faith— the Story of Christ is scandalous and absurd and requires a leap of faith out of the dialectic. You need a teleological suspension of the ethical whereby you take a leap of faith into the irrational. Aesthetic ethical real religion. To be authentic means to stand out against the mainstream culture.
Nietzsche:
The death of God— In Parable of The madman Nietzsche wrote: We have killed God. We are his murderers. Are we not strained through an infinite nothing? Are we Gravediggers burying God? How will we comfort ourselves? Must we become God to be worthy of killing God? This deed is still distant from them yet they have done it themselves. We’ve butchered Christianity and turned it into something else. He wants the Theology and church to go. God is not God. He exists only based on human belief. God could shape a culture but the people no longer react that way. Churches are tombs of God. There’s a death of Christendom. It’s over. We are unmoored from our shore and we are now drifting. Human beings lack the self-awareness to realize they’ve
untruth. The will to power says the world exists in constant flux or change with no purpose. We are bent on self-preservation, but Power is about self-overcoming. We must struggle to change and become more and better. Overman vs. Last Man— Last man plays by the rules and accepts his place in the system. Nietzsche celebrates the Overman, who invents truth, creates it, and imposes it. That’s the goal of a life well-lived. He’d have to turn hatred and pity against itself. The model is Caesar with the soul of Christ. Jesus has a transformational effect. Jesus says don’t judge. Accept the world as it is. Paul is the problem who institutes a system of rules and the afterlife. Jesus was about embracing this world on its own terms, without judgment. Jesus dies, so we need Caesar to rule with might to impose values. Legislate for others. Nietzsche likes old testament more than the new. He says this transformation only comes by rejecting the old one. We should love our fate and embrace the world as it is. Overman is an artist. Aristocratic Radicalism —The only reliable politics is Aristocratic and not equal, anti- egalitarian, in all of its forms. Every enhancement of man comes from an aristocratic society that needs slavery in one form or another. Overcoming of ma in a supra moral sense. Class structure that creates inequality. Order creates inner turmoil that inspires people to push and struggle against constraints. Great human beings aren’t created in a society defined by equality. It inspires people to reach higher to replace man with the self-overcoming of man. The noble class is always the barbarian class, who were stringer and more whole, beasts. Society doesn’t begin in contract and consent, but in force and conquest and that is a mark of nobility. An old society mellows into decadence, spirit of corruption who are taken over by a new barbarian, animal class. One should not yield to humanitarian illusions. The ruling class must be parasitic so we can climb higher and turn our faces to the sun and shine as the lower class. He is class and race oriented. Life is about becoming perfect. Equality should only apply to people who are really equal. Resist the sentiment of weakness. Exploitation is a natural force. Subjugation is essential to life itself. Even when people treat others as equal it doesn’t mean they are. Emphasize your superiority. Tragic Culture —Tragic Culture is where life and art involve giving yourself up. Pour yourself into your creation. Artists are all misanthropic. They pour anger and resentment into something to create beauty. They understand the world. They are twisted. That makes them produce a masterpiece. We are all just silly animals sitting on a cold barren rock and one day we’re all going to die. There is no afterlife, just this life. Embrace life in its joy, hardship, suffering, misery, and pain. Expect nothing to change. Look at it from a standpoint of art. The moral judgment of artists is not clouded. They really see and experience life. Christian moral judgment is about controlling our behavior (power) more than your soul. Religion is not about truth, but about power. It skews your view. Take off your mask of morality and live in the ugly beauty of the here and now. Trans-valuation of Values— He wants to invert Plato and Christianity. Like Kierkegaard who sees the Aesthetic life as the lowest level, next is the ethical and the highest is religious. Nietzsche turns that around completely. The aesthetic is the highest and religion is the lowest way to live. Forget the other world and live wholly in this one.
Art, Truth, and Morality— everyone cannot understand Art. Men must and should suffer. Don’t help people. That creates mediocrity. Suffering brings creativity. Post-modern politics are suspicious of truth, art, and diversity. Its an attempt to save Marx by using Nietzsche. Replace Marx with Nietzsche’s relativism. An emancipated world with truth and hierarchies are dismantled, so we can live freely. It a left wing version of Nietzsche. Nietzsche thinks when you replace the will to truth you are left with the will to power, which the left wouldn’t like because it’s brutal and exploitative. Facism —Mussolini’s war contributes to a nation’s vitality. Fascism can include Militarism, nationalism, and racism. Fascists don’t necessarily have a racist component, but the Nazis do. It is post-Industrial and Anti-intellectual.
Gobineau:
Race theory & anti-Semitism— Marquis De Sade- associated with Porn. Sadistic comes from his name. He was an 18th^ century porn author. Said women are objects of sexual desire to be manipulated and enjoyed and subjected to male power. He was sick and depraved. German Counter-enlightenment included Herder and Fichte, who were early champions of nationalism. Nations are most cohesive when anchored in ethnicity. Different nations had different talents to contribute to the greater populations. Gobineau says a nation rises to power when its race is pure and vigorous, but its diluted through race mixing. He’s a mid 1800’s writer, and a friend of de Tocqueville. He believes in a hierarchy of pigment, and inequality of human races. Going on in Europe. He was influential in France and Germany. Gobineau picked up by German writer Woltman- racial struggle central to evolutionary progress. Europe is evidence of the superiority of the white or Arian race. There is a problem of scarcity of resources. “Lower races” breeding at fast rate trying to hem in the Arians. He’s a social Darwinist. A lot of rhetorical power develops in late 19th^ and early 20th century Europe. Fascism means to unify or bind. Mussolini was able to bind the people together in nationalism. “Fastened together by a rope for a common purpose.” Nazis develop national unity based on the race theory and the superiority of the Arian race. Parasites must not only be subjugated, but also terminated. Martin Heidegger is a philosopher but not much of a political scientist. Schmitt is not much of a philosopher, but more of a political scientist.
symbolic level Catholic attachment to gaze upward. The people need not only a powerful church, but a strong monarchy to look up to as well. He longs for day when everyone basked in the glow of the Pope and King. Humans are not driven by abstract ideas we are creatures of power animated more by circumstances than anything else. It’s our social position that means something, not the greater circumstance of humanity. Differences give purpose. Pan-nationalism seeks to unite ethnicities across national lines into one transnational form of government who view themselves as a chosen people, who are greater and better than any other group of people. Zionism is this. You have an identity in a particular nation state. They think their identity is the chosen race. Racism- the category of race is a modern concept. Color deference didn’t exist in the ancient world so much. Division by distinct races as an idea comes to exist more in the Enlightenment as rational sensibility to make more sense out of the world. Conquest brought slavery. Race becomes a retroactive legitimation of a power conquest. It’s all very tentative, and there is no worked out theory. Racial Theory begins with the idea that Ham, son of Noah, who mocked his dad while drunk and naked became the African People. This is known as the Curse of Ham theory. Pseudo scientific means of classifying humans, picked up by counter enlightenment to emphasize differences. Democratic dictatorship— Schmitt wants to get past all the talk of the parliament and just get decisions made by a democratic dictator. Affirm the leader who will protect everyone and their way of life. Caused people to fear fascism. The law doesn’t matter. Brutality is useful to defend ourselves. Internal partisan divisions weaken our external resolve. Democratic Dictatorship is executive centered democracy rather than parliamentary centered, as with liberalism. A Dictator can act in decisionism. He doesn’t have to talk about it with a bunch of people who can never agree. He can act swiftly to protect the state from any enemy. There is strength and vitality in an executive centered democracy with out free speech and secret ballots and the legislature. The will of the unified mass is the living existentially present embodiment of the Public will. People hear their own voices channeled through the dictator when he speaks. True democracy. Hitler was given powers to calm unrest. He suspended the German Constitution to embody the unified will of the people. Schmitt mocks free elections. Sympathetic to Lenin’s and Mussolini’s rise to power. Democratic dictatorship is powerfully masculine. The Problems of Parliament— you can’t get anything done. People hate them and they can never make a quick decision. Friends and enemies— Slavery is necessary because it recognizes differences. The enemy is anyone who is not a member of the homogenous group. Eliminate heterogeneity. Subjugate the weak, alien and estranged to slavery or elimination.
George Orwell:
George Orwell— George Orwell is not his real name. He was born Eric Blair in 1903 ito a lower middle class family. He dies in 1950. He was prep-school educated at Eaton. He skipped Oxford to join the Imperial Police Force and went to Burma. He became a bitter enemy of imperialist projects. Lived a hobo life sleeping on sofas and floors. He wrote 1984 in 1948. Animal Farm focused on Communist as a brutal satire on communism. 1984 is critical of Authoritarianism. He was a democratic socialist. He believed that was the only real answer to fascists, Stalinists, and totalitarianism. He makes a brutal critique on Socialism. Orwell was commissioned by the socialist book club for The Lion and the Unicorn,. They didn’t like it and disagreed with it, but had to publish it under legal action. The English Character —There is a very distinguishable characteristic about England that makes you feel at home. English aren’t known for art, or philosophy so much. They are more self-deprecating in their patriotism in England. Its cautious and self-critical. English culture is more curious and less chest thumping. He reminds the British who they are and how they will not fall to such a dangerous patriotism. He is trying to tell the English who they are as propaganda. English peculiarity is not very unifying. It’s private and converts to the liberty of the individual. To have a home and do what you choose and not exploit anyone is very English. They are not about a movement. To the hypocrisy of the Empire, English lack of standing armies is a good thing. There has never been a naval dictatorship. It’s a different sensibility. The English loathe swaggering officers and are likely to throw rotten food at them for too much swagger. The English are unaware of their empire. British military members do not go around in uniform when off duty and wear civilian clothes in public life. There has to be a dividing line. The English would laugh at the Goose Step. Its only used in countries where people don’t dare laugh at the military. English respect for the law over state and over power is profound. The English don’t live in terror of the military. Justice, liberty and objective truth are believed in (referencing Nietzsche) though they are illusions. The illusions are strong, pushing back corruption even though the monied class has unequal power and representation by elections. Our perceptions of culture matter. Blimps & Leftists —Orwell criticizes the English left. They get their cookery from Paris and Politics from Moscow. The left ignores the power of patriotism. He said it is possible to be an intelligent patriot. The Leftists only have allegiance to an abstract world view. He said the Blimps are full of hot air and are those who love the flag and they are morons. They don’t know anything. They are prone to give sympathy to the fascists. The left is intelligent and the right is patriotic, and that equals a big bad equation. The right values class over culture and nationality, so it leaves them open to fascism. Democratic Socialism— Orwell wanted democracy with more power concentrated in the House of Commons. He also wanted to nationalize all industry to make the people more economically equal within a reasonable range. Not exactly equal, but close enough.
Leo Strauss:
Machiavelli is the founder of modern thought.. Columbus of politics discovering a new continent but its not inhabitable. He lowers the standards of Political Philosophy to set his sights on the real. He abandoned political standards altogether. Not concerned with the best regime but what works. He said public virtue is private vice. Masculinity, Power, winning success become virtue for Machiavelli. There is no place for the philosopher. Obtaining and maintaining power is all that matters. Preserving lives and elevating power is the goal (Hobbes and Locke). This leads to liberalism. Rather than talking about what is natural and what is virtue, we talk about natural rights and freedoms to make choices in your own name. That is a lower goal. There is no guidance in the choices. Liberalism wont make any judgments of virtue to maintain a good regime. Machiavelli pave the way to liberalism. Wave 2 comes after liberalism. Rousseau critiques Hobbes and Locke. Says we can’t know nature of humans because of the social contract. Social contract creates equality where individual wills come together in a nation. This leads to communism. Wave 3. Rousseau paves the way for communism. A degradation with a moral patriotism devoted to equality. It’s worse. Sacrifice your soul for greater equality. Liberalism isn’t good but its better than communism which leads to Nietzsche, who debunks the idea of equality and morality. He gives us Caesar with the soul Christ with a goal of creating hardship for the sake of art. It creates fate. No morals. No religion. We replace will to truth with the will to power, which gives us fascism. The third wave is the current wave that abdicates moral judgment for a belief in history itself. WE resign ourselves to fate and forces of history.
Hannah Arendt:
Martin Heidegger World-alienation-- In modern politics, we begin with a classless society. Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche and Schmidt all describe this. People feel alone, disorientated, and alienated. From this, we organize a totalitarian movement. They believe in the movement and have something to believe in. Mass Society Authoritarianism --: These institutions are fundamentally organized like pyramids. They have a top authority. They have a strict hierarchy. The Catholic Church is the prime example of this. There is God and the pope at the top and everyone else stacked down. This system restricts freedom, but does not abolish it. It all seems legitimate. You obey those above you because you have a natural respect for authority. Authority is a device you can’t ignore. It isn’t inherently bad, but it isn’t the worst possible thing you can get.
Totalitarianism-- Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche and Schmidt all describe this. People feel alone, disorientated, and alienated. From this, we organize a totalitarian movement. They believe in the movement and have something to believe in. What matters is that you stand with the leaders and whatever they say today, even if it is different from what they said yesterday. Loyalty to the party beyond all else. If the movement is successful, it creates a full-blown totalitarian system. It has two primary institutions: the secret police and the camp (concentration). Dictatorships operate through the military, but often that is too conservative of a system. But a totalitarian system cannot have stable institutions. The camps begin in Western imperialism. British camps in South Africa, American camps in the tropics. Dictatorial terror is only against state opponents. Totalitarianism seeks to destroy innocence. It tries to create a society were no one trusts anyone else and all citizens are subject to trusting the leader of the state. It is structured like an onion. There is at the center, a rotten core that is a conspiratorial center. There are various layers emanating from that core. This is the basic structure. The leader in the center organizes a conspiratorial faction that runs everything else. This hides how crazy the center is. Outside the leader we get the inner circle, then the elite formations, the party members (higher and lower), then the party sympathizers (along for the ride but not completely on board), and then everyone else. Reality is kept at bay within the onion. The only people you confront are those who are similar or slightly crazier than you are (like North Korea). Only clear cut examples for hear are Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. Lenin and Mussolini don’t count because they loosened things up. Mussolini was tyrant. You need a large country to run a totalitarian country (she would probably be surprised by North Korea and Cambodia). She contests Mao’s line that power comes from the end of a gun. Violence comes from the end of the gun barrel. She supports an opposite pyramid, where power comes from below and goes up. Violence happens within. Modern politics is all about the rise of the individual. The problem with this is that the authority structures lose their credibility. Modern politics is one revolution right after another. All modern structures are leaving. Conservatives lament this but can’t do anything about this. Conservatives and liberals are confused, conservatives because they want structures and liberals because they think freedom is the best thing to achieve and the only way to achieve it is little or no more structures. Tyranny-- : One leader consolidates all power to him and keeps it through violence. Having leveled the masses, so that all are the same, the top remain suspended on a bayonet at the top. If you don’t obey he will kill you. Similar to Hobbes. This is a terrible form of equality. The tyrant is so different from others that he does not seem human. The tyrant rules with no legitimacy, and no law, and no checks, and does what he wants. Political freedom is abolished. Public vs. Private-- Polis and Family : One of the strengths of the Greeks is that they separated the distinct spheres of human life. There is the public world of human life and the private realm. Public is the political world and the private realm of the family. There is the natural distinction between children and parents. Families are all about providing for the substances of life. Economics is management of the home. So Home Ec is redundant. Having provided for the household, it liberates the head of the household to engage in the political realm. Politics, naturally speaking, is where no one rules. Ruler ship is from the household trying to engage
What defines the “modern” tradition of political thought? What has happened to this tradition in the 20th^ Century? Is there a modern “crisis”? What is human nature? Do “natural rights” really exist? Are human beings best understood in terms of the work (economics), their actions (politics), or there thought (philosophy)? What is the status of morality and moral reasoning? Do these have independent validity, or are they merely reflections of one or another power structure? Are people naturally equal or unequal? Is equality a valid political ideal? What is alienation? What is the nature of the State? What role does power play in the construction of the state? Is violence an acceptable part of political power or authority? What is the nature of sovereignty? Under what circumstances is revolution legitimate? What is the best form of government? How is it possible to distinguish between regimes? Is patriotism good or bad? What are the foundations for “democratic” and “liberal” government? Are these compatible or are they essentially in conflict? What is “freedom?” Where is it found? What threatens it? What is the relationship between truth and politics? Is popular enlightenment possible? Does knowledge lead to moral or political “progress?”
