Political Thought Mark Knights. Lecture plan Is the term political thought a useful one? What are...
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Transcript of Political Thought Mark Knights. Lecture plan Is the term political thought a useful one? What are...
Political Thought
Mark Knights
Lecture plan
• Is the term political thought a useful one?
• What are the key themes of political thought in the period?
• Case study of Thomas More’s Utopia to show– European nature of debate– The importance of context
What is ‘thought’ and who thinks it?
• Could study ‘great thinkers’ and examine their ideas; they are indeed part of the story but
• Ideas don’t change in isolation from events and movements around them
• Ideas aren’t just the preserve of ‘intellectuals’ but are inherent in everyday actions, conflicts and beliefs
• ‘political discourse’ [John Pocock, Quentin Skinner]
What is politics?
• Religion affected politics • Relations between church
and state are certainly key – the two are closely intertwined
• Impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations on internal and external power relations
The related problems of C16th French wars of religion (1562-1598), the revolt of the
United Provinces (1568-1609) and C17th revolutionary Britain
Key themes:– Religious pluralism – Fundamental
rethinking of the grounds of obedience,
– forms of government (republicanism)
– and the right to resist
Religious pluralism• Catholic vs Protestant, protestant
against protestant
• The destruction of religious unity
• What is the correct response by church and state?– Toleration/freedom of conscience?
Solution adopted in United Provinces, France 1598, England 1689. Recognition of diversity and plurality.
– Represssion, enforced uniformity? Solution adopted for much of the C16th and C17th; France after 1685.
The Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing religious toleration in France
How to justify freedom of conscience?
• Dutch Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677, of Portuguese-Jewish background), whose Theological-Political Treatise (1670) argued for freedom of thought and conscience
• or Locke’s Letters on Toleration (early 1690s)
• or the Huguenots and protestant sects
• Arguments used
Hostility to freedom of conscience• Duty to avoid heresy and
prevent subjects falling into error that will lead them to damnation; without guidance they will not achieve salvation and will fall into superstition, irreligion and immorality. National churches are therefore necessary.
• Freedom of conscience is only a cover for political sedition and the two go hand in hand.
Resistance theory
Why should you obey a secular authority that persecutes or proscribes your religion? or which
cannot provide you with security?
• The orthodox answer:– The king is divinely appointed; he is empowered by
God; God requires obedience; disobedience is sinful; – The king is sovereign and all powerful; he does not
share power with the people; people certainly have no right to hold the king to account (God alone will judge him), and even less right to resist him; the king’s will is law
– Monarchy is the most natural form of government
Re-thinking the grounds of obedience and authority
• There were several ways in which that view was challenged
–By appeal to an ancient constitution; legal scholarship; immemorial customs; idealisation of ancient liberty and even of popular sovereignty
• E.g. Francois Hotman’s Francogallica (1573) ; Sir Edward Coke in England in early C17th; Pietor de Gregorio in Sicily; Francois Vranck in Netherlands (Corte Vertooninghe, 1587)
–Calvinism: private individuals cannot resist, but there may be institutions that can; developed by his followers; Beza (1519-1605) and the need to follow God’s law not man’s.
A radical Protestant theory• Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos or
Defence of Liberty against Tyrants (1579)
• Possibly by Philippe Duplessis Mornay. He escaped 1572 massacre and fled to England, returning to France to aid Henri de Navarre (Henry IV); an active philosopher.
• State of nature [NB influence of overseas exploration and colonisation; Locke ‘in the beginning all the world was America’], natural freedom and equality
Catholic resistance theory
Catholic League needed arguments to favour the rejection of a protestant monarch, such as Henri de Navarre (who was excommunicated in 1585); but also other succession crises in Scotland and England.
• Dominican and Jesuit. Francisco de Vitoria (1485-1546), Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1611) and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617); Robert Persons in England (1580s); Juan de Mariana (1599)
• Ideas: man not irredeemably evil; Suarez: law of nature ‘written in our minds by the hand of god’; discernible by reason; political society as artificial and man-made not god-given; therefore rested on consent of community; man by nature free and equal.
Contract• Legal and Commercial
rather than spiritual
• consent as basis for civil society; popular sovereignty; right of resistance
• Locke was a revolutionary who placed law above everything
Two versions of contract theory
• Thomas Hobbes (1651) an authoritarian version of this contract; the individual transfers all power to the sovereign
• John Locke (1690) a liberal version of this contract; the individual entrusts power to an executive but retains both natural rights and a power to judge when the government is dissolved by tyranny; force against force
What is role of state in relation to the Economy
• Should the state restrain consumption of luxuries?
• Should the state impose trade tariffs? The rise of the ‘mercantile system’
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)
• Describes an ideal society
• European Renaissance humanism; by 1650 translated into 6 languages
• An intellectual game with Erasmus (1466- 1536)
• Written in Latin
The importance of context
• The role of the adviser
• Equality and community – ‘commonwealth’ (respublica)
• Critique of his society• Critique of
Machiavelli’s rejection of idealism
• Afterlives of texts: contexts can change meanings
• 1551 English translation • 1639 as The
Commonwealth of Utopia
A 1647 tract about the civil wars
Palmanova, near Venice, founded 1593
Campanella’s City of the Sun (1623)City of the Sun
Andreae’s Republic of Christianopolis (1619)
Literature and visual culture as a vehicle for the
discussion of political ideas
• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Metaphors matter
Conclusion
• Political Thought is only a shorthand for discourse about affairs of the state: in relation to the church, the people, trade and commerce, and the best form of government
• If we focus on the works of ‘great white men’ thinkers we need to contextualise them and their ideas – including the cultural dimensions.