Overview of Major Points of Course I

The following takes place in an era of new understandings in the physical sciences.  The French philosopher René Descartes had argued that the world was mechanistic (it behaved like a machine) in the 1630s, and in 1688 Isaac Newton published Principia Mathematica which described that laws of motion (Newton's physics would replace Descartes' by 1720).  Although Descartes believed there were non-material entities like "minds" (souls) and God (that is dualism), some further thinkers would maintain that the world was completely material (monism).


I.  Natural Sociability

From the ancient Greeks up until the 17th century most philosophers held that "man" (humans) were "naturally sociable;" it was in their nature to form societies and governments.  Aristotle's famous view that "man is a political animal" held that men were virtuous and fulfilled their nature when they were active in the good of  the polis (the Greek city-state of Athens).  

The medieval scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas claimed that this natural sociability existed because God had implanted First Precepts (or what would be called innate ideas) in the minds of people at the time of birth, so all men were inclined to act socially.

In a famous 1651 political work Leviathan, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that man was not naturally sociable, that his basic nature was one of self-interest only, and he had created governments to protect his own live from the other selfish humans because, without government, life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" and man would be in an eternal state of warfare.

Another English philosopher, John Locke, in an 1689 book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, argued that there were no innate ideas of any kind, that the human mind at birth was tabla rasa, a blank slate.  Ideas were only created by sensory experience after birth though the five senses.

Locke's claim was widely accept by British (and even many French) philosophers at the beginning of the 18th century, but this left them with a problem.  They could not accept, and did not believe, Hobbes was right that man was intrinsically self-interested, that he acted solely in his own self-interest.  They needed a solution that did not include innate ideas to hold that man was indeed naturally sociable.  Starting with an Englishman, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, followed by Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith, they developed theories of moral sentiment, where instead of having intellectual ideas of sociability, man had emotional connections to other human beings though feelings of "empathy."  This new theory of sociability would be a major factor in much of Enlightenment thinking (see Chapter 2 of course II's book, The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters, "Bringing Pity Back In" which we will be discussing on the first day of Course II).  


II.  Natural Law Theory and Natural Rights

The laws of a society that are on the books are call positive law.  But because some positive laws can be unethical or immoral, some philosophers, starting with Aristotle, held that their are "higher laws."  (This concept has been famously invoked  in the 20th century by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.)  The concept of natural law was further developed by Thomas Aquinas who held that "an immoral law is not a law at all, but a perversion of law."  Aquinas, the great 13th century Catholic theologian/philosopher, claimed that God had implanted truly moral laws in the human mind (natural laws).

During the 16th century, natural law philosophers like Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf gradually secularized the concept, eventually dropping God from the equation but still maintaining natural laws existed and were evident to human reason.  In that century the idea of natural rights was also developed.  Natural law was the moral law one should adhere to, natural rights were liberties all humans were entitled to,  and governments could not alienate people from their natural rights. 

The concept of natural rights was famously proclaimed by Thomas Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  

As we will see in this course, theories of natural law and natural rights will be prominent in the 18th century.


III.  Social Contract Theory (for basic information visit this link)

        I will provide a refresher of both Hobbes' and Locke's use of the Social Contract Theory in the 17th century when we discuss Jean-Jacques Rousseau's use of it in the 18th century.


IV.  Epistemology (theories of human knowledge)

In the 17th and 18th centuries, there were two general schools of thought.  The first were the rationalists from continental Europe (France, Holland and Germany) and the empiricists from the British isles.  The famous rationalists were Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz.  The famous empiricists were John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.   

First, rationalists believed human were born with innate ideas, empiricists did not.  Second, rationalists held the sensory experience was deceptive and untrustworthy, and that reason was the arbitrator of truth.  Empiricists were not as skeptical of sense experience (and David Hume voiced objections to the trustworthiness of reason).  


V.  Biblical and Ecclesiastical Authority 

For many centuries much of politics and social control was based in biblical and ecclesiastical authority.  Those who differed in views were often punished severely, including being executed.  A King's right to rule was authorized as the Divine Right of Kings traced back to the book of Romans in the New Testament. 

During the 17th century this religious authority came under attack.  Major figures included Thomas Hobbes and John Locke who argued that legitimate government based not on Divine command, but on the consent of the people.  Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle argued against religious superstitions and the idea of the Bible as being the Word of God, and the concepts of religious toleration and freedom of conscious were promoted by numerous philosophers.  Spinoza claimed that there were no grounds on which a religious authority could play a leading role in society (one of his ideas that made his books the most banned books in the Dutch Republic, the most politically tolerant government of its time).   The idea of separation of church and state gets it start here.  These types of attack on religion-based authority would continue in the Enlightenment.    


VI.  Theories of Revolution

There isn't a theory of justified revolution until late in the 17th century.  Even though Thomas Hobbes said in 1651 that legitimate government was based on the consent of the people, he denied the right of the people to overthrow a sovereign even if the sovereign they consented to became tyrannical.  In the 1680s Samuel Pufendorf claimed that a people could take up arms against a sovereign if he violated their natural right to their own religious thought.  A few years later, John Locke argued that the people could rebel against a sovereign who violated any of their natural rights (and thus the list of charges against the "tyrant" King George III in the Declaration of Independence). 


VII.  Unfulfilled Political Ideas in the 17th century

Many political ideas got their first voice in the 17th century but went unfulfilled for many years to come.  Baruch Spinoza was the first to argue for truly republican government (government of the people by the people, and for the people) and full freedom of religion, speech and the press.  Other unfulfilled ideas from this century include government help for the poor, a social security system for the aged, funded public libraries and schools, and a European United Nations.