Great Ideas of Philosophy

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3. Slavery is commonplace in all of recorded history and often predicated on the belief that some personsor tribes or religious groups or races are simply inferior to their enslaving masters.E. The closest we come to a discussion of universal individual rights is in some of the precepts of the ancientCynics.1. Diogenes (412–323 B.C.) was a leader of this radically “democratic” school of philosophy, opposed toclass hierarchies and even slavery.2. Here, too, however, notions of universal brotherhood did not capture the sense of “rights” as such, butsomething more akin to a naturalism that requires social and political life to be stripped of what ismerely artificial and self-serving.II. Perhaps the most significant development in conceptions of justice was that introduced by the early churchfathers, especially by St. Augustine in his discussion of conscience and freedom of the will.A. Justice on this account is obedience to God’s law, which may place a person in adversarial relationshipswith others and with the state.B. Augustine is also important for his comments on slavery. He sees in slavery only the lust for domination,which condemns the master, but Augustine does not offer any political argument for abolition.C. John Locke, regarded as the prophet of American liberty, in the preamble to the Constitution for Carolinain 1669, made express provision for the keeping of “leet-men,” holdover serfs of medieval Europe, orslaves.D. I know of no anti-slavery treatise based on the universal principle of human rights before the 17 th century,when the Quakers protested the importation of slaves from Africa.III. There are earlier treatises on “human rights” apart from the issue of slavery and its abolition.A. The Magna Carta of 1215, signed by King John at Runnymede, affirms the rights of the Church against theCrown and grants individuals free exercise of their religious convictions.1. The document neither affirms universal rights nor focuses on the individual as the bearer of suchrights.2. It lays the foundation for principles that will become more sharply defined in the Reformation andthereafter, as to the limits on royal prerogatives and clerical authority.B. By the 18 th century, the secular version of this conception of justice requires rule by right reason over andagainst any rule based on no more than revelation or tradition.IV. Out of the religious wars between Christians and Muslims would come a most significant teaching on the rightsof man—Francisco de Vittoria’s (1480–1546) De Indis and his De Jure Belli Relectiones.A. Vittoria insists that God’s laws apply to the children of God and would preserve them from torture andtorment. The religious ignorance or waywardness of a people cannot justify inhumane acts toward them,even during war.B. Vittoria also proposes the idea of a “just war,” beyond the ancient concept of “might makes right.”1. Christian theological virtues also must be adhered to, including the stipulation that “mercy is theperfection of justice.”2. Justice now is measured against motives, and the motives must be faithful to Christian values.C. In the context of Christian teaching, the two most significant writers on the subject of the just war were St.Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.1. Augustine made clear that, at the personal level, only self-defense can justify the use of lethal force. Atthe level of nation-states, however, there is a larger purpose served: the preservation of peace. Thisview specifically rules out as permissible motives or justifications for war “the passion for inflictingharm, the cruel thirst for vengeance… the lust of power.”2. With Thomas Aquinas, we see the full development of a theory of just war in an attempt to remove theinconsistency that results in what he offers as the sole justifications for war. For a war to be just, threethings are necessary.3. The authority of a sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged.4. A just cause, namely, that those who are attacked should be attacked because they deserve it onaccount of some fault.30©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
5. The belligerents should intend the advancement of good or the avoidance of evil.D. Once a war has begun, there are comparable principles determining what is justly done in the prosecutionof the war. The main criterion is proportionality, recognized immunity of non-combatants.1. Refinements were added over the centuries by such theorists as Francisco Suarez (1548–1617),Francisco de Vittoria, and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645).2. The warring party, seeking no more than the advancement of good or the avoidance of evil, must itselfavoid evil.3. The war must be waged with restraint, applying no greater force than is needed to secure the desiredgood.4. Its motivation must not be corrupted by considerations of wealth or power.V. If these are principles that at least plausibly classify warfare as just, are they mutatis mutandis, applicable torelationships between the individual and the state? If a nation may justly make war to secure peace and resistevil, might it not also impose coercively on citizens forms of conduct and life also consistent with peace anddecency?A. In the liberal tradition, the state’s justifiable use of force has been limited to the prevention of harm. JohnStuart Mill made the harm principle the prime justification for the constraint of liberty.B. But this is unhelpful until and unless the category of “harms” is worked out with some precision.1. To the harm principle some have argued for the addition of “offense” and “nuisance.”2. Citizens should also be protected against actions that are so patently offensive as to diminish thedignity of civic life.3. Coercive constraints in such cases must be applied in a measured and proportionate fashion, themotive again not corrupted by self-serving factors.C. The problem with this reasonable paradigm is that it leaves plenty of room for excessive forms of statepaternalism, as well as excessive forms of state paralysis. What standards are to be applied to notions ofoffense and nuisance or, for that matter, harm?D. Paternalism is nearly unavoidable, except in total anarchies. The compulsory education of children is oneexpression of it, as are laws requiring seat belts, denying the right to smoke in public places, forbidding thesale of alcohol to minors, and so on.1. Provable harm is not invariably at issue in these contexts.2. Nor are those opposed to state paternalism comparably opposed to state welfarism. John Rawls, forexample, requires a hands-off policy in the matter of individual liberty but a hands-on policy incompensating for marked inequality in wealth and opportunity.VI. Virtue, of which justice is an instance, cannot be reduced to a formula nor manifested in the form of trappingsand slogans. Justice in the state comes from just citizens, just magistrates, and just legislators.A. To the extent that, at least metaphorically, we can speak of the state as “virtuous,” we can mean only thatits institutions and practices are designed to promote virtue and oppose evil.B. “Do good and avoid evil” is a command accessible to those with common sense and sufficient civicbreeding to understand how their actions contribute to the tone of life, their own included. Nothing servesthem better than a political world in which the rule is the rule of law, understood to be an ordinance ofreason.Recommended Reading:Augustine. The City of God (downloadable).Paine, Thomas. The Rights of Man (downloadable).Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars. New York: Basic Books, 2000.Questions to Consider:1. What is the right answer to the Athenian claim in the Melian dialogue?2. Suppose the native population in the Americas were judged to be doomed to hell unless converted. Whatargument would still require tolerance and a respect for the autonomy of their beliefs?©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 31
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
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E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
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2. Despite their oracles, priests,
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4. Looking at geometry, we are told
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E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
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of the mystery of earth itself impe
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Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
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Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
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Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
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II. A philosopher is engaged in the
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Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
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Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
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III. The dominant school of Greek m
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1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
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C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
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III. The problem of conduct is then
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C. The Stoic account relies on the
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Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
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Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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III. Roman law successfully permitt
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Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
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B. Augustine approaches the problem
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B. Very early, the Islamic commitme
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Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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IV. The third great institutional c
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1. Scholasticism was an attempt to
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Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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historical volumes tell Florentines
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Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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1. First, the courts required a doc
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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B. This expansion, however, does no
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1. This standard essentially rules
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Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
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Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Levi
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B. Other things can be known to be
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Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
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Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
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Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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efore him were not always faithful
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2. His Letters on the English makes
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Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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VI. The Federalist Papers and the g
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III. Kant argues that there is some
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Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Questions to Consider:1. A hypothet
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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C. Though his system would be mocke
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1. There is nothing in the physics
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F. To include Hegel within the trad
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Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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insisted that our very character is
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III. Nietzsche was an admirer and o
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B. In the final state, we’re all
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Lecture Forty-ThreeDarwin and Natur
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2. There is room for altruism but o
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1. He is a Hegelian who stands Hege
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Lecture Forty-FiveThe Freudian Worl
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B. How can repressed elements be un
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III. What figures in the human imag
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Lecture Forty-SevenWilliam James’
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Page 195 and 196: Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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Page 199 and 200: 1873...............................
Page 201 and 202: Functionalism: The view that consci
Page 203 and 204: Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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Page 214 and 215: Lecture Forty-NineAlan Turing in th
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Page 232 and 233: Lecture Fifty-FiveWhat Makes a Prob
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Page 238 and 239: Lecture Fifty-SevenOn the Nature of
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Page 252 and 253: etween a world of beauty and one of
Page 254 and 255: ⎯⎯⎯. On Free choice of Will.
Page 256 and 257: Herodotus. The Persian Wars. G. Raw
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