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Reading social science G.M. Hawkins SC1158 2015 Undergraduate study in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences This is an extract from a subject guide for an undergraduate course offered as part of the University of London International Programmes in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences. Materials for these programmes are developed by academics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). For more information, see: www.londoninternational.ac.uk This guide was prepared for the University of London International Programmes by: G.M. Hawkins, PhD, London School of Economics and Political Science. This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to pressure of work the author is unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable, please use the form at the back of this guide. University of London International Programmes Publications Office Stewart House 32 Russell Square London WC1B 5DN United Kingdom www.londoninternational.ac.uk Published by: University of London © University of London 2015 The University of London asserts copyright over all material in this subject guide except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. We make every effort to respect copyright. If you think we have inadvertently used your copyright material, please let us know. Contents Contents Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................................................... 1 1.1 Route map to the guide............................................................................................ 1 1.2 Introduction to the subject area................................................................................ 2 1.3 Syllabus.................................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Aims and objectives.................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Learning outcomes................................................................................................... 4 1.6 Overview of learning resources................................................................................. 4 1.7 Examination advice.................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power............................... 11 2.1 Introduction: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)............................................................ 11 2.2 Hobbes’ life and work: a brief outline...................................................................... 12 2.3 Reading Leviathan.................................................................................................. 13 2.4 A close reading of the text...................................................................................... 14 2.5 Thomas Hobbes and sovereignty............................................................................. 36 2.6 Leviathan’s legacy.................................................................................................. 37 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract........................................ 39 3.1 Introduction: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78)..................................................... 39 3.2 Rousseau’s life and work: a brief outline................................................................. 40 3.3 Reading The social contract.................................................................................... 41 3.4 A close reading of the text...................................................................................... 41 3.5 Rousseau and governance ..................................................................................... 50 3.6 The social contract’s legacy..................................................................................... 51 Chapter 4: Adam Smith and the invisible hand..................................................... 53 4.1 Introduction: Adam Smith (1723–1790).................................................................. 53 4.2 Smith’s life and work: a brief outline....................................................................... 54 4.3 Reading The wealth of nations................................................................................ 55 4.4 A close reading of the text...................................................................................... 55 4.5 Adam Smith and economic life................................................................................ 68 Chapter 5: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the manifesto for humanity........ 71 5.1 Introduction: Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)................. 71 5.2 Marx and Engels’ lives and works: a brief outline.................................................... 72 5.3 Reading The Communist manifesto......................................................................... 73 5.4 A close reading of the text...................................................................................... 73 5.5 Marx and Engels and the call to revolution.............................................................. 97 5.6 The Communist manifesto’s legacy......................................................................... 98 Chapter 6: Georg Simmel and the metropolis ...................................................... 99 6.1 Introduction: Georg Simmel (1858–1918)............................................................... 99 6.2 Simmel’s life and work: a brief outline................................................................... 100 6.3 Reading ‘The metropolis and mental life’............................................................... 101 6.4 A close reading of the text.................................................................................... 102 6.5 Georg Simmel and modernity................................................................................ 120 6.6 The metropolis and mental life’s legacy................................................................. 121 i SC1158 Reading social science Chapter 7: Sigmund Freud: Civilisation and the individual................................. 123 7.1 Introduction: Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)............................................................ 123 7.2 Freud’s life and work: a brief outline..................................................................... 125 7.3 Reading Civilization and its discontents................................................................. 125 7.4 A close reading of the text.................................................................................... 126 7.5 Freud and psychoanalytic society.......................................................................... 142 7.6 Civilization and its discontents’ legacy.................................................................. 143 Chapter 8: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer: ‘The culture industry’........... 145 8.1 Introduction: Theodor Adorno (1903–69) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)........ 145 8.2 Adorno and Horkheimer’s lives and works: a brief outline...................................... 146 8.3 Reading ‘The culture industry’............................................................................... 147 8.4 A close reading of the text.................................................................................... 148 8.5 Adorno and Horkheimer and mass consumption.................................................... 169 8.6 The dialectic of enlightenment’s legacy................................................................. 170 Chapter 9: Frantz Fanon: the psychopathology of race and racism ................... 171 9.1 Introduction: Frantz Fanon (1925–61)................................................................... 171 9.2 Fanon’s life and work: a brief outline..................................................................... 172 9.3 Reading ‘The Negro and psychopathology’............................................................ 173 9.4 A close reading of the text.................................................................................... 174 9.5 Fanon and racialisation......................................................................................... 192 9.6 Black skins, white mask’s legacy........................................................................... 193 Chapter 10: Michel Foucault: Disciplinary power................................................ 195 10.1 Introduction: Michel Foucault (1926–84)............................................................ 195 10.2 Foucault’s life and work: a brief outline............................................................... 196 10.3 Reading Discipline and punish............................................................................ 197 10.4 A close reading of the text.................................................................................. 197 10.5 Foucault and disciplinary power.......................................................................... 214 10.6 Discipline and punish’s legacy............................................................................. 215 Chapter 11: Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and bare life.................................. 217 11.1 Introduction: Giorgio Agamben (1942–).............................................................. 217 11.2 Agamben’s life and work: a brief outline............................................................. 218 11.3 Reading Homo sacer........................................................................................... 219 11.4 A close reading of the text.................................................................................. 219 11.5 Agamben and the new sovereignty..................................................................... 231 11.6 The response to Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life................................ 232 Appendix 1: Sample examination paper............................................................. 233 Appendix 2: Examiners’ commentary.................................................................. 237 General remarks......................................................................................................... 237 Part A – Sample answers............................................................................................ 239 Comments on the essay questions.............................................................................. 241 ii Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Route map to the guide Reading social science is a foundation course offered on the Economics, Management, Finance and Social Sciences (EMFSS) group of programmes. This course has two key and related aims: • First, the goal is to teach students the highly transferable skills of careful reading and getting to grips with complex primary material. This should give you the confidence to recognise and grasp significant arguments and ideas. • The second objective of this course is to give you an introduction to key arguments that have shaped social scientific thought from its inception in the Enlightenment up to the present day. Each chapter gives an extract of a key text by a thinker who has had a major impact on social and political thought. The chapter offers a backdrop for the text by giving a brief biographical account of the author and historical account of the text, as well as locating the text within the author’s other writings. The chapter then provides a very detailed reading guide to the text, tackling difficult terminology or forms of argumentation. Finally, you will find a series of activities that are designed to develop your understanding of how these arguments are made and what they mean. This brings us to the second purpose of the course, which is to introduce important and influential themes, arguments and ideas from the social sciences and to demonstrate how these emerged and how they have developed. Themes cut across chapters, and there are important conceptual (and historical) connections between them. Every chapter addresses at least one major topic. There are also a number of other key topics that play a role in the work, although in a less obvious direct way. In this course, you will study arguments about economic and political power, social order, subjectivity and institutional life, capitalism, urban life and modernity, social inequality and sovereignty. The chapters of the guide are as follows: • Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the social contract • Chapter 4: Adam Smith: the invisible hand • Chapter 5: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: manifesto for humanity • Chapter 6: Georg Simmel: the metropolis • Chapter 7: Sigmund Freud: civilisation and the individual • Chapter 8: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer: the culture industry • Chapter 9: Frantz Fanon: the psychology of race and racism • Chapter 10: Michel Foucault: disciplinary power • Chapter 11: Giorgio Agamben: sovereignty and bare life. The subject guide is best used by studying each chapter in the order it appears in the guide. This will give you a sense of the development of themes and ideas and how these have recurred in different forms and been discussed in very different ways. In some cases, the authors are directly 1 SC1158 Reading social science reacting to previous works you will have read in a different chapter in a positive way, and in other cases, they are reacting against the earlier works. Later chapters will refer to earlier ones, in order to help grasp the context of the readings. You will be expected to familiarise yourself with the extracts indicated and discussed in the subject guide. You are encouraged to read, analyse, compare and make links between the readings indicated. You will be required to identify the arguments, problems and formulate your own ideas and arguments about what you read. You will also be expected to familiarise yourself with some related secondary literature (indicated in the guide) in order to locate the arguments and ideas that you encounter in their historical and intellectual context. You will have a selection of at least 10 short texts which have been chosen for their importance in the development of social scientific thought. 1.2 Introduction to the subject area The course is divided into 10 chapters which introduce you to the work of: • Thomas Hobbes, 17th-century English political philosopher • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 18th-century French political philosopher • Adam Smith, 18th-century Scottish economist • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, German 19th-century political theorists and revolutionaries • Georg Simmel, German 19-20th-century sociologist, philosopher and critic • Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychologist and pioneer of psychoanalysis • Frantz Fanon, 20th century Afro-French political theorist and psychiatrist • Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, German social theorists and cultural critics • Michel Foucault, French historian and philosopher • Giorgio Agamben, contemporary Italian social philosopher. These writers span an arc from the 17th-century and conclude with a writer who is currently publishing. Through these texts, we explore how themes and approaches specific to social scientific thought emerged and developed over time. This course should help you to place these ideas into both a conceptual context and a historical context. One of the aims of introducing you to older texts as well as to more contemporary ones is to give you an idea of the historical roots of social scientific thought and to demonstrate how and under what circumstances it emerged. By demonstrating to yourself that you can successfully read such older texts you will also gain the confidence to broaden the scope of your reading and feel able to tackle a wider range of writers. Remember, it is always better to encounter a writer or a thinker in his or her own words rather than through secondary sources. While studying, many students tend to think that the texts that they have been set to read will be too difficult, too complicated, or even too irrelevant. However, writers do not set out to baffle, confuse or bore their readers. If you approach the task of reading with an open mind and a determination to enter the perspective of the writer then you will encounter above all interesting and stimulating ideas that will give 2 Chapter 1: Introduction you much to think about. Reading successfully depends on developing a positive attitude to the task. It is the aim of this course to help de-mystify the process of reading and give you the skills and the confidence to tackle texts of all types. It is especially designed, however, to give you the confidence that is necessary to tackle original texts by key writers. However, this is not only a course in how to read. It also explores the ideas and arguments of the writers that it covers. In doing so, it allows us to recognise the persistence of certain key themes and ideas in social scientific thinking and the very different attitudes and approaches that have been developed to tackle them. There are five broad themes that surface throughout these texts and that have had a major impact on shaping the social sciences we employ now: • social order, cohesion and power • economic organisation and social life • subjectivity and institutional life • urban life and late capitalism • sovereignty and social inequality. We will therefore be looking at questions about ‘human nature’, social and political order, the ‘self’, knowledge and tradition, social and economic processes and the question of ‘agency’. These texts have been chosen because they are very important in their own right. They have also been chosen because they exemplify the ways in which important questions about human beings and their societies have been treated in very different ways over time. The texts on this course are each significant in an area of the social sciences; however, they are not always the ‘founding texts’ of a discipline. For example, Chapter 7 is on a text by Freud. While Freud is the ‘father’ of psychoanalysis and his work has been enormously influential in psychology, sociology, literary studies and philosophy, the text that you will study is one of his later, lesser studied works. It is important because it involves Freud’s attempt to situate his individual-focused theory within the context of social life. Similarly, Chapter 6 is about an article by Georg Simmel, the least-known of the main founding thinkers of sociology. The text that you study is about how social life is transformed by the shift from rural life to urban life. This work is highly suggestive for how social scientists can appreciate and analyse the rapidly changing conditions of the global, cosmopolitan world. Finally, the final chapter on a very recent work by the philosopher Agamben is particularly important because he asks seemingly timeless questions about the current geopolitical world. To ask these questions, he draws from a range of significant thinkers in European thought. The concepts that he is using to talk about the current legal and moral form of social life are being debated across the humanities today. All of this will be of particular use if you who want to go on to study economics, politics or development. This course links closely with further sociology courses in historical sociology and sociological theory. I hope that you enjoy studying this course and that you find it as enjoyable to work with as I found it to write. I have found that the rewards in creating this subject guide have outweighed the challenges involved, and urge you to keep this in mind as you face the range and complexity of the texts that it contains. 3 SC1158 Reading social science 1.3 Syllabus The course is structured around a series of short extracts from texts that are important within, or have shaped, the social scientific tradition. Key themes that the course addresses through these texts are: subjectivity, selfhood and society, the ‘problem’ of order and social cohesion, social stratification and division, and social change. Woven throughout them are also crucial questions about the contemporary world and how human societies are formed within it. These themes and questions are fundamental to the spectrum of social sciences: law, economics, psychology, politics and geography. 1.4 Aims and objectives The aims of this course are: • To develop transferable skills for the close reading and comprehension of complex original material. This will give you confidence to recognise and understand important arguments and ideas. • To give you a sound introduction to some of the key arguments that have shaped social scientific thought from its inception in the Enlightenment up to the present day. 1.5 Learning outcomes At the end of the course and relevant readings you should be able to: • use investigative skills to engage with the substance of hugely significant and challenging texts from across social and political thought • read the selected texts critically and select key steps in the arguments for closer evaluation • describe several major positions on the relationship between the individual and society • critically present several key positions on how modern social relations are distinct from pre-modern relations • present in clear terms several explanations of the form that social power takes. 1.6 Overview of learning resources 1.6.1 The subject guide The subject guide is the main learning resource for 158 Reading social science course. Because of the nature of this course, it is focused around guided readings. Guided readings Each of the guided readings is designed for you to read paragraph by paragraph. There are a series of short questions based on the content of each of these paragraphs and some space in the subject guide below the questions to write an answer. You may find it more useful to write down your answers in a notebook. The questions are there to help you focus on the reading and they have two specific purposes. First, they are there to help you work out an understanding of difficult words or phrases. It is very important that you have access to a good 4 Chapter 1: Introduction dictionary while you are reading and to other reference material so that you can look up individual words, concepts, names, places, etc. that you are unfamiliar with. It is important that you write down the answers to these questions as it will help you to remember them. The questions are a way of guiding you through the reading. Remember: you will need to read slowly and carefully! The questions are there to make sure that you keep stopping to think about what is written and to make sure that you understand as much of what you read as possible. Of course, if the answer seems obvious or you know it already, you can read on and ignore the question. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you know the answer just because it might seem obvious. Sometimes stopping to think and actually writing down an answer – especially translating the author’s ideas into your own words – will allow you to gain a different perspective on a point that you thought you understood or to see a point more clearly. The questions are there to help you get as much out of the reading as possible and not to catch you out. Secondly, the purpose of the questions is to help you break down complex arguments and ideas into manageable sections. Often when encountering a new and unfamiliar text it is difficult to grasp an argument the first, or even the second time that we read it through. If you think carefully about the questions in the guided reading sections you might find that writing down responses helps you when you go back and look again at your whole paragraph or section of the text that you are focusing on. You might also find that your answers to some of the questions change once you have read the text through a number of times as your understanding of it deepens. Remember, reading is a process and that the more time and attention that you give to a text, the more you will get out of it. Use the space in the subject guide to briefly jot down your responses to the questions. But remember, the questions are there to help you to get the most out of the reading. It is the aim of this subject guide to allow you to get the most out of reading texts that you might ordinarily think of as too difficult or demanding. Thinking about and answering the questions are an invaluable part of that process. Interpreting texts is a skill that, like any other skill, will be developed by practice and effort. Many interpretations – of words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and whole texts – are possible. However, this is not to say that any interpretation is possible. As you get more skilled at reading closely and describing what you read in your own terms, you will become better at breaking down a text or passage and building it up again. In the process, by looking up unusual terms, trying to work out what an author means by seemingly nonsensical parts of the text, and connecting pieces of text to other sections of the work or, indeed, other works, you are developing a more plausible interpretation. A plausible understanding of a text is one that you can defend well. The first step toward a plausible interpretation is making sense of the text (or part of a text) and being comfortable explaining it to another person (either verbally or on paper through the guided activities). The next step is being able to defend your interpretation, or parts of your interpretation. There are various ways to defend an interpretation, and there is more than one plausible interpretation of a text. You should become increasingly confident in your interpretation skills as you practise them throughout the readings and activities in this course. This effort will support you in the exams, where you will encounter new passages from the same texts that you have been studying in this course. 5 SC1158 Reading social science Activities The Guided readings section contains Activities that are designed to push your understanding of the texts further. These Activities are more challenging and time-consuming than the initial reading questions. The reward, in terms of gaining a critical understanding of primary texts, is related to the level of challenge. If you complete all of the tasks in a chapter, you will find your command of the text much stronger. The Activities ask specific questions about broader aspects of the texts you are reading and ask you to apply the knowledge that you have gained from your reading of the text. It is strongly recommended that you attempt as many of the tasks in each of the chapters as you can. Write out your answers to questions in a separate workbook. I recommend that you tackle the Activities in the order that they are set. Most of the activities are intended to give you the opportunity to think about what you have read in more depth and to help you to put the ideas into a context. The Activities will usually ask you to either: summarise larger sections of the text that you are reading in your own words; reflect on the meaning of the writer’s arguments in a wider context (for example, by relating the writer’s ideas to contemporary events or to your own experience); relate the ideas of one writer with those of another. Work through each of the Activities methodically and in order as this will help you to build up a solid understanding of the text itself and allow you to think about it in relation to the societies that we live in and in comparison with the ideas of other writers. These Activities are also set up to help you develop your writing. You are encouraged to think about how to summarise arguments in your own words. This is a very valuable skill to learn. The Activities offer step-bystep help in how to make your own arguments. You will be asked to relate arguments and ideas to your own experience and to compare them with the arguments and ideas of other writers. The Activities are often quite carefully structured (through using questions to help guide your thinking). Sometimes there are suggested word limits to help you. Writing to a word limit is a very important exercise as it helps you to focus your thinking. As a way to help you understand how to tackle the questions and the activities some model answers have been provided in an appendix to the subject guide. Part of the Guided reading section from the chapter on Thomas Hobbes has been chosen to demonstrate how to make the most of the Guided readings. You will find recommendations on how to answer some of the questions asked about the extract from Hobbes’ book Leviathan. You will also find suggestions for how to tackle the tasks from several of the Activities in the rest of the chapters in this guide. Other chapter sections You will also find that the chapters you are about to read contain information about the writer’s life and work and about the historical and intellectual context in which it was produced. It is important that you read these as they help to offer context for the texts you are working on. You will also find Activities to do in these sections that are designed to help deepen your understanding of the individual writers’ arguments and to help you make connections between themes and ideas explored in the different chapters of the guide. In many chapters of the guide, we also encounter approaches to reading that widen the context from straightforwardly trying to comprehend an individual text. We also look at examples of the ways that texts are 6 Chapter 1: Introduction argued against or used in the work of other writers. It is the aim here to show how a writer’s ideas can be used and critically responded to. 1.6.2 Essential reading You do not need to purchase any textbooks for this course as all your readings are contained within a study pack which you will be provided with. Alongside the key readings, you will find reference to a single, short and highly useful secondary text on the author. These works have been listed under ‘Essential reading’ because they represent the best supplementary source to learn more about the conceptual and historical context of the text you will be studying. The examination will not feature any questions that make reference to these secondary texts. However, many students will find them extremely useful as a support for the work that they do through the close reading and Activities. It is recommended that you read these secondary works after you have worked through the close reading, in order to better develop your reading and interpretive skills. 1.6.3 Further reading If you would like to read about any of the writers in more depth as you prepare for your examination, the following provide useful background information and detailed commentaries on their work. You can also find suggestions for further reading in the bibliography at the start of each of the chapters in the subject guide. It is worth finding a companion reader to which will help you to develop a broader contextual picture of the texts you are studying. Each of the books listed below has sections on a number of the thinkers featured in this course, but both miss the earliest thinkers (Hobbes, Rousseau) as well as Fanon. Callinicos, A. Social theory: a historical introduction. (London: Polity Press, 2007) second edition [ISBN 9780745638409]. Elliot, A. Contemporary social theory. (London: Routledge, 2014) second edition [ISBN: 9780415521376]. Ransome, P. Social theory for beginners. (Bristol: Policy Press, 2010) [ISBN 9781847426741]. For the earlier thinkers, this book offers a solid introduction: Cohen, M. Political philosophy: from Plato to Mao. (Michigan: Pluto, 2001) [ISBN 9780745316031]. For longer and more in-depth texts on individual thinkers, the following provide balanced introductions: Thomas Hobbes Martinich, A.P. Hobbes. (London: Routledge, 2005) [ISBN 9780415283281]. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Grayling, A.C. Rousseau. (London: Pocket Books, 2005) [ISBN 9780743231473]. Adam Smith Buchan, J. Adam Smith and the pursuit of perfect liberty. (London: Pine Books, 2006) [ISBN 9781861979407]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Elster, J. An introduction to Karl Marx. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) [ISBN 9780521338318]. 7 SC1158 Reading social science Georg Simmel Frisby, D. Georg Simmel. (London: Routledge, 2002) revised edition [ISBN 9780415285356]. Sigmund Freud Gay, P. Freud: a life for our time. (London: Dent, 1989) [ISBN 9780333486382]. Frantz Fanon Macey, D. Frantz Fanon: a biography. (London: Verso, 2012) [ISBN 9781844677733]. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer Muller-Doohm, S. Adorno: a biography. (New York: Wiley, 2009) [ISBN 9780745631096]. Michel Foucault McNay, L. Foucault: a critical introduction. (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994) [ISBN 9780745609911]. Giorgio Agamben Durantaye, L. Agamben: a critical introduction. (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009) [ISBN 9780804761437]. 1.6.4 Online study material In addition to the subject guide and the Essential reading, you can take advantage of the study resources that are available online for this course, including the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and the Online Library. You can access the VLE, the Online Library and your University of London email account via the Student Portal at: http://my.londoninternational.ac.uk You should have received your login details for the Student Portal with your official offer, which was emailed to the address that you gave on your application form. You have probably already logged in to the Student Portal in order to register. As soon as you registered, you will automatically have been granted access to the VLE, Online Library and your fully functional University of London email account. If you have forgotten these login details, please click on the ‘Forgotten your password’ link on the login page. The VLE The VLE, which complements this subject guide, has been designed to enhance your learning experience, providing additional support and a sense of community. It forms an important part of your study experience with the University of London and you should access it regularly. The VLE provides a range of resources for EMFSS courses: • Self-testing activities: Doing these allows you to test your own understanding of subject material. • Electronic study materials: The printed materials that you receive from the University of London are available to download, including updated reading lists and references. • Past examination papers and Examiners’ commentaries: These provide advice on how each examination question might best be answered. • A student discussion forum: This is an open space for you to discuss interests and experiences, seek support from your peers, work collaboratively to solve problems and discuss subject material. 8 Chapter 1: Introduction • Videos: There are recorded academic introductions to the subject, interviews and debates and, for some courses, audio-visual tutorials and conclusions. • Recorded lectures: For some courses, where appropriate, the sessions from previous years’ Study Weekends have been recorded and made available. • Study skills: Expert advice on preparing for examinations and developing your digital literacy skills. • Feedback forms. Some of these resources are available for certain courses only, but we are expanding our provision all the time and you should check the VLE regularly for updates. The Online Library The Online Library contains a huge array of journal articles and other resources to help you read widely and extensively. To access the majority of resources via the Online Library you will either need to use your University of London Student Portal login details, or you will be required to register and use an Athens login: http://tinyurl.com/ ollathens The easiest way to locate relevant content and journal articles in the Online Library is to use the Summon search engine. If you are having trouble finding an article listed in a reading list, try removing any punctuation from the title, such as single quotation marks, question marks and colons. For further advice, please see the online help pages: www.external.shl.lon. ac.uk/summon/about.php 1.7 Examination advice Important: the information and advice given here are based on the examination structure used at the time this guide was written. Please note that subject guides may be used for several years. Because of this we strongly advise you to always check both the current Regulations for relevant information about the examination, and the VLE where you should be advised of any forthcoming changes. You should also carefully check the rubric/instructions on the paper you actually sit and follow those instructions. The examination for this course is two hours long. The examination paper is split into two sections. Section A consists of a short passage of text chosen from one of the writers that you have studied in this course. The text will be chosen from the writer’s work in general and not from the material covered in the subject guide. You will be asked to answer a number of short questions on the passage and be expected to demonstrate that you have clearly understood it. Section B consists of four shorter passages each taken from one of the extracts in the course reading pack. You will be asked to choose two of these passages and to answer questions on them. A Sample examination paper appears as an appendix to this guide, along with a sample Examiners’ commentary. The Examiners’ commentaries contain valuable information about how to approach the examination and so you are strongly advised to read them carefully. Past examination 9 SC1158 Reading social science papers and the associated commentaries are valuable resources when preparing for the examination. You should ensure that all questions are answered! Remember, it is important to check the VLE for: • up-to-date information on examination and assessment arrangements for this course • where available, past examination papers and Examiners’ commentaries for the course which give advice on how each question might best be answered. Examination advice In approaching the examination the most important thing to remember is that even if you know and fully understand the material, if you cannot clearly convey this to the Examiner, then this is worthless! The key to clear expression is simply to practise. Take time to prepare for the examintion by writing short passages on parts of the readings that you have found the most challenging. In the examination itself, try to write as clearly and concisely as possible. This examination consists of a long comprehension exercise with some short and quite simple questions about the passage, and a shorter comprehension exercise, based on a passage from one of the texts in your reading pack. You will be asked more general questions about how the ideas in this passage relate to those of other writers you have studied on the course. The comprehension exercise in Section A is divided into short questions each of which demands a short but detailed answer demonstrating that you have fully grasped the text. In Section B your answers will need to be longer. Remember, with proportionately less time for each question, you will have to keep your essay very much to the point and address the question directly in order to convey to the Examiners that you have fully understood the topic. 10 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power 2.1 Introduction: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) In this first chapter, we look at a text by Hobbes who was an English philosopher–scientist from the 17th century. The extracts that we will examine are from the most famous of Hobbes’ writings and they are concerned with political philosophy. The full title of the work is Leviathan or the matter, forme and power of a common wealth ecclesiasticall and civil. Hobbes wrote on a variety of subjects including mathematics, optics and classical literature. Leviathan is the only one of his works that is considered significant today, and it remains a key work on most introductory courses in politics, moral philosophy, and law. Leviathan, as it is usually called, discusses the best form of social organisation that Hobbes saw as both practicable and natural. The selections that are the focus of our reading below capture the central tenets of Hobbes’ political philosophy. The main ideas that are important to this chapter involve the nature of human nature and of social order, the character and significance of sovereignty in society and what form a legitimate government should take. Connected to this are images of social ranking and how power does and should play a role in social life. Hobbes worked as a translator, scientist and political philosopher during a period of major religious and political transformation in England. He was a student of Francis Bacon and carried out fruitful debates with René Descartes. He was impressed by the work of Galileo Galilei, and spent time working on history, geometry, physics, and theology. Hobbes’ major texts are: The elements of law (1640), De Cive (1642), Tractatus opticus (1641), Of liberty and necessity (1646), Leviathan, or the matter, forme and power of a common wealth ecclesiasticall and civil (1651), De corpore (1655), De homine (1658), and Behemoth or the long parliament (1660). Hobbes’ work has been the foundation – in both negative and positive ways – of what is called ‘social contract theory’ in philosophy. He also contributed to a number of schools that are described loosely by the terms materialism, empiricism, determinism and moral egoism. The form of government that he proposes – absolutism – has not had many supporters throughout the centuries of debate on good government. One consequence of defending a form of government that many people reject is that Hobbes’ work has gained extra attention. His arguments in Leviathan provide a political theory that many later political theorists argued against, thus the fame of the work cannot simply be understood as the popularity of its argument. Just a few sentences of Hobbes’ lengthy treatise are commonly quoted. One of these brief but powerful images is that human life is ‘nasty, brutish and short’, and another is that we live in a ‘war of all against all’. While both these ideas play a role in Hobbes’ political philosophy, they need to be understood within the larger context of the arguments that he makes. You will encounter this in the text selections below, and should be able to quote these famous phrases a little more accurately and with a much more nuanced understanding of what Hobbes meant by them. 11 SC1158 Reading social science 2.1.1 Essential reading (reproduced as Appendix A in Coursepack) Hobbes, T. Leviathan. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); originally published 1651) [ISBN 9780521567978] Chapter XIII, ‘Of the natural condition of mankind as concerning their felicity, and misery’ and Chapter XVIII, ‘Of the rights of sovereigns by institution’. Tuck, R. Hobbes: a very short introduction. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) [ISBN 9780192802552]. 2.1.2 Works cited/other reference material Baumgold, D. Hobbes’s political theory. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) [ISBN 9780521341256]. Ewin, R.E. Virtues and rights: the moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991) [ISBN 9780813312385]. Hampton, J. Hobbes and the social contract tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) [ISBN 9780521368278]. Locke, J. Two treatises on government. Edited by P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; originally published 1689) [ISBN 9780521375730]. Martinich, A.P. The two gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on religion and politics. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) [ISBN 9780521418492]. Rogers, G.A.J. (ed.) Leviathan: contemporary responses to the political theory of Thomas Hobbes. (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997) [ISBN 9781855064065]. Strauss, L., The political philosophy of Hobbes: its basis and genesis. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936) [ISBN 9780226776941]. Williams, G. ‘Thomas Hobbes: Moral and political philosophy’, Internet encyclopedia of philosophy: www.iep.utm.edu, 14 January 2015, first published 1995 [ISSN 21610002]. 2.2 Hobbes’ life and work: a brief outline Hobbes’ vocation was as a tutor and scholar. During the 17th century, such a career involved being close to people in powerful positions, including nobility and English royalty. Hobbes spent his early life working as a tutor to a young aristocrat, which involved teaching the best of the knowledge available at the time, but also accompanying his pupil when he sat in parliament. As a result, while Hobbes was working on intellectual questions such as mathematical theorems, he was at the same time observing the system of English government first hand. Hobbes’ writings on political philosophy are closely connected to the practices of politics at his time, and these involved profound and violent conflict. Hobbes got involved in the debates that were being passionately held at the time he was working as a tutor. Through his writings about sovereignty, he became aligned with the Royalists. This raised problems for Hobbes when Charles I was executed in 1649 during the English Civil War. Hobbes left England for the relative safety of France where he remained for over a decade. It was during his stay in Paris that Hobbes worked on Leviathan, which was published in 1651. Hobbes’ political philosophy is an extension of his broader philosophical understanding. This philosophy is based upon his scientific studies, which pre-dates the explosion of experimental science that occurred only a few decades after Hobbes was actively writing. The understanding of the universe that was dominant in Hobbes’ time has been called mechanistic and deterministic. The natural world was imagined to be something like a great watch with each part of the workings having a specific function and being able to move only in a pre-established fashion. Human 12 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power nature, for Hobbes, was something similar to this. He saw humans as sophisticated physical instruments, in which sensation, perception, thought and motivation were determined by our physical being. This is important to grasping what he is arguing for in Leviathan, where the main question is about the ideal form of government. For Hobbes, the physical determination of human nature plays a significant role in how we interact. Social relations are characterised by the conflicts between individuals as they struggle to meet their physical needs and goals. In working out how to reduce human struggle and misery through a specific type of government, Hobbes proposed the first clear exposition of what is now called ‘social contract theory’. His presentation of the social contract was of it being a necessity if humanity is to escape the painful, violent and conflict-ridden natural condition of humanity. Hobbes argued for absolutist monarchy as the solution to the anguished condition of human nature. Hobbes’ commitment to absolutism as the best government was not without personal consequences. His time in France came to an end because his arguments that the sovereign should be head of religion as well as state upset the leaders of the Catholic Church. Several years after Hobbes returned to England, Leviathan was scrutinised by parliament for evidence of atheism. Hobbes wrote only on non-political topics for the remaining years of his life. 2.3 Reading Leviathan This course is designed to both teach you how to read seemingly difficult texts carefully and systematically in order to engage with the ideas that they contain. Below you will be guided through a line by line ‘unpicking’ of the key sections of Leviathan, which ought to enable you to grasp some of the methods Hobbes used to make his arguments. This effort, combined with the passages below, which provide intellectual and historical context for Leviathan, should give you tools to set out Hobbes’ position on human nature, the nature of social order and cohesion and sovereignty. Having gained this ability to describe Hobbes’ views in your own words, you should then be able to critically engage with them. You will need an English dictionary to help you with the reading, as some of the words will be unfamiliar to you, for several specific reasons. First, Hobbes wrote so long ago that there are old forms of English which are confusing for many students encountering such a text for the first time. If a term has a ‘th’ at the end, this is the older form of ‘s’. For example, • hath = has. Replace all the ‘th/eth’ endings with ‘s/es’ in the following words, and the words become modern: • proveth, ariseth, requireth, looketh, maketh, consisteth, lieth, dependeth, beareth, attempteth, representeth, recovereth, receiveth, preoceedeth, imagineth, doth, acteth, complaineth, punisheth, causeth. There is another set of words that are simply less used in modern English, and it will be useful to jot the definitions down onto your text, as you read through it for the first time, such as: • thereupon, howsoever, soever, thereby, therein, thereto, withal. The grammar, or order of the words in the sentence, is another thing that you may find challenging. There is no simple rule to modernise the grammatical structure of the text, but the step-by-step questions that guide you through a close reading should help to give clues that will untangle even the most stubborn of sentences. 13 SC1158 Reading social science To help you with this first text, here are some questions to keep in mind as you read through the piece. • What is the style of Hobbes’ work: is it prescriptive, descriptive, suggestive, explanatory or something else? • Would you describe it more as science or as art, or is this distinction unhelpful for this text? • What is the relationship between this work and other studies/texts by Hobbes? Sometimes you will want to look up a term or idea, and may find further information about other works useful in clarifying things about this text. An introductory text that is worth using to look at Hobbes’ work more generally, as well as in relation to Leviathan, is Tuck’s Hobbes: a very short introduction, especially Chapter 2. • What is the special element of Hobbes’ text that will stay with you as you move on to study the following chapters? (Making a note of this after a close, intense reading can be helpful when you revisit the material for revision.) 2.4 A close reading of the text Now read paragraph one which begins on line 1 and ends on line 18. • How does Hobbes’ definition of nature differ from one you would find in a modern dictionary? What is the additional element? • Write out the first sentence, lines 1 and 2, in your own words. • What do you think Hobbes means by ‘Artificial animal’ (remember this is written in 1651)? • How does Hobbes define ‘life’ (lines 2–3)? 14 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • What is Hobbes comparing a watch to? • What are the two qualities that man has, according to Hobbes, so far in this text (by line 7)? • How does Hobbes describe a ‘Commonwealth or state’ being made into an ‘Artificial man’? • What, in a state, is analogous to the soul of a man? • What does the soul do for a man, and therefore what does its analogue do for a state? • What is the state intended to do? 15 SC1158 Reading social science • What are the joints of a man analogous to, in a state? • How do rewards and punishments in a state act like the nerves of a body? • What gives the Leviathan its strength? • What serves as the memory of the Leviathan? • What are the ‘reason and will’ of the state? • Write out the attributes of a state that are analogous to health, illness and death. 16 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power Activity 2.1 Lines 16–18 describe the origin of the state or body politic by reference to God’s creation of man described in the Christian Bible. What does God do to create man? How does understanding this affect your understanding of what occurs in the creation of a state? In a few sentences, present the main features of state creation according to Hobbes. Now read the paragraph which begins on line 19 and ends on line 24. • What does Hobbes mean by the first sentence? Try to restate it in your own words. • Hobbes is setting up a standard for understanding, if one is to ‘govern a whole nation’. What is that standard (lines 20–22)? • What guarantee does Hobbes give for his treatise to be at the standard necessary for a sovereign to use? In other words, what test can be applied to show that this work meets the standard Hobbes sets out? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 25 and ends on line 30. • Before starting the paragraph, make sure that you understand what the title means. 17 SC1158 Reading social science • What do ‘faculties of body and mind’ refer to? • Are men the same or different in these ‘faculties’? • Does this mean they are equal or unequal? • What two tactics are possible to equalise the advantage that physical strength lends some men? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 31 and ends on line 43. • Does Hobbes argue that we are equal or unequal in terms of our mental abilities? • What is the relationship between prudence and experience? Ask first for a definition 18 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • How does this relate to mental faculties? • What is the basis of the belief that some people are superior to others in their mental capabilities, according to Hobbes (sentence beginning line 36 and ending 39)? • Is this his view, or not? • What is the most fundamental quality of mental ability for Hobbes, and what are three other, less fundamental qualities? Activity 2.2 1. Focus on the final two sentences in this paragraph. They contain a proof for Hobbes’ main point. Can you restate that proof in your own words? 2. Now that you have restated it, do you agree or disagree with the claim that Hobbes is making? Does the proof he offers make any difference to your agreement or disagreement? 3. Take the same type of evidence he is using for support and apply it to another human quality – for example, kindness. Is the argument now convincing or unconvincing? This exercise is intended to help you separate the claim an author makes from the support that the author gives for that claim. Sometimes we strongly agree or disagree with an author without any need for the author to persuade us. This suggests that we have a bias that makes us favour or reject the author’s arguments. Learning to recognise the opinions we have before we read a text is an important step in learning to evaluate texts for their own merits. Doing this sort of ‘thought experiment’ is one element that develops your ability to read critically. 19 SC1158 Reading social science Now read the paragraph which begins on line 44 and ends on line 51. • Can you think of another way to say ‘hope of attaining our ends’? • Between the first and second sentence of this paragraph, a significant step is taken in Hobbes’ argument. He shifts from talking about equality to potentially violent competition. Pinpoint this shift. • What does ‘delectation’ mean? • Look closely at the penultimate sentence in this paragraph (lines 47 to 50). Why would a farmer having a full harvest bring with it the likelihood of the farmer being attacked – possibly so violently that he is killed? • According to the final sentence, is anyone safe from the hostile competition of other people? 20 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power Now read the paragraph which begins on line 52 and ends on line 60. • What does ‘diffidence’ mean? • What do you think Hobbes mean by a ‘man to secure himself…[by] anticipation’? • What are the methods that Hobbes describes for men to ‘secure’ themselves? Do these methods have any moral value, or are they morally neutral? • When will any man stop trying to ‘secure’ himself? • What do you think Hobbes means by the term ‘generally allowed’? • Hobbes gives a reason why people cannot simply stay still and defend what they have. What is the reason? 21 SC1158 Reading social science • In the penultimate sentence, Hobbes gives his proof for why people have to overextend themselves from their own domain (in power). What is the final sentence of this paragraph stating? Now read the paragraphs which begin on line 61 and ends on line 73. • Write out the first sentence of this paragraph in your own words. • In the first clause of the sentence on lines 62–66, what is Hobbes saying? • The second section of this sentence describes how people will act, if the first part of the sentence is not fulfilled. Can you rewrite the rest of this sentence in your own words? Activity 2.3 Write 250 words on what you know so far about Hobbes’ understanding of human nature. First, return to the Introduction to remind yourself of what Hobbes considers human nature to be, before we enter into social relationships. Then look at his descriptions of the fundamental basis for, and the character of, how we interact with other people. Try to set out how the two pictures – human nature in isolation, and the character of social relations – are connected to each other. 22 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power Now read the paragraphs which begins on line 67 and ends on line 73. • What are the three characteristics that motivate humans and result in conflict? • What are the three objectives that are connected to these characteristics? • List the characteristics, the abstract objective and the concrete actions that follow each one. Now read the paragraph which begins on line 74 and ends on line 81. • Line 74 contains the claim for which Hobbes is most famous, and it is often used to summarise Leviathan. Can you describe it in your own words? • What is Hobbes’ definition of war? Is this definition (in lines 78–81) one that is commonly used? If not, what is different about it? • Hobbes’ use of the term? 23 SC1158 Reading social science • Has he given any specific characteristics to peace, or is it simply the opposite of war? Activity 2.4 1. When something is described only by virtue of what it is not (for example, being wealthy is when you are not impoverished), it can be called a ‘negative definition’. Has Hobbes given war, or peace, a negative definition? 2. How would a positive definition of this look different? Can you offer a positive definition? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 82 and ends on line 89. • What is Hobbes describing in the first sentence of this paragraph? • What does Hobbes mean by ‘industry’ in the next sentence? • List that which is missing in a time of uncertainty/war. • Describe what there is during this time (lines 88–89). 24 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power Activity 2.5 The final clause of the final sentence in this paragraph is the other phrase that is used to summarise Hobbes’ perspective and why he argues for monarchist absolutism as the optimal system of government. One powerful way to critically engage with his position is to tackle this claim. A good method is to scrutinise the proofs that Hobbes has offered so far for it (about human nature and the fundamental character of social relations). If you can find a weakness, or something unconvincing in these proofs, you will be in a strong position to argue against his broader argument about the nature of good government. Conversely, if you want to argue in support of Hobbes, you will need to offer a defence for the foundations of his work. Take time now to look at the proofs and try to challenge and defend them. You can do this in note form: this is a thinking exercise, rather than a writing exercise. Now read the paragraph which begins on line 90 and ends on line 101. • What sort of passage do you expect based on the first sentence of this paragraph? What clue does ‘it may seem strange to some’ offer about what will follow? • The second part of the first sentence is telling us what? What challenge is Hobbes telling us that he is meeting? • Are you persuaded by lines 93–97? Does your ‘experience confirm’ what Hobbes is asserting about human nature and the nature of social life? • What does Hobbes mean by this? Do you agree that a way of acting can be an accusation? 25 SC1158 Reading social science • If something is a sin, is it morally neutral or morally negative? What function does describing something as ‘no sin’ have, what happens to the moral valuation? • Re-write the final sentence in your own order and your own words, until it makes sense to you. Now read the paragraph which begins on line 102 and ends on line 108. • Look up ‘peradventure’. • Is Hobbes opening this paragraph by strengthening his main arguments, or by qualifying them? • In lines 103–06, it is important to remember the historical context. This text was published in the middle of the 17th century, and knowledge of the ‘savage peoples of America’ would have been limited. What little information was shared was largely inaccurate and often sensationalist. Bearing this in mind, what is Hobbes’ key point? • What is Hobbes saying about the stability of government if it lacks a single authority? 26 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power Now read the paragraph which begins on line 109 and ends on line 115. • According to Hobbes, has human history ever seen a state where every person was in open conflict with all others? • Why is this not the case? What is the difference between a state where every individual is in conflict and the actual state of human history? • What is the difference between actual war and a posture of war? • Why is being under the dominion of a jealous, war-posturing sovereign different from being without any sovereign and in conflict with all other people one encounters? • How are liberty and misery connected, according to Hobbes? Activity 2.6 There are two significant elements in the last paragraph. The first concerns the benefit of sovereign protection and the second concerns the negative connotations for liberty that are built into Hobbes’ political philosophy. How are these two elements connected? Try to write out an answer, including your own critical response to this question in 300 words. 27 SC1158 Reading social science Now read the paragraph which begins on line 116 and ends on line 125 • In your understanding, what are the implications of nothing being unjust in the ‘war of every man against every man’? • Why is it significant that Hobbes places right and wrong next to justice and injustice in line 117? • What is necessary, according to the next sentence, for there to be justice? • What does Hobbes mean by saying that force and fraud are virtues in war? • Where do justice and injustice derive, if they are not part of our faculties? 28 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • What is Hobbes’ proof that justice and injustice are not faculties of human nature (line 122)? • Does the sentence starting line 120 plausibly follow from the sentence that precedes it? Why or why not? • What does Hobbes mean by ‘propriety’, ‘dominion’ and ‘mine and thine distinct’? • What do you think Hobbes means by ‘to be man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it’? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 126 and ends on line 130. • Are the ‘passions that incline men to peace’ self-directed, or are they directed toward others? 29 SC1158 Reading social science • What offers us a way to find agreements to peace with one another? • What does Hobbes describe as ‘the laws of nature’? Before you begin the next section, look closely at the title which shows what the content of the section is about. You will be looking at significant extracts of the chapter but not the whole chapter. Now read the paragraphs which begins on line 131 and ends on line 138. • Rewrite the definition of commonwealth (the paragraph) in your own words. Is there any part of Hobbes’ definition that is confusing or unclear? • Does a sovereign power have to be an individual, or can it be a group? • What is it that ‘confers’ the rights to the sovereign? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 139 and ends on line 158. 30 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • Explain what it means to ‘covenant’ something. • What is the obligation that Hobbes is outlining in the second sentence of this paragraph? • Why can subjects not ‘cast off’ monarchy if they have ‘instituted a Commonwealth’ (lines 143–49)? • Isolate the clause beginning on line 145 and ending on line 146. Does Hobbes offer support for why people are ‘bound’ in any of the text that has gone before? Why are people obliged, as he describes it? • Can you find support for this obligation in the next clause (lines 146–48)? • How is deposing a sovereign ‘injustice’? 31 SC1158 Reading social science • Explain why a person who tries to depose a sovereign and is caught and killed is, according to Hobbes, the person who legitimates his own death. The next argument, about God and sovereignty, is specific to the historical context of religious discord and political conflicts that were occurring at the time Hobbes was writing. It is historically, but not logically, significant. Activity 2.7 Can you set out the steps in Hobbes’ argument from the origin of sovereignty to the inviolability of the sovereign once established? Can you defend Hobbes’ definition of sovereignty as set out in this paragraph? Write 400 words defending or criticising Hobbes’ definition of sovereignty. Now read the paragraph which begins on line 159 and ends on line 177. • Which rights is Hobbes referring to, that are incommunicable and inseparable? • Which rights are transferable, in contrast to the fundamental sovereign’s right? • Is the sovereign’s power to protect also a right? 32 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • Is it wise for the sovereign to transfer any of the rights that they can transfer, or does Hobbes claim that specific problems arise from the transfer of each of them? • What happens to a Commonwealth if the sovereign rights (or powers) are parcelled out to other persons, or assemblies? • What historical example does Hobbes offer to demonstrate that power needs to be unitary? • What other unities follow from unity of sovereign power? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 178 and ends on line 182. Look up the word ‘essential’ in an ordinary English dictionary and try to find a meaning that is relevant to political philosophy. If you cannot find one that makes sense in political philosophy, find a meaning that is relevant to philosophy in general. If you are unable to make sense of this term by using an ordinary English dictionary, try a dictionary of philosophy (there are several available online such as the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, the Internet encyclopedia of philosophy). • Why is it impossible to dissociate the specific rights from the sovereignty itself? 33 SC1158 Reading social science Now read the paragraph which begins on line 183 and ends on line 191. Read the first sentence, skipping over the Latin terms, but reading instead with the English definitions as they are offered. • What is the main point of the first sentence? • Explain why it is absurd if ‘they mean not the collective body as one person’. • Explain why it is absurd if ‘they understand them as one person’. Now read the paragraph which begins on line 192 and ends on line 197. • What meaning does honour have in this context? • Is the sovereign in this paragraph an assembly or an individual? 34 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power • What is the difference in status accorded to aristocrats in relation to each other and the sovereign? Now read the paragraph which begins on line 198 and ends on line 208. • Rewrite the sentence in lines 198–99 in your own words. Could you apply this to any contemporary national leaders (whether monarchs, despots or elected representatives)? • Where does the sense of injustice stem from: the form of a government or something else? • Begin at the clause that starts on line 203 and write down you own interpretation of the remainder of this paragraph. What key points did you draw from it? Activity 2.8 Write down in your own words Hobbes’ account of the nature of sovereignty. Include as much detail as you can from the text. Try to write about 500 words. 35 SC1158 Reading social science 2.5 Thomas Hobbes and sovereignty Williams summarises Hobbes’ main question and his own answer to it: His vision of the world is strikingly original and still relevant to contemporary politics. His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. He poses stark alternatives: we should give our obedience to an unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide every social and political issue). Otherwise what awaits us is a “state of nature” that closely resembles civil war – a situation of universal insecurity, where all have reason to fear violent death and where rewarding human cooperation is all but impossible. (Internet encyclopedia of philosophy, 1995, http:// www.iep.utm.edu) How did Hobbes come to be called the ‘founder of modern political theory’? How did he end up writing Leviathan, a work that is almost unfailingly regarded as peculiar, and yet also nearly unanimously seen as hugely significant? Hobbes wrote at an important juncture in science and politics, which is called the ‘early modern’ period. This period was a time in which a new form of intellectual inquiry was becoming popular. The 17th century marked the start of a shift towards empirical science and away from logical disputation. Many of the opening paragraphs of Leviathan are significant in this context. The rejection of logical argumentation on its own is important, but what is more significant is that Hobbes bases his political philosophy on materialism. This is a view that emphasises the importance of the physical causes of events rather than unobservable, immaterial causes. Hobbes’ account of human nature is a mechanistic and deterministic image which follows from his materialism. By focusing on the physical basis of human action, Hobbes’ political philosophy has to focus on the problem of social order. Starting with the material realm means that Hobbes looks first to individuals and how each of us handles the problems associated with physical survival. From this point, other social philosophers have gone in a different direction, especially Rousseau and Smith, as explored in the next two chapters. The circumstances around Hobbes may help to explain why social order was regarded as a problem in need of a solution. Simultaneous to his studies in mathematics, optics, law, and religion, Hobbes witnessed a bloody, violent civil war. What was happening around Hobbes was not orderly, nor unified, nor peaceable. Some of his statements about the failure of certain forms of sovereignty are drawn directly from his experience of living through a period of bloody political and religious discord. Leviathan is an odd text in many ways. Commentators point out that it is the original social contract theory and, as such, marks a dramatic shift for political theory. There is an important method involved which Hobbes’ text laid out: social contract theorists imagine the human condition ‘before’ or without any form of social organisation. The next step is to argue that a specific form of government is best and that people explicitly or implicitly agree to this form. Unlike the social contract theorists that followed, Hobbes comes to the astonishing conclusion that absolutism is the best form of government. This is astonishing because his starting point is the idea of a group agreeing to subordinate their natural egoism for the general justice. In the next chapter, we look at a reaction to Hobbes that was taken by another social contract theorist. 36 Chapter 2: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan and sovereign power 2.6 Leviathan’s legacy Hobbes was born prematurely as his mother received news of the impending invasion of the Spanish Armada in England. He is reported to have said that his mother gave birth to twins on that day: to himself, and to his fear. The feature that underpins Hobbes social contract theory is a vision of human nature derived from fear. We have a sound basis to fear each other, according to Hobbes, since fundamentally we will compete for our own ends and we are equal in the means we have to attain them. This has generated a long and healthy debate, as to what human life is in an imaginary state of nature. Hobbes is one of the few who argues that we will do violence to each other, as many European thinkers imagined the life in nature to be blissfully cooperative. This theme returns again in the chapter on Freud. In Hobbes’ understanding, however, life in the state of nature is characterised by violence, competition, and suspicion. Order is something that can only be imposed by someone who people (who become in a political sense, subjects) universally agree has the power to regulate social relationships. Fear takes on a productive role in sovereignty, as the fear of our neighbours is transferred to the fear of the king, the Leviathan. The materialism and determinism which were discussed in the Introduction are important as fundamental ideas in Hobbes’ account of how a people can live peaceably. Society cannot function in the absence of a guiding power, embodied in the absolute ruler, the monarch. John Locke, continuing in the vein of social contract theory, argued against the totalising element of Hobbes in Leviathan. Locke responded to Hobbes in Two treatises on government, where he offered a softened version of social contract theory. One of the most vocal replies to Hobbes is to be found in the text we look at next, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 37 SC1158 Reading social science Notes 38 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract 3.1 Introduction: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Rousseau was an 18th-century Genevan French political philosopher who wrote on music, morality, and science. He was closely connected with the group of French scholars (the philosophes) that published a significant work which is often understood as the intellectual basis of the French Revolution, the Encyclopedie. Rousseau contributed articles on music and moral philosophy to the Encyclopedie. The books that he published were Discourse on the origins of inequality (1755), Julie or the New Heloise (1761), The social contract (1762), Emile (1762), Emile and Sophie (1780), The confessions (1782/9), The reveries of the solitary walker (1782), and Rousseau: judge of Jean-Jacques (1782). The text that remains the most influential across various social sciences is The social contract, which is the focus of this chapter. In The social contract, Rousseau is responding to both Hobbes’ and John Locke’s writings about good governance and sovereignty. This is described as the development of social contract theory, but as you will see Rousseau’s vision of just sovereignty is quite different to that of Hobbes. Equality, liberty, sovereignty, the will of a people and the will of individuals – these concepts emerge from The social contract, and they are the concepts that have attracted so many defenders and detractors. The social contract can be analysed alone; however, a brief contextual history clarifies some of the main ideas that underpin it. Rousseau wrote earlier works which set out how he views human history and the current state of social life. Like Hobbes, Rousseau uses the idea of a ‘state of nature’ to imagine what social life is, in the absence of government. However, Rousseau’s state of nature is harmonious and based on mutual empathy. With the development of private property, inequality enters into social relations. Violence and mutual envy become possible, and systems for protecting property emerge which entrench inequality between people. This is the natural contract, and it is the opposite of the social contract. This idea of human nature as fundamentally empathetic and peaceable is one that Marx and Engels share, and it overlaps with the primitive communism in Marx’s account of the development of political-economic stages. Rousseau’s influence is wider than just political philosophy, but that is where it is felt most directly. The social contract remains a significant defence for different types of political thinkers, such as liberal theorists and republican theorists. Rousseau has also been influential for a range of thinkers. For example, Immanuel Kant took up Rousseau’s ideas about the faculty of judgement. Rousseau provoked strong criticism from 20thcentury philosophers, such as Hannah Arendt who rejected Rousseau’s apparent unity of the state as the instrument of law and the nation as the vessel for the will of the people. Within the history of ideas, Rousseau’s political philosophy has been as productive in a positive sense (by stimulating further work for those in broad agreement), as it has been in a negative way (by stimulating those whom find it repugnant). This seems to be because Rousseau has managed to touch upon the fundamental issues of what human nature and social life are in a way that is more 39 SC1158 Reading social science easily comprehensible than Hobbes or the other thinkers you will find in subsequent chapters. Underpinning what appears to be fairly clear and concise writing, however, are significant ideas about the nature of progress, reason and our natural condition. Bear this in mind when you begin to read his famous work, which starts with the well-known line ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’. The text you will be reading below is short, but has within it significant claims about freedom, sovereignty, how social order is possible, justice and equality. 3.1.1 Essential reading (reproduced as Appendix B) Rousseau, J.-J. The social contract. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; originally published 1776) [ISBN 9780521424462] Book 1, Chapter 1, ‘The subject of the first book’; Chapter 6 ‘The social compact’ and Chapter 8 ‘The civil state’. Wokler, R. Rousseau: a very short introduction. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) [ISBN 9780192801982]. 3.1.2 Works cited/other reference material Cooper, L.D. Rousseau and nature: the problem of the good life. (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 1999) [ISBN 9780271029887]. Grayling, A.C. Rousseau. (London: Pocket Books, 2005) [ISBN 9780743231473]. O’Hagan, T. Rousseau. (London: Routledge 2008) [ISBN 9780855205966]. Riley P. The Cambridge companion to Rousseau. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) [ISBN 9780521576154]. Starobinski, J. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: transparency and obstruction. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) [ISBN 9780226771281]. 3.2 Rousseau’s life and work: a brief outline Rousseau was as interested in aesthetics as he was in intellectual topics. He wrote an opera, plays and several novels. These interests were interconnected, and his first major piece of writing to gain attention was an essay about arts and sciences that explored the relationship between aesthetic and intellectual works and morality. Rousseau criticised the society in which he found himself, arguing against the position that civilisation represents progress. This idea of the historical decay of social life is decisive in the The social contract, where it follows on from the claim that the defence of private property the basis upon which injustice and inequality could develop. The main question that troubles Rousseau, however, is not how to return to a state of nature in which morality remains pure. Instead, he looks at how to provide freedom for individuals within collective life. Like Hobbes, Rousseau’s work was not always well received by the powers of the day. The social contract (and Emile) was banned and Rousseau fled France and then Switzerland and settled for a period in England through the invitation of David Hume, another notable political philosopher. He did return to France and his writings were taken up by the French revolutionaries after his death in 1778. Rousseau gained fame from his early writings, but The social contract and Emile were immediate sensations. The appetite for the ideas Rousseau was offering was powerful in mid-18th-century France. However, it was not only his moral philosophy that was popular. He experimented with style in his Confessions, providing what is now seen as the first text in an 40 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract autobiographical style. He maintained a lifelong interest in the arts, as an artist (a composer) and writer (writing an early version of a novel, Julie). These efforts were interconnected with the moral philosophy he wrote about simultaneously. The popularity of his works was liberating in some ways and constraining in others. He faced censors and fled for fear of prosecution, but he was also in the company of the philosophes, which offered great stimulation for his work. 3.3 Reading The social contract The social contract was written in French, and you are encountering the English translation. This work has been the topic of much debate in the years since its first publication. As a result, the translation has been carefully discussed, and specific terminology has led to areas of discussion in political philosophy. Rousseau’s work stands in contrast to Hobbes in terms of the clarity of language. There are few unfamiliar terms, and the grammar is generally much simpler. This is a good text to start looking at the use of figurative and literal language. Familiarise yourself with the difference between these two forms of expression before starting to work on Rousseau’s extract. If you are uncertain, look up unfamiliar words or terms in a standard English dictionary and consider the examples that are offered. When you encounter something that you think is a metaphor or an analogy, make note of this. Sometimes powerful images will carry arguments further than direct logical analysis, whereas sometimes they are unnecessary to make the point. In this text, the use of figurative language is minimal, but significant. In other chapters, authors use illustrations to offer examples and these play an important role in the arguments. Identify each instance of a metaphor or an analogy that you find in the extract below. 3.4 A close reading of the text Now read the first two paragraphs which begin on line 1 and end on line 10. • What sort of chains is Rousseau referring to? Is this literal or metaphorical, in your view? • How is it possible for a master ‘of others’ to be a greater slave than his slaves? 41 SC1158 Reading social science • What changes is Rousseau referring to? • What question does Rousseau say he cannot answer, and what question can he answer? • Does Rousseau open with a striking image or does he build up to one? • What kind of force do you think Rousseau is referring to? What are your clues for this? • Are there other forms of compulsion than physical force? • This new phrase, ‘the social order’ is worth noting along with the characteristics that Rousseau attributes to it. 42 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract • What is the social order established upon? Note the title of this chapter extract. Now read the paragraphs which begin on line 11 and end on line 26. • What do you think Rousseau is referring to when he invokes ‘the state of nature’? • What is Rousseau asserting in this first sentence? • What is his proof in the final sentence of this first paragraph? • What do you think Rousseau is referring to when he writes ‘engender new forces’? • What can we do with our existing forces? 43 SC1158 Reading social science • What does ‘preserving’ ourselves by means of ‘the formation, by aggregation’ of ? a sum of forces mean? • What do we need to do, in order to overcome the obstacles to our preservation – i.e. our survival? • What do you think Rousseau means by ‘a single motive power’? • What are the two ‘chief instruments’ of our survival? • What paradox does Rousseau relate in terms of our own selfpreservation and the necessity for a ‘sum of forces’? Activity 3.1 Write out the ‘fundamental problem’ that according to Rousseau The social contract is aimed at solving in a few sentences. Look back to your work on Hobbes in Chapter 2, and compare what the two philosophers say that they are drawing up and why. 44 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract Now read the paragraphs which begin on line 27 and end on line 30. • What contract is Rousseau referring to? • What does he mean by ‘determined by the nature of the act’? • How would it be possible to modify the clauses of this contract? Can you give an example? • What clue about the character of this contract do you get when he writes that the clauses have never ‘been formally set forth’? • What would violate the social compact? • What happens to the individual when the social compact is annulled? 45 SC1158 Reading social science • What is the difference between natural and conventional liberty? Activity 3.2 Consider natural and conventional liberty. Write 350 words exploring whether these two forms of liberty are compatible or incompatible. Now read the paragraphs which begin on line 31 and end on line 43. • What does Rousseau mean by the term ‘alienation of each associate, together with his rights’ (lines 32–33)? • What is the relationship between the individual and the social group, according to the first half of the sentence on lines 32–33? • What is the quality that stops people ‘making [the conditions] burdensome on each other’? • On the sentence beginning line 36, what does Rousseau mean by ‘alienation being without reserve’? 46 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract • Why does the associate have nothing more to demand? • What rights do people keep in Rousseau’s social compact? • What is another name for what Rousseau calls a ‘common superior’? • What sort of relationships do people have in the ‘state of nature’? • What does Rousseau mean when he writes that ‘each man in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody’? How does this compare with the agreement required of subjects in Hobbes’ commonwealth? • What is the logic that puts a barrier on domination of some over others? 47 SC1158 Reading social science • What are the three ways that Rousseau illustrates the barrier? Activity 3.3 What sort of an image of human nature does Rousseau assume? Find support in the text for your answer. How does this conception relate to the character that the social compact has? Can you support your answer with specific text references? Note the title of this section. Now read the paragraphs which begin on line 44 and end on line 56. • What are two different circumstances people can find themselves in which Rousseau sets up as a contrast? • What change occurs in people when they shift from the first circumstance to the other? • In which circumstance are people governed by instinct and immoral? • In which circumstance, are they governed by justice and do they act morally? 48 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract • What human faculty directs justice and moral action (line 61)? • Is morality something connected to individuals, in the absence of others, or does it seem to be something connected to groups? Activity 3.4 Focus on the final sentence in this paragraph. Take a moment to sketch out Rousseau’s image of the civil state. How does this image relate to the first sentence of the text? Write up your answer in 200–300 words. In your answer, make it clear where you are drawing direct support from the text and where you need to deduce from elements in the text, or speculate (for example by using a contrast with Hobbes). Note the title of this section. Now read the paragraphs which begin on line 67 and end on line 77. • What is the difference between ‘natural liberty’ and ‘civil liberty’? • Is there any obvious distinction between having ‘an unlimited right to everything [one] tries to get’ and having ‘proprietorship of all [one] possesses’? • What is a general will? 49 SC1158 Reading social science • Can you distinguish between possession and property? • What does Rousseau mean when he writes that ‘the mere impulse of appetite is slavery’? Activity 3.5 Write an answer on the question below. Time yourself to spend one hour developing an essay style answer as if you were in an examination hall. Critically interpret Rousseau’s famous statement that ‘Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains’ in respect of his claim that ‘man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery’. Try to write a balanced answer, using evidence from the text where possible. In the first section, offer a robust interpretation of the key claim/s that are embedded in the question. In the second part, try to critically engage with the claim/s. 3.5 Rousseau and governance For Rousseau, the question of good government is motivated by his commitment to the dignity of individuals before they enter into social relations. It is significant that Rousseau is concerned with outlining a government, in any form. His work is not a rejection of human culture wholesale, although it rests on the rejection of the idea that human cultures are progressive, that they are improving. Where Hobbes saw man fundamentally as egoistic, driven by passions (mechanically, almost logically, it can be said), Rousseau saw human nature as expressive, compassionate and most importantly, free. Rousseau’s question is how our fundamental freedom can be protected while we live in community, when we have inherited systems of injustice and inequality. Governance is thus working, not to contain the selfish and conflicting appetites of people as in Hobbes’ view, but to improve the equality and justice that are inherent objectives of human nature. The main concept that Rousseau relies upon is the idea of a general will, or a will that unifies and is greater than the individual wills it is made up of. This concept makes it possible to imagine individuals coming together in the form of a ‘sovereign’ that is no longer an actual individual ruler (as it was in Hobbes), but rather a collective form such as direct democracy. Rousseau’s work has much to offer for questions about the nature of human community and government, as well as for the role of individuals and collectives. Power and economic justice are decisive in both his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and The social contract. 50 Chapter 3: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The social contract 3.6 The social contract’s legacy Rousseau has been criticised in various ways from the time he published The social contract until the present. His writings upset Voltaire, because Rousseau contrasted the pastoral existence of the country with the decline of human life through ‘civilisation’. The argument that Rousseau is setting up an ideal of what is called the ‘Noble Savage’, has however, been convincingly countered. The concept of the ‘Noble Savage’ is an idealisation that some European thinkers have had of humanity in a noncivilised state. They imagine that prior to civil society, humans are gentle, kind and have an innate wisdom. This image was erroneously attributed to Rousseau at the time of his writing and in the following decades. Rousseau has been criticised for holding this image, but also some thinkers approvingly borrowed from it (although it has been quite strongly shown that it is not what Rousseau argued). The pastoral image of life before the natural contract was deeply influential for a number of American 19thcentury political philosophers, such as Emerson and Thoreau. On narrower grounds, there has been much debate on questions about the form and validity of The social contract and the general will. Embedded in these postulates are certain ideas about human freedom and sociability that scholars and political thinkers of various schools react against. Amongst the earliest such responses was Hume who argued that although the ‘consent of the governed’ was a perfect ideal, it was simply that: an ideal that could not be realised. However, Rousseau has also had profound influence on notable Western thinkers, such as Kant. Kant’s writings on ethics share the premise that moral actions are those actions which are generalisable. Kant’s moral imperative relies on rationality where Rousseau is more concerned with nature and affect (especially sympathy). Marx is also indebted to Rousseau, taking much from Rousseau’s idea of what the foundation of human collectives rest upon, and how we ought to live in common. 51 SC1158 Reading social science Notes 52