Liberalism

I was reading through the book, "Politics" and I came across the ideology of Liberalism. It has a neoliberalism component of Individualism, which we have discussed in the past meetings. I was just wondering if the practice of this ideology includes the use of the schools of thought which have been said to possess individualistic views?

-Regine Villanueva, 2011-48248

Niccolo Machiavelli: Moral or Immoral

Machiavelli's famous saying "The end justifies the means" has been used to vindicate, sometimes solve, many moral issues in the world. Examples including the ruthless bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and ongoing battle between religion and science to solve morality of stem Cell Research. Parties that suffered from the bombing, the church, and others who do not follow this belief would claim that Machiavelli was a gravely immoral person, while others praise his moral views. It is not unheard of that Machiavelli had passionate drive and obsession towards achieving complete unity in Italy despite the Medicci's mediocre intelligence. But would the intention of Italy's unification justify his teachings? In the Prince, Machiavelli's moral perceptions are elucidated in between the lines of his political "do's and don'ts".

To understand Machiavelli's moral perception it is only fair to state all his morally-related teachings, both the ethical and unethical. In his book, The Prince Chapter 19, Machiavelli teaches 'you' that in order to rule a nation-state well, 'you' have to be both feared and loved. However, if both cannot be attained, being feared is the better alternative. But the line between being feared and being hated is both thin and vague. While people will surrender to your rule while feared, they would overthrow while hated. Thus being hated is not a trait fit for a ruler. He teaches that to avoid being hated, 'you' must avoid taking one's property and woman. Similarly, in Moses's given Ten Commandments it states "Thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife". Later in the future, a philosopher named John Locke, was also praised for his belief that men should have rights to life, liberty and property. Because this teaching of basically "not stealing" - of property and of women- has been socially accepted since the Bible until the present time, Machiavelli , in this aspect, can be deemed moral. But it cannot be ignored that his immoral teachings outweigh his moral ones.

One of Machiavelli's immoral teachings is that rulers and civilians have a different set of morals. What is morally right to civilians may not be morally right to rulers, and vice versa. This implies that he does not believe that all men are equal. This in itself is immoral, according to both the Bible and Aristotle's teachings. Aristotle believed that all men are subject to the understood moral law, equalizing men of all status. Religion also teaches us that all men are equal and under the same God. The immorality of this particular teaching is aggravated by his belief that a Prince should not burden himself with the welfare of his citizens, stating " unless extraordinary vices cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him" (Machiavelli, pg.3) .

Another evidence to prove Machiavelli's immortality is his option , when a prince wants to rule a state with common languages and culture, is to have "destroyed the family of the prince who was ruling them" and have "the family of their former lord extinguished" (Machiavelli, pg. 6). This shows, first, his indifference to the value of life, or, second, that a life is unequal to the state as a whole. One can argue that he emphasizes importance on the state as a whole because he cares for the welfare of the people in it, but that is easily countered by my first point, that if analyzed, means that the success of the state is determined by how stable it is and how strong a ruler is, instead of the security, safety and prosperity of the people in it.

However what is moral and what is not is very controversial. As long as man is given the power of choice, morality will always depends on the perception of the majority in society. One can deem Machiavelli moral,only if they believe that both life and human equality are less important than the stability of only the state and its rulers - and not its people.

Isabel Luna, 2010-79583

Short Quiz to be submitted on Wednesday (December 7, 2011)

On-line quiz

Social Science 2

Instructions: Write your answers on a blue book, not on-line. Anybody who answers on-line will get the grade of “zero”. Submit your answers in our next class meeting, Wednesday 7 December 2011. Late submissions will not be accepted.

Identify the following:

1. Plato’s teacher who was condemned to death for offending the gods and corrupting the youth.
2. The founder of the Lyceum in ancient Athens.
3. His conquests and imperial domination completed the decline of the polis (the city states in ancient Greece).
4. A school of thought in the Hellenistic period whose basic moral teaching was to pursue pleasure to the maximum because bad times are soon to follow.
5. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, what is the origin of inequality among men?
6. Which of the philosophies during the Hellenistic period influenced the development of Roman law?
7. What metaphor did Adam Smith use to refer to an alleged law that automatically adjusts supply, demand and price if the market is left alone?
8. What is the popular name for a school of thought that seeks to limit the powers of government supposedly to broaden the freedom of individuals?
9. Who put forward the theory that in entering into the social contract, men did not abandon all their natural rights but retained the rights to life, liberty and property?
10. Who advanced a theory opposite to #9 above, arguing that in the social contract men totally surrendered their natural rights to the sovereign; hence the power of the state over its citizens is absolute. 

Video on Machiavelli and the Prince

Please click the following link to see the video or you can watch it directly from you tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s25kX24j250

No classes on Wednesday (November 30, 2011)

We will not meet on Wednesday since it is a regular holiday, to commemorate the birth of Andres Bonifacio.We'll meet on Friday, December 2. Thanks!

The Republic: Guardians

Ruth Denise Z. Mariano
2010-79008
WFY


focusing on "The Republic" by Plato who suggested that the Guardians must not own a private property and they shouldn't possess gold and silver so that they may not become tyrants. Was this ever applied in Athens or anywhere in Greece? If yes, what were its effects? If it was never applied, why is that?


Source:

Curtis M. (1981). The Republic: The Great Political Theories. Published by Avon Books, New York.

Rebuplic vs. Democracy

To what I understand about the difference of the Republic kind of government from democracy during the first meeting, a person is chosen as a leader because he possesses the trait that the citizens think what a leader should have. These two types of government have differences in its voting procedure but how does their governing differ from one another? To the Greeks who were democratic and to the Romans who were Republics, which one do you think had a better government?

Class Syllabus

Social Science II                                                                      Dr. Francisco Nemenzo

2^nd Semester, 2011-2012                                                         Professor Emeritus

Syllabus

          Social Science II is a survey course of the most important ideas of the political philosophers listed in the departmental syllabus. You will learn more that. Knowing what these great thinkers said is not enough. We cannot fully appreciate the power of their ideas if taken out of historical context. A good dictionary supplies simple definitions of the terms they popularized; but even the best dictionary does not reconstruct the circumstances that gave rise to them and the nuances ascribed by later commentators, politicians and activists who appropriated their philosophers.

          Political philosophies are considered “great” which influenced the thinking of a significant number of people and triggered some momentous events. In this class we shall study also their ideological and practical consequences. To grasp their continuing relevance, we shall, furthermore, reflect upon their use in contemporary political discourse.

Since it was included in the UP General Education Program, Social Science II discussed selected political thinkers one-by-one, in chronological order. In this class we shall focus, instead, on key issues in the history of political thought and see how they have been formulated, disputed, revised, and enriched.

          Below is the list of issues we shall discuss and the political thinkers who contributed in the debates. Attached is a bibliography of the major works of these political philosophers. Since these works are acclaimed “classics”, they have been published in various editions and translations. For this reason, the bibliography only mentions the authors and titles (omitting their publishers, places of publication and dates of publication).

          I do not prescribe a textbook. I will try to convince you to read the originals. If that is too much to ask in a one semester course, I recommend Michael Curtis’ compilations of excerpts from the original works: The Great Political Theories, volumes 1 and 2, and The Nature of Politics.

Issues in Political Theory

1.    Democracy

a.    Plato

b.    Aristotle

c.    Marx

d.    Locke

2.    Equality

a.    Plato

b.    Aristotle

c.    Rousseau

d.    Marx

3.    The community

a.    Aristotle

b.    Rousseau

c.    Engels

4.    The nation-state

a.    Bodin

b.    Machiavelli

5.    The empire

a.    Cicero

b.    Marx

c.    Lenin

6.    Church and state

a.    Augustine

b.    Aquinas

c.    Bodin

d.    Hobbes

e.    Locke

7.    Morality and raison détat

a.    Augustine

b.    Machiavelli

8.    Authoritarianism

a.    Hobbes

b.    Lee Kuan Yew

c.    Marcos

9.    Political liberalism

a.    Mill

b.    Locke

10. Anarchism

a.    Bakunin

b.    Proudhon

c.    Marx

11. Economic liberalism (laissez faire)

a.    Smith

b.    Friedman

12. The socialist challenge

a.    Marx and Engels

b.    Lenin

c.    Stalin

d.    Mao

e.    Guevara

13. The Keynesian compromise

a.    Keynes

b.    Crossland

14. Globalization: the current debate between neo-liberals, Keynesians, and socialists