POL320 - Lecture - September 29, 2008

to be prime minister is to be radically deprived of your freedom

• with increased power comes increased responsibility
• in other ways you are just as constrained
• why can't the prime minister just quit?
• he has the freedom to quit

Freedom depends on wants

• appetite vs. reason
• Are you free?
• do you agree with every law which governs you?
• I agree with the procedure in which the laws were reached and am confident that I can change the laws that don't cov

equality before the law

• the law forbids both rich and poor from breaking bread in the streets and living in the streets
• Hobbes defines freedom as the absence of obstacles to ones desires
• Stoic definition of freedom -
• freedom from want -
• what you are deprived of in body

primitive sense of freedom

• norm creation - most of the conventions around clothing follow function -
• we were clothes to have an advantage in performance
• that performance gets refined and optimized to a level of absurdity and becomes purely ornamental
• living in the moment is an aspect of freedom

social contract

• how can we be free in a dense social and political community
• one fundamental element of freedom
• you can't be free if there are laws imposed upon you
• you must impose the laws upon you first

legitimate and reliable

• what will make it legitimate?
• what will make it work?

men as they are

• human nature is fixed
• we shouldn't try to change men

laws as they Could be

• they are malleable and changeable,
• first departure from the devinly ornated laws of 18th century
• but wait Rousseau thinks that a radical transformation occurs from nature to society
• how the rules shape dispositions and attitudes

how the laws changes nature

• the project of the social contract is the transform and change human beings
• human nature is not fixed but it is constrained - not completely plastic
• different culture have different constraints and opportunities
• 3 - justice and utility should not conflict

morality vs. interest

• it is dangerous for duties to be opposite of interests
• for example - war - you can't ask everyone to sacrifice their lives every day
• hobbes - says we are all interest no morals and justice
• show us why we should be good when it is not in your interest to be good
• a redefinition of interest - what are your fundamental interests?
• you can't divorce your self entirely from material interests
• but you can limit interests

Hume

• we just want to set up a society were people are preoccupied and concerned with beauty, justice, and the good
• Hume - we should construct human institutions for the lowest common denominator
• you reconcile morality and interests by coordinating human institutions
• whereby ambition should constrain ambition, the invisible hand
• elevate and transform
• change peoples understandings of where their true interests lie

Rousseau

• the legitimacy of government - consent
• he believes himself a master but is in fact a bigger slave than old

First Principles

1. Human beings are naturally free and equal
2. The first law is self preservation
3. people will only concede liberty to access greater liberty
4. the word right adds nothing to force - it is prudent to obey power but power is not authority
5. authority is consensual
6. maintenance of peace and order is not a justification of authority
7. quite similar to Locke

Authority

• density is a good argument for consensual authority
• he does say why he just assumes it
• contrast between nature and civil society
• consult his reason before heeding his inclination
• what is this if business?
• if the abuses of this new condition did not degrade him below the conditions he left

Consensual

• why would people consent?
• what do they consent to?
• find a form of association

total alienation

• there are no constraints or reservation
• no claims against the state
• no rights against the association because that brings you back to the state of nature
• it is popular sovereignty
• a constitution - Rousseau rejects any law the constrains the political authority

Hobbes

• freedom is what is left over -
• you can trade freedom for security

Locke

• you can't give it up
• it is not the absence of obstacles to ones desires
• appropriate desires: freedom is the ability to act on appropriate desires
• run your life the way you want to -
• carve out space for the individual

Majority Rule

• Locke gives enormous power to majority
• ties freedom to the right to participate
• Rousseau - participating in decision making
• being subject to a law you consented to
• collective decisions

organized political community

• submit all power in common to the general will
• forced to be free

Tutorial

• epochs of equality
• epochs of realative equality
• epochs of inequality