Preface to Political Philosophy

No one has ever observed a tribal society emerge into a ¨civilized¨ society. Much of early anthropology was formed observing the remaining hunter-gatherer and tribal societies of American Indians, continued today in the remaining early societies in places like New Guinea. Or through archeology we can look at what is left from our own civilizations in centuries past, and conjecture. And that is what mostly goes on, conjecture.

The questions of whether humans are naturally social or whether men and women are inherently unequal are today still philosophical as history can only give so much. Even if history suggests men and women are unequal, it doesn't have to follow it must be this way then or now.

More recently darwinian evolution combined with our knowledge of genetics has given hope that we can uncover what human nature is by looking directly at ourselves. Books like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology argue for a new understanding of human nature that isn't for the individual or the group, but for the reproduction of the genes. Kinship selection is the basis of society, we care for others and want them to survive so our genes will live on. Those genes, of which children have half their parents, are what are truly immortal and connect us with other people. It is in our self-interest to save others because they are us in the deepest sense. Altruism, indeed morality itself comes from this interest in self-preservation. But the self of interest is our family's genes.

This is becoming a more popular view, which I subscribe to, but it doesn't fully answer the question of why. Why is for the rational animal, humans, who don't just follow their biology, their genes. We do things not only because they allow us to survive, but we want to know what is the best way of survival, which politically is living together. As Dawkins put near the end of The Selfish Gene:

     ¨We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination...we are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on Earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.¨

So the beginning of the discussion of civil or political society is of reason,of those who can ask why, for why would a rational person live in a political order? This requires a definition of what politics is. Politics of course comes from Greek, the polis or what we call today a city-state. This definition confused me when I first heard it in grade school. For how is this definition relevant to a country with many cities, towns, suburbs etc? Government is found in all kinds of living arrangements. As I grew up, I found that there can be an underlying concept behind the use of a word which is merely expressed by that word. The city state really expresses people living together under rules, different people living together in a single place under these rules. Aristotle begins his The Politics (the first real study of political science) saying;

    ¨Every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always acts in order to obtain what they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community...aims, and in a higher degree than any other, at the highest good¨

Politics itself is based on a larger underlying concept, that of common human purpose. We all have different goals, but by virtue of reason there are things that we all can agree that are good through speech and language, by communication. By mutual agreement, we can convince others to act for our benefit and guarantee us to act for theirs. This is how trade works in its simplest form of barter, I agree to give you something in return for a promise you will reciprocate, in agreement with what I communicate I want in return. Politics is an agreement between all people who live together, the stipulations communicated to all and enforced by a body to which all answer to.

And there we have it, political society emerges when all rational beings agree to rules specifying who can do what. Politics touches everything from marriage, war, trade, and even life and death. However there is an insight from a more modern figure which I add, which best describes what the state does. Sociologist Max Weber described the state as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force over a defined area. Politics bluntly is the use of force. It is coercive. It must be for how can all people in the community be bound by it? If I steal something, how can that person get justice if somebody else protects me?

The state monopolizes coercion so that nobody may take the law in their hands. Coercion makes sure the law is obeyed, and is placed in one body which we all abide by. But government is something more than just a monopoly of violence, it is supposed to be ¨legitimate¨. St. Augustine told the story of a conversation Alexander the Great had with a captured pirate. Alexander asks the pirate how dare he molest the whole world. The pirate replies that because he molests the world with a small ship he is a pirate, while because Alexander does it with a great Navy he is called emperor. This shows that government without justice is no better than a gang of pirates, or thieves writ large. For the rational being, force takes away the capacity to exercise his capacity. So it had better be for the good of the rational part in our nature.