Nature in Hegel and Kant

Hegel would classify Kant's view of nature driven history as a type of universal history. It would be accurate that Kant's history reveals just as much, if not more, about his own philosophical framework than what may have actually happened. In fact Hegel's idea of the Rational Spirit is related to Kant's idea of Nature. Except is more representative and explained, and does not reference as much back to being the unknowable space (i.e. an effective god figure), but rather something more a renewing and renewable (but knowable) part of the world. Hegel's nature in fact is in opposition to overall progress through a cyclic history and is opposed by the Rational Spirit . Hence Kant's nature is more comparable to Hegel's Rational Spirit than Hegel's nature through its control.

The Progression of Society

Kant's view of nature and its role is very different than what comes before, in my understanding of it. In the idea that nature is inherent in us as a species and is a driving force in how the human race is shaped throughout time. This deterministic, and almost predestined view of human history/future (we may not get to a state of peace or concord between nations on the first try, but eventually it will happen) seems strongly rooted in a Calvinistic or at least Protestant view of predestination.
Interestingly, he does not seem optimistic about the fact that eventually nations will learn to work together despite his reasoning that it must occur. I thought that there may be two reasons for this: (1) He believes that it will be so far in the future that there is no use for him to think about it as he won't be around anymore, nor would he have expected it to occur in a few hundred years; (2) Staying at a position of formal relations between nations and cooperation between them may be difficult and the moral aspects may not be easily maintained either.

One thing that struck me as being, as far as I am aware, relativity new thinking was the idea that the even the politics of one state should not be interfered with by others. Although this likely has its roots in ideas coming out of the Peace of Westphalia and ideas for sovereignty, the way it was stated and laid out also made it clear that Gene Roddenberry must have been in some ways a Kantian.

Society and the Indivdual justice

One argument of his that I find interesting is that in justice, even if a few cases do not seem to be the most fair thing (do to extenuating circumstances, etc.), that in no way implies that it is not the right to follow the same lines of justice. While he does still often hold he individual as a basic unit, this is particularly society oriented, as Hume believes that without the maintenance of the same rules of justice even in cases where they don't seem to fit is essential to the maintenance of order and society. And although Hume's belief in a "state of nature" is purely as a theoretical background, he believes that any society would be better than none. He thus brings the individual priority back in in the English tradition.

State of Nature and further Reflections

In my reading, his description of the state of nature and the possible transition therefrom was very informative of his ideas on government and society. Although the entire idea of society as a social construct itself struck me as interesting as this becomes a similar chicken and egg problem to what he points out as his conception of how language and society grew. As an answer to that question of his, I answer with the following: likely the two grew together. A basic means of communication, even if it did not originally rise to the level of a language, existed for chance encounters, and even presuming the family unit stayed practically non-existent, mothers would pass on what language they had discovered growing up to their children (in addition to any technical innovations, which Rousseau also claims must originally must disappear each generation). Since unlike in the chicken and egg question, community and language can form simultaneously, that is what likely occurred, each allowing (and demanding) more complexities than the other. In the totality, while I do not agree with the extreme solitariness of humans before society (he gives no reason why humans wouldn't be in groups like many animals), nor of there complete incomprehension of the future (storing food for winter would require some level of forethought), his conception of people seems more realistic than Hobbs'.

However, combining the two pieces, I still see that the ideal place for man to be is in small societies of towns that can expect no interference from other groups. He acknowledges that true happiness can also be found when around family, which although he does not directly say so, he implies can be greater than the not quite idyllic peace and freedom from obligations found by man alone.


Going through the texts again also gave me further thought into who he would truly consider a citizen and part of the general will. While he does not address the role of children as part of this either way, he does make several implications throughout as to the role of women. Their role is clearly stated to be less than that of men in other spheres, and he clearly thinks that there value is less, and makes only a slight mention of the Roman's non-inclusion of women in there system, which is much less than he talks about the non-inclusion of slaves and non-citizens. Therefore there is an inconsistency in his reasoning in regard to women. They can either be a full part of the general will and an equal part of the sovereign, or they can be hold a lesser place in society. To try to place them in both categories seems paradoxical to me. I also cannot recall any point in which he describes if any portion of the population should not be accounted for in the general will, accept those who are traitors. And yet he did not seem deeply troubled that some of the governments of the past that he held in higher esteem were highly exclusive.

No Civil Society?

One thing that struck me was the end of Chapter III in Book II when Rousseau asserts that there "should be no partial society in the state and that each citizen make up his own mind" (156). While this would be a good thing, and may to some extent have been more possible at his time, the lack of civil society now would hinder peoples abilities to have the information to make up his own mind. Since most issues and topics in general are very involved and without groups who care specifically about the information gathering it and distributing it, it would become difficult to know enough about an issue to make up your own mind. While he would likely be more against societies such as unions and fixed political parties, civil society would also fall under his assertions against partitions in society since it is methods of bringing people interested in specific issues to work on and discuss issues which relate to their community, and often spread information and opinions about those topics.
Now, civil society is considered an important part of building a society into a democracy and involve people actively in having a voice and being able to analyze for themselves what their opinions should be on government. So why does Rousseau think that this segment is more harmful? For other issues he carefully weighs the positives and negatives, but not here. Is the objection based mainly on that subgroups within the society will inherently weaken the greater whole? If so, how does he feel that everyone should have the knowledge to evaluate their stances?

Freedom and Tyranny

While I did not have the opportunity to enter into a discussion with Locke himself, I instead focused on finding points in the text which seemed rather self evident now, but wouldn't have been. First was the concept of freedom he presented, specifically that if someone hindered ones freedom in any way, they would by necessity be be planning on taking everything else to. It struck me as opposing previous views, and prevailing logic at the time that slaves could and should be content with their lot as it was where they belonged, and not be in "a state of war continued" against their master. He does say that a contract between the two would nullify the slavery aspect and turn it into drudgery. The question is then, would the slave no longer be considered a slave by Locke if (s)he did anything that the master asked that didn't directly let them live longer? How implicit or explicit would the contract have to be according to Locke?

Significant is that Locke uses many words and phrases in the same manner we would now use them commonly, and different from how they have been in the past. Specifically tyrant, for example, which he lays out is a ruler(s) who is not governed by the laws of the land and steps beyond the role given to him by the public. It will be interesting to see if this way of viewing tyranny continues to change in the literature or that it has remained relatively fixed since this time period. At this point I feel its more likely that this is the definition we use because of how often Locke was cited in the beginning of our country's history, and not because his definition became prevailing throughout future literature.

Greek states as self-aware

What first struck me is how Aristotle's style seems much more modern than that of Plato's. The presentation of the arguments were not extracted by step by step calculations, but rather the more complete sections of arguments present a much more wholistic view of his thought process. As a side note, it also surprizes me that scholars could think that Plato wrote this, as Aristotle makes direct references and arguments against Plato's Republic in Book II, Chapter VI.

Regarding governmental style, the suggestion that a pure form government might not be the best for a city, but rather a having elements from different mind sets counterposed the idea of the more purend strict ideas set by Plato. Aristotle's ability to both envision what good/ideal governments should look like as well as discussing the pros and cons and futures of actual states seemed to be a strength to me and not something ill-reconciled as suggested by many critics in different Introductions. The way democracy is portrayed as a perversion of the polity makes us ask, what is different between the democracy he envisions and the one we have. The checks and balances which we feel necessary he does not tie directly to the idea of democracy, and many of the people who would have influence in a democracy he does not see as having the strength, time or ability to be as involved in the government process as he feels a citizen should be. It seems that the fact that now people without citizenship anywhere is considered unusual would feel odd to his time as many people (mostly of the Artisan class), although spending most of their time in one place, would not belong as a citizen to anywhere.

A Consistent Republic?

While at times Plato does mention the need to show the possibility for what he is proposing to exist, he never truly discusses it beyond noting that not too many changes would need to be made to the Hellenic state. However, this is not the case since many of the steps would go against habits in Greek culture, including his treatment of women and the breaking up of families. Further problematic with setting up this ideal state is that the plans are not even internally consistent. Book V struck me personally as the most offensive and objectionable, and also lacked internal consistency of ideas. For instance, he wishes that women be equal in almost every way, but still refers to them as property and belonging to the community. He also speaks of women as wifes and as belonging to a collective of men, but his preconceptions must block him from seeing that in the community he set up with people being housed together and through the dissembling of the family structure, women will not be wives just as the men will not be husbands. Furthermore, while he does have an interesting idea with many valued points about raising children in a way that leaves them uncertain of their parentage, he does not seem to think of where and how they will be raised beyond the first year or so after they are done nursing. At that age it can not yet be determined what their preferences are so where they should go apprentice as he proposes. From this writing and later section it is clear he has little personal experience in what goes into raising a child.

As a second point I agree with Thomas when he notes that Plato's analyse and argument for maximizing hapiness would not stand up today. However, I do slightly disagree with your point that a government shouldn't and likely can't influence human happiness, while I do agree that Plato's way of trying to maximize possible human happiness is also not internally consistent (especially vis-a-vis the role and place of the Guardians). However, I disagree with Thomas in that since human happiness is a very desirable thing to have in a state, it is something that a government should try to provide room for and at least make sure their is opportunities for the vast majority to be happy/content/satisfied. While lying to the people and trying to exclude vast pieces of literature is very likely unsustainable, even if Plato's Republic were momentarily realised, it would soon collapse or revolt or fundementally shift once the lies are discovered, which would once again lead to a decrease in happiness.

Overall, I was not impressed with this piece, especially as it seemed despite the supposed questioning going on, the listeners where simply there to say yes and propose leading questions and serve reasons why Socrates must delve into deeper points. This lead me to compare the increasing belief in all the suppositions to a case of group think, where little questions are asked and dealt with, but the underlying (questionable) fundamentals remain untackled.

Inagural Post

Hello!

Here is the blog space for our course. I went ahead and played with a few settings, such as linking and labels, but feel free to change things around. I came up with a title, but it can still be changed if you have another idea.

As another note, should we make sure we tag all our posts using our names as well?