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Social and Political

Philosophy: What is the


Best Society?
States and Societies

Humans

are social creatures: We like to


do things in groups.
varying sizes, including families, schools,
sports teams, work shifts, church groups,
social networks, neighbourhoods, towns,
and cities
At the largest macro levels, we organize
ourselves into nations, states, and
international communities, such as the
United Nations or the Commonwealth.

These

groups have a variety of functions,


including nurturing us, protecting us, or
helping us in our quest for the "good life
In fact society is a term that refers to
these groups, how they operate, and our
place within them

The

area of Philosophy that examines


theories of how and why societies
operate is Social Philosophy. An
adjunct of Social Philosophy is Political
Philosophy, which focuses on states,
political systems, and human rights.

Society:

A set of individuals and/or


institutions in relations governed by
practical interdependence, convention,
and perhaps law.
State: The political organization of a
body of people for the maintenance of
order within its territory by coercion.

What is a Society? What is a State?

Societies,

then, are groups of individuals


working together, in some form.
The state is a legalistic expression of this
organization, with the ability to coerce
(force) the compliance of individuals to
this organization to maintain order.
This force keeps the society functioning
by regulating the relations between the
individuals and institutions. This use of
force, either agreed to by the individuals
in the state or imposed upon them, is the
law, the basic rules governing how society
operates.

At

one time our ancestors lived in small


bands.
These bands had rules and laws governing
relations between members, based on their
needs.

How did states come to be?

As

societies evolved and grew larger and


more complex, the need for rules to more
efficiently organize larger social units also
evolved, leading to such forms of
government as:

monarchy (rule by a king or queen)


oligarchy (rule by a small group)
empire (rule of one group over
others)
theocracy (religious government)
democracy (the people rule
themselves)

The

terms we use for these types of


government are derived from Ancient
Greek, because the theory of government
we use derives from them.
A variety of prefixes are added to the
suffix
archy, meaning a form of rule or government
such as
mono (one)
olig (few)
theo (god)
demo (people)

In

Social and Political Philosophy, one of


the main questions is how society should
be organized.
What is the ideal form of government
and society?

utopia

(Greek meaning, not any place): the


term is now used to describe any vision of an
ideal society.

There

have been innumerable utopias


proposed, including many visions for future
societies.

The

literal meaning of the term is appropriate,


as utopia is less a destination than a
direction, as the ideal society will never be
realized.

What is the Best Society?

However,

people will continue to construct


societies and states that reflect their
vision of the ideal.

The

examples that follow are a few of the


more famous utopian social visions.

The

opposite of utopia is dystopia, the


most undesirable society. Of course, one
philosopher's utopia may well be another's
dystopia.

In

the Republic, the character Socrates


discusses various examples of just societies.

Through

this character, Plato proposed an


ideal state designed to maximize social
harmony and reduce conflict. Plato was
leery of democracy having seen that if not
exercised responsibly it could lead to
corruption and tyranny, as it had in his city
of Athens in the 5th century.

Plato's Republic

Athens

had a system of direct democracy,


in which every citizen was entitled to
attend the legislature and vote on every
measure proposed. The assembly was
enormous and could not even conduct
business without a minimum of 6000
citizens present!

Anyone

skilled in oratory, the art of


making clever speeches, could sway the
crowd, in a manner similar to today's
politicians who look good on TV.

One

of the criticisms of this form of


democracy is that it was too democratic,
did not protect the rights of individuals
against the masses, and represented a
"tyranny of the majority".

Plato proposed a system that would


correct this and ensure harmony and
peace. Society would be strictly
organized; each citizen would belong to
one of three social classes:
Guardians, who ruled the state for the benefit
of all;
Soldiers, who would defend the state and
enforce the rules; and
Workers, who would supply the needs of the
others and enjoy the benefits of society.

In

Plato's republic, there would be no


private property and all goods would be
owned in common.

This

would eliminate the corrupting effects


of material possessions and the desire to
have more, and would eliminate the
differences between rich and poor, since
everyone would be economically equal.

Each

person would know his/her role in


society. The family would not exist as a
social unit and children would be nurtured
and educated by the state to maximize
their talents and for the specific role they
would have, based on their individual
characteristics.

Plato's

political theory of the tri-partite


state is based on his notion of the tripartite human soul, with its ruling
elements.
Guardians represent reason, the highest
element;
soldiers are spirit, aggressive and passionate;
workers are ruled by appetite, by the desire to
have and make.

In

his theory of the human soul, Plato


argues that reason needs to rule the other
two, which are necessary to a healthy
balance, in order to control and harness
their ability, which, if left unchecked, will
cause chaos.

In

this utopia, everyone would be happy,


because everyone would be doing what
he/she was best suited to do.

Because

ruling is a complex and difficult


task, only the best and brightest children
would be educated to become guardians.

Their

education would lead them to


become philosopher-kings, dedicated to
ensuring justice for all.

Naturally,

the guardians would be


accountable to themselves alone, since
only they were capable of ruling wisely or
understanding what they were doing. They
would have absolute power and would
control every aspect of life.

This

would include censoring art and


literature, selective breeding of workers to
produce the best workers, and deciding
who would be educated as a guardian.

The

workers would be controlled by the noble


lie of religion, in which the guardians would
claim that the gods had mixed a precious metal
in each person's soul, that is, gold for the
guardians, silver for the soldiers, and bronze
for the workers. By appealing to the gods and
the natural order of things, the workers would
be content with their place in society, even
though the guardians were aware it was a lie.

Contrary

to the standard of the time, which


was staunchly misogynistic (woman-hating)
Plato believed that women would be as suited
to being guardians as men.

Plato's

utopian republic has been criticized


for its anti-democratic basis, and it has
been often cited as an inspiration for
totalitarian forms of government such as
fascism and communism.

The

Republic itself raises concerns about


how to curtail the unlimited power of the
guardians.

Aristotle,

not surprisingly, differs from Plato in his


approach to political organization. His views flow
from his Ethics which are presented at the end of
Nicomachean Ethics.

Just

as Aristotle argues that the best life for each


person to live should be based on their individual
strengths, the best political system for each state
will be based on the needs of the state.
Thus, he does not propose one utopian system, as
does Plato, but a range of possibilities. His work,
The Politics is more a study of political systems
and their theories than a proposal of a utopia.
Aristotle: The Politics

Aristotle

was not so negative on


democracy as Plato, but was concerned
about its excesses, particularly with an
uninformed or uninvolved populace.

Aristotle

argued that while individuals


might be unwise, as a group, they
possessed a sort of wisdom.

The

range of opinions would lead to a


"golden mean" of wisdom, which would
allow them, as a group, to make good
decisions.

However,

there could be "too much


democracy" and Aristotle favoured a
system mixing oligarchy and democracy,
with each working to balance out the
other and keep things working smoothly
to benefit all.

Examine

the diagram (handout) to


better understand Aristotle's analysis
of various political forms.

Thomas

More is best remembered for


being beheaded by King Henry VIII for
refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of
Henry's marriage.

wrote

Utopia at a time (1516) when the


Christian church was in the midst of the
crisis of the Reformation brought about by
Martin Luther's new Protestant concept of
salvation

Thomas More: Utopia

In

Utopia, More used the story of a


shipwrecked traveller as means to explore
notions of how society should operate.

"Utopia"

has been described as a


"Christian communist" state, because
there would be no ownership of private
property and society would be organized
along Christian lines.

With

no private property, there would be


no rich or poor, hence no class conflict.
Equality was taken to an extreme:
Everyone would dress identically, all
houses would be the same (and people
would swap them at regular intervals to
discourage notions of "mine-ness"), each
town would be identical, and everyone
would work exactly six hours a day.
The ruler would be elected, based on
merit, and removed when not ruling
properly.

Slavery

was part of Utopian society,


slaves being criminals serving out
sentences for breaking any of the many,
many rules of Utopia, their sentence being
to perform any undesirable jobs in society
(for example, slaughtering animals)

Religious

differences would be tolerated,


but atheism was punishable by death.
More felt you could not trust someone
who did not believe in God of concepts of
Christian justice to be found in the
afterlife.

Any

criticism of the social and political


order, likewise, would not be tolerated, it
too would lead to death.

While

impressively just, More's Utopia has


been criticized both for encouraging
totalitarianism and authoritarianism and
for promoting an incredibly dull place to
live.

One

of the major issues in Social and


Political Philosophy relates to property
ownership.
The wanting and having of material
possessions can lead to inequality in society
and politics.
For example, it is usually the case that the
wealthier citizens have more of a say in governing
society and live easier lives than the poor. Often,
the poor resent this and engage in activities like
peasant uprisings or political revolutions to topple
the existing socio-political order.

Socialism and Nihilism

The

utopias of Plato and More addressed


this concern by imagining the banning of
private ownership, replacing it with
communal or common ownership. In its
most basic form, this is known as
communism.

many

forms of communism, and many


varieties of communist utopias

most

basic, communism involves living


communally, a group of people (a
community) sharing all resources (in
common)

the

emphasis in communism is on the


material equality of all-no one is richer or
poorer than anyone else, and all work and
profit is shared equally

The

communist ideal has strong roots in


Christianity, and examples of
communalistic societies include Christian
monks and nuns, and Mennonite colonies

Other

examples of communist solutions


are the Kibbutzum of Israel, as well as the
hippy communes of the 1970s

During

the 19th century, the term


socialism was used to describe this sort
of society:
a socialist society will include communal
ownership of property. Socialism is the political
expression of a communist society

The

Industrial Revolution, which began in


the 18th century, created vast wealth and
vast inequality between classes.
The ideology of laissez-faire capitalism,
in which there were no regulations
regarding how wealth could be made and
no protection of the workers, allowed the
upper classes to make tremendous
amounts of money from the new
technology, while the working classes
grew impoverished.

This

created class conflict between rich


and poor and led to a string of political
and social revolutions in European
countries that lasted from the time of the
French Revolution (1789) until the end of
the Second World War (1945).

more radical solution to the problems


caused by unequal ownership was
anarchism, a term which means an
absence of government.
Anarchism tends to be associated with
nihilism, the belief in nothing. Nihilists feel
any and all values are meaningless and
should be avoided.
Only by holding nothing valuable, neither
material possessions nor moral values, can
we be free to create ourselves as we wish
to be.

Anarchism

Frenchman

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809-1865) argued that "Property is
theft", because your private ownership of
something (a car, a house, an iPod) steals
its use away from the rest of society.
Russian Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)
had a simple message to address
inequality: "destroy everything". Fixing
the problems of society using socialist
methods would not work; all had to be
swept away. To anarchists, society itself is
corrupting.

Handout

on Communism and Fascism

The

politically tumultuous 20th century led


many to abandon thinking about theories of
the ideal society.
There had been plenty of examples of
utopian theories put into action and the
result was a century of anxiety and a horrific
global crisis brought on by two catastrophic
world wars and the Cold War.
However, in the 1970s, one philosopher
revitalized the debate about utopianism and
came to dominate contemporary thinking
about the "best society".

Contemporary Utopianism

Rawls

(1921-2002), an American
philosopher, was the most influential
political theorist of the later 20th century.
His 1971 book, A Theory of Justice,
redirected discussion about the ideal
society.

It

was tremendously influential, and many


other philosophers became involved in the
questions it posed, both in agreement and
opposition.

While

Rawls was a member of the "social


contract tradition" (which will be discussed
later), he used the idea of society as an
agreement among its members in a
radically different form than it had been
previously put forth.

For

Rawls, as for Plato, the ideal society


would be a just society, fair to all its
members. In trying to establish guidelines
for the ideal society, Rawls began with a
thought experiment called the Original
Position.

This

thought experiment was a completely


abstract exercise, and Rawls pointed out
that it was unworkable in practice. It was
designed only to demonstrate what
principles people would naturally choose if
they had to design the just society.

In

the Original Position, people would have


to decide what kind of society they would
want to live in, without knowing what
position in society they would occupy.
This lack of knowing where they would be
in society is known as the "veil of
ignorance". The designers could end up
anywhere in the new society. For example,
they could end up in the ruling class, or
they could end as someone severely ill, in
a hospital. They could have a "nice" job or
a "dirty" job. There would be no way to
know.

Rawls

argued that people would design


the ideal society based on a decisionmaking principle called maximin (or
minimax), which involves maximizing the
minimum benefit you would receive.

Thus,

if the veil of ignorance kept you


from knowing what you would get from
this new society, you would want to make
sure that no one in the society was too
badly off, because you could just be that
person.

For

instance, you would want to make sure


that the people doing the less desirable
"dirty" jobs had some chance for happiness,
even if it cost the people doing the "nice"
jobs some of their benefits.
As well, you could not know if you were to
be sick or healthy, so you would take care to
ensure adequate health care for sick people.
Since people would not want to gamble with
their life and place in society, they would
ensure that if they occupied a less desirable
position, society would be structured so as
to be appropriate concerned with the welfare
of all of its members.

Using

maximin would lead to what Rawls


called the liberty principle, which would
be that the ideal society would maximize
the rights of all its citizens.

It

would lead as well to the difference


principle, which would mean that, so
much as possible, the ideal society would
allow equality of opportunity and material
wealth-no one would be terribly
advantaged or disadvantaged.

However,

some would have more than


others, due to their positions in society
and Rawls accepted that there would be
inequalities that were inescapable. To
lessen this injustice, Rawls argued that
this difference should be minimized by
allowing for maximum opportunity.
For example, if you were born poor, you should
not be stuck in poverty, but be able to work
your way out of it into a more comfortable life.
As well, Rawls did not agree that making life
better for the least well-off should be done at
the expense of the better-off (so that society
reduced their incentive to create and produce)a balance would need to be found.

Rawls

argued that the Original Position, based


on the maximin theory, would result in a society
based on the notion of justice as fairness.
However, the Original Position is just a thought
experiment, and the veil of ignorance merely a
handy device to help us envision what the
hypothetical just society would be. To put into
practice the principles of the justice as fairness
society that the Original Position helped reveal,
Rawls argued that the state must intervene to
help the disadvantaged.
This distributive justice would smooth out the
inequalities that our actual society has and lead
to greater fairness, in keeping with what the
Original Position revealed is the ideal society.

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