Locke’s Authoritarian Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-128
Author(s):  
Rita Koganzon
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Personal Authority ◽  
The Will ◽  
Epistemic Theory ◽  
Intellectual Independence

Locke’s pedagogy follows from his political and epistemic theory, counterposing an authoritarian pedagogy against limited formal parental authority. In light of his fears about the power of public opinion, Locke argued that personal authority in childhood was necessary for intellectual independence in adulthood, and the personal authority of parents was required to shield children against competing authorities in society. Locke’s account of human development reveals that the intervention of a unitary, personal authority to direct the will at the beginning is necessary for the will to be self-directing afterward. The inward-directed Lockean family forms a counterforce against the prevailing fashions outside. The private guidance of familial and pedagogical authority in childhood is a fence against the potential dangers of Locke’s political philosophy. His pedagogy argues that a state grounded in equality and individual liberty requires a hierarchical, authoritarian family to sustain itself.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Mike L. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Law System ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Will ◽  
Subjective Rights

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.

Locke and the Nature of Political Authority

2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Hoff
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Capacity To Consent ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Will

AbstractThis paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them.

scholarly journals SĄMOKSLAS KAIP POLITIKOS MOKSLO IR LIBERALIOS VISUOMENĖS PROBLEMA

Problemos ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvydas Jokubaitis
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Liberal Society

Straipsnis skirtas šiuolaikinės politinės filosofijos nuošalyje likusiai sąmokslo problemai. Sąmokslas yra didelis iššūkis pozityvistinei mokslo sampratai. Karlo R. Popperio sąmokslo teorijos kritika prieštarauja pagrindinėms šio autoriaus metodologinėms nuostatoms. Popperio požiūris į sąmokslo teoriją gali būti apibūdintas kaip nenuoseklus ir vienpusiškas. Sąmokslas yra didelis iššūkis liberalizmo politinei filosofijai. Daugelis autorių mano, kad sąmokslas yra mažai reikšmingas liberalios visuomenės gyvenimo elementas. Tai menkai pagrįstas požiūris. Net pačioje liberaliausioje visuomenėje veikia daugybė slaptų susitarimų, viešai nematomų politinio gyvenimo subjektų ir manipuliacijų viešąja nuomone. Kai kurie dabartinių liberalių visuomenių politinio gyvenimo reiškiniai verčia naujai pažvelgti į sąmokslo fenomeną.Reikšminiai žodžiai: sąmokslas, sąmokslo teorija, pozityvizmas, liberalizmas. CONSPIRACY AS A PROBLEM OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LIBERAL SOCIETYAlvydas Jokubaitis Summary The article discusses the concept of political conspiracy. This concept is a great challenge to a positivistic understanding of political science. The criticism of conspiracy theory proposed by Karl Popper contradicts the main methodological ideas maintained by the author. His view on conspiracy theory may be described as incoherent and one-sided. Conspiracy is an ambitious challenge to contemporary liberal political philosophy. It is widely asserted that conspiracy is an insignificant element in the political life of a liberal society. This view is hardly substantiated. Even in the most liberal society there are a lot of clandestine agreements, undercover subjects of political life and manipulations of public opinion. Many phenomena of contemporary liberal society encourage us to regard conspiracy from a different perspective.Keywords: conspiracy, conspiracy theory, positivism, liberalism.

Reckoning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deva R. Woodly
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Public Meanings

Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements is an analysis of the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics, while also laying out and contextualizing the social movement’s unique political philosophy, radical Black feminist pragmatism (RBFM), along with documenting measurable political effects in terms of changing public meanings, public opinion, and policy. Throughout the text, the author interweaves theoretical and empirical observations, rendering both an illustration of this movement and an analysis of the work social movements do in democracy.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-202
Author(s):  
Rita Koganzon
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Intellectual Freedom ◽  
The Family ◽  
Congruence Theory ◽  
Personal Authority ◽  
Sovereign Authority

The conclusion summarizes the reasons for Locke’s and Rousseau’s turn against absolutist congruence theory and toward a defense of authoritarian families in liberal states. They saw that the absolutists had failed to adequately grapple with the power of public opinion to undermine the sovereign authority that was supposed to control it, and they understood the enormous influence of opinion over our ideas and its potential to foreclose intellectual freedom. To defend that freedom for adults, they leaned on the family and its domestic education of children as a buttress and counterinfluence against the power of fashion and opinion. Recognizing this pedagogical role of personal authority in the foundations of liberalism may help us to resolve our own inability to find a place for the basic but private experience of personal authority, which, however much we wish it away, remains central to forming liberal public life

Contract law, theories of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.E. Simmonds
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
The State ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Law ◽  
Individual Choices ◽  
Rival View

Theories of contract law seek to articulate general principles and values underpinning the complex rules of contract law. Some theorists view contract law as simply concerned to facilitate individual choices and enforce the will of the parties. A rival view holds that it is impossible to derive the content of contract law from such a sparse foundation: contract law is better viewed as one of the instruments whereby the state regulates markets and distributes resources and power. The debate addresses the detailed technicalities of the law, but seeks to relate these technicalities to broader questions of political philosophy.

The Market, Preferences, and Equality

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin M. Macleod
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Equitable Distribution ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Mutual Advantage ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Egalitarian Justice

The perfectly competitive market of economic theory often enters political philosophy because it can be represented as illuminating important values. Theorists who are enthusiastic about the heuristic potential of the market claim that we can learn much about individual liberty, the promotion of mutual advantage and efficiency in the distribution of goods by studying it. However, a principal limitation of the market for many theorists is its supposed insensitivity to the demands of egalitarian justice. According to the standard charge, markets—even idealised ones—are hostile to the achievement and maintenance of an equitable distribution of resources. It is striking, then, that a leading exponent of egalitarian justice like Ronald Dworkin should argue that there are very deep and systematic links between equality and the market. He contends that, contrary to the received view, “the best theory of equality supposes some actual or hypothetical market in justifying a particular distribution of goods and opportunities.” Moreover, the articulation of Dworkin’s influential egalitarian account of liberal political morality depends on acceptance of the market as an ally of equality. Thus Dworkin claims not only that the market plays a crucial role in the elaboration of a doctrine of distributive justice but also that it illuminates the distinctively liberal commitments to the protection of extensive individual liberty and to the requirement that the state must be neutral between different conceptions of the good. The aim of this paper is to raise some doubts about the soundness of one of the fundamental onnections Dworkin draws between the market and distributive justice.

Liberal States, Authoritarian Families

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Koganzon
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
The Family ◽  
Liberal Citizenship ◽  
Traditional Authorities ◽  
Formal Power

How can liberals justify adult authority over children? Children are born requiring both subordination to adults and education to equip them for citizenship. These requirements are especially vexing for liberal democracies, for whom the exercise of authority is at odds with the natural liberty and equality of citizens. This difficulty has led some liberal theorists to appeal to the liberal state as a model for familial relations and reject parental authority. My book shows that this effort is misguided, and that early liberals understood parental authority as a necessary protection for children’s own future liberty. It was early modern absolutist theorists—Bodin, Filmer, and Hobbes—who sought congruence between the family and the state, arguing that absolute paternal authority was a salutary education for absolutism’s subjects. But early liberals like Locke and Rousseau opposed congruence. Even as they sought to restrict public authority and limit the formal power of parents, they nonetheless sought to strengthen their private authority over children. They saw that undermining traditional authorities would not issue straightforwardly in freedom but would instead elevate the authority of public opinion to new heights and subject citizens to a new tyranny of opinion. To counteract this threat, they buttressed the pedagogical authority of the family to protect children’s future intellectual liberty and defend liberal citizenship. Their educational writings reveal an important corrective insight for modern liberalism: authority is not only not the enemy of liberty, but actually a necessary prerequisite for it.

The Basics of Libertarianism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Human Relationships

What is libertarianism? Libertarianism is a political philosophy. Libertarians believe respect for individual liberty is the central requirement of justice. They believe human relationships should be based on mutual consent. Libertarians advocate a free society of cooperation, tolerance, and mutual respect. Libertarianism holds that...

The Philosophy of Social Life

Philosophy ◽  
1929 ◽  
Vol 4 (15) ◽  
pp. 367-378
Author(s):  
C. Delisle Burns
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The People ◽  
Or Economics ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Difference

Philosophers less subtle than those of the Middle Ages feel no difficulty about such words as “and” or such phrases as “member of”; but even to write “man and society” has committed us to an assumption which may not be justifiable, and to say that men are “members” of a community or of a trade union is so alarming a metaphor that it would startle Duns Scotus. It is unwise, however, to ask philosophers what they mean when they feel very passionately about what they say, for the confusion becomes even greater than it was if passion gets into explanation. It is supposed to be obvious that men exist and that States and Trade Unions and Churches exist; and who would be so foolish as to raise difficulties about the difference between existence and essence? Many who claim to be scientists with regard to politics or economics suppose it to be obvious that there is an “essence” called “public opinion” or “the will of the people” or “utility”; and what Occamite would now dare to say that entities are not to be multiplied ?

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