Pe105intro

PE 105E

Introduction lecture

We are actors -- whether we desire to be or not. To learn to think is to learn to act in the best manner possible.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." Robert Kennedy)

Building a "Thinking" vocabulary, i.e., how to think about politics.

--re: words/terms often used

--not just definitions but live terms with meanings interlaced with human relationships that provide some fluidity and dynamics to the meanings (definitions are moving targets for critique, rethinking, contextual analysis and usage)

--re: how we know what we know and make decisions from this "knowledge"

What is "politics"?:
         --values allocation
         --coercion
         --power
         --influence

--practical morality

--linguistics: words are paths to power

Political "science"?:

Where is the "science" in science?

"It would be a mistake to confuse scientifically based knowledge with wisdom....Wisdom involves sound ethical direction, the exercise of good taste, and distinguishing the worthwhile from the not so worthwhile." (Sjoberlg and Nett quoted by Kim Hill in PS , p. 114, March 2002.)

--objectivity? (The "value-free" sciences?)
--accepted methods? (remember Thomas Kuhn's warning) -- reflected also in Gleick's comment: "No one realized how tightly compartmentalized the scientific community had become, a battleship with bulkheads sealed against leaks." James Gleick. Chaos: Making a New Science. 1987.

--logic? (logical, ok; but does this explain all? rational choice runs into irrational motivations -what is and why not always dictated by logic)

--reason (empirical? normative?)

--empirical -- quantitative ("bean counting" and comparing)

--"labs" for political science?

--normative (fuzzy-headed idealism? or true reality?)

--cause and effect: all appearance? David Hume

Values: What you hear is not what you see? Actions still speak louder than words!
--intrinsic

--extrinsic

--absolute

--relative -- Must knowledge of relative values deny any absolute values? Are people often relativists intellectually but absolutists at heart? If not relative how to answer argument that diverse views abound within cultures as well as between cultures, so who is right?

--David Korten: refers to alienated modernists: "distinguished by their propensity to believe in nothing at all" -- Is this possible?

--the complexity: "The Most difficult political choices are not between good and bad but between good and good." (William Galston)

--Is Calvin Schrag right when he says: "values become values only when they are taken as being valuable within the contrite context of everyday life. Like fact, values are constituted and defined against the backdrop of communalized interpretive practices."

"Any society, in the end, is a moral order that has to justify...its allocative principles and the balances of freedoms and coercions necessary to enforce such rules." (Daniel Bell)

POWER POINT PRESENTATION BELOW CONTAINS MUCH OF THE ABOVE BUT SOME DIFFERENCES EXIST:

•      In recent days, the 2004 presidential campaign has focused on the meaning of one word: "values.“ Christian Science Monitor, July 16, 2004

THINKING ABOUT POLITICS

Live terms in context

vValues

vLiberal or conservative?

vTerrorist or freedom fighter or God’s instrument?

vPro-abortion or pro-choice?



WHAT IS POLITICS?

vValues allocation – David Easton

vWho gets what, when and how – Lasswell

vPower/coercion/influence – Thiel

vPractical morality:

vLeo Strauss

vVaclav Havel

vLinguistics – words are power

David Easton: a political system is one designated as those interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for the society

WHAT IS POLITICS?

vValues allocation – David Easton

vWho gets what, when and how – Lasswell

vPower/coercion/influence – Thiel

vPractical morality:

vLeo Strauss

vVaclav Havel

vLinguistics – words are power

Leslie Thiel: “Politics is about power and power is about influence.” – “Only power can limit power, and political power is constantly involved in determining and reestablishing the appropriate limits of nonpolitical forms of power.”

Thiel also: "Politics is about the exercise of power that does not slip over the line into the realm of force."

Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 1930 in Zuckert, Postmodern Platos: “when the political is threatened, the seriousness of life is threatened. The affirmation of the political is in the last analysis nothing other than the affirmation of the moral.”

Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic referred to “politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow humans.” [ quoted by Daniel Bell in Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism]

•      Barry Allen, quoting Derrida indicates Derrida's link between communication and political re: the content of utterances: "...there is something political in the very project of attempting to fix the content of utterances.: "This is inevitable; one cannot do anything least of all speak, without determining (in a manner that is not only theoretical but practical and performative) a context. Such experience is always political because it implies, insofar as it involves determination, a certain type of non- 'natural' relationship to others...non-natural relations of power that by essence are mobile and founded upon complex conventional structures."

Where Does One Find Politics?

•      Ian Shapiro, Democratic Justice: “…politics are both nowhere and everywhere. They are nowhere in the sense that there is no specifiable political realm….Politics are everywhere, however, because no realm of social life is immune from relations fo conflict and power. ---Politics conditions everything we do, yet it is never simply what we do.”

WHAT IS THE “SCIENCE” IN POLITICAL SCIENCE?

vKnowledge of what is [maybe!] but not the wisdom of what to do –Note Sjoberig and Nett

vObjectivity – value-free?

vAccepted methods? Note Kuhn’s warning.

vLogical – deductions, inferences

vReason applied – empirical? Normative

vCause and effect –only appearance? -- Hume

v“It would be a mistake to confuse scientifically based knowledge with wisdom….Wisdom involves sound ethical direction, the exercise of good taste, and distinguishing the worthwhile from the not so worthwhile.” quotes by Kim Hill in PS

WHAT IS THE “SCIENCE” IN POLITICAL SCIENCE?

vKnowledge of what is [maybe!] but not the wisdom of what to do –Note Sjoberig and Nett

vObjectivity – value-free?

vAccepted methods? Note Kuhn’s warning.

vLogical – deductions, inferences

vReason applied – empirical? Normative

vCause and effect –only appearance? -- Hume

ETHICS AND VALUES

vIntrinsic

vExtrinsic

vAbsolute

vRelative

vComplex world

v“The most difficult choices are not between good and bad but between good and good.” [William Galston]

v“Any society in the end, is a moral order that has to justify…its allocative principles and the balances of freedoms and coercions necessary to enforce such rules.” [Daniel Bell]

POWER POINT PRESENTATION BELOW CONTAINS MUCH OF THE ABOVE BUT SOME DIFFERENCES EXIST:

• In recent days, the 2004 presidential campaign has focused on the meaning of one word: "values.“ Christian Science Monitor, July 16, 2004

THINKING ABOUT POLITICS

Live terms in context

vValues

vLiberal or conservative?

vTerrorist or freedom fighter or God’s instrument?

vPro-abortion or pro-choice?

WHAT IS POLITICS?

vValues allocation – David Easton

vWho gets what, when and how – Lasswell

vPower/coercion/influence – Thiel

vPractical morality:

vLeo Strauss

vVaclav Havel

vLinguistics – words are power

David Easton: a political system is one designated as those interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for the society

WHAT IS POLITICS?

vValues allocation – David Easton

vWho gets what, when and how – Lasswell

vPower/coercion/influence – Thiel

vPractical morality:

vLeo Strauss

vVaclav Havel

vLinguistics – words are power

Leslie Thiel: “Politics is about power and power is about influence.” – “Only power can limit power, and political power is constantly involved in determining and reestablishing the appropriate limits of nonpolitical forms of power.”

Thiel also: "Politics is about the exercise of power that does not slip over the line into the realm of force."

Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 1930 in Zuckert, Postmodern Platos: “when the political is threatened, the seriousness of life is threatened. The affirmation of the political is in the last analysis nothing other than the affirmation of the moral.”

Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic referred to “politics as practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow humans.” [ quoted by Daniel Bell in Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism]

Where Does One Find Politics?

WHAT IS THE “SCIENCE” IN POLITICAL SCIENCE?

vKnowledge of what is [maybe!] but not the wisdom of what to do –Note Sjoberig and Nett

vObjectivity – value-free?

vAccepted methods? Note Kuhn’s warning.

vLogical – deductions, inferences

vReason applied – empirical? Normative

vCause and effect –only appearance? -- Hume

v“It would be a mistake to confuse scientifically based knowledge with wisdom….Wisdom involves sound ethical direction, the exercise of good taste, and distinguishing the worthwhile from the not so worthwhile.” quotes by Kim Hill in PS

WHAT IS THE “SCIENCE” IN POLITICAL SCIENCE?

vKnowledge of what is [maybe!] but not the wisdom of what to do –Note Sjoberig and Nett

vObjectivity – value-free?

vAccepted methods? Note Kuhn’s warning.

vLogical – deductions, inferences

vReason applied – empirical? Normative

vCause and effect –only appearance? -- Hume

ETHICS AND VALUES

vIntrinsic

vExtrinsic

vAbsolute

vRelative

vComplex world

v“The most difficult choices are not between good and bad but between good and good.” [William Galston]

v“Any society in the end, is a moral order that has to justify…its allocative principles and the balances of freedoms and coercions necessary to enforce such rules.” [Daniel Bell]