1. A ‘Political Animal’
Dr. Andy Mansfield

2. The Polis Polis (‘city-state’): C6 BCE Greece
Zoon politikon – ‘political animal’ for the polis
Community to transform individual
Citizen vs. Barbarian
Acropolis, Athens

3. Aristotle’s Politics
‘The state is a creation of nature, and that man is by his nature a political animal’, I, (7)
Man requires society
Needs law, justice, virtue, reason & goodness
Two elements of Polis:
(i) Slavery: master (soul/ cause) & slave (body/ effect)
(ii) Oikos (Household)

4. The Citizen (Book III)
Citizen: someone who ‘has a share in the administration of justice and the holding of office’, III.
Civic Virtue: to be able to rule and be ruled (obey)
Good Life: men living together for common interest + community has full power & jurisdiction

5. Types of Government Kingship – Tyranny Aristocracy – Oligarchy
Polity – Democracy
‘Ideal Constitution’:
All citizens possess moral virtue and contribute to polis = excellence & happiness
Mixed constitution = (aristocracy, oligarchy and polity) – [despised democracy]

6. Aristotle’s Ethics All things have a function (ergon) = virtue
Humans special function = Reason (logos)
Happiness (eudaimonia) = live according to reason/ wisdom (sophia)
2 Forms of wisdom = practical (phronesis) [statesman] & intellect (nous) [philosopher].
Virtue to follow wisdom & live well – (in the polis)
Philosopher is superior

7. Rejecting Aristotle Aquinas & Natural Philosophy dethroned
Thirty Years’ War ( ) – a shaken world
Scepticism & the Individual
The Material World
St. Thomas Aquinas ( )

8. Humanising Human Nature
Influenced by Reformation & Amerindians
Social life about survival
No natural sociability
Security & Self-Preservation
Man left to own devices (law)
Hugo Grotius ( )

9. Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) Atheism: separating man from God
Sociability a ‘superficial view of human nature’
Self–preservation & fear = civil society
Laws of nature are not metaphysical

10. Hobbes’ De Cive (1642)
‘Man to Man is a kind of God … [and] an arrant Wolf’, Dedication.
God when individuals, & wolf when in groups
Man is not Sociable, & all Men are Equal
3 Key Passions (negative view):
(i) Fear
(ii) Vainglory
(iii) Competition

11. State of Nature & Government
‘Nature hath given to every one a right to all’, I, x ‘[T]he naturall state of men, before they entr’d into Society, was a meer War’, I, xii The ‘first and fundamentall Law of Nature is, That Peace is to be sought’, II, ii ‘The submission of the wills of all those men to the will of one man, or one Counsell’, V, vii

12. A Reductionist View ‘Profoundly unsettling’ negative view of humanity
Denis Diderot ( )
‘Profoundly unsettling’ negative view of humanity
Removed sympathetic elements of human nature: (Shaftesbury’s sympathy)
Reductionist: simplified and focused on egotism

13. Pufendorf’s Sociability
Moral ‘Intelligence’
People sociable & dependent
‘In the State of Nature, every Man must rely upon his own single Power; whereas in a [State], all are on his side’
- Whole Duty of the Citizen (1673), II, ii.
Samuel von Pufendorf ( )

14. C18 Sociability
David Hume ( )
Adam Smith ( )

15. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 78)
Acknowledged Hobbes’ view of natural right
Man not just a higher mammal
Attacking Mandeville – humans sociable & capable of virtuous behaviour

16. Rousseau’s State of Nature
Humans are sociable
Primitive society is virtuous – (compassion)
Two Arts of ‘Corn and Iron’
Unnatural: rank, inequality & leisure
Inequality due to competition (like Hobbes)
Amour de soi and Amour-propre
Pursuit of power and state-building = hostility
Noble (Savage) Amerindians

17. Cosmopolitanism More to life than Rousseau’s ‘cow-like’ existence
Immanuel Kant ( )
More to life than Rousseau’s ‘cow-like’ existence
Nations are aggressive by nature
Cosmopolitanism:
trade, (republican) rights and peace