1. Introductory Essays
Issues of War & Peace

2. Overview Fukuyama and the End of History
Meisheimer and Cold War Nostalgia
Huntington and the Clash of Civilizations

3. Fukuyama
Key Terms:
Hegelian Dialectic
Marxist Dialectic
Liberalism

4. Fukuyama G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) German philosopher
Developed theory of history based on the dialectic
History is driven by the clash of ideas

5. Dialectic
Thesis

6. Dialectic
Thesis Antithesis

7. Dialectic Thesis Antithesis built on the idea of internal relations:
Interdependence of things; where the “thing” (whether physical object or idea) contains everything which allows it to exist.
this means in part that everything contains within itself its opposite (e.g., master/slave,husband/wife, landlord/tenant, etc.)

8. Dialectic
Thesis Antithesis
Synthesis

9. Dialectic
Thesis Antithesis
Synthesis
Becomes the new thesis…

10. Dialectic
Process repeats with new antithesis emerging to challenge the thesis, reaching a new synthesis, which becomes the next thesis… and so on
How does this help us understand human social life?

11. Dialectical Materialism
“The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity…” The German Ideology

12. Dialectical Materialism
These “real premises” then include the way we make a living (that is, how we keep ourselves alive as biological beings).
These are the “means of production”

13. Dialectical Materialism
Marx & Engels claim that it is these material factors which shape the ideas we have:
“Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.” -- The German Ideology

14. Dialectical Materialism
Or, as they’ll claim in the Manifesto:
“What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”

15. Dialectical Materialism
We also need to examine how these means of production are mobilized and organized to actually produce the means of subsistence
This is the “forces of production”

16. Dialectical Materialism
Finally, we need to know how the various members of the society stand in relation to the means of production.
Class – defined as one’s position vis-à-vis the means of production
Broadly, you either own the means of production or you labor on the means of production

17. Dialectical Materialism
“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living individuals.” -- The German Ideology

18. Dialectical Materialism
“The various stages of development in the division of labor are just so many different forms of ownership, ie., the existing stage in the division of labor determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material instrument, and product of labor.”
-- The German Ideology

19. Dialectical Materialism
When we look back at history we see certain patterns emerge.
Primitive Communism
Slave Labor
Feudalism
Capitalism

20. II. Liberalism Historically, liberalism is built on 2 key ideas:
Limited Government
It was the political solution to the struggle for religious toleration
Attempt to keep politics out of religion. The state should not worry about the state of men’s souls
Give freedom of religion to the people
Why is this a good idea?

21. II. Liberalism A key component of limited government is: Rights
Theoretical underpinning to the notion of religious toleration is that individuals have rights against the state
We each have a right not to be interfered with by the government or by other people
These rights are natural – they accrue to us simply by the fact that we are human beings
Recall our earlier prisoner example…

22. Suppose you are a District Attorney in a community that is composed of easily recognizable majority/minority communities.
A member of the majority community has been killed and witnesses have reliably identified a member of the minority community as the perpetrator, but the police have been unable to find the exact person
The majority community is screaming for vengeance and on the verge of rioting.
We know that in the course of the riot, at least 10 people from the minority population will be killed in mob violence.
As the DA you suggest the following course of action to the mayor:

23. In order to avert the riot and save lives, you take a member of the minority community at random, accuse that person of the crime, and stage a very public arrest/execution
As the mayor, what do you do?

24. II. Liberalism Why rights?
Rights mean that no matter how good the consequences of a particular action may be, these consequences cannot override individual rights
Why rights?
Each individual possesses dignity
Each of us is priceless
Roots are in the rise of Christianity
Secularized form – in lieu of soul premise – treat people as ends, not as means to an end
Every human being has infinite weight, so can’t use any calculation to justify hurting some for the greater good

25. II. Liberalism Side bar:
Suppose superior beings from Planet Twylo descend to earth and tell us they have a food shortage
To alleviate this shortfall, they plan on harvesting human beings
Would we accept the same arguments from them that we offer to justify eating animals or otherwise using animals as means to an end??
Just food for thought… we won’t pursue it now

26. II. Liberalism So one component of liberalism is limited government
The second component is capitalism
By capitalism, we mean the idea that as long as a transaction has no negative diseconomies and is mutually advantageous, the transaction is permissible
A deal made between two consenting parties and no one is getting hurt, the state should not get involved in the transaction

27. II. Liberalism
The market is a private place where people voluntarily dispose of their own property
Locke will present two arguments – one secular, one religious – to show where this right comes from
The overall idea justifying these economic rights is roughly parallel to our political rights in that the state should not interfere with people doing what they want to do with their property

28. II. Liberalism
Note, the argument itself need not be limited exclusively to property and thus exclusively the purview of the (political) right wing
E.g., sexual freedom, drug freedom arguments could work equally well
Since the world is embracing variants of this view today, an examination of its historical evolution and philosophical premises is both warranted and educational

29. II. Liberalism
The key idea linking to the two strains is the primacy of the individual
That is, the individual is the basis of power – political, economic, social.
Political power does not come from divine right or the rule of the stronger, but the will of the people

30. II. Liberalism 2 Implications
If individuals are basis, then we can’t treat others as means to an end… each is an end unto itself
We are all individuals with separate and equally valuable lives (valuable at least to us)

31. II. Liberalism
Good political society is one which could have emerged from unanimous agreement by these individuals
Hobbes and Locke are not trying to describe an actual historical situation; they are not doing anthropology
Nonetheless, the description of human nature in this prepolitical situation needs to be accurate otherwise we can reject the conclusions by rejecting the premises

32. II. Liberalism
Question we need to face at root of political philosophy concerns the necessity of the state
That is, if the state did not exist, would it be necessary to invent it?
In other words, is anarchy a viable option for organizing human society?
Note: lots of other animal species are social, but they’re all anarchic

33. II. Liberalism
This question carries with it important implications for understanding the society in which we live in that if political philosophy could not address and satisfactorily rebut anarchist arguments, the state loses much – or indeed all – of its intellectual support

34. Mersheimer Key Terms Uni-, Bi- and Multipolarity
Costs and Probability of War
Democratic Peace Theory

35. Mersheimer Uni, Bi, and Multipolarity
The number of major powers in the world

36. Mersheimer
costs of war
probability of war

37. Mersheimer Democratic Peace Theory
Democracies do not wage war on each other