I. Some common features of Western political, moral, and religious thought from the Hebrew Bible to Machiavelli

A. Variety of human desires

1. Final goods; goods we seek for their own sake

a. Impure pleasures: pleasures that are preceded by pain

1) bodily desires

b. Pure pleasures: pleasures that are not preceded by pain

1) Pleasures in human activity, in the development and exercise of our capacities

2) Various types:

a) bodily

b) friendship and love

c) children

d) politics (in the ancient and medieval sense): ruling and being ruled

(1) includes business activity of today

e) arts

f) philosophy

c. Spirited (thymotic) desires for pride, self-esteem, distinction, excellence.

1) To satisfy these desires

a) we must meet some standard of excellence

b) and we must believe that, in doing so, we will live a fulfilled life.

2) Spirited desires arise from our capacity to think about and reflect on ourselves and our life.

a) We are capable of looking to the past and, more importantly, the future. Thus we are concerned about how we will fare in the future and want to believe that we will fare well.

(1) One reason we adopt certain standards of excellence, then, is that we believe that living up to them will enable us to have a good life in the future.

(2) These standards of excellence are thought to connect to a living a fulfilling life in a number of different ways, which are discussed below under the category “the nature of morality.”

b) Another reason we adopt certain standards of excellence is that we have a basic want to live a life that has meaning and purpose. We want to live a life that amounts to more than the life of an animal. That is, we want to do more than survive, reproduce ourselves and have pleasure.

(1) Plato, in The Symposium holds that this want is connected to our mortality.

(a) We would like to possess the happiness forever. But that is unavailable to us.

(b) So, instead, we want to achieve some kind of immortality. We want the lives we live to have some significance that will outlive us.

(2) We can live such lives only by living up to some standard of excellence, one that defines a way of life that is worthy of us and that makes a continuing contribution to the lives of other human beings.

(3) Again, human beings can adopt standards of excellence of very different kinds. See the nature of morality, below.

3) The desire for honor, recognition, and glory is connected with the desire for pride, self-esteem, and distinction.

a) We seek honor, recognition, and glory because we are unsure of

(1) whether we have the right standards of excellence

(2) or whether we can live up to our standards of excellence.

b) When we receive honor, recognition, and glory from others, we have more confidence in ourselves.

c) Honor, recognition, and glory can also be instrumental or external goods.

2. Instrumental, external goods

a. friends

1) Friends can be instrumental or external goods because they can help us attain other instrumental or external good.

2) Friends can also be final goods.

b. honor, recognition, glory

1) We seek honor, recognition, and glory as instrumental goods because a particular kind of reputation may be helpful in our efforts to attain other instrumental or final goods. For example:

a) If we are thought to be particular good at our work, we can command a higher wage or price.

b) If we are thought to be particularly harsh or tough, other people will be less likely to disobey us.

c. money

d. political power

B. Fundamental features of political life in ancient, medieval, and renaissance thought. We can call this the political problem of ancient, medieval and renaissance thought.

1. There is a limited supply of goods.

a. There are not enough goods for everyone.

b. Thus to improve our own standard of life we must take from others

c. And we can expect others will try to take our goods from us.

2. We need politics to

a. protect ourselves from the attacks of others.

b. to secure the minimum supply of instrumental or external goods to keep us alive, safe, and with some prospects for prosperity.

c. Politics is thus the most important instrumental good

3. Political communities are difficult to sustain. They are prone to internal division and collapse, which is likely to lead to be conquered by other political communities.

a. Politics asks citizens and subjects to sacrifice for the good of the community by paying taxes and serving in the military.

1) People are often reluctant to do so, however, and my try to minimize our contribution. We would sometimes prefer to serve ourselves, our family, or our tribe or ethnic group rather than the political community as a whole.

2) Citizens and subjects can serve themselves rather than our political community in one of two ways.

a) They can pretend to serve the community but not do so. They can cheat on our taxes or feign illness when asked to fight.

b) Citizens and subjects can also rebel when asked to sacrifice for the political community..

b. Political communities often come into internal conflict over the division of benefits and costs of cooperation.

1) Even if everyone benefits from a political community, divisions can arise about who benefits and how much.

2) The most common conflict is between the few, rich and the many, poor citizens.

a) The poor seek to use the polis to redistribute income from the rich.

b) The rich resent this.

3) Other conflicts arise between different family, tribal or ethnic groups.

II. Antigone

A. Fortune

1. Gods

a. Central elements of Greek polytheism

1) Gods are not all powerful.

a) They are subject to natural necessity.

(1) Thus even they cannot

2) Gods are not united but, rather are divided among themselves.

b. Gods seek obedience and sacrifices from us..

1) Obedience to the different moral rules they have given or support (see below.)

2) Sacrifice and prayer.

c. Sometimes, but not always, the Gods support us.

1) They have their own agendas and concerns which sometimes leads them away from aiding us.

2. Thus much that happens in life is out of our control and subject to fate and fortune.

a. Some things seem fated to happen, which we are powerless to control.

1) These things may be the result of natural necessity to which even the Gods are subject.

b. Some things are under the control of the Gods. But even here it is difficult to predict what might result.

1) Gods are divided and we do not know who will prevail.

2) Gods make different and conflicting demands on us.

3) Gods have their own agendas which leads them to fail to respond to us, even when we do what they seek.

B. Morality

1. Nature of morality

a. Moral rules are those give by our ancestors and Gods

1) Rules set out in the past by the ancestral founders of our institutions and practices

a) The founders of our families

b) The founders of our city

2) The rules have been taught to the ancestral founders by Gods or endorsed by the Gods who reward us for following them.

b. Moral actions are those which make our group (our political community, our tribe, our family) successful either because we directly contribute to our group or because we win favor from the Gods.

2. Content of morality

a. There are conflicting claims to our loyalty, primarily from our families and our political community.

b. The Gods support these different claims.

1) The Gods have different aims and concerns and thus set different rules for us.

2) There are Gods that call on us to do our utmost to help our own family.

a) Different Gods may support different families.

3) Some Gods call on us to support our own political communities

a) Different Gods may support different families.

4) Some Gods, and perhaps Zeus, calls on us to treat all human beings well.

a) They call on us to recognize that we are all human and thus all vulnerable to fate and fortune, to:

(1) Natural disaster

(2) Military and political disaster

(3) Illness and disease

(4) Death

c. Sophocles’s claim in Antigone seems to be that, given the conflicting claims on our loyalty, we must be humane and moderate in our pursuit of a moral life.

1) Thus he criticizes both Antigone and Creon and shows that both are

a) immoderately attached to their own ideals

b) motivated, in part, by their own self-interest rather than the ideals they profess.

III. The Funeral Oration of Pericles

A. Fortune

1. Essentially the same view of fortune as found in Antigone.

2. Pericles, however, suggests that, together, Athenians can go some way to controlling fortune.

a. He downplays the role of the Gods, which is somewhat surprising for a public funeral.

b. He calls on Athenians to gird themselves for conflict and battle and implies that the success of the Athenians is due to their struggling against fortune.

3. But there seems to be an acknowledgment that,  ultimately, the success of Athens is, in some large part, subject to fate or chance. 

a. Soldiers will die defending Athens.

b. Their only recompense is the honor they receive from their actions.

B. Politics

1. Athens.

a. A direct democracy

1) Everyone is encouraged to take part.

a) Poor receive daily stipends to attend the assembly for much of Athens’ history

b) Although those with a following and who are good speakers play a particularly large role in the deliberations of the polis.

b.  Life in Athens is free and easy.

1) Individuals are free to choose how to live their lives.

2) Life is pleasant.

a) For the time, Athens comparatively prosperous.

b) And Athens is living through a time of great artistic achievement.

c. There is a common expectation that Athenians will be virtuous citizens.

1) They are expected to willingly

a) Contribute to the defense of the polis.

b) Pay taxes.

c) Take part in political debates and decisions.

2. Sparta

a. An aristocratic regime

b. In which life is devoted to military training and thus is difficult and demanding.

C. Morality

1. Nature

a. Ancestral morality from the founders and gods.

1) The morality of Athens and Sparta is thought by them to have been passed down from the founders of the respective political communities.

2) And these moral ideals are supported by the God of the city.

b. Moral parochialism found in both Athens and Sparta: morality is helping friends and harming enemies.

1) Athenian and Spartan morality demands sacrifice for the sake of the common good.

2) But Athenians and Spartans seem themselves as having few obligations to those in other political communities except in so far as they are allies.

c. Athenians and Spartans do not want to see themselves as parochial.

1) They hold up their way of life as an ideal for all to follow.

2) But, this only justifies their imperialism.

a) They claim to benefit other cities by conquering them or forcing them to become allies.

b) Though there might be some benefits in this result, they do not override the belief within these other political communities that they are oppressed by the Athenians and Spartans.

2. Content

a. Sparta

1) Civic virtue.

b. Athens

1) Civic virtue that combines a free and easy life with commitment to the common good (see above on politics.)

D. Happiness and well-being

1. Athens

a. Happiness and well-being seem to consist, for Pericles in both pure pleasures and the spirited desires of pride and honor.

b. Both come, in large part, from the collective efforts of the polis.

1) Pleasure comes from both

a) communal provision

(1) Religious ceremonies

(2) The presentation of new plays.

(3) The baths

(4) Taking part in the political life of Athens

b) individual actions: Athens is free and easy.

(1) Individuals are free to pursue whatever satisfaction fits their tastes.

(2) Their life is relatively prosperous.

2) Pride and honor

a) Collective pride in the accomplishments of Athens.

b) Individual pride in one’s own contribution to Athens.

2. Sparta

a. Happiness would seem to come only from pride and honor as Spartans prepare for military campaigns all the times.

E. Addressee

1. Primary

a. Citizens of Athens, so as to educate them about their ideals and encourage them to live up to them.

2. Secondary

a. Those who might remember Athens in the future.

1) Pericles downplays the role of ideas as opposed to action.

a) Everyone can take part in action, but not everyone can speak.

2) Yet thought seems to be vitally important in two ways.

a) Speech is necessary to pass on the Athenian way of life.

b) The memory of Athens and those who have sacrificed for her, which is so vital to the pride of Athenians citizens, depends upon what people come to say about this time and place.

IV. The Republic

A. Fortune

1. Nature and the Gods

a. Philosophers have doubts about the Gods.

1) In large part because the stories about the Gods within each polis, and from one polis to another, are so different.

a) That raises the question as to whether these accounts are wholly conventional that is, a product of a particular place and time.

2) And, in part, because philosophers wonder whether the Gods have been created by human beings

a) To explain natural phenomena that are inexplicable in other ways.

b) To justify the law of the polis (see below.)

b. Philosophers seek knowledge of the natural as opposed to the conventional, of what exists independently of human beings as opposed to what we create.

1) That knowledge, for Plato, consists in knowledge of the forms in the abstract entities that help us understand the distinct nature and the good of everything in the cosmos.

2. While knowledge of the forms helps us understand the life we see around us, and helps us change our own lives, it does not give us control over the natural world.

a. Thus, the Greek notion that the visible or experiential world is, in some respects chaotic or in flux, is accepted by Plato.

b. The Greek philosophers typically assume that history is cyclical in nature. Good and bad events and regimes follow one another due to various chance occurrences. There is no direction or rational development in history.

3. Rather than tell us to struggle against nature, however, Plato suggests that philosophers can gain some independence from fortune (see below).

B. Politics: The Platonic critique of politics

1. Critique of Athens and the devotion to civic virtue. (This is implicit in the discussion of justice in Book 1 and the construction of the kallipolis in subsequent books.)

a. Tensions arise in Athenian political life because its parochial conception of justice rests on self-interest.

1) Pericles point out that benefit from the achievements of the polis.

2) Self-interest, however, cannot justify devotion to the polis to the exclusion of other interest: one’s faction, ethnic group, tribe, family or oneself.

a) Why should Athenians always be willing to contribute to the polis?

(1) Why would they be willing to supply taxes and military manpower?

b) Why should not Athenians try to benefit their own class (the rich or poor) or their own family or themselves in the internal politics of the polis?

(1) Doing so, however, will lead to division within the political community.

(2) And that division might undermine the decisions needed to serve the common good of the polis.

c) Why should someone not try to take power in Athens against the democracy as a tyrant or a member of an oligarchy if that is in their interest?

3) The parochial conception of justice can lead to

a) Rejection of the sacrifices demanded by the polis.

b) Internal division.

c) Rejection of democracy as a good, or the best, regime.

4) One can only minimize these dangers if one has a deeper defense of Athenian life and the civic virtue needed to sustain it. It is not enough to show that Athenian democracy serves the interest of all.

a) Individuals must have good reason not to try to gain these benefits while avoiding their civic responsibilities. One must show make one or both of the following claims:

(1) Taking part in the political life of Athens gives the individual citizens certain goods they could not receive if they shirked on their responsibilities.

(a) But could not the pure pleasures of activity or pride be found to an even higher degree by an oligarch or tyrant?

(2) Citizens have some powerful moral obligation that overrides their self-interest.

b) The polis must have a conception of justice that is seen to fairly distribute the costs and benefits of civil life between different social classes.

c) There must be reason to believe that democracy is the best form of government.

(1) Athenian democracy must be shown to be best  because it provides certain goods that cannot be obtained in any other kind of polis.

5) Athenians, however,  can only defend their city by talking about the ideals passed on to them by their ancestors and, they presume, the Gods.

a) Other poleis, however, have other traditions and other Gods.

b) How can Athenian way of life be defended when one recognizes:

(1) the variety of possibilities of ways of life

(2) that the various Gods recommend different kinds of life

(3) and that what the Gods are said to support may be mainly a function of what political leaders try to convince the people to believe.

c) For their ideals to survive, then, the ideals of the political community have to remain unquestioned.

(1) The polis remains a cave.

(2) And philosophers are dangerous to the political community because they call the ideals of the polis into question.

b. The good life of Athens comes with a very steep price: continual war.

1) Are the benefits of Athenian life worth the sacrifice of life?

c. The good of Athenian life seems very fragile.

1) The polis can be defeated in war.

a) And its inclination to empire makes that defeat more likely.

2) Doesn’t Athens, then,  run a great risk, especially given the unpredictability of fortune?

2. The kallipolis is meant to be a political community that overcomes the tensions that beset all existing political communities. That political community, in some ways, is closer to Sparta than Athens. But it does not seem to be possible to realize.

a. Socrates seeks to eliminate two kinds of division or tension.

1) That which arises between one person or group of people and another.

2) That which arises within our lives as we are torn between serving our own interest,  of our family or tribe, and that of the polis as a whole.

b. The only way to attain the kind of unity Plato seeks this is to:

1) Assign each group or type of person a particular task and way of life which would satisfy those desires that are central to this group or type of person

a) Then each group would not be divided between aims that lead them

(1) to contribute to the good of the political community

(2) to seek their own well-being at the cost of the political community

b) In the kallipolis

(1) Craftsmen and farmers seek to satisfy their appetitive desires as well as to gain the the money necessary in order to do this.

(2) Auxiliaries seek distinction and honor.

(3) The guardians seek knowledge. And, though they would prefer not to rule, they do so out of gratitude for their education and to keep the kallipolis in place

2) Insure that, in pursuing its own aims, each group is satisfied with its place in the whole regime.

a) No group seeks to get the goods desired by another group

(1) The craftsmen and farmers are ruled by guardians and auxiliaries who are not interested in, and thus leave them most of, their money and goods.

b) Each group lives about as well as the other, in that each group has roughly the same degree of satisfaction of their desires.

(1) The craftsmen and farmers have some degree of luxury, although not so much

(a) as to leave them unwilling to work

(b) or as to invited foreign conquest.

(2) The auxiliaries have the honor granted soldiers, although they must give up private property and family life.

(3) The guardians are given a philosophic education and, when older, have the time to philosophize, although  they must also spend time ruling the polis. And they too, give up private property and family life.

c. But tensions cannot be eliminated.

1) There are few pure types of people. Most everyone has desires that arise in more than one part of the soul.

a) Many people have all three parts of the soul, perhaps to different degrees

b) But a mixture of desires would make the members of each class dissatisfied with their place.

(1) Craftsmen and farmers who were motivated by spiritedness as well as appetitive desires might seek more luxuries than the kallipolis can allow.

(2) Guardians and auxiliaries

(a) who have stronger appetitive desires might be dissatisfied with their lack of private property

(b) And, their appetitive, thymotic, and philosophic desires will all lead them to seek to restore family life.

c) Auxiliaries in some ways are the most likely to have other desires besides spiritedness and so are most likely to be dissatisfied  in the kallipolis.

(1) It may be plausible to imagine people with strong appetitive desires and weak spirited desires.

(2) But it is difficult to imagine people with strong spirited desires who have no desire for pure pleasures in activity.

(a) Spiritedness seeks a distinguished life.

(b) But the kind of distinguished life spirited people seeks is usually one that is has the potential to be fulfilling on other grounds.

(i) They take pride in self-discipline and readiness to sacrifice.

(ii) But what they are ready to do is not what they hope to do throughout their lives.

(iii) Spirited people would generally like a life that both meets certain ideals and is pleasurable.

(iv)  For example, the spirited citizens of Athens take pride in the willingness to sacrifice their lives for Athens. But Athens provides them with lives that fulfill other desires besides those of the spirited part of the soul. They take pride, in part, in the high quality of their lives.

(3) But

(a) Their sole activity is military training and the kallipolis is not supposed to fight many wars. (See below)

(b) Military training by itself  is both difficult and not likely to satisfy the desire for pure pleasure in activity.

(c) They are most likely to give up their lives for the sake of the polis.

(4) The auxiliaries most exemplify the motives of citizens who have civic virtue. Thus, in showing us that they are least likely to be happy in the kallipolis, Plato is showing us that civic virtue motivated by spiritedness, by itself, is an insufficient motive on which to build a moral life. Thus we have a dilemma for civic virtue.

(a) A restricted life, like that of the auxiliaries seems to be necessary to focus spiritedness solely on the good of the community as opposed to the good of some part of the community, our family, or ourselves.

(i) But such a life is unsatisfactory to most people.

(b) A less restricted life, however, will lead the civically virtuous citizen to be sometimes torn between preferring the those aspects of his life that bring him pure pleasures and preferring to live up to his commitment to the good of the polis as a whole.

2) The individuality of human beings also undermines the search for a polis that is free of tension and dispute.

a) The success of the kallipolis requires complete commitment to the common good on the part of auxiliaries and guardians.

b) But our very individuality—the fact that we have individual bodies and souls—would make both auxiliaries and guardians reluctant to accept these demands.

c) The auxiliaries and guardians will not be entirely indifferent to whether they, or some other auxiliary and guardian sacrifices their life for the polis or have their other desires satisfied.

(1) There can be no complete equality because the lives of one guardian or auxiliary will never been exactly the same as that of another.

d) The auxiliaries and guardians are likely to seek sexual and romantic relationships with particular other people and to prefer their own children.

(1) We seek particular romantic partners, to have our own children, and to have particular friends, in order to satisfy appetitive, thymotic and philosophic desires.

(2) Appetitive:

(a) Our appetitive desires are, to one degree or another, different from those of others: thus we will have our own preferences for sexual partners.

(b) We seek support and comfort from our family members in the face of the difficulties of life. The diffused love of a thousand others will be less valuable than the intense love of a few others.

(3) Thymos: We seek recognition and esteem from our family members who know us well. This usually means much more than the approbation of a thousand others who do not know us well.

(4) Philosophic: intense philosophic conversation requires an ongoing relationship between people who know and appreciate each other’s views and ways of expressing them.

d. Conflicts between one polis and another will continue although they will be moderated by the limited desires for luxuries found in the kallipolis.

1) The kallipolis does not seek empire.

2) Still, in foreign affairs, the kallipolis follows the parochial conception of justice.

a) Even to the point of helping imperialistic polises to conquer innocent third parties.

3. All political communities are caves

a. For Plato, to survive, most citizens in political communities must be willing to:

1) accept the sacrifices necessary for the survival of that political community;

2) accept the distribution of costs and benefits between different groups; and

3) accept that their own form of government is good, if not the best available.

b. Force is not enough to get citizens to be willing to act as if they accept these ideas. Rather, some, and perhaps most citizens must more or less believe them.

c. But, for Plato, most citizens do not believe these notions because they have good reason to do so.

1) Some people simply don't stop to question the ideas that bind their political community together.

a) Some people don't have the time to do so.

b) Some people don't have the inclination or skills to do so.

2) Some people accept these ideas because they believe, wrongly, that the Gods will punish them if they do not do so.

3) Some people accept these ideas because they think they are correct.

a) Plato suggests, however, that they may well be wrong at least in the most difficult cases.

b) For, when a political community is in trouble or difficultly, it may not be in our interest to sacrifice our own well-being in order to support it.

d. Thus all political communities survive only in so far as the ideals that motivate them remain unquestioned.

1) And thus Plato shows us why he thinks freedom of speech can be dangerous for a political community.

e. Two kinds of people see through these ideals.

1) Philosophers who, in searching for the best form of government come to recognize that the ideal is unattainable and that every form of government is questionable.

2) Tyrants, who reach more or less the same conclusion and decide that, as a result, they should only act to benefit themselves.

4. What then is the best political community for Plato?

a. There is no solution to the problem of politics.

b. But there is something to be said for the most common regimes, oligarchy and democracy.

1) Democracy is a regime that allows for freedom of speech and variety.

a) It is thus a good regime for philosophers.

2) Oligarchy is, however, preferable to democracy in other ways.

a) The oligarchic, rich are more likely to sacrifice some ends for the common good than the poor.

(1) They  more restrained in their pursuit of the satisfaction of their appetitive desires.

(2) They are more disciplined.

b) An oligarchic regime might limit freedom to some extent, which might help preserve agreement.

c. Some judicious combination of oligarchy and democracy might be the best realizable regime.

C. Happiness and well-being

1. While a ideal polis is impossible, an ideal life is possible, the life of a philosopher.

a. A philosopher’s life is relatively independent of fortune.

1) Knowledge, unlike, most other goods can be shared by everyone. You cannot steal my knowledge. And your pursuit. of knowledge can contribute to my own.

2) The pursuit of knowledge needs few instrumental or external goods, goods that can be gained or lost through fortune.

b. The pursuit of knowledge brings pure pleasure.

c. Philosophers satisfy their thymotic desire.

1) The can take pride in their independence from fortune.

2) And they also can be proud of their the freedom and independence that comes from transcending the conventional ideas of their own time.

2. Worst life is that of a tyrant.

a. Tyrants lack independence from fortune and luck

1) Fortune and luck very much influences whether a tyrant stays in power or has the money to satisfy his desires.

a) They live in fear of those who they offended or hurt.

2) They lack friends who can help them in bad times.

b. Tyrants driven by powerful desires for impure pleasure.

1) The appetitive part dominates their souls.

a) They indulge their appetitive part of the soul, thus strengthening it.

(1) As soon as one desire is satisfied, another comes to replace it .

b) But, unlike democratic citizens, tyrants are highly spirited.

(1) Their desire for distinction leads them to seek more appetitive goods of all kinds than anyone else has.

c. Their desire for pride and distinction is never satisfied.

1) While tyrants receive a great deal of honor and recognition, they still fear for the future.

a) Their position is also insecure because so many people wish to overthrow them.

2) Tyrants receive honor and recognition from those who pursue the lowest desires of human beings, not from those who pursue the highest desires.

D. Morality

1. Nature

a. Philosophers are virtuous not because of their commitment to the good of the polis but, rather, because they are not primarily concerned with seek the goods that most citizens of the polis seek.

1) Philosophers do recognize that they benefit from the polis, since it provides for their own security and safety.

2) And they are capable of understanding that, in a good polis, justice requires that everyone sacrifice their ends to that of the polis to the same degree.

3) So they are willing to do their share to support the polis, such as to pay taxes and serve in the military.

4) The will not, however, go out of their way to make greater sacrifices to the polis that will interfere with their pursuit of knowledge.

E. Content:

1. Philosophers cardinal virtues

a. Wisdom

b. Courage

c. Moderation

d. Justice

F. Addressee

1. Primary

a. Philosophers and potential philosophers

1) Encourage them to pursue best life, of philosophy.

2) Encourage them to do this in a way that minimizes the threat to the polis and themselves.

a) Because philosophers call into question the moral, political, and religious ideals of their political community, philosophers can undermine the civic virtue of their fellow citizens.

b) So prudent philosophers will present their criticisms of their own polis in a careful and circumspect manner.

3) Discourage them from a political life and, in particular, a life that aims at tyranny.

a) The tyrant and the philosopher are close to one another in that both see through the

2. Secondary

a. Gentlemen and citizens. Plato hopes to encourage them to have greater respect for philosophy so that they will:

1) Allow philosophy and philosophers to survive and continue to express themselves.

2) Listen to philosophers about how to bring their political life closer to the ideal.

VI. The Hebrew Bible

A. Fortune

1. One God, not many

a. The Hebrew Bible, like Plato must deal with the variety of religious and moral beliefs.

b. How can we claim that the God of the Bible is the true God and his law is divine and superior to the laws given by other Gods?

c. But, instead of turning to nature to find a standard beyond all divine law, the Hebrew Bible posits one and powerful, invisible God who created the cosmos.

1) Such a God must be the only God, otherwise He would not be all powerful.

2) Only such a God could be the true God.

3) God is the true God, as opposed to the false Gods worshipped by idolaters.

2. An all powerful God, however, is and must be fundamentally mysterious.

a. We have no model of such a God in our experience.

b. Moreover, if we did understand God fully, he would not be all-powerful but would, in some ways, be under our control or influence.

1) Thus we cannot see the face of God and live.

3. So how can we be sure what God seeks from us or that God cares for us?

a. Only by means of God’s covenant with us.

b. Covenant is an agreement in which

1) we agree to follow God’s commands

2) in return for

a) God’s support for us

b) God’s punishment of those who violate the commands.

4. God is ultimately in control of the cosmos. There is no chance or fortune but God’s providence.

a. God has created an ordered world that is good. 

b. The events and direction of history are not, ultimately, due to chance, but to God’s will.

c. Yet, while God is all-powerful, he gives men free will. This is the source of evil.

1) Evil, then, is not due to God but to ourselves.

2) The stories of the Garden of Eden and Noah are meant to reconcile the difficult and, sometimes chaotic world in which we live with God’s goodness.

5. , thus leaving some things up to us.

a. God intervenes in history to help mankind in two ways.

1) He gives us commandments to follow, since we are incapable of fully discovering them for ourselves.

2) He promises to punish those who violate his commands.

b. But it seems as if God would like to minimize his intervention.

1) He initially does not give us extensive commands either in the Garden of Eden or immediately afterwards.

2) He gives somewhat more extensive commandments to Noah. But they are by no means comprehensive.

c. Ultimately, he becomes the law giver of the Israelites and the ultimate judge of those who violate the law.

1) The Israelites, in turn, are supposed to lead mankind to God’s law by their example.

d. So God’s intervention in history does not eliminate the necessity for human effort and struggle to create a better world.

1) Indeed, the Hebrew Bible gives us more reason to engage in that struggle than is found in Greek thought.

a) For the Greeks, human effort and struggle was against fate or fortune.

(1) We did not know whether our efforts would, in the near future, be successful or not.

(2) We did know, however, that ultimately, all that we create would disappear. Political communities, like individual human beings, are mortal.

(a) All that may survives them is a memory of greatness, however, fleeting.

2) God’s covenant—his promises to them—give the Israelites, and the rest of mankind, us confidence that the we will ultimately reach the proper end.

a) Our struggles are thus not in vain, because we know that our hope to create a better world will eventually be realized.

b) God’s promises to the Israelites eventually becomes transmuted into the promise of a this worldly messiah. 

(1) The messiah will restore the Jewish people to their homeland

(2) And give them political independence.

(3) In doing so, the messiah will lead all other peoples to a recognition of the one true God and to peaceful relationships with each other.

3) But the fulfillment of God’s promise depends upon human action to live up to God’s law.

a) It is often said in the Jewish tradition that the messiah will come when all Jews obey the law.

(1) The point is not that God will reward obedience to the law by sending a messiah but that the arrival of the messiah is constituted by obedience to the law.

(2) That is, if the Jewish people obey the law, they will be able to attain the ends of the messiah.

b) The reason that that obedience to the law on the part of all constitutes the coming of the messiah is that it would point the way to the solution of what I called above the political problem of ancient, medieval, and renaissance thought.

(1) If all Israelites obey the law, conflict among the Israelites would come to an end.

(2) If all peoples and political communities obey the moral law, all conflict between them would come to an end.

B. Politics

1. God is the ruler for the Israelites.

a. His commandments form the central elements of criminal, civil, and religious law

2. The Israelites are bound together and created as a people during their forty years in the Sinai.

a. They learn the law.

b. And a new generation arises that does not have its spirit broken by slavery.

3. The Israelites are to be a nation of priests and a holy people.

a. They are to teach other peoples about God and his commandments.

b. Other peoples are obligated to follow the moral, but not ritual, laws and to believe in one God.

C. Morality

1. Nature

a. The story of the Garden of Eden suggests, on first reading, that it would have been best if we had never learned about good or evil.

1) There is a sense in which this is true and a sense in which it is not true.

a) We would like to live in a world in which conflict within and between human beings does not exist. We would like our lives to be more peaceful and happy than they are.

(1) We find attractive a world without good and evil, in which human beings live a simple life, with only those desires that can easily be fulfilled.

b) At the same time, however, we wish to have the freedom—the capacity for self-determination and creativity—that seems to be promised by the notion that we are made in God’s image.

(1) That God wants us to be free is suggested by his giving us commandment to not eat from the fruit of the tree of good and evil.

(2) On the Jewish view, it seems unlikely that such a simple creature could have obeyed this commandment.

(a) Our curiosity together with our lack of moral responsibility (that is lack of capacity for remembering and acting on God’s commands) leads us to sin.

2) Thus our disobedience and our learning of good and evil is probably necessary.

a) If we are to truly be in God’s image and have free will, we must be capable of making choices and  directing our own lives. That means, however, we must be capable of choosing to obey or disobey God, choosing good or evil.

b) We learn of good and evil, and of our capacity to chose between good and evil by disobeying God and being punished for doing so..

(1) In disobeying we learn of our capacity to choose.

(2) In being punished we learn the importance of being responsible for our actions and of the importance of obeying God. .

3) The story does have important lessons for what our aims should be.

a) We must try to restore, at a higher level, and  by means of our responsible and free moral choice, the circumstances of the Garden of Eden.

b) We do this by following God’s commands.

(1) In following his commandments, we restore a kind of simplicity to our lives. We restrain those desires that lead us into conflict with others and within ourselves.

(2) We limit the curiosity and search for knowledge which, the story shows, lead us against God.

(a) For, if the Garden of Eden story teaches us the necessity of coming to have reason, the rest of Genesis teaches us that reason is not enough.

b. Morality can be discovered by reason. Otherwise, God would be unjust in punishing Cain and the people who die in the flood.

c. But human beings have a tendency to evil. “…the devising of man’s mind is evil from youth” Gen. 8:20.

1) On the Jewish view, the evil of mankind is not the result of original sin but begins later, in youth or adolescence?

2) Why does it begin at all and begin then?

a) Adolescence is the time in which two important changes occur in our lives.

(1) We first begin to face the necessity of taking care of ourselves.

(2) And we first begin to be held morally responsible for our choices.

b) We can respond to this circumstance in two ways.

(1) By choosing to look out for ourselves alone, thereby rejecting the claims of morality.

(2) Or by choosing to live a moral life.

c) The choice we make depends upon the education and experiences we have at this time.

(1) If we are taught to be moral, we are more likely to be moral.

(2) If we have experience a world in which other people are moral and support and help us, we are more likely to be moral.

3) The difficultly for human kind, then, is to create circumstances in which human beings will choose to live moral lives. But we seem incapable of doing this ourselves.

a) Perhaps the difficulty is in getting a good political community started.

(1) Until such a political community begins, it is difficult for individuals to discover the right moral rules.

(2) And it may make sense for people to violate these rules and act badly at times. For that is the only way for them to avoid being crushed by those who are truly evil.

d. So God is necessary to the creation of a good political community.

1) He tells us what we must do. He gives us commandments that set out the minimal rules necessary for the survival of a political community.

2) He gives us a reason to follow these laws, even when our self-interested concern for this wordly happiness would leads us to violate them. For he promises to punish evil doers himself.

3) The content and force of law is the Biblical solution to political problem.

e. What is the appropriate attitude toward God and ourselves?

1) Fear:

a) We should fear God’s punishment.

b) Religion seems to begin in fear.

2) Humility

a) We need God to help us created a good political community

3) Pride

a) in

(1) The unity of the Israelite people and their being chosen by God.

(2) The success of the Israelites in conquering the Holy Land and forming a political regime that provides milk and honey.

(3) Self-overcoming, meeting the ideals and commandments of God.

(a) Which help others as well as ourselves.

b) God requires pride as well as humility because

(1) He wants us to accomplish as much as we can through our own devices rather than through reliance on him.

(2) Only a proud, spirited people can conquer the wholly land.

c) The pride of the Israelites might, in some ways, be greater than for Athenians.

(1) For they are chosen by God.

(2) And they demand a higher degree of self-discipline and overcoming than the civic virtue of the Athenians.

d) Although that pride is tempered by humility in the face of our need for God.

4) Love: We should be grateful to and love God for

a) The good earth he created for us.

b) The commandments he gave us, which enables us to live good lives.

f. The moral law is not just a parochial law but a cosmopolitan law.

1) God, who is universal and good, must be concerned about all. His laws must be for everyone.

2) But the cosmopolitanism of the Hebrew Bible is different than that of the New Testament in that it does require precisely the same beliefs and observances on the part of all people.

a) The New Testament presents a teaching that, it claims, everyone must accept.

b) The Hebrew Bible teaches that only the basic elements of the moral law and a belief in the one, true God must be accepted by all people.

(1) The ritual law is for the Israelites, although anyone who wishes to accept the commandments can become an Israelite.

c) There is a suggestion in the Hebrew Bible that each people can form its own covenant with God, one that has a somewhat different shape and structure.

2. Content

a. Obligation to others

1) Our obligations to others are, in part, those moral rules necessary to sustaining a political community. Prohibitions against

a) Murder

b) Theft

c) Adultery

(1) which is necessary to prohibit in order to preserve the family, upon which rests the moral and religious education and the sustenance of children.

d) False witness

(1) which is necessary to establish justice.

e) Coveting

2) We also have obligations to take care of the weak and unfortunate, such as orphans and widows, and to treat foreigners well.

a) The Hebrew Bible is very different from the Greek morality in that it makes these demands.

(1) The civic virtue of Athens is oriented to the provision of goods to everyone and in military success.

(2) The philosophic life aims at the well being of philosophers.

(a) They will not harm others.

(b) But they will not go out of their way to help others.

(3) Even Aristotelian moral virtue does not lead to such a concern for the weak and unfortunate.

(a) A morally virtuous person might

(4) success of the community in

b)  Why does the Hebrew Bible make these additional demands on us?.

(1) God has created everyone and is the God of all of us. Thus he must have concern for the well being of all human beings. In so far as we follow him, we must show a similar concern.

(2) While we are proud to follow God’s commands, we are also humbled by our recognizing our need for God.

(a) The Hebrew Bible encourages us to recognize our need for God and thus to recognize the need of others for God as well.

(3) If the account of how we choose to be moral given up is plausible, this attitude of the Hebrew Bible makes sense.

(a) We are encouraged to be moral when we live in a community that show concerns for all of its members.

(b) Thus the morality of the Israelites depends upon there being concerned about all Israelites and about other people as well.

(4) The Hebrew Bible encourages those who violate God’s commands to repent and feel guilty because they fear Gods’ punishment.

(a) Repentance and feelings of guilty encourage in us

(i) pity for those we have harmed

(ii) and a sense of identification with those who are weak and unfortunate.

(b) These feelings give us a greater concern for other people.

(c) The morality of Plato and Aristotle, on the other hand, discourages these feelings.

(i) There is no God who summons feelings of repentance and guilt.

(ii) Plato and Aristotle encourage people to have the greatest confidence in themselves. For, only in that way, can they have confidence in their capacity to transcend or be independent of fortune and achieve the goods of philosophy and moral virtue.

c) The Hebrew Bible does not say we must care for everyone as much as we do for our own people.

(1) The presupposition of the Hebrew Bible seems to be that human kind will continue to live in discreet groups that follow their own rituals and, presumably, have their own relationship with  God.

(2) Again, given the account of the sources of moral action given, morality is dependent upon people finding support in a relatively small political community.

(a) Such support is likely to be less forthcoming in a larger community in which each person is relatively anonymous and the community concern for the poor and unfortunate is very widely spread.

b. Obligation to God

1) Ritual aims at imitating God’s creation of the universe and separating times, places, and activities from one another.

a) Separation creates moments and places of holiness in which God’s presence is more clearly felt.

2) These rituals include

a) Sacrifices at the temple

b) Dietary laws

c) Prayers

d) Holidays and special practices during them.

3) Importance of ritual

a) Education: we teach children first by encouraging them to act certain ways and then by telling them the reasons for their actions.

b) Encouragement of self-consciousness in how we live our lives.

(1) As the Garden of Eden story teaches, we must be aware of our moral responsibilities.

(2) Thus ritual acts as a reminder of our debt to God and our obligations to obey his commandment.

c) Self-discipline.

(1) By learning to disciplines ourselves through ritual, we come to be better able to meet the moral commandments of God.

d) Unification of the people.

(1) Ritual creates a sense of belonging to a group of people.

(2) It may also create a shared common good in the celebration of religious holidays and the like.

e) Example to others: a holy nation and kingdom of priests.

(1) To be a holy nation is to be marked out from others by the commandments.

(2) This is necessary if the Israelites are to spread God’s message to other people.

c. How God’s law is the Biblical solution to the political problem, the conflict over a limited supply of goods.

1) The political problem arises because there is not enough goods to go around. Those who want more than they already have will be tempted to do things that undermine their political community.

a) They will reject the laws of their own political community that require them to contribute to the common good.

b) They will try to take the goods of others either by changing the laws to their own benefit or by violating the laws.

2) Biblical law aims to solve, or at least moderate the political problem in a number of ways.

a) The law is just and fair.

(1) We know this because the law is given by God and because the fairness of the law is evident to reason.

(2) A just and fair law undermines any disobedience that results from a belief that the law is unfair.

b) It gives self-interested people a reason to obey the law of their political community, even when they can get away with violating that law.

(1) God will punish violators of the law, even if their own political community does not catch or punish them

c) The moral and ritual laws, taken together, restrain us from pursuing certain kinds of goods and encourages us to pursue other goods. It changes the focus of human life from goods that are limited supply, and over which there is human conflict, to goods that are available to all.

(1) The law sets limits on our pursuit of those goods that are in short supply.

(a) External goods.

(i) The Sabbath requirements limits the amount of external goods (such as money) that the Israelites can acquire.

(ii) God gives the Israelites a land, but tells them only to conquer this land, not to go beyond it.

(b) Goods that satisfy our bodily desires.

(i) Laws against adultery and other sexual rules limit their pleasure in sexuality.

(ii) Dietary laws limit their enjoyment of food.

(2) The law encourages us to pursue those goods that are not in short supply. These goods are not only available to all but our own appreciation of them is enhanced when other people have them as well as ourselves.

(a) Collective pride in a political community that is a nation of priests and a holy people.

(b) The pleasures of family life.

(i) The Sabbath is meant, in part, to give families time to be together.

(c) The pleasure of communal celebration.

(i) The Sabbath and other religious holidays are meant, in part, for this purpose.

(d) The pleasures of teaching and learning the commandments of God.

(e) The love of God.

(3) This restraint and encouragement, if generally followed by all political communities, would enable different peoples to live together even in the face of a limited supply of goods.

(a) Each group would have what it needs and some, but not a lot of, luxuries.

3. Addressee

a. Primary

1)  The Israelites

b. Secondary

1)  The rest of mankind.

D. Happiness and well-being

1. Land of milk and honey. Both necessities (milk) and some luxuries (honey.)

2. A nation of priests and a holy people.

a. To be a nation of priests and a holy people is to have collective pride in one’s community.

b. And it also is to be directed towards those goods that are available to all people.

VII. Matthew

A. Fortune

1. The New Testament understanding of fortune and chance is, in some respects, similar to that found in the Hebrew Bible. That is, not fortune and chance, but God’s providence is responsible for the world we see around us.

2. However, that world has been corrupted by original sin.

a. The New Testament perspective on the story of the Garden of Eden tells us that Adam and Eve’s disobedience fundamentally corrupted human nature.

1) It was a act of fundamental disobedience to God, motivated by a desire, based in envy, to have God’s power.

2) We are thus bound to sin. Human beings cannot live without sinning.

3. The human world, then, is not redeemable or improvable through human effort. Our efforts then, should be focused not on this world but on the next world, that is, on making ourselves worthy of salvation, of being one of the sheep rather than one of the goats on the day of judgment.

a. Our aim, that is, is to win salvation—resurrection and eternal, heavenly, life in the new creation that follows the day of judgment.

b. What makes resurrection and eternal life possible is Jesus’s death is God’s sacrifice of himself for the sake of human beings.

1) This sacrifice redeems us from sin.

a) It makes us worthy of resurrection and eternal, heavenly, life, despite our sinful nature.

b) On some views, it frees us from the compulsion to sin

c. Thus, for Christians, belief in Jesus and his sacrifice for us, is necessary to attaining salvation.

d. And, for Matthew, the day of judgment is expected relatively soon.

B. Morality

1. Nature

a. The moral law is, for Christianity, not focused so much on creating a just political community as on preparing the way for salvation. This difference accounts for the differences in emphasis in the content of the moral law.

b. Christianity rejects the necessity of the ritual law of the Hebrew Bible.

1) The ritual law was never thought, by Jews, to be necessary for gentiles.

2) In Matthew Jesus teaches that Jews should follow the ritual law. He criticizes the way in which the Pharisees follow the law, but not the law itself.

a) The Pharisees, he argues, give greater importance to ritual rather than moral law.

b) The Pharisees follow ritual in a hypocritical manner. They do so to be seen to righteous by others, not for the sake of righteousness itself.

3) Since the split between Judaism and Christianity, most Christians teach that the ritual law is not necessary for Jews either. This is understandable in two way.

a) The ritual law plays an important role in creating the political community of the Jews. But, given the focus of Christianity not on redemption of this world but salvation in the next one, ritual is of less

c. Humility as the proper attitude of the follower of Jesus.

1) The account of the beatitudes.

a) The proper approach to God, for  Christians, begins with a lack of spirit, that is, with a sense of our own unworthiness.

(1) To lack spirit is to confess that we are sinful, rebellious, and without the moral virtues God wants of us.

b) This leads to mourning: we mourn over our sins and estrangement from God.

c) The next step is meekness and humility.

(1) This means willingness to submit to the absolute authority of God, so as to repair our estrangement from Him.

d) This leads to a thirst for righteousness, for doing what God requires of us.

e) If our thirst for righteousness is strong enough we become pure in heart. The desire to do what God wants of us becomes our sole desire in that all other desires flow from it.

f) And purity of heart leads us to follow God’s path in our relationships with other men and women.

(1) We are merciful, reaching out to those who need our help as God is merciful to us.

(2) We seek peace above all

2) Christians should not expect worldly success from acceptance of God.

a) Rather, Matthew tells us that they should expect persecution from a corrupted world.

b) Worldly success, however, is not the aim of Christians.

d. The moral content of Jesus’s teaching tells us to focus not on those goods that are the subject of human competition and struggle, but on those goods that are available to all people.

1) The Hebrew Bible cannot go so far, because it is concerned with creating a good political community in this world.

a) Some external goods and goods that satisfy our bodily desires are necessary to political survival. Thus the Hebrew Bible aims to moderate our desires for these goods, not to eliminate them or reduce them to the lowest level.

2) Since Christianity has other aims, it can go farther in the demands it makes on us.

2. Content: The moral law taught by Jesus is, in most respects, that of the Hebrew Bible. It does, however, have a number of distinctive features.

a. It is, in some respects, more rigorous in its restraints on us.

1) It demands that we do only good to others.

a) We are not supposed to resist evil but, rather, turn the other cheek.

2) It tells us to, in so far as possible, give up any competing aims besides following Jesus.

a) For example:

(1) For those who are able to do so, it is better not to have sex, get married, and have children than to do so.

(2) Jesus recommends that rich people give away all their money.

b) The point of this injunction is not that sexuality, marriage, and children are evil or wrong in themselves, but that they direct our attention away from Jesus and the next world and to this world.

(1) We can’t have children without being concerned about feeding them, and thus about gaining external goods, such as money.

(2) Money, of course, is an external good. We can’t have a great deal of it without being concerned about how to preserve and expand it.

b. It focuses more on intention than action.

1) For example:

a) Lust in the heart is condemned as well as adultery.

b) Anger against others is condemned as well as violence towards them.

2) This make sense, given that the primary aim of a Christian is salvation. To be sure that one is worthy of salvation is to aim at the greatest inner purity.

C. Happiness and well-being: salvation

D. Addressee: all human beings.

VIII. The Qur’an

A. Fortune

1. The Qur’an is poised between Judaism and Christianity in its concern for both this world and the next.

a. The notion of God’s judgment and resurrection is central to the Qur’an.

1) Resurrection is only open to those who do God’s will in this world.

b. But the Qur’an also aims at justice in this world

1) The threat of God’s judgment is meant, in part, to encourage obedience in this world.

2) Islamic law is, like Jewish law, a guide for the whole of life in this world.

2. Thus Islam like Judaism encourages us to does

B. Happiness and well-being

C. Morality

1. Nature

a. In some respects, Islam is between Judaism and Christianity with regard to the question of ritual and belief.

1) Ritual is more important for Islam than for Christianity.

a) Specific rituals are required of all Muslims.

(1) Prayer five times a day.

(2) Pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime.

(3) Fasting during the month of Ramadan.

(4) Dietary Laws.

b) Yet these rituals are not quite as elaborate as those of Rabbinic Judaism. They do not cover each and every aspect of our lives

2) Belief is somewhat more important for Islam than for Judaism.

a) Followers of Islam and Judaism all share what we might call the essential principles of monotheistic religion.

(1) They believe in one God.

(2) They believe that God is the creator of the world.

(3) They oppose idolatry.

b) Muslims also are required to believe in resurrection and a last judgment. These beliefs are not held by all Jews.

(1) In this respect, Islamic beliefs are somewhat more elaborate than those of Judaism in the sense that Muslims must believe more than Jews believe.

c) But Islamic belief is much less elaborate than that of  Christianity in that they need to believe less, and less particular notions, than Christians.

(1) There is no Islamic parallel to the Christian belief that Jesus died for our sins.

b. Islam is especially tolerant among the Biblical religions.

1) It holds that all who are monotheists and follow the moral laws of God will be rewarded in the next life.

a) Islam holds that the moral laws of all Biblical religions are fundamentally the same.

2) And it calls on Jews and Christians to practice their religion, while also claiming that Islam is, in some ways, superior.

a) For example, the belief in the trinity is, for Islam, dangerously close to a rejection of monotheism.

3) This feature of Islam seems to be related to its relatively late arrival.

a) Islam comes after Judaism and Christianity, and the tension between them.

b) It calls for the adherents of the Biblical religions to learn from all of the prophets of God including Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.

c. Islam is somewhat closer to Judaism than Christianity in two respects.

1) Its greater emphasis on ritual.

2) Its belief that one need not be a Muslim to gain entrance to heaven.

IX. The Prince

A. Fortune

1. Machiavelli believes that human beings can largely, if not totally conquer nature.

a. We cannot have control over every chance event.

b. But we can prepare for bad events occurring when times are good and thus ride out any storms.

c. Machiavelli typically points to certain problems that are impossible to overcome. Then he shows us that they are merely difficult to overcome. And finally he proposes a solution. He does this

1) To prepare us for his new view of human power.

2) To get us to try to find the solution ourselves.

a) In part, to stimulate our minds.

b) In part, because the solutions often require us to do evil.

(1) Machiavelli wants to more or less gently come to accept his new notion of virtue.

(2) And he wants us to think these evil ideas ourselves. He seeks to desensitize us to the need for doing evil in order to attain good.

2. How do we conquer nature?

a. Through systematic knowledge of nature.

1) Machiavelli assumes that the world is more or less explicable in natural terms.

2) And he supposes that knowledge of nature in general—and in its particular variations—would enable us to gain control over it.

a) Our knowledge then is tied to our ability to make or bring about things both natural an political.

b) Theoretical knowledge then, is useful.

3) Machiavelli is one of the first to put forward this new understanding of theoretical knowledge, one the rejects the Greek notion that theoretical knowledge does not give us practical control over the world around us.

4) This new understanding of knowledge unites:

a) The Greek search for theoretical knowledge.

b) The Hebrew assumption that there is a natural order in the actual cosmos, and not just in the ideas  that animate it.

c) The Christian philosophical notion that philosophy can attain the truth and be a systematic guide to life in this world..

(1) This notion develops because, given the importance of belief to Christians, Christians quickly used philosophical ideas to elucidate their theological notions of such things as free will, God’s grace and so forth.

(2) Thus Christians adopt Greek philosophy while rejecting the Socratic notion that philosophy is an endless pursuit of the truth.

(a) For Christians, God has revealed the truth that philosophy merely helps us elucidate.

b. Fraud

1) Machiavelli has greater confidence then the Greeks that the people can be manipulated to accept the political, moral, and religious ideas of the great. (See below on the great and the people.)

a) Plato and Aristotle assumed that politics must be based upon political, moral, and religious ideas that were accepted by most people without good reason.

(1) But they assumed that practically all members of a political community must accept these ideas and act on them most of the time.

(a) Except in cases of political emergency.

(2) If some people did not accept and act on these ideas, then they would ultimately be rejected by everyone.

(a) If say, some oligarchs were hypocritical in their acceptance of the conception of justice held by the people, the people would eventually discover this and rebel.

2) Machiavelli assumes that the great can act virtuously (in his sense) as necessity demands and yet still convince the people that they are virtuous in the traditional sense. Why are the people easy for a virtuous prince to fool?

a) They are scared to seek power because they believe that they will be defeated and possibly killed. And so they seek to avoid politics and political life. This leaves them lacking knowledge about politics. And, by avoiding it, they avoid feeling the Prince’s actions. They only see what the Prince wants them to see.

b) Given their fear of politics, they are also fearful for their future. How can they have any confidence that things will go well for them by staying out of politics? How can they have any confidence that bad luck will not destroy them? In part, by having confidence that their Prince or political leaders are good and will take care of them. That is, given their fears, the people want to believe in their prince or political leaders. That is, they are self-deceptive.

c) Biblical religion, and especially Christianity encourages them to assume that things will work out well.

(1) God presumably is in control of this world. Thus whatever happens is his doing and God is presumably good. Thus they can assume that the prince or political leaders are good.

(2) Biblical religion and Christianity can more directly influence the people when its leaders tell the people that that their rulers are good.

3) What accounts for the difference between Machiavelli’s experience of the people and that of Plato and Aristotle?

a) Plato and Aristotle assumed that the people want some share in political power.

(1) But Machiavelli assumes they want to avoid being oppressed.

(2) Yet he also points out that politics is necessarily oppressive. That is, it demands much from the people that they do not want to give.

(3) Machiavelli does recognize that the people may become problematic for the prince. He has two solutions to this problem.

b) The first, most important solution is to keep them fearful. A confident people might begin to challenge the great. A fearful people will not do so.

(1) They are kept fearful by the striking and cruel actions of the prince to punish those who challenge him.

(2) They are also kept fearful by religion which tells the people that they will suffer eternal punishment for violating the prince’s commands.

(a) One reason a Machiavellian prince can be more effective than an ancient prince is that he has great religious punishments at his disposal.

(3) And finally they are kept fearful by war, which brings home to the people their need for princes.

c) The second solution is to deflect the resentments of the people against the prince and government as a whole onto particular people who can be punished.

(1) This is what Cesare Borgia did when he executed Remirro d’Orca.

4) Machiavelli has, in a way, learned from biblical religion and, in particular, from the success of Christianity, as he understands it.

a) Biblical religion tells us that people are not likely to be good unless they fear punishment from God for violating his commands.

(1) Machiavelli adopts this view and encourages his princes to act like God.

(2) That is why Machiavelli frequently tells princes that they must return to the beginnings. That is, they must strikingly remind people why they need government to protect them.

(a) Machiavelli reminds of necessity and of the beginnings of government.

(b) Plato and Aristotle, on the other hand, encouraged us to partly forget about necessity and to think about ends that presuppose that we have some independence from necessity: philosophy (for Plato) and moral and intellectual virtue (for Aristotle).

b) On Machiavelli’s view, Christianity attained power by fraud. (He assumes, that is, that Christianity is not true.)

(1) The leaders of Christians— the Church hierarchy—were unarmed prophets. Yet, by converting the Roman people and their emperors, Christianity came to be the dominant religion of the Roman empire.

(2) Most unarmed prophets fail. But Christianity succeeds, Machiavelli suggests, by showing us that fraud can be more successful then anyone had previously imagined. as

B. Politics

1. Politics, for Machiavelli, is an essentially inarticulate struggle between princes who appeal to the people for support.

2. The two humors or tendencies in a political regime.

a. The great seek to oppress.

1) They seek more goods and can only get them by taking them from others.

2) The great are defined in terms of a certain psychological type.

a) They are more likely to be found on the part of a certain social class, the nobility.

b) But they can also be found among the non-nobles in the form of people who seek to rise from little or nothing into power.

3) So, in talking about the great, I am talking about princes, noblemen and potential princes and noblemen who seek power.

b. The people seek not to be oppressed.

1) Again Machiavelli is talking about a psychological type that is more likely to be found in the social class of the common people.

3. Politics,  for Machiavelli, should not and cannot aim at some agreement about the good regime or about justice as both the Greeks and Biblical religion suggests.

a. Given the different ends of the great and the people, no such agreement is possible. Indeed, reason plays a limited role in political matters (as opposed to, say, fraud.)

b. Indeed, acceptance of a regime on the part of the people rests on necessity, that is, on their fears, aided and abetted by the religious fraud the great commit on them. (See above.)

c. And the great are limited in the extent to which they oppress the people not by any more scruples but by their own fears. The great are taught by Machiavelli to choose to support the people rather than other members of the great.

1) It is difficult for a prince to make the great happy.

a) They demand much which can only be given to them if it is taken from other great or, even more likely, from the people.

b) Even though the people are not likely to rebel, it is risky to oppress the people too much.

(1) They are necessary for making war.

(2) It is impossible to eliminate all of the people.

(3) Even if an aggrieved people are not willing to fight against the prince themselves, they might support another potential prince who promises to help the people if they help him to take away the established prince’s power.

2) It is much easier to make the people happy.

a) A prince simply must leave them alone.

b) Or he can provide benefits taken from the great, who are easier to get rid of since they are fewer in number.

4. Machiavelli thus downplays the distinction between republics and principalities.

a. Princes in principalities

1) serve the ends of the people

2) are kept on their toes by fear of competing princes.

a) Just as politicians in republics are kept on their toes by fear of other politicians coming to win the votes of the people

b. The people in republics do not rule themselves. They exert influence by choosing between competing members of the great who exercise power in the name of the people.

1) And, in times of danger, republics do well to hand power over to dictators.

c. Thus, in talking about princes and potential princes, Machiavelli is also talking about political leaders in republics.

d. The advantage of republics is that political leaders with different talents and natures compete with one another for power. This makes it easier for a political leader with the right kind of character to rise to power in the appropriate circumstance.

1) Machiavelli points out that princes—and thus political le tend to be either impetuous or cautious.

2) Only the very best princes can adjust their behavior according to the times.

5. Machiavelli also eliminates the distinction between rulers who aim at the good of all and rulers who aim at their own good.

a. By serving their own good, successful princes serve the good of the people.

1) They keep the peace.

2) Keep taxes low

3) Defend their people from foreign attack.

4) Take from other principalities and republics to reward the people.

b. See the examples of the virtues below.

C. Morality

1. Nature

a. Virtue, in Machiavelli’s new sense is

1) skillful self-advancement

2) learning how to be able to be not good and using it when necessary to keep power.

b. But a prince must pretend to virtue in the old sense.

1) Thus, for Machiavelli, old and new sense of virtue will continue to exist.

2. Content:

a. Some examples of Machiavellian virtues:

1) Liberality for Machiavelli involves

a) Being stingy by not giving to the great, which enables the prince not to take from the people.

b) A prince should only be liberal when he can take from other people.

c) A prince can keep a reputation for this Aristotelian virtue.

2) A prince is merciful by being cruel.

a) Cruelty well-used need not be repeated.

b) And it keeps peace in the territory of a prince.

D. Happiness and well-being

1. For Machiavelli, we are always subject to necessity.

a. What we have can always be taken from us.

b. Thus we need more to protect ourselves.

2. In particular, we can never have too much of the instrumental goods.

a. land

b. honor and glory.

c. money

d. power

3. Machiavelli, then, recommends the life of the tyrant that Plato rejects because he tells us that we cannot afford anything else.

a. There is no way to try to become independent of fortune or chance.

4. And so Machiavelli wants to encourage spiritedness to be directed not at distinguishing ourselves in virtue or piety but in the accumulation of instrumental goods and in the satisfaction of our bodily desires.

5.  

E. Addressee

1. Machiavelli’s work is aimed at princes and potential princes.

2. He hopes to teach them how to learn not to be good.

3. This must be learned because

a. Religion and Ancient philosophy teaches us the opposite.

b. Spiritedness leads us to want to be distinguished by transcending necessity.

1) But this is impossible.

4. By teaching them this, and encouraging them to pursue power, Machiavelli hopes to improve the state of the world and, indeed, to create new kinds of political relationships.