Change refers to the slow, measured process by which laws are passed and conventions and norms come into being. It represents a sceptical attitude toward revolution in general: change is necessary, but revolution is not. Advances in science and technology can change the skin of society, but on the inside, much stays the same. This scepticism about outward change does not imply a craving or preference for stagnation, but a cautious outlook toward things in general, and a marked indifference to the new-fangled for its own sake.
Category: Short Notes
‘Short Notes’ are elucidations of principles of political philosophy with reference to canonical thinkers, capped at 1,000 words. They are sketches, in short, to a more systematic philosophical system, and the views contained in them are mine, built upon the crutches of an important canon of political philosophy and humanistic thought.
Short Note #2: Duty and Obligation
There are two kinds of obligations with which we are concerned here: legal and moral obligation. Both are important in the context of the polis. Legal obligation is concerned with the observance of the law, broadly understood, in both letter and in spirit. Moral obligation, which we shall refer to as ‘duty,’ relates to broader questions of right and wrong and with hierarchy in general. Legal obligation is important, especially when the polis is ruled in accordance with a series of non-arbitrary rules, codified into laws, which are sovereign over the polis. Both these forms of obligation, in the context of the polis, find their articulation in Marcus Tullius Cicero’s treatise, On The Commonwealth.
Short Note #1: The Importance of Politics
To know man fully is to know first what politics is. Aristotle’s arguments for the importance and primacy of politics still maintain their vitality today. They go as follows.
For Aristotle, “nature … makes nothing in vain” (Politics, 1.2, 1253a8–9). Everything that arises from nature has an end, a telos. Man’s telos is determined by Aristotle by the possession of faculties of speech that go beyond expressions of “pleasure and pain” (1253a12). The Epicureans would like to reduce most things to pleasure and pain, but Aristotle does not: he restricts them to the domain of animals, not humans. Humans use their speech to express more complex ideas; for example, “man alone possesses a perception of good and evil” (1253a16). Man’s ability to converse has an end, and it cannot be realised in solitary existence.
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