where would you recommend an absolute beginner start when it comes to political theory/philosophy? also did you study these things in school or did you find texts on your own?
I taught myself these things. If you live in America you will probably not get much out of the average politics course bc they’re meant to train campaign managers and bureaucrats rather than to educate insightful political theorists. I’ll make a course to teach what I think a beginner should read and why below
Modern Politics (1960) by C.L.R. James
Explains the basics of political theory and traces the history of democracy in Western politics from the Ancient Greeks to the 20th century workers’ movement.
Han Feizi (200s BCE) by Han Fei
One of the earliest works of political theory that gives advice on how to rule a state, explains the concept of authority, and argues that political power is based on force and manipulation instead of being virtuous or following the course of things.
Plato’s Five Dialogues (400s-300s BCE)
Goes through the basic concepts of political theory in Ancient Greece and gives accounts of Socrates’ doctrines as interpreted by Plato.
Politics (300s BCE) by Aristotle
Shows how politics begin with addressing and defining the common good of the citizens. Argues that a polity is made up of the nature of each citizen taken together, although you’ll see that Aristotle’s concept of nature is not as simple as later interpretations assume. Identifies different kinds of governments and how they transition between each other. Unlike Han Fei, argues for the role of virtue in politics.
Works of Mengzi (300s BCE) by Mengzi
Argues that an authority’s legitimacy rests on their ability to care for the common good of their people. Explains the concept of the Mandate of Heaven and argues that people can overthrow their governments and replace them with new ones if they lose their legitimacy. Explains how our natural tendency to mutual cooperation and recognition, including the use of shame, makes virtue precede and supersede the existence of the state.
Modern Political Philosophy:
The Prince (1532) by Niccolò Machiavelli
Similar to Han Fei, but gives much more detail about how states compete over space. If you like this book you should also read his Discourses on Livy where he argues that society (“the multitude”) is what keeps the state alive and that for that reason the many are more important and creative than the aristocratic few, even if he thinks the conflict between both is necessary for a republic.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1577) by Étienne de la Boétie
Explores the issue of why people submit to authority even when their conditions are unbearable and argues that people can free themselves from tyranny if they stop submitting, disobey, and learn to choose for themselves.
The Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes
Explains how a state develops out of society’s need for peace and security. Explores how and why a state makes up a single entity. Argues that “the multitude” (society) enters a contract with authorities in order to preserve their own lives from each other and to make the permanent ownership of property possible, which forges them into a people/nation/polity where they no longer have any right to resist the will of the state. Supports a monarchy on the basis of seeing authority as maintained through patrilineal descent, which he traces back to Adam. One of the most important works of political philosophy in modern history.
John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Unlike Hobbes, argues that every social association begins with people wanting to protect their already-existing claims to property, which they secure through changing the world around them with labor. As a bourgeois liberal, makes the sovereignty of the property owner (including the enslaver) the basis of all states, and argues that the legislature is superior to all other branches of government for this reason. Argues in favor of a revolt of civil society if the state authorities infringe on the rule of law. You could probably get away with skipping the first treatise because it’s a polemic about how our descent from Adam doesn’t justify the state being a patrilineal monarchy.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1755)
Repeats a lot of what Hobbes says about “the state of nature,” that people are born equal, free, without the concept of property, but goes a different direction with his argument. Shows how the development of civilization and the state leads to unhappiness and unfreedom and at the end begins arguing for a democratic republic as the way to reclaim the original freedom of association in the higher form of a social contract where each participant becomes part of a single, general, national will.
Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791)
One of the best works of the liberal revolutions. Defends the French Revolution and the right to revolt against undemocratic states. Usually treated as just summing up the ideas of John Locke and others, but has a lot of original concepts, including arguing that society is so superior to the state that as people learn to cooperatively take care of their needs for themselves the state bureaucracy will wither away.
Critiques of Modern Political Philosophy:
The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Should be read in the context of the liberal and democratic revolutions (1776-1848) against monarchies and aristocracies. Think of Marx and Engels as the “ultraleft” of those democratic revolutions and you’ll get a lot more out of reading this as a critique of even the progressives in history and a call for a universal social revolution.
W.E.B. Du Bois’s Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920)
Explains the implications of his concept of the “color line” between the white world and the dark world. Shows how Europe has been built through the exploitation of the dark world. Argues for a global socialist movement as the only thing that can emancipate people from racism and colonialism.
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930) by Muhammad Iqbal
Argues that many of the concepts people attribute to modern European philosophers already existed in Islam (and those people were almost all influenced by Islamic philosophers like Ibn Rushd or Ibn Tufayl). Demonstrates how Islam endorses a kind of “spiritual democracy” of the community of believers.
The Sexual Contract (1988) by Carole Pateman
Critiques classical contract theory (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) for ignoring the fact that the patriarchal family precedes the formation of a state. Argues that this means that the formal equality of all citizens in a modern liberal state, even in a democratic republic, actually veils the real inequality between men and women and the arbitrary authority of the men. Explores all the consequences of this in everyday life.
Taiaiake Alfred’s Peace, Power, Righteousness (1999)
Argues that Indigenous peoples should return to their own political traditions and critiques European political theory through a Mohawk lens. Demonstrates an example of political theory that doesn’t make property, authority, the social contract, or labor the foundation of the polity but instead the reciprocity between people.
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