The Human Person in

Relation to Others,
Society, and Environment
Political and Economical Philosophies
Course Outline

Politics and Economy

• The State of Nature
• Thomas Hobbes
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Ethics of Economics
• Karl Marx
• Adam Smith
Political Thought
What is Politics?
• Politics is “Power”

• Politics in a broadest sense, is the activity through which people

make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live.
(Heywood, 2014)

• In theory, Politics can also be linked to the phenomena of CONFLICT

and COOPERATION.
Everywhere We can See Politics
Can we separate ourselves from
Politics?
• THE ANSWER IS NO!

• Being Apolitical is Political

“Man is by nature a Political Animal”

- Aristotle
Politics is a SOCIAL CONTRACT
• Social Contract is a view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent
upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.

• The concept of social contract theory is that in the beginning man lived in the state of
nature. They had no government and there was no law to regulate them. There were
hardships and oppression on the sections of the society. (Laskar, 2013)

To overcome from these hardships they entered into two agreements which are:

• Pactum Unionis ; and

• Pactum Subjectionis
THUS,
• Social Contract Theory is simply a contract between individuals to
form a governing body and to be subjected to that.

• Social Contract Theory is also a process of Cooperation of Individuals.

• Social Contract is Political.

THOMAS HOBBES AND HIS SOCIAL
CONTRACT
• Thomas Hobbes was born on April 5, 1588 in
Westport, Wiltshire, England

• He is an English philosopher, scientist, and

historian, best known for his political philosophy,
especially as articulated in his
masterpiece Leviathan in 1651.

• He died December 4, 1679 in Hardwick Hall,

Derbyshire
According to Hobbes
“In faculties of mind and body, men are, on the whole, so nearly equal
that one cannot claim for himself any benefit to which another may not
pretend as well as he. From this equality of ability arises equality of hope
in attaining ends desired.”

 In his discussion, he clearly established that in the State of Nature men are
almost equal in nature. However, this was followed by the concept of different
desires of men which turn into Conflicts.

“And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless
they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies."
Three Principal Causes of Conflicts
• The Desire for Gain;
• The Desire for Safety;
• The Desire for Glory

• These principal causes are what men always need. However, if man
desired to much of these, it causes conflict.
• “They are in that condition called war, and such a war as is of every
man against every man.“

• This war need not be constant conflict, since "the nature of war
consists not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto
during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary."

• In a state of war, actual or potential, the condition of man is most

unfortunate and terrible, "The life of man in such a state is solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
This is why Social Contract is a NECESSITY

• According to Hobbes, in order to secure self-protection and self-

preservation, and to avoid misery and pain, man entered into a contract.

• This idea of self-preservation and self-protection are inherent in man’s

nature and in order to achieve this, they voluntarily surrendered all their
rights and freedoms to some authority by this contract who must
command obedience. (Kothari, 2018)

• As a result of this contract, the mightiest authority is to protect and

preserve their lives and property. (Kothari, 2018)
Social Contract as Totalitarianism
• This led to the emergence of the institution of the “ruler” or
“monarch”, who shall be the absolute head. Subjects had no rights
against the absolute authority or the sovereign and he is to be obeyed
in all situations however bad or unworthy he might be.

• However, Hobbes placed moral obligations on the sovereign who

shall be bound by natural law.
• Hobbes then stated that, “law is dependent upon the sanction of the
sovereign and the Government without sword are but words and of
no strength to secure a man at all”.

• He therefore, reiterated that civil law is the real law because it is

commanded and enforced by the sovereign. Thus, he upheld the
principle of “Might is always Right”.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU AND HIS
SOCIAL CONTRACT
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July
1778) was a Francophone Genevan
philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th
century.

• His political philosophy influenced the

Enlightenment in France and across Europe, as
well as aspects of the French Revolution and
the overall development of modern political
and educational thought
According to Rousseau
• In the Discourse on Inequality the natural man appears first as the
solitary savage, living the happy, care-free life of the brute, without
fixed abode, without articulate speech, with no needs or desires
that cannot be satisfied through the merest instinct. (Dunning, 1909)

• STATE OF NATURE OF MEN IS INDEED SELFLESS AND PEACEFUL.

• In the natural man are to be found the elements of perfect

happiness.
ELEMENTS OF PERFECT HAPPINESS
• In the state of Nature, Men are considered to be:
• INDEPENDENT;
• CONTENTED; and
• SELF-SUFFICING

• For others of his own species he has no need, and he regards them with
the same indifference that he feels toward other animals.

• He is not however adherent of the idea of Hobbes in aggressive

monster, ceaselessly driven by his passions to war upon his fellows.
In a STATE OF NATURE
• Rousseau believed that in the state of nature men are all equal. This
equal rights extend to the peasants and laborers, as well as to the
middle class.

• STATE OF NATURE is PRE-POLITICAL

• The Society was not based on REASON rather on EMOTIONS of self-

interest and pity.
Social Contract as Social Organization
• He claimed that with the PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION, EVILS arose.

• The division of labor that followed the development of the arts and
the rise of private property created distinctions between rich and poor
that broke down the happy natural condition of mankind and
necessitated the establishment of CIVIL SOCIETY. (Wanlass, 1953)

• With the appearance of fixed homes, family and property are at hand,
and the knell of human equality is sounded. Social organization has
begun.
STATE AND SOCIETY
• Rousseau claimed that reason was the outgrowth of the artificial life of
men in organized society, and that the results of its development were
calamitous.

• The STATE was an evil made necessary by the rise of inequalities among
men.

• According to Wanlass (1953), the process by which POLITICAL SOCIETY

was created was a SOCIAL CONTRACT since only by AGREEMENT and
CONSENT could authority be JUSTIFIED and LIBERTY RETAINED.
In the words of Rousseau:
To bind a form of association which may defend and protect with the
whole force of the community the person and property of every
associate, and by means of which each, coalescing with all, may
nevertheless obey only himself, and remain as free as before. Such is
the fundamental problem of which the social contract furnishes the
solution… In short, each giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody;
and as there is not one associate over whom we do not acquire the
same rights which we concede to him over ourselves, we gain the
equivalent of all that we lose, and more power to preserve what we
have.
The GENERAL WILL
• Rousseau held that each individual gave up all his natural rights to
the community as a whole. By this process a body politic, with a life
and will of its own, was established.

• Yet each person in the state, possessing an equal and inalienable

portion of the sovereignty of the whole, gained back under the
protection of the state the rights he had given up.

• The will of each individual was merged into a GENERAL WILL

General Will as Democratic Ideals
• The GENERAL WILL corresponded to the common interest of all
members of the community, as contrasted with particular interests.

• This was normally arrived at by asking each member to vote for what
he believed to be the common good and accepting the view of the
majority.

• However, Majority is not absolute and it can go wrong but Rousseau

still believed that the majority would errorless often in identifying the
GENERAL WILL that any other group.
Justification of DEMOCRATIC IDEALS
• Because Rousseau believed that the interests of the Majority in
community welfare can not be easily corrupted, the acts of the GENERAL
WILL alone were properly LAW.

• Thus, Laws must deal with general interests and must emanate from the
people.

• With this, he favored DIRECT DEMOCRACY. He argues that in holding that

an increasing population was a test of good government and through
believing that the sovereign people must act directly in MAKING LAW.
Economic Thought
What is Economics?
• Economics is defined in general sense as a branch of Social Sciences
that deals with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth.

• According to Allen (1977), economics is a Social science that analyzes

and describes the consequences of choices made concerning scarce
productive resources. Economics is the study of how individuals and
societies choose to employ those resources: what goods and services
will be produced, how they will be produced, and how they will be
distributed among the members of society.
Importance of Economics
Karl Marx and Communism
• Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland, in
1818. Although his family was Jewish they converted to
Christianity so that his father could pursue his career as a
lawyer in the face of Prussia’s anti-Jewish laws.

• Turning to journalism, Marx rapidly became involved in

political and social issues, and soon found himself having
to consider communist theory.

• The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, written in

Paris 1844, and the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ of 1845,
remained unpublished in Marx’s lifetime.
Communism
• According to Wanlass (1953), Communism may be defined as a
philosophy of history based on a materialistic conception of human
development.

• This ideology advocates that the system of social organization is based

on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being
ascribed to the community as a whole or the State.
The View of Marx to Communism
• According to Zulueta (2011), Marx’s vision of the future and his
fundamental values, combined elements of both anarchism and
communism.

• Marx also explains the SOCIAL and POLITICAL relationships in terms

of the MATERIAL NEEDS that are basic to HUMAN EXISTENCE.
MARXISM and COMMUNISM
• Marxism rests first on the doctrines of HISTORICAL MATERIALISM and
CLASS WARFARE.

• Secondly, Marxism depends on the theory of SURPLUS VALUE which

derived from the English classical economics.
Historical Materialism
• Marx replaced the concept of opposing ideas with the concept of
opposing economic forces. Marx thought that communism was the
necessary and natural result of these opposing forces.

• More specifically, the engine of history rests in the internal

contradictions in the system of material production or the things we
do in order to produce what we need for survival.
Simple Depiction of Historical
Materialism

THESIS 1 – FEUDALISM ANTITHESIS 1 – RISE OF PEASANTRY

SYNTHESIS 1 (THESIS 2) – ANTITHESIS 2 – RISE OF

CAPITALISM PROLETARIATS

SYNTHESIS 3 –
COMMUNISM
Adam Smith and Capitalism
• Adam Smith, (baptized June 5, 1723, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland
—died July 17, 1790, Edinburgh), Scottish social philosopher
and political economist. After two centuries, Adam Smith
remains a towering figure in the history of economic thought.

• Known primarily for a single work—An Inquiry into the Nature

and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), the first
comprehensive system of political economy—Smith is more
properly regarded as a social philosopher whose economic
writings constitute only the capstone to an overarching view
of political and social evolution.
Theory of Moral Sentiments
• He wrote in his Moral Sentiments the famous observation that he was
to repeat later in The Wealth of Nations: that self-seeking men are
often:
“led by an invisible hand…without knowing it, without intending it, [to]
advance the interest of the society.”

• Smith described the principles of “human nature,” which, together

with Hume and the other leading philosophers of his time, he took as
a universal and unchanging datum from which social institutions, as
well as social behavior, could be deduced.
The Free Market Idea of Adam Smith
• Adam Smith complained bitterly about the government monopolies that
granted exclusive trading rights to groups such as the East India or the
Turkey companies, and modern commentators have emphasized the
degree to which mercantilist economies relied on regulated, not free,
prices and wages.

• The economic society that Smith described in The Wealth of Nations in

1776 is much closer to modern society, although it differs in many
respects, as shall be seen. This 18th-century stage is called “commercial
capitalism,” although it should be noted that the word capitalism itself
does not actually appear in the pages of Smith’s book.
Free Market and the Points of
Capitalism

Source: Gerard Lameiro, Ph.D.