Introduction the Subfields of Political Science: Political Philosophy

In my previous posts, I explained how I try to introduce the activity of politics to students.  Following my “great books” approach to introducing political science, I then turn to each of the subfields:  political philosophy, Canadian politics (in the U.S., this section would obviously cover U.S. politics), international relations, and comparative politics.

There are numerous texts with which one can introduce political philosophy to first-year students.  Moreover, any number of them can serve as a general introduction to politics, which I described in my previous posts on Huxley’s Brave New World.  I generally use either some of the Platonic dialogues covering the trial and death of Socrates, or John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.   Numerous shorter Platonic dialogues open up the perennial questions of political philosophy for first-year students, including Gorgias, which discusses topics immediately pertinent to students including justice and democracy, or even a less well known like Laches, which deals with courage.

A selection from the Republic would also be useful.  However, I need to be mindful of the fact that I teach the full Republic in my second-year Introduction to Political Philosophy class.  The same goes for other great works, including Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Locke’s Second Treatise, and Machiavelli’s Prince.  Any of these serve as wonderful introductions to political science and political philosophy.  While any teacher can tell you multiple readings of these works are beneficial, in this case I defer to the prejudices of my students who think if they’ve read something once, then they need not read it again.  Then again, if they only read Book One of the Republic, perhaps they will want to know “what happens” and they’ll want to enroll in my second-year class. Perhaps I’ll have to keep that option alive after all.

Even so, for the past two years I have taught Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito.  Both consider the nature of justice and whether philosophy or the city lays a higher claim upon justice than the other.  Students consider whether the Athenian decision to convict and execute Socrates is just, whether Socrates is right to obey their decision (against the wishes of Crito, who wishes to help him escape to Thessaly), as well as the related considerations concerning Socrates’ guilt or innocence.

Students find the questions about Socrates’ guilt or innocence fascinating because they appeal immediately to them.  Their first instinct is to view Socrates as an intellectual hero battling against prejudice, censorship, and an ignorant majority. The challenge as educator is to elevate their instincts to view the deeper, and possibly more troubling, questions about political order.

The challenge of teaching Plato’s Apology and Crito is to elevate students’ instincts of viewing Socrates as a solitary hero standing up “against the man,” toward getting a sense of the competing claims for justice that both Socrates and the city make for themselves.   I push them to see how these dialogues are not simply about a single individual standing up “against the man.”  Rather, I try to show them that Socrates is opposing his life, the life of philosophy, against any claim about the good made by the city.  If the unexamined life is not worth living, and if he finds no one in the polis – politician, poet, or craftsman – can tell him what the good life is, then this directly challenges the moral project politics claims itself to be.  Socrates is not simply standing up “against the man.”  He is challenging the very authority of “the man” to be “the man.”  This is why the Apology ends with Socrates proclaiming his judgment upon Athens. The defendant becomes judge.

Even so, the advantage of reading the Crito, including the somewhat sophistic speech Socrates concocts in the name of the laws of Athens, is that students are forced to consider more seriously the claim politics, warts and all, makes for justice.  I ask students what a society full of Socrateses would look like.  How long could it last if the only activity is contemplation?  Who would cook the meals?  Who would take out the trash?  In other words, political life needs to secure nonintellectual goods.  Perhaps Socrates is oblivious about these nonintellectual goods that sustain his own life.  Perhaps not everyone is up to the life of philosophy.  Perhaps Socrates would be unjust if he were to expect everyone to live the life of contemplation.

The advantage the laws have is they provide an abbreviated version of the good life.  The laws of Athens provided this abbreviation as much as the U.S. Constitution or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms do.  For example, how many Americans or Canadians can demonstrate equality?  When I ask for someone to prove equality, one or two brave students stutter the beginnings of a response, but it quickly becomes clear the students have never thought about it, and my point about law’s abbreviation becomes clear.  The students have learned the unexamined life is not worth living, and they recognize how much they depend on unexamined principles for their political allegiances and sense of self-worth.

After considering these questions, the students are sufficiently puzzled and perhaps overwhelmed with the complexities of the question, that I sneakily ask them how they would vote if they were one of the members of the Athenian jury.  They don’t appreciate having to reduce all these complexities down to a yes or no answer, but they also realize that doing so is part of political life.  Political choices frequently come down to this or that political party, or government and opposition.

More fundamentally, they have learned that political life, as a series of abbreviations, is always about action, not contemplation.  In acting, we make a choice for a certain way of doing things, and we rule out alternative ways of doing things (at least for a while, if we have the opportunity to reconsider and revise our original decisions).  The life of action, which is what politics is about, is “dumb” because it requires contemplation to come to an end.  Now is the time for acting.  The time for thinking and talking is over.  There is something essential to politics in this attitude.

If I can get my students to feel a pang of regret in considering that they must cease contemplating and deliberating in order to act, then I have accomplished something very important.  I will have leavened their instinctive pragmatism with the spark of the joy of contemplation.  They will have learned the unexamined life is not worth living, and will also have learned the responsibility of living an examined life.

Also see “Ditching the Textbook,” “What is Politics?” “Canadian Politics,” “International Politics,” “Comparative Politics,” and “Big Questions for Contemporary Politics.”

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