Political Theory

H05(b) - Classical Political Thought

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 03:30pm to 05:00pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Robert Sparling (University of Ottawa)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Lindsay Mahon Rathnam (Duke Kunshan University)

Not All Five Phases of the Polity are Necessary in Ibn Khaldūn's Political Thought: Lilian Abou-Tabickh (University of Toronto)
Abstract: In this presentation, I argue that in his study of politics, Ibn Khaldūn does not use the term “end” (ghāya) as one of the four causes of natural philosophy as claimed in the scholarly literature, but in its lexical senses of extent, utmost, goal, and very. Leading interpreters of Al-Muqaddima situate Ibn Khaldūn's thought within ancient philosophy based on specific terms that appear in the text, such as “form”, “matter”, “efficient cause”, and “end”. While ancient philosophical terminology can be found in the text, I show that Ibn Khaldūn uses the term “end” in the natural philosophical sense solely in his discussions of The Physics and its different subject matters. In fact, a close reading of the text does not reveal a determinist interpretation of history. Rather, analysis of Ibn Khaldūn's five phases of the polity shows that unlike the first three phases, which are necessary in human association and are entailed by politics, phases four and five, wherein deficiencies in the polity's foundations become deep-rooted, are not necessary but conditional. Political decline is not inevitable, but it becomes inevitable as a result of injustice. This interpretation underscores the role of human action and choice in history and the impact of fiscal policies on the polity's duration. It severs the connection to natural philosophy and challenges the cyclical pattern of rise and fall prevalent in the scholarly literature. The way Ibn Khaldūn uses language, his ideas on interpretation and meaning in context, and his historical method, all support this interpretation.

Political Friendship in the Lysis and the Republic: Giving to Each What is Due: Lucas Jerusalimiec (McGill University), Victor Muniz-Fraticelli (McGill University)
Abstract: In Book I of Plato's Republic, justice is associated with doing good to one’s friends. Who are Socrates friends? Does he do good to them? Plato’s analysis of friendship in the Lysis helps us see that Socrates’ friends are those who are willing to join him in struggling for commonly held yet partially unknown goal. Socrates has trouble modelling justice in friendship because his conversational partners in the Republic and the Lysis are unwilling to put up with the doubt engendered by their joint inquiry. Plato’s portrayal of this dynamic is informative for political science because it shows that it is difficult to reason intelligently about justice without first admitting that we don’t know what it is. Without this willing uncertainty, justice cannot be modelled in interpersonal relationships, and is thus not available as a concept that can be applied to the political community.

Augustine and the Moral Psychology of Empire: Pride, Dominion, and Domination: Joseph Dattilo (University of Toronto)
Abstract: The African philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo is among the earliest diagnosticians and critics of empire. My paper explores the role of pride in Augustine's moral psychology of empire. Writing in late antiquity, while the Roman Empire was collapsing, Augustine sought to understand why conquerors faced great peril and burden to conquer others, only to be inevitably overthrown. He was unconvinced of material explanations for imperialism like wealth or security. Augustine develops a system of moral psychology to explain the impetus for dominion-seeking, hence, imperialism. Augustine argues that imperialism is an expression of malignant pride (superbia), an inordinate appetite for exaltation, which eventually expands into a generalized drive for domination (libido dominandi) as a vehicle for exaltation. For Augustine, these drives infest all social relations, not just imperial politics. Augustine, as one of the first philosophers to make the turn to interiority and moral psychology, which allows him to offer one of the most distinctive (and earliest) analyses of empire. He did not seek merely to castigate the dying Roman Empire that had conquered his North African Homeland centuries prior to its birth, but to explain its rise and diagnose the cause of its fall. While there has been extensive religious scholarship on Augustine's writing for centuries, there is comparatively little secular scholarship dedicated specifically to his moral psychology of imperialism. My paper also emphasize the versatility of Augustinian moral psychology; Augustine's moral psychology of empire is valuable because it applies not just to the problem of imperialism, but the question of domination in general. Augustine provides a distinct perspective on imperial power and its evils, one that is highly divergent from that of most modern authors, but it is no the less valuable.