SİYASAL DÜŞÜNCE - Deneme Sınavı - 16

Looking at the successors of Socrates, we can see an important ancient school of political thought that is usually pointed out as one of the oldest versions of egalitarianism: Cynicism. The word cynic, in fact, is from an ancient word used to imply dog. Cynics’ primitive life style was resembled to life of a dog and, therefore, the name of “cynic” was given them by their political opponents. Cynicism was a reactive movement against to the highly non-egalitarian society. The members of the movement were the lowest part of the society who was supported by the foreigners and exiles who were not given a right to citizenship. However, their egalitarian reaction to stratified society was not considerably successful in spreading among the poor.

The originality of Polybius’ theory depended on his conception about the power relations of politics behind the scene. His claim for a mixed constitution, foresaw a check and balance system for the conflicting powers. According to him, the success of Roman constitution was to ensure this check and balance system. Polybius built his constitutional understanding on not the social classes but
 political forces
 and institutional
 balance. It can be
said that he pointed
 out the way for the 
modern constitutional
 separation of powers
 system.

The responsibility of the ruler(s), for the materialization of justice, is making ethical codes set forth through fıqh applicable in public space, via incentive and deterrent executions of law (Ibn Khaldûn, 1958-I:262-263).

In political thought, as well as in metaphysics, Avicenna followed the path built by his predecessor, Al-Fârâbî. For Al-Fârâbî, the conditions for ideal rule are mostly related with the functions of the soul and the intellect. Avicenna thoroughly studied the soul in its totality and in all its functions, whether rational, animal, or vegetative. He charted the operations of all the senses in detail, including the five external senses and especially the five internal senses located in the brain-namely, common sense, imagery (where the forms of things are stored), imagination, estimation (judging/guessing the imperceptible significance or connotations for us of sensed objects, like friendship and enmity, which also includes instinctive sensing), and memory-and how they could help or prevent or slow down the intellect in finding out the middle term and perceiving intelligibles more generally.

All of the above reflect William of Ockham’s view.

The great geographic discoveries then in process were integrating Europe into a world economic system. New commodities, many of them imported from recently discovered lands, enriched material life. Not only trade but also the production of goods increased as a result of new ways of organizing production. Merchants, entrepreneurs, and bankers accumulated and manipulated capital in unprecedented volume. Most historians locate in the 16th century the beginning, or at least the maturing, of Western capitalism. Capital assumed a major role not only in economic organization but also in political life and international relations. Culturally, new values—many of them associated with the Renaissance and Reformation—diffused through Europe and changed the ways in which people acted and the perspectives by which they viewed themselves and the world (https://www. britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The emergence- of-modern-Europe-1500-1648).

At this very point, in order to name 16th century capitalism as commercial capitalism, it is necessary to get into the further stages leading to industrial capitalism (Beaud, 2003:31). The issue that Smith and Marx named as exchange value increasingly gained importance in the 15th century. Money in the 16th century was yet away from going beyond a thing that met humans’ needs. It became a value for exchange of goods for new capitalist class and a means of making a living for masses (Harman, 2009:184). Cities were in the front line of a new economic growth as in printing and shipping in the middle of the 15th century (Harman, 2009). The effect of technical change and new market relations within feudalism led to a duality in economic and political relations, in which ways of capitalist and feudal behaviors and thoughts embraced as well as conflicted with each other (Harman, 2009). Thus, absolute monarchy already became a widespread form of government in the Western Europe in the early years of the 16th century. The absolute monarchy was a combination of blood and iron depending clearly on force to a great extend (Sabine 1969:3). Church, which was one of the most important institutions of the Middle Age, became the victim of social forces, on which the absolute monarchy depended. Church administrators increasingly came under the rule of the kingdoms, and in the end the legal authority of the church disappeared.

Machiavelli had two different but interrelated objectives. His personal objective was to return to his active duty in the state. His second objective arose from rejection of the past. According to Machiavelli, the Italian city states, including Florence, often had instability for that reason and they obviously tended to decline. As a result, they were dominated by external powers such as Spain, France or the Papacy. Machiavelli’s second objective was of political: to ensure stability and to free entire Italy from any kind of secular or religious external control. Therefore, The Prince goes on these two lines that overlap at the same time (Tannenbaum,2017: 182).

As a religious faction, the reformation movement took place in the early 1500s in Europe. It emerged as a political, intellectual and religious reaction to the established religious tradition of Catholicism of the Medieval era and demanded a return to the basic principles of Christianity. As the movement, became popular and had a great deal of support from the public particularly in Germany during the 1520s, it was able to establish its own church. These reformation movements regarded themselves as the ones serving for “the action of the gospel” and reconstructing, restoring and reforming the original religion. In other words, what they aimed was a return to the uncontaminated core source of spiritual Christianity without adding anything in an undegenerated situation (Balckwell’s Encyclopedia of Political Thought, 222).

Bodin defines the state as the administration of various family members and their common properties stem from the dominant power. Bodin does not discuss the state only at the level of political events like Machiavelli, but the state is a legitimate institution in accordance with the law and is not a stranger to values such as goodness, happiness, and order. The state’s sovereignty that ensures the unity and integrity of the political society is the foundation that makes the state as it is. Sovereignty is an absolute

and continuous power (Goze, 2017: 141) 1)

Here are three principles of sovereignty for Bodin as given below.

The model of society that More represents in Utopia is authoritarian, patriarchal, and hierarchical. There is a total economic equality. The elderly, husbands and fathers have respect and authority. Property is collective, there is no competition, and everyone works towards common interests (Blackwell Political Thought Encyclopedia, 1994). Utopia takes the Republic of Plato as an example in some ways. There is a longing for the past in this satire where there is an intense criticism of the economy of the business life. More’s understanding related to socially right depended on Plato’s analysis of society. According to this analysis, society is a system of classes that cooperate.

Hobbes wants to show in which conditions people will live in the absence of a certain political power to organize people with the state of nature, that is, in a situation where there is no sovereignty. According to Hobbes, the state of nature is not historical. When people are in the state of nature, they experience a constant uncertainty, conflict and violence. The state of nature is a state of war, which Hobbes has formulated as “a man is a wolf to another man”. Hobbes lists the chain of causes that creates the state of war as follows:

Locke’s political thought is based on a basic metaphysical law that explains the political power and the administrative law (Timucin (2006). His epistemology privileges reason and empirical experience. He claims that human mind is a tabula rasa [blank slate]. All individuals have potential dispositions and capacities. In this context, Locke is a follower of Hobbes: He claims that ideas emerge from individual experiences that influence senses and actions emerge from these rational ideas (Tannenbaum, 2017: 224).

His philosophy springs from empiricism. His ethical ideas stem from the idea of utility, but he also minds sympathy. His political ideas are entirely conservative (Touchard, 2015: 430). His theory of passions attempts to determine the limits of mind, emotions and will of an individual. He attributes importance to passions in order to understand human nature, accepts that passions determine human behavior, and does not take passions in a negative sense. Passions can be observed and explained, according to Hume. Reason is (and should be) the slave of passions. It cannot act independently from passions; it has to obey them. Reason and passions have various functions; they cannot be opposed to each other. Reason, by itself, cannot constitute the means of motivation, but it can help distinguishing between the good and the bad about passions (Hume, as cited in Kırlı, 2013: 111).

Spinoza claims that what seem strange, absurd or bad to us in nature do so since we cannot grasp the elements and their organizing principles in its entirety (Spinoza, 2018: 409). Therefore, it can be considered that the point of departure for Spinoza’s political theory is similar to that of Hobbes. They

both claim the following propositions to be the basics of their political thoughts:

Like Machiavelli, Spinoza sought to understand relations of political power practically, scientifically, and dispassionately. Like Hobbes, he held that citizens are well-advised to give up their right and power to the state in return for the protection that it can provide to them in their pursuit of selfpreservation.

Unlike Hobbes, however, Spinoza emphasized the breadth of the practical limitations on the individual’s concession of power to the state; and also, unlike Hobbes, he located a human being’s highest advantage not in mere continued life and the pursuit of pleasure, but in the achievement

of adequate knowledge and its resulting peace of mind (Garret, 1995: 8). In Spinoza’s thought, the theoretical privilege of democracy is expressed through the closely interlinked usage of the concepts of the social covenant and of reason.

With the end of the 15th century, the consequences caused by economic and political changes that were ongoing for years gave rise to radical transformations in the medieval organizations. That was a period where means of communication were very limited and largely controlled by the church and aristocracy. In addition to this, trade and commerce were somewhat restricted for merchants.

Nonetheless, the development of communication tools and techniques such as compass, advanced binoculars and astrolabe, advent of new trade routes across the globe considerably shifted the economic superiority from feudal intuitions to the newly emerging capitalist class. This gradually freed the commerce trade and liberalized economic relations at the local, regional and global level.

In the 16th century, all kingdoms deliberately adopted the policy of running national sources, promoting trade both at home and abroad, and developing national power. At this very point, in order to name 16th century capitalism as commercial capitalism, it is necessary to get into the further stages leading to industrial capitalism.

According to Machiavelli, the Italian city states, including Florence, often had instability for that reason and they obviously tended to decline. As a result, they were dominated by external powers such as Spain, France or the Papacy.

The development of cities in the 16th century turned these places into centers where new relations, new classes, new demands, new expectations, new political struggles, and new nerves of energy were connected and redistributed.

Especially the bourgeoisie using the money from the trade made the cities the main places of the conflict between old and new the social classes. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie and the emerging urban middle class would be one of the main supporting forces behind the Renaissance and the Reformation. Those who politicized the reformation movement on another level would be the peasants.

One of the issues that Luther emphasized was using force. Luther does not mention the state as a union of institutions operated systematically but as a political power (the princes), who uses force in order to maintain the order and its being legitimacy is in the presence of God. Luther, who expresses that the first and the last action of human will is nothing but devotion, states that the only thing to be done is to obey the governors.