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Human Nature, State and Society
In this course, Dr Alessandro de Arcangelis (University College, London) explores the links between the concept of human nature and ideas about the state, society and the economy in four key thinkers: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97). In the first lecture, we look at the importance of human nature in some key political documents (e.g. the US Declaration of Independence) and think about two writers from the ancient world whose view of human nature fed into their ideas about what kind of political societies humans should form – Aristotle and Cicero. In the second lecture, we think about how concepts of human nature were transformed by the Scientific Revolution (c. 1543-1687) and its impact on political theory. And in the four lectures after that, we look at each of our chosen political thinkers in turn, with a focus on each case on their conception of human nature and their view on the kind of government we should have.
Introduction
In the lecture, we provide an introduction to the idea that there are important connections between concepts of human nature and ideas about politics and government, focusing in particular on: (i) the importance of human nature in three separate political documents: the US Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000); (ii) the connections between human nature and idea about politics and government in the writings of Aristotle (Politics 1253a1) and Cicero (De Re Publica 3.22, De Legibus 1.18, 28); and (iii) the four thinkers that will form the basis for this course: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97).
Hello. My name is Alessandro Delcangelis.
00:00:06And I'm a lecturer in European and global intellectual history
00:00:08here at university college London.
00:00:12Today,
00:00:15I'm gonna be giving a lecture on the links between con sips
00:00:15of human nature and ideas about politics and government in the
00:00:19history of western political thought.
00:00:22In seventeen seventy six, the United States
00:00:25declaration of independence began with a very famous pronouncement.
00:00:29Namely that all men are created equal that they are endowed
00:00:33by their creator with certain unalienable
00:00:38rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
00:00:41Politics was then understood as an emanation from these
00:00:47fundamental human rights.
00:00:51Government
00:00:53the document claimed is instituted among man in order
00:00:54to secure these rights.
00:00:58A few years later in seventeen eighty nine,
00:01:01during the period of the French Revolution,
00:01:03the famous declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
00:01:06outlined a number of,
00:01:09fundamental features of human nature and later served as a
00:01:13preamble for the seventeen ninety one constitution,
00:01:17which outlined the political vision of governmental order
00:01:21for the French state directly based on those premises,
00:01:25chief among which were the ideas that, quote, all human
00:01:29beings are born and remain free and equal in rights.
00:01:33And that the goal of any political association
00:01:39is the conservation of natural and imperscriptable rights of man.
00:01:42Well, over two centuries later in the year two thousand,
00:01:49then the charter of fundamental rights of the European Union
00:01:52dedicated its seven titles to enshrineing,
00:01:55a number of inalienable
00:01:59including dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity,
00:02:01civic rights and justice.
00:02:06Nine years later, the European constitution
00:02:08endeavoured to grant binding legal value to the charter,
00:02:11insisting among other things that the purpose of European institutions
00:02:15is to maintain uphold and preserve those rights.
00:02:20These are only brief examples that happen to be produced at
00:02:25very different times,
00:02:28in completely different parts of the world,
00:02:29and under completely different sets of circumstances.
00:02:32However, they share at least one key feature.
00:02:36They all emphasize a range of values that are intrinsic.
00:02:39Through human nature that precede and can be applied independently
00:02:43of any positive law, political institution, or governmental arrangement.
00:02:48Precursors of these modern viewpoints can be found even in
00:02:55antiquity. So if you think about it, Aristotle, for
00:02:58instance, reckoned man was by nature what he called a zone
00:03:01politicon, a political animal.
00:03:05People would therefore always tend to organize themselves in
00:03:08politically ordered societies
00:03:13whose exact configuration
00:03:15was then a matter of convention or circumstances.
00:03:17In other words,
00:03:21Aristotle's political thought stems directly from a very
00:03:22critical assumption about human nature. Among the Romans,
00:03:26one can find several examples of a similar tendency as well.
00:03:31For example, in his book entitled De Republika on Commonwealth
00:03:35Cicero claimed, quote, that the true law is right
00:03:40reason consonant with nature. Later on, in his treat is on
00:03:45the laws entitled Delegibus
00:03:50Cicer insisted again, quote, that law is the highest
00:03:54reason rooted in nature and that men are therefore
00:03:58born for justice.
00:04:03Now comparing these ancient sources to those more modern
00:04:05and contemporary ones that I've mentioned a minute ago,
00:04:08can yield, I think, some truly thought provoking insights.
00:04:12It makes it quite clear, for example,
00:04:17that the way in which people in the Western world think about
00:04:19politics is actually inseparable from particular
00:04:23assumptions about human nature, but actually I think that the
00:04:27link is deeper than that.
00:04:31I think that the way in which we think about politics stems directly
00:04:33from how we think of our own human nature.
00:04:38So what I want to do today is to provide you with a an
00:04:42overview of the links between human nature and political
00:04:45thoughts in the history of western political ideas.
00:04:49And I want to place particular emphasis on four authors.
00:04:52That are some of the most
00:04:56some of the best known,
00:04:59and the most widely studied in the so called canon of Western
00:05:00political thought. I'm talking about Thomas Hobbs, John Lock,
00:05:04Jean Jack Russo, and ultimately Mary Wilson Craft.
00:05:09But hang on a minute.
00:05:13You'll probably be wondering why I have decided to begin my
00:05:14lecture with someone who lived in the seventeenth century like Thomas Hobbs,
00:05:18even though just a few minutes ago,
00:05:23I made it clear that this juncture of ideas about human
00:05:25nature and politics could already be encountered in antiquity.
00:05:28Well,
00:05:33the thing is that even though intuitions about human nature
00:05:33were central to political thought since antiquity,
00:05:37The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed an unprecedented
00:05:40expansion of knowledge on how humans actually functioned. And
00:05:45provided European thinkers with a plethora of new scientific
00:05:50and anthropological theories around which they could
00:05:55construct their political ideas.
00:05:58
Cite this Lecture
APA style
de Arcangelis, A. (2023, September 01). Human Nature, State and Society - Introduction [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/human-nature-state-and-society
MLA style
de Arcangelis, A. "Human Nature, State and Society – Introduction." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 01 Sep 2023, https://massolit.io/courses/human-nature-state-and-society
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