Germs of Ideology

Question 1

Who were the germs of ideology?

Answer 1

• Immanuel Kant
• Edmund Burke
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Karl Marx

Question 2

Who was Immanuel Kant?

Answer 2

• 1724-1804 in Prussia, Konigsberg
• Early proponent of the enlightenment
  “the maxim of always thinking for
  oneself”
• His political essays champion reason
  and the freedom it requires and
  condones
• Optimist - believed in the strength
  of reason, and envisioned a world in
  which all thought for themselves
  through it and lead to republics
• Freedom
• The Social Contract
• ## Domestic Policy of Liberalism

Question 3

What was Kant’s view of Freedom?

Answer 3

“There is only one innate right, Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with universal law”

Question 4

What was the Domestic policy of Liberalism from Kant’s perspective?

Answer 4

- Any government that represents the
  united will of the people - not
  necessarily democracy
- An elected representative is fraught
  with problems
- Might does not make right

Question 5

What does Kant question about IR?

Answer 5

- Kant asks how republics would act in
  IR
- Reason suggests giving up the
  realist/Machiavellian logic of war
  and forming a league of states that
  privileges unanimity over strength
- And bestowing a universal right of
  hospitality (not to be treated as an
  enemy)

Question 6

What is the reaction to Kant?

Answer 6

- Kant is not the only pioneering
  liberal (Hobbes, Locke & Adam Smith)
- His work, however, provoked the
  philosophical reactions that lead to
  the consolation of the three main
  ideologies of the 20th Century

Question 7

Who was Edmund Burke?

Answer 7

- 1729-1791 (Born in Ireland; British
  politician)
- Viewed the French Revolution as
  catastrophic - Reflections on the
  Revolution of France (1790)
- Burke's Conservatism

Question 8

What was Burke’s Conservatism?

Answer 8

- Contrary to Kant, the French
  Revolution was a rupture of the
  social contract
- Property, tradition and community >
  civil freedoms
- Thought without the social fabric
  (religion), people would become
  immoral
- We are social animals and our
  identity depends upon our community
  and the communal ties of society -
  Not our reason
- A civil constitution designed by our
  limited reason should not supplant
  the moral, economic and political
  systems that have evolved over time
- The loss we suffer from upheavals of
  society is inestimable since society
  is so complex

Question 9

Who Was Hegel?

Answer 9

• 1770-1831, German
• The French Revolution was a “glorious
  dawn” and Napoleon a “world soul”,
  which could prove to be a new epoch
  of freedom
• Pioneer of Marxism
• History is always moving forward
• Epochs of History

Question 10

What were Hegel’s Epoch’s of History?

Answer 10

• Thesis - Antithesis - Fusion - New

Epoch

Question 11

What were Hegels views on formal and substantive freedom?

Answer 11

- The French Revolution misjudged the
  zeitgeist - people were not ready for
  it (therefore was bloody)
- Being free to make choices does not
  constitute real freedom if we have
  limited option to choose between e.g.
  addiction, povery
- The free geist exists in an organic
  community where private and communal
  interest are in harmony

Question 12

Who was Karl Marx?

Answer 12

• 1818-1883, German
• A down-to-earth Hegelian
• The dialectic does not occur with the
  ‘spirit’ of the age, but in classes
  distinguished by their economic
  relation to the means of production
• Is this historical materialism
  reductive?
• Communism
  
  • The abolition of private property
  • Equal distribution of the means
    of production
  • Freedom is the ideal of
    self-sufficiency and the true
    expression of human nature