Political Theory: The Classic Texts and Their Continuing Relevance

I recently completed the course offered by the Modern Scholar on Political Theory. Like all offerings by Recorded Books, this course comprised seven CDs each with two approximately 30-minute lectures for a total of 7 hours of lecture time. Despite being a bit more formulaic than its rival The Great Courses, selections from the Modern Scholar bookshelf are always dense with information and efficient in its delivery. This course on political theory was no exception.

The instructor was Professor Joshua Kaplan, who earned his master’s in the subject at the University of Chicago and his doctorate at UC-Santa Cruz. He has taught political theory to students at the University of Notre Dame since 1987. Professor Kaplan is well spoken with an even diction and articulates in the way only an expert in the field could possibly be.

Dr. Kaplan describes political theory as “slow food in a fast food world.” We crave simple, easy answers but often analysis is highly complex. In general, political theory does not dictate a set of actions or behaviors that lead to statistically probable outcomes. Instead, it gives us perspective, helps us think about the issues, and gives us the ability “to act with purpose and vision.”

To enlighten the student with a survey of thought across the nations, kingdoms, and states and the times in which they held sway, the professor surveys a number of essential classical texts. The first text he recommends, highly recommends I might add, is an essay by George Orwell titled, “Politics and the English Language.” While he does refer to this text, I regrettably did not complete this reading during the course due to constraints imposed by other obligations. I am so fond of Orwell that after I do read the piece I might post an entry examining it by itself, or in retrospect to the completed course. Another recommendation, which I have previously read several times, is Oedipus the King by the Greek tragedian Sophocles.

An important early point that Dr. Kaplan makes is that “The first thing to understand about political theory is that it is not a collection of doctrines or assertions about politics, but rather a way of understanding the significance of political events.” This is important to keep in mind during the seven hour lecture series. There are as many ways of looking at politics as there are politicians—or at least it seems that way often times.

I found this course somewhat nostalgic as the bulk of texts and material was contained within my wide-ranging and near useless (only joking, folks!) undergraduate education in the liberal arts. After a brief recounting of how horrible was poor Oedipus’s life the professor moves on to less morbid Greeks. (Yes, according to my doctoral education that is the correct way to render the possessive of a singular proper noun ending in the letter “s.” I do believe it is a sad comment on the English language, myself, but pick up a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and please prove me wrong. I’ll enjoy it!)

Plato begins the discussion proper—and doesn’t he always? I must admit, I was very glad that I paid attention during my Introduction to Philosophy course way back in 1995. Those Greek gentlemen, particularly Plato and Aristotle, have oriented me time and again. You know, an annoying party trick just might be to wait until the discussion turns political (or philosophical, or scientific, artistic, etc.—just wait until you are in need of a refill) and then with a surreptitious interjection, and in your most refined voice proclaim, “Well you know, it all goes back to Plato’s Republic…” Coincidentally, that is the path of the course in Lectures 2 and 3; let us remember the lesson of that great text—that justice is within ourselves. Then, we move on—still in ancient Greece, however, we now consider the historian Thucydides who chronicled the Peloponnesian War. Rather than review the tangled web of that conflict, let us simply say that Thucydides considered himself a realist, espousing something along the lines of, “might makes right.”

Next, Dr. Kaplan reviews Aristotle’s Politics, which (I think rather naively) holds that the citizen is in partnership with all other citizens—kind of like a team—in which the good of the polis is superior to what’s good for any individual. Next, the course considers Machiavelli’s The Prince which essentially asserts that it is often beneficial to the ruler and the state to behave like Richard Nixon when necessary and when power is at stake. (For a good crash course in Machiavellian politics taken to the extreme for drama’s sake, check out the thrilling Netflix show House of Cards which is based on a British TV show of the same name but it suffers from the absence of Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright.

Now, we move on to the idea of a social contract theory, first espoused in Leviathan by essentially the father of modern political science, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’s thinking was foundational in what we now know as Western political thought. He introduced such revolutionary and dangerous ideas such as the “equality of all men” (apologies to the better half of the species, as we now know that all men are created equal and all are equally inferior to women), and representative government.

Another seminal social contract theorist was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who had a pretty rough up-bringing. Rousseau was a truly revolutionary thinker whose concepts about the right to private property and the nature of human beings had a bit of influence in starting the French Revolution. He was also somehow influential on Cambodian madman Pol Pot, a genocidal maniac who surely must have severely misread some of Rousseau.

From social contract theory, Dr. Kaplan considers the revolutionary ideas espoused anonymously in The Federalist Papers. This is another area in which my undergraduate education provided a bit of background as I did my senior thesis on “The Political Philosophy of James Madison.” I won’t digress much at present but there is both an elitist as well as a careful protectiveness of the nascent republic throughout Madison’s thought. It might do many Americans much good to undertake a quick review of at least some of Madison’s careful thought.

Two of the most fascinating lectures in the entire series are given on the penultimate disc. Both concern Alexis de Tocqueville and his work Democracy in America. Despite its concern with American democracy, de Tocqueville’s audience was in France. His book was very generous toward the US and thus it became popular and made him something of a celebrity. Essentially, de Tocqueville described America in usually glowing terms in an attempt to reassure the French that a fading aristocracy and societal equality would not threaten utter ruin: Just look at the United States!

Next, Professor Kaplan turned his discussion to the always-controversial Karl Marx. Yet, he prefaced his lecture with one of the most brilliant caveats I have ever heard given regarding Marx. Kaplan said, “Karl Marx is one of the most difficult political theorists for us to read and

understand. One problem is that we feel compelled to take sides when we read Marx, to reject him or to convert to Marxist. We don’t run into this problem when we read Aristotle, for example, but it is hard for us to accept the idea that we can simply learn from Marx without signing up or rejecting him out of hand.” I could not agree more—and it makes me feel much better about the months-long experience of reading all 140 lbs of Das Kapital when I was studying macroeconomic theory for pre-dissertation research several years ago. (Don’t worry, I was a Keynesian from the start! But I still had to wade through the entirety of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as well as John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Well, back to Marx, while communism was a stark over-reach, Marx’s criticisms of exploitation by the owners of the means of production against laborers were spot-on.

Dr. Kaplan closes the lecture series with a discussion of game theory, the predominant mode of political analysis during the 20^th century. Classic examples of non-cooperation such as the “Problem of the Commons” or the “Prisoner’s dilemma” gave mathematic-minded analysts insight into rational choice behavior. It also might have contributed to the absurd levels of the nuclear arms race. However, all in all, game theory proved to be a very useful tool for providing insight into human decision making.

I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who has the opportunity to listen. It seems more like a history course than a theory course but that is primarily due to the survey nature. It does help if you, like me, have some familiarity with most of the theorists and their works prior to the discussion. I think you would enjoy it just as much if you lacked such knowledge but you would find yourself checking Wikipedia quite often to deepen your understanding of certain theoretical perspectives, timeframes, and personalities. A very enjoyable course from a knowledgeable professor! Happy learning!

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce

Mr. Pierce is a freelance writer and I am most familiar with his work from Esquire magazine. His writing is witty, acerbic, and very insightful on subjects ranging from sports to current affairs. It is the latter that is the subject of this book.

Pierce describes the contemporary United States as something of an intellectual wasteland. He begins by painting a vivid picture of the inherent absurdity of the so-called Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Men ride dinosaurs fixed with English saddles. A couple of triceratops are lined up (baby ones to conserve space) on Noah’s Ark. Elephants are rescued from the Hindu religion and its god Ganesh.

Pierce described “Idiot America” (undefined, but probably best understood as the mass of the public, the aggregate of US opinion) acting as follows: “It decides, en masse, with a million keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. In this “new media age” (the 24-hour news cycle), “everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is,” (p. 8). He uses controversy over teaching “intelligent design” in public schools and the “debate” over the same. Pierce lambasts press coverage regarding the undermining of the teaching of evolution through pseudo-scientific propaganda.

In a country pulsing with technological innovation, how do such misguided ideas gain popular support, or even an audience? Pierce asserts three premises that guide the commoditization of ideas which allows them to flourish in contemporary American society: 1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. 2) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. 3) Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough. His unique talent, in this text, is in chronicling the decline of the informed and educated citizenry sought by James Madison. Pierce’s recollections of Madison’s idealism feels like a sad lament, one with which most thoughtful Americans might closely identify.

One of the saddest comments recorded in Pierce’s text is from a minister in Pennsylvania, Pastor Ray Mummert: “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture.” This is a comment that is difficult to stomach, yet one can easily identify this sentiment as pervasive in our popular culture. Intelligence has almost become some kind of stigma in public life. Recall the election of 2000: Bush vs. Gore. Gore, the soft-spoken intellectual was consistently skewered by both the media and by his jovial, from-the-gut common-man opponent. This is not to say that either candidate’s party or platforms were superior to the other’s, or to criticize or condemn anyone who supported either candidate. The point is that logic, facts, or ideas were marginalized in favor of emotional, gut-level appeal.

Pierce also gives a short biography of a crackpot (he calls a “crank,” in fact “The Prince of the Cranks”) named Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly lived from 1831 to 1901 and in this stretch of time completed a large collection of popular works on topics ranging from Atlantis to politics to Shakespeare as well as a plethora of pseudoscientific and pseudohistoric ideas. He was also intimately involved in politics in Minnesota and the US. Pierce’s point is to contrast the way in which fringe ideas and movements developed in the 19^th century versus their pervasiveness in contemporary life. Donnelly, although popular and not without a following, was largely relegated to the fringes of public discourse where he belonged. However, these days we are inundated from every corner by pseudoscience and pseudohistory, ranging from Dr. Oz to Ancient Aliens.

In another amusing segment of the book, Pierce discusses so-called reality television. He recalled a mid-2000s Writer’s Guild strike that led to the temporary stoppage of reality television shows such as survivor. According to Pierce, there was no one available to “write” reality. Reality itself has become a more twisted concept than ever. I am struck by the way in which individuals carefully craft a multi-media narrative about their lives through the use of social media, particularly Facebook. Thus, now more than ever, we truly are authors writing the story of our lives; only now, it is more literal than figurative.

Idiot America is a solid, well-thought argument about the “dumbing-down” of popular culture in America. The major problem that I found with the book is that it is mostly descriptive of cultural maladies and rarely offers anything in the way of prescription. Also, by the time the reader has finished the majority of the text, Pierce has reviewed copious supporting examples. I think some of the space the author used to present examples of his cultural critique could have been better used to examine the origins of our reactionary, apathetic, and ultra-conservative culture.

Likewise, the conclusion of the book would have been more effective, to me, if the author had presented some of the ways in which Americans have gotten it “right.” For example, the same country that produced the absurdist Creation Museum is also the only nation to have landed a human being on the moon. The same people that fight and squabble over whether homosexuals should be allowed to contractually enter into a monogamous union was able to struggle, strategize, and protest until women and African-American citizens had equal rights and protections under law. While current affairs might tend to make one despair, it is a better use of the intellect to inspire true social change. With that said, I still would certainly recommend Pierce’s book to anyone seeking to attain a better understanding of where our culture is at present as well as how our government’s various functions have become quite dysfunctional in many respects.

Happy learning!