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— Amir Ali
(The Indian Express has launched a new series of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and scholars on issues and concepts spanning History, Polity, International Relations, Art, Culture and Heritage, Environment, Geography, Science and Technology, and so on. Read and reflect with subject experts and boost your chance of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. In the following article, political scientist Amir Ali delves into the nature and origin of state in Western political thought.)
The tradition of Western political thought has seen a major transformation in its understanding of the state, particularly when comparing John Locke’s view of a limited state to Karl Marx’s vision of the state eventually withering away. But what is meant by the Western tradition of political thought, and where does it originate?
There is a distinctly long and identifiable tradition of political thought that has been characterised as Western or European. Its origins are traced to the Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, whose theorisation happened in the context of the Greek city-state or polis, from which the word politics itself is derived.
Athens, the most prominent Greek city-state, is considered the birthplace of democracy as people had a say in government decisions. However, both Plato and Aristotle were wary of its chaotic nature, which was likely to be swayed by the mood swings of a demagogue, who could easily influence the people.
The tradition of political theory was carried forward by the prolonged and powerful Roman Empire. Many grand figures of the Roman Empire – statesmen such as Cicero and Seneca and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius – belonged to the philosophical system called Stoicism. They balanced intense political engagement with a more detached philosophical reflection on the frenzied nature of political life.
The Roman Empire, which was significant for carrying forward the tradition of Western political thought, collapsed around 476 AD. This seismic political event is captured by historian Edward Gibbon in his magisterial book, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). With the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe is widely believed to have gone into the dark medieval ages – a period traditionally seen as marked by limited intellectual progress and a decline in major works on the tradition of political thought.
It may be noted that great canonical works in the tradition of political thought tend to be written in times of great intellectual ferment, rather than stagnation. Sometimes, imminent political decline can stimulate such intellectual ferment. It is evident in the fact that while much of medieval Europe saw a decline in classical learning, it thrived in the Arab world where Greek philosophy was preserved and translated.
This process was encouraged by rulers of the Abbasid dynasty, notably Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Mamun, who oversaw the flourishing of the institution in Baghdad known as the Bait ul Hikmat or the House of Wisdom in the 8th and 9th centuries.
These preserved and translated works of the Greeks later found their way back into Europe during the Renaissance — an era marked by a revival of classical learning in early modern times of the 15th and 16th centuries, especially in Northern Italian cities such as Florence.
One of the most significant figures associated with the city of Florence, especially its political and diplomatic circles, is Niccolò Machiavelli. He was very important for the continuing tradition of political thought. His book, The Prince, falls under a genre of writing in political thought known as ‘advice to the ruler’.
This genre, which offers pragmatic counsel on statecraft, includes the work of the ancient Indian thinker and strategist Chanakya, whose book Arthashastra similarly serves as a mirror for the prince or ruler and offers advice to perfect the art of statecraft.
From the 17th century onwards, Western political thought under the influence of social contract theory acquired a distinct flavour. Early expressions of this theory can be gauged from thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who, though roughly contemporaries in the 17th century, brought the element of a very distinctive individualism into political thought that enters into an agreement or a contract to create a state. In addition to the element of distinctive individualism, what one notices is a deep reflection on the origins and nature of the state.
The state is thus a very central feature in the tradition of Western political thought, harking back to the works of Plato and Aristotle. In his classic book The Republic, Plato envisioned an ideal state, while Aristotle’s book Politics looks at the state as a koinonia or community, which people associate with and which complements and completes the smaller and more numerous associations or communities below.
However, in a social contract thinker like Hobbes, the state appears as a deliberately created artifice or contrivance, like a machine, that is able to deter the dangerously inconvenient lawlessness of his famous state of nature, where life is variously described as being, “nasty, brutish and short”. This preoccupation with the state is again evident in the famous 19th century German idealist philosopher Hegel who considers three levels of the ethical life – family, civil society, and, above all, the state, which he famously characterised as the ‘march of God on earth’.
This brings us to the centrality given to rights in the tradition of Western political thought as it protects liberty, especially against the state. The 17th century social contract thinker John Locke, in the interest of liberty, was eager to see restrictions placed upon a potentially overbearing state through the safeguard of three natural rights – life, liberty and property.
The question of freedom as a central concern is carried forward in another famous social contract thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau. It was best evoked in his famously stirring words in his book The Social Contract where he notes poignantly: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’.
The great German idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant, one of the most central figures of Western political thought and a philosopher par excellence of the 18th century Enlightenment, carries forward the idea of autonomy. The Enlightenment itself subsumes the thoughts of philosophers, especially Hegel, Kant and Marx, and assigns centrality to reason in human progress.
This broad survey of Western political thought culminates with Karl Marx, who carries forward the philosophical understanding of history. He closely read the work of Hegel and famously inverted his dialectical method to emphasise the materialist and economic basis on which history advances.
Marx’s philosophical analysis remains indispensable to understanding the capitalist economy and its trajectory. Finally, perhaps most importantly and ironically, Marx calls for the withering away and waning of the state – the very institution that Western political thought discussed and theorised at length.
What is meant by the Western tradition of political thought, and where does it originate?
How did the Greek city-state (polis) influence early political thought?
Why is Athens considered the birthplace of democracy? Why were Plato and Aristotle critical of Athenian democracy?
What are the three natural rights identified by John Locke, and why are they significant?
Why does Marx argue for the ‘withering away of the state,’ and how does this contrast with earlier political thinkers?
(Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)
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