WPT Final

Republics: Power held by the people or their representatives, ruled by many
Principalities: Ruled by a prince can be hereditary or new, ruled by one

Competition: Leads people to invade for gain, seek to take what others have to improve their own condition
Diffidence: Mistrust/fear, causes people to strike preemptively for safety
Glory: People fight for reputation, want respect or to be feared, reacting violently to perceived insults or slights

Labor, God gave the earth to all humans but through labor something becomes private property and gains value
Labor transforms natural resources into property and creates value

“Love of oneself”
A form of self-love that depends on the opinions of others, involves vanity, pride, competitiveness that makes people seek approval and leads to envy, shame, conflict

Rousseau’s civil religion serves as a compromise between religious belief and political necessity and promotes social cohesion, morality, and political unity. It creates a moral framework where religion supports the political community without interfering in the state's governance. This civil religion helps bind individuals to the common good while still respecting freedom of conscience in personal religious beliefs.
Spiritual glue for a secular, democratic society because traditional religion undermines the state’s authority

Modern liberty: individual freedom and personal autonomy, value private lives, commerce as the new “war,” representative democracy

Kant’s paradoxical human tendency where we seek society but also resist it through competition, ego, self-interest
The tension drives progress, our selfish desires lead us to create laws, culture, institutions, internal conflict --> moves forward history towards freedom and moral maturity

Freedom of the individual to have personal liberty: protection under law, act autonomously, security of rights
Dependence on single common legislation (Rule of law): no one is above the law, all legally equal under representative government
Citizens consent to be governed, people have a role even if small in shaping laws
Republican constitution is the only one that is conducive to a federation of states that promotes liberty and enlightenment.

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity."
Individuals break free from external authority- such as tradition, religion, or government by using reason to think for themselves.

Hegel’s idea that reason exploits the passions of individuals to further itself. It takes advantage of the tension and conflicts created by particular interests to create further rational development.
Cunning of reason is the way in which history makes subjective passions work for the overall good. Napoleon pursued his own personal and national interests yet advanced the cause of freedom throughout the world.

The end goal of history - the expression of true freedom
A perfect balancing of the subjective will (individual rights and freedoms) and the objective (the greater good of society, represented through laws)
Complete reconciliation without eliminating either entirely

The Oriental World, then the Greek World, then the Roman World, and finally the Germanic World
Going from only one being free, to some being free, to many being free, to all being free

Napoleon (or also Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, etc…). Their personal ambition drives them to make irreversible change to the world. They are selfish, usually wanting to conquer large swathes of the world, and cause huge amounts of damage, but in the long run they further the progression of history by promoting values such as freedom.
They push history forward by daring to challenge the norms of their day - forces development.

Primitive Tribal state (family) then the ancient slave state, then feudal, then the modern capitalist state (he calls this the epoch of the bourgeoisie in the communist manifesto), and then eventually Communism after a transitional socialist state

Wage labor is the exchange of money (wages) for a certain amount of time worked by a wage laborer. Through the system of wage labor, labor itself becomes a commodity and workers become alienated. Surplus value from the labor is taken by the capitalist as profit while workers are paid wages that barely sustain life.

The last man is the human being that has stopped striving for better, and in giving up has become comfortable, but completely mediocre. Is completely unwilling to do anything difficult, essentially is compared to sheep. The "last man" represents the antithesis of the Übermensch

Eternal recurrence of the same is a thought experiment where we are forced to live our lives over and over again exactly as it passed the first time. How each person interprets this possibility is telling: Nietzsche’s point is that if someone is truly life affirming, they will be thrilled by eternal recurrence because they are at peace with their life exactly as it is. A lesser man might be completely paralyzed or weighed down by the same notion.

A metaphorical prophet that Nietzsche presents, mouthpiece of his philosophy
Zarathustra withdraws from society then returns to teach humanity his ideas like eternal recurrence and will to power.

Mockery of Wagner’s opera Twilight of the Gods. An idol is a diminutive form of a God that implies a complete lack of objective truth that is venerated or worshiped by individuals or societies without critical reflection. These idols suppress individual freedom and can take many forms such as religious, cultural, or moral norms.

Wage labor is the exchange of money (wages) for a certain amount of time worked by a wage laborer. Through the system of wage labor, labor itself becomes a commodity and workers become alienated. Surplus value from the labor is taken by the capitalist as profit while workers are paid wages that barely sustain life.

History evolves through conflict, which forces the development of new ideas by the negation of the previous - Hegel
Both see their systems as the end goal of history, whereas their ideas for their states are different. Marx has a stateless society where Hegel has a positive state that protects individual rights. Under Marx, the state will naturally wither away.
Hegel is an idealist, so his development of history refers to the development of freedom and Spirit over time through the opposition between particular and individual interests and the objective will, which in this case can refer both to a specific society’s legal code and to the greater good
Marx is a materialist - his conflict that leads to development comes from the division of labor and the development of production. All of the “intangibles” like culture, art, philosophy, etc… are a manifestation of the material conditions of any people and therefore cannot be separated from the material things.
Marx: History starts with human consciousness, which starts with production
Humans need to work together to produce food to survive, which is when we become conscious of ourselves
Mocks Hegel for his argument that there are prehistoric human societies

Hobbes: The state exists to stop people from harming each other. Everyone rationally wants peace in order to secure themselves from injustice, but in the state of nature they will just attack other people for various reasons. The sovereign is absolute - in making a compact a people give themselves to the sovereign absolutely
Huge difference with Hegel, who focuses on the state as a reconciliation between the particular and objective interest. For Hegel, a Hobbesian Leviathan is in line with his Roman World, where everyone gives up their interests for the good of the state and the community
For Hegel, the state represents both the institutions and political systems, but also the will of the people on a particular basis
Hobbes lacks this second part - for Hobbes there is no individual freedom in the commonwealth
Hegel’s is not just rational, it also integrates the particular will of its people, which is where each nation’s identity and culture comes from
Hobbes’ commonwealth does not incorporate this idea at all, it is a purely political body, and there is no difference between one commonwealth and any other like exists with Hegel’s national spirits.

Rousseau: Criticizes former philosophers (most notably Locke and Hobbes) for making assumptions about human nature that derive from society - were therefore claiming to talk about the effectual truth when they were not
Talk about need, greed, desires as natural, when they only derive from society itself
Claims to have to look at the pre-rational pre-society man in order to get at human nature itself
But, paradoxically, he also admits repeatedly that man has never actually been in the state of nature, so as he claims that early modern philosophers were talking about something imaginary, he also admits that he does so
Uses his “imaginary republic” which in the abstract term is his natural man to understand human nature and therefore the sources of inequality
Also is very much an idealist in that he sets up an imaginary republic in the social contract
“Men as they are and laws as they can be”
A combination of the two ideas here
Constant: Criticizes Rousseau’s imaginary republic as being intended for a type of person that no longer exists
Ancients preferred political freedom like that which exists in the social contract to the exclusion of all else, while moderns prefer individual rights
Rousseau completely ignores the virtues and priorities of the moderns in the social contract, which is reductive and even dangerous - lead to the violence of the French Revolution
Even then, Constant is forward thinking
He identifies various weaknesses with the modern state - primarily that the private citizen is not sufficiently engaged with representative government, and promotes education
While he does commit to the “effectual truth” more than Rousseau does, he also still is focused on reform
Marx: Extremely against the idea of just describing the world the way Machiavelli claims to
Says in Theses on Feuerbach that the philosopher must act to reform his society
In describing the world as he sees it - that being a struggle between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie, his entire goal is to spark a revolution
Uses a manipulation of the effectual truth to create an imaginary republic

Social, adaptable, developing
The human being is constantly changing - which is something that most of the authors agree on (from Rousseau onwards)
Rousseau and perfectibility
The ability to adapt to our environment and the desire to improve ourselves
Arguably humans are still necessarily social for Rousseau because the natural man never actually exists - perfectibility necessarily leads to society
What has lead to the heights of human civilization, but what also leads to injustice in all of its forms
Amour-propre for example
Our want to be better leads to injustice and to development
Kant
Humans are naturally social but also get very competitive
Much like Rousseau, the drive to be better than others leads to human development
Humanity strives to achieve rationality and peace
There is an end - democratic peace
Hegel - progression of history and world-historical individuals
Everyone is characterized by their own interests, which Hegel calls passions