You mentioned Machiavellianism in an earlier post. Aristotle certainly ranks as one of the Big Daddies of Machiavellianism, in terms of both ethics and politics (Russell, however breezy his comments on Aris., Hegel, and other political philosophy may seem, also put him in strong-man Mach. camp). The various Aristotelian ethical concepts--magnanimous Man, the insistence on power, greater rights for the nobles, justification of slavery, anti-democracy, etc.-- seem close to Machiavellian ideals, both in terms of virtue ethics and "normative ethics" (is there really any sort of Aristotelian "normative ethics" anyways? Aris. generally thinks nobles are not bound by any objective ideas of Justice. Plato a bit more concerned with the possibility of an impersonal, objective realm of Justice binding on all. Hobbes' advance on Aristotle may have been that he at least conceives of the possibility of all individuals having some entitlement claim: the Aristotelian sort of royalist never assumes that.

That is one of my most basic interests in philosophy: the revival of the ancient, pre-modern distinction between theoretical and practical reason in their separateness, from without the Kantian/post-Kantian conflation/identification of theoretical and practical reason. (The great red doctor himself once said, in one of his more lucid than usual moments, that if the revolution failed, as it were, to materialize, modern society would enter into a state of "civilized barbarism". No talk of the revolution being "inevitable" there. That's clearly an allusion to Vico, the last exponent of the classical tradition of practical reason, who was rediscovered by the French liberal historian Michelet. So it's back to Vico!)

But the more-or-less Aristotelian conception of politics, rested on the exclusion of the "oikos" from political deliberation, together with those without public standing, the "idiotas", while relying on the more-or-less customary standards of a concrete and localized communal praxis. However, the emergence of large territorial nation-states, with functionally autonomous economies and, correspondingly, legal/bureaucratic state structures,as the hallmarks of political modernity, rendered such thinking untenable, even no longer conceivable. Hegel clearly recognized this, which was the fundamental motivation of his "Philosophy of Right". The modern theorization of politics from Rousseau and Kant onto Hegel and Marx and beyond attempted to respond to the absence of a rational basis for praxis by balancing theory off against the subjectivities of its bearers, but each time erring in the end on the side of theory, (if not epistemological "justification"), reproducing the quandary. The (reading of) the resulting development of modern thought and polity is as the progressive occlusion of praxis by a theoria subservient to techne.

It is noteworthy that three students of Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt, and Levinas, responded to the impasses of Heidegger's deconstruction of metaphysical theory and critique of technology, by attempt to retrieve a consideration of practical reason in its separateness in the modern context, the former two reviving motifs of Aristotelian praxis and the latter drawing on Judaic ethics. But the impossibilities are as great as the need. In particular, I don't think it can be done through an academic discipline of normative political philosophy, attempting to abstract from actual political processes to secure an elusive consensus for a liberal moralization of politics. Not only does the pervasive and extensive instrumentalization of social relations in modern societies leave precious little space for ethical judgments and consequential actions, but political life is henceforth definitively irreducible to the ethical, which latter tends to be reduced to the function of a dubious, possibly illusory "legitimation" of large-scale orchestrations of power, that is, displaced into ideology. Political judgements are "prudential" judgments, that is, a mixed form of judgment combining considerations of justice and goodness with the efficacy of means/end relations and a realistic assessment of power relations. The ethics of engagement with political processes is set against itself, combining a deep and thorough recognition of the amorality of the world with a desperate retrieval of (possible) communities. The appeal to "virtue" only sounds the retreat.

Theoretical reason solves problems within a more-or-less defined problematic, elaborating and securing knowledges. Practical reason resolves conflicts, whether within or between agents and communities. The "end" of the former is the mapping and mastery of worldly conditions secured through communicative consensus. The "end" of the latter is the maintenance and enhancement of relations in human communities aimed at the shared potential of good lives in common.

John,
You write:

That is one of my most basic interests in philosophy: the revival of the ancient, pre-modern distinction between theoretical and practical reason in their separateness, from without the Kantian/post-Kantian conflation/identification of theoretical and practical reason.

The usual return to Aristotle is to appeal to appeal to, and reassert, his distinction between praxis and poesis and to insist on praxis in contradistinction to poesis.

I for one followed that move in early modernity to appropriate Aristotle, ie., his teleological conception of praxis following the way that Hegel and Marx's systematic renewal of Aristotle's conception of praxis.

Now I'm more than willing to place praxis under question, given the way that it has been framed within a understanding of action based on instrumental reason, domination and mastery--eg., Weber's strategic conception of action.

I think that praxis as action needs to be reconceptualized because of the instrumentalism that lies in the heart of Aristotle's conception of praxis.

J.
Aristotle like Nietzsche spoke on behalf of the noble and not the multitude.

Both were philosophers and were concerned with political concepts--action, sovereignty, power, autonomy, citizenship --that have become part of the political philosophical tradition. Should we not question our understanding of politics as administration or management? (eg., the CEO business model of politics).

Should we not also be concerned with the way we understand these classical concepts in modernity, and the way our own understandings differ from those of the classical Greeks and Romans?

Machiavelli, as I interpret him, stands for rupture or break with the classical understanding of politics: he rejects the classical reduction of politics to ethics, and he reworks virtue in terms of style of action, the agnostic conception of action, and great deeds.

Is that what you mean by 'Machiavellianism'?

Yes, and it's to be noted that Hegel praised Machiavellian heroics,as he praised the Roman emperors. While liberal individualism ala a social contract may have its shortcomings (tho I think Hobbes is closer to agrarian socialism really, with the sovereign there to keep things on an even keel), Hegelian statism raises at least as many problems.

And arguing against Hegel is about like arguing against Lord Byron: in some sense Hegelian metaphysics, the dialectic, as well as the phil. of right and history seems more like some massive romantic theodicy than philosophy in either the Cartesian or English mode, nor do I think Hegel is so much in line with Plato and Aristotle. The anti-democratic, anti-individualist approach to political theory was done nearly to perfection in the Republic of course. (for dystopias, methinks I would rather have Plato than Hegel as Prime Minister)

Hegel's application of his metaphysics--the infinite, universal vs. particular, dialectic, process, Idea, teleology, Freedom, etc.--to his political thinking often seems quite irrationalism if not just wrong; Bertrand Russell, however non-hip or "glib," wrote a fairly scathing account of Hegelian metaphysics and political history in 1943 or so: I tend to share his view that Hegel can hardly be read as a liberal OR leftist, and that he is fundamentally a conservative and sort of 18th century Tacitus, regardless of all the post-Kantian musings.

Marxism inherits that statist view of "polis", and that may be one of its greatest flaws, as is class struggle. Which is to say, once a revolutionary party (communist or fascist) gains control, having decided entitlement claims are not necessary or expedient to implementing the great socialist plans, gulags or concentration camps might seem to follow, as would censorship and all sorts of anti-democratic acts. Hobbes and even Locke and Rousseau have less blood on their hands than do Hegel and Marx, really. William Shirer (another non-hip writer) thought Hegelian ideas had more of a casual relation to the rise of the 3rd reich than did Nietzsche's writings.

J.
From memory I do not think that Russell knew that much about the Philosophy of Right.

One third of Hegel's Philosophy of Right is concerned with individual freedom in civil society. It has a basic structure of abstract right, morality and ethical life and the argument isone away from abstract right to the more concrete ethical life.

Ethical life is the crux of this structure and the core of his critique of the individualistic foundations of modern liberalism. This text does not identify ethical life with the Greek polis as the modern state is deemed to be a part of ethical life.

From what you write about you appear to interpret ethical life as a conservative traditionalist notion that sanctifies customary morality and is hostile to individuality or any sort of moral reflection or criticism. This interptretation does not stake up with Hegel's emphasis on freedom and rationality in this text.

Sir, you seem convinced that Hegel is a leftist. He's not--even Marx realized that. He's a military historian and a jurist as much as a philosopher. IN fact he praises Luther as well as Roman emperors and Mach. He's even to the right of Kant, whose ethics he really undermines, if not destroys. Nietzsche himself has some positive words for Hegelian Phil. of History; none for Kantian ethics or metaphysics: Nietzsche knew a fellow conservative (and at least partial German nationalist) when he read one. The emphasis on the State itself, it could be argued, is a conservative move, a militarist move.

Hobbes is less conservative than Hegel; even Locke and Rousseau are less conservative. How do you decide to award the conservative label to thinkers, sir? Russell himself was more left than many postmodernists and marxists: he met Lenin and lent some support (not much) to the Bolshevik cause, and clearly denounced the fascists early on, unlike TS Eliot or Pound; he denounced American corporations. Russell also sided with Kropotkin and with the anarchists in the Sacco and Vanzetti thing. But with the postmod. re-writing of 20th century thought anything from England is suspect, even Cambridge wranglers.

I have read a few sections of P. of Right: Hegel generally comes down strongly on the side of punishment, on authority, on constabularies, even on death penalty. He seems pretty f-n prussian to me.

J.
It is you who are interested in pinning left/right labels on philosophers and making that the criteria for evaluation --not me. I am more interested in the way that political philosophers have reworked the political categories that we use to make sense of political life; and how they go about doing it.

Since you have read Hegel's Philosophy of Right you would be aware that individual freedom has a key role in that text:it is both the starting point (the free will is the basis of right)and the substantive concern. The conception of freedom is a positive freedom and, for all the differences, is basically a reworking of Kant's conception of freedom as self-determination through a critique fo the dualism: freedom and nature, reason and sense etc.

Kant's conception of freedom (as rational autonomy) is quite different from that of Hobbes or Bentham, which is based on the unfettered pursuit of our desires or interests.

John,

I would argue that there is a rupture between classical and modern political philosophy: the former is concerned reason and nature (the natural order discernaaible by reason to which human beings ought to conform; the latter with will, freedom and self-actualization. It is the centrality of freedom,variously understood, which characterises the modern tradition of political philosophy.

Hegel's critique of the classical Greeks, for instance, is that they did not give enough recognition to individual and freedom.
I would then locate Hegel as working in the Rousseau, Kant, Fichte conception of freedom as self-determination.Hegel's conception of freedom develops out of this tradition, and he modifies its individualist presuppositions through with the category of ethical life recovered from the Greeks.

I would argue that Hegel's conception of practical reason has its ground in ethical life--that our moral obligations are based on the established customs and usages of an ongoing historical ethical community. However, ethical life is also important to the extent that it realizes the freedom of human beings. The latter is what makes Hegel more than a communitarian.

Gary:

It's true that there was a rupture between classical notions grounding political life in metaphysical ideas of given nature and tradition, which ideas are irremediablely and irrecuperably criticized and discredited. And further, modern ideas of subjectivity and freedom took hold to reconstitute the rationalization of the given order of society in terms of their projected "necessity", culminating in Hegel's comprehensive idealism.

But then that notion of the ideal freedom of subjectivity itself became caught between an growing substantive conflict between "freedoms", an increased differentiation/complexity/division in modern society and a reactive formalization. Such "freedom" became abstracted and alienated, losing its legitimating persuasive power.

Hence there was a further rupture, which I would associated with Heidegger, dealing with the finitude and situatedness of freedom in the world and the retrieval of its relation to concrete being. The finitude and limitation of freedom, not just in terms of temporality, historicity and death, but also in terms of causal processes, socio-structural constraints, symbolic determinants, and difference and otherness, puts paid to the Hegelian neo-classical ideal.

Henceforth, "freedom" has to be analysed and understood in its limitation and finitude, its marginality and ambiguity, if the notion is to have any content, else it becomes sheerly ideological. Just read some of the ghost-written speeches of "Dubbya", if you don't understand that.

That grand Kantian-Hegelian affirmation of Freedom may be one of the great flaws of continental philosophy (and of its descendent, existentialism). Though not agreeing with marxist materialism in toto, I feel that Marx was not completely mistaken (in his remarks contra-Hegel in the German Ideology, I believe) in denying the a prioricity of the subject, and in affirming man, the economic and political animal, rather than the quasi-metaphysical and spiritual man of, say, Kant and Hegel. There is a naturalist marx which the continental philosophy and LIT. people routinely ignore; and if I recall correctly, Marx dedicated Capital to Darwin. (The marxist materialism still affirms the conceptual power of men--but that may be as much a sort of psychologized Kantianism as Hegel or the English.) People do have economic and biological needs which precede the ideology and theory; on that Hobbes and Marx are not that distant. And Marxism owes at least as much to the Hobbesian/Lockean materialism and sensationism as it does to the Hegelian system.

Freedom then is contrained, limited, conditioned--not only by humans' own biological needs and requirements but by the existing economic and political conditions. One might agree with much of the beginnings of the Marxist critique and with dialectical materialism (which again has a naturalist aspect--man/organism and environment/society/politics), while objecting to various concepts put forth in Capital.

Most of this discussion revolves around "majoritarianism". Does it work? Sometimes? Never? Rousseau and Condorcet are better guides to that issue than Hegel (Con. a better mathematician and political thinker than any german philosopher I can think of, except for perhaps Leibniz). If the citizenry is mostly uneducated, corrupt, self-serving, voting may be less just and effective than non-democratic politics. Hobbes' Leviathan sort of anticipates Condorcet to some degree as well: a somewhat ethical monarchy intially consented to might be preferable to peasant revolts, but the sovereignity comes at a cost. Plato's solution to the problems of democracy is the Philosopher-king, and Hobbes not too far from that, except that covenants are agreed to at least in theory.

Nonetheless, if one is neither a Guardian, party member nor with the King's men, non-democratic politics would not likely be very appealing.

J
Why is 'the grand Kantian-Hegelian affirmation of Freedom [as self-determination] one of the great flaws of continental philosophy (and of its descendent, existentialism)'? It underpins the conception of republican citizenship as actively participating in politics.

John
you write:

But then that notion of the ideal freedom of subjectivity itself became caught between a growing substantive conflict between "freedoms", an increased differentiation/complexity/division in modern society and a reactive formalization. Such "freedom" became abstracted and alienated, losing its legitimating persuasive power.

Does that mean we return to the negative freedom of Hobbes and Locke--the freedom to pursue one's given desires/interests and acquire property---and give up on freedom as self determination and republican citizenship?

If we do then, that negative conception of freedom introduces a conception of the state as primarily concerned to protect life, liberty and property. Does not this downplay the significance of participation in public life by citizens?

Gary:

No. But I don't particularly like the negative/positive freedom distinction, as if that were a separable choice and not flip sides of the same coin: separated, either term gives a distorted image of its meaning. I prefer to think of "freedom", human agency, in terms of human relatedness, without which it does not occur. And I'm not disagreeing with the value of freedom as self-determination, that is, as the capacity to make fundamental choices with self-formative implications, and how that carries on to the republican value of participation in public life. But what I am arguing for is a realistic analysis and understanding of "freedom" , as a real phenomenon, in terms of the finitude and constitutive limitation of human agents and in relation to the concrete contents it can take on, which would vary widely across human situations. That would understand the issue in less idealizing and individualistic terms, but rather in a more collective and mutually implicated way , and not just consider "freedom" in the light of its value and values, but also in terms of its intrication in power relations. At any rate, we are too far gone in the evolution both of scientific/philosophical culture and of political history, to regard "freedom" as a self-evident matter.