Democracy Lite?
Today's NY Times Week in Review features a suggestive article entitled, "What's in It for America?" that explores the possible ramifications of Bush's latest crusade to democratize the Middle East.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/weekinreview/06roger.html
I recommend that all three of my classes read this article on the prospect of democratization of the Middle East as background for our discussions this next week.
Political Philosophy (20) will be reading Machiavelli's The Prince. What might he have to say about the democratization of the various regimes in the Middle East -- indeed, around the globe where conflicts, actual and potential, abound between competing ethnic, religious, and political groups?
Philosophy of Law (43) will be getting to H.L.A. Hart's comments on the distinctions between "being obliged" to obey the law and "having an obligation" to do so. Will rapid democratization solve the problems of the broad range of Middle Eastern nations with their diverse political systems and potentially conflicting interest groups? Keep in mind that our Western democracies took centuries to develop relatively stable civil societies as the foundation for the rule of law and orderly political systems.
Somewhat less directly relevant to this article but with some passing references to it, Ethics and Society (6) will be exploring the impact of divisions between poverty and wealth -- both within nations and between them. One of the Middle Eastern problems generated by our European and American democracies has been a bad history both of suppressing incipient democracies there, e.g. Mossadeq in Iran:
http://www.iranonline.com/newsroom/Archive/Mossadeq/
and supporting authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia -- whose 4,000 princes have been our accomplices in our exploiting their resources, i.e. *OIL*. Will we be opening up a Pandora's box by urging rapid democratization of such previously authoritarian regimes? Lest we forget, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi dissidents. As Plato warned long ago new democracies all too often degenerate into chaos and tyranny. We witnessed this phenomenon repeatedly after WW2 with the withdrawal of the European powers from their colonies. Self-serving demagogues were as likely as democrats to take control of such newly liberated nations (e.g. Nigeria, which was captured by a series of brutal military juntas, which systematically murdered their democratic opponents -- in complicity with our corporate oil interests).
I should add as a footnote (for the benefit of others who have been away from the academic world for a time) that contemporary philosophy has been shifting away from purely theoretical (principle-based) analyses of social, political, and other matters to applied empirical exploration and verification of the effects and limitations of our theories.
In my Ethics and Society class after some independent student thinking about the practical problems raised by the divisions, national and global, between poverty and wealth, I shall sketch the theoretical polar approaches taken to this same subject by the recently deceased Harvard philosophers, Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia):
http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l17.html
and John Rawls (A Theory of Justice):
http://www.commerce.usask.ca/faculty/backman/lectures/HCA434/Ethics/Ethics2/Ethics2.htm
Rawls and Nozick tended to dominate our philosophical discussions (and textbook presentations) on the subject of distributive justice with limited and limiting principles during the second half of the 20th century -- a naive and grossly misleading error IMHO. Ed Kent
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/weekinreview/06roger.html
I recommend that all three of my classes read this article on the prospect of democratization of the Middle East as background for our discussions this next week.
Political Philosophy (20) will be reading Machiavelli's The Prince. What might he have to say about the democratization of the various regimes in the Middle East -- indeed, around the globe where conflicts, actual and potential, abound between competing ethnic, religious, and political groups?
Philosophy of Law (43) will be getting to H.L.A. Hart's comments on the distinctions between "being obliged" to obey the law and "having an obligation" to do so. Will rapid democratization solve the problems of the broad range of Middle Eastern nations with their diverse political systems and potentially conflicting interest groups? Keep in mind that our Western democracies took centuries to develop relatively stable civil societies as the foundation for the rule of law and orderly political systems.
Somewhat less directly relevant to this article but with some passing references to it, Ethics and Society (6) will be exploring the impact of divisions between poverty and wealth -- both within nations and between them. One of the Middle Eastern problems generated by our European and American democracies has been a bad history both of suppressing incipient democracies there, e.g. Mossadeq in Iran:
http://www.iranonline.com/newsroom/Archive/Mossadeq/
and supporting authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia -- whose 4,000 princes have been our accomplices in our exploiting their resources, i.e. *OIL*. Will we be opening up a Pandora's box by urging rapid democratization of such previously authoritarian regimes? Lest we forget, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi dissidents. As Plato warned long ago new democracies all too often degenerate into chaos and tyranny. We witnessed this phenomenon repeatedly after WW2 with the withdrawal of the European powers from their colonies. Self-serving demagogues were as likely as democrats to take control of such newly liberated nations (e.g. Nigeria, which was captured by a series of brutal military juntas, which systematically murdered their democratic opponents -- in complicity with our corporate oil interests).
I should add as a footnote (for the benefit of others who have been away from the academic world for a time) that contemporary philosophy has been shifting away from purely theoretical (principle-based) analyses of social, political, and other matters to applied empirical exploration and verification of the effects and limitations of our theories.
In my Ethics and Society class after some independent student thinking about the practical problems raised by the divisions, national and global, between poverty and wealth, I shall sketch the theoretical polar approaches taken to this same subject by the recently deceased Harvard philosophers, Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia):
http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l17.html
and John Rawls (A Theory of Justice):
http://www.commerce.usask.ca/faculty/backman/lectures/HCA434/Ethics/Ethics2/Ethics2.htm
Rawls and Nozick tended to dominate our philosophical discussions (and textbook presentations) on the subject of distributive justice with limited and limiting principles during the second half of the 20th century -- a naive and grossly misleading error IMHO. Ed Kent
posted by Ed Kent at 11:37 AM
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