Theme
How to govern
10 philosophers, 3 traditions
Who should rule, what makes their power legitimate, and how should a state be run? Answers range from moral example and impartial law to philosopher-rulers and the consent of the governed.
Politics raises the question of which laws and policies are right, but also, as Plato’s Republic asked, who should be in charge, and what makes their power justified rather than merely accepted.
In early China, rival schools argued over how a ruler brings order. Confucians looked to the moral example of those who govern, and Mencius to benevolent government for the people’s well-being. The Mohists judged policies by the benefit they bring and wanted officials chosen for merit, while Han Fei put his trust in clear laws, reliable rewards and punishments, and the power of the ruler’s position rather than his virtue.
Plato’s ideal city was taken up and transformed by al-Farabi, whose perfect city is led by a philosopher-prophet. In early modern Europe, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau traced legitimate authority to an agreement among the people themselves, but drew very different conclusions, from an absolute sovereign to government limited by natural rights, or law as the general will. Marx asked instead whose interests the state serves.
Through time
6th century BCE
Confucius
Good government starts with the character of those who rule. A virtuous ruler moves the people as “the wind blows on the grass”, without their trust “the state will not stand”, and the family virtues of filial piety and respect for elders show who is fit for office and are the root of loyalty to the state.
5th century BCE
Mozi
Government exists to end the disorder that follows when everyone has their own idea of what is right. Mozi wanted people to take their standards from worthy superiors, appointed for merit and ability rather than birth, and judged policies by whether they bring the people wealth, a large population and order.
Drew on Confucius
4th century BCE
Plato
The Republic criticises the family, private property and rule by the many, and holds up an anti-democratic city as the model of a good constitution, whose best rulers would rather contemplate divine reality than govern. The later Laws gives non-philosophers considerable powers under a detailed code of law.
Mencius
A true king rules by benevolence, not by force or profit. He notices how his policies affect the people and pursues only those that serve their well-being; a ruler who asks how to profit his state teaches everyone below him to seek profit too, and conquest by war is like “climbing a tree in search of a fish”.
3rd century BCE
Han Fei
Order can’t depend on virtuous rulers or honest officials, who are too few to fill the offices. Han Fei designed a system that works even under an average ruler: impartial standards (fa) known to all, rewards and punishments kept in the ruler’s hands, and authority that rests on his position, not his character.
Drew on Mozi
About 1200 years later
10th century CE
al-Farabi
The perfect city mirrors the ordered hierarchy of the cosmos, and at its head is a ruler who is both philosopher and prophet. Adapting Plato to a very different world, al-Farabi imagined not a small city-state but a vast empire of many languages, peoples and religions.
Drew on Plato
About 700 years later
17th century
Thomas Hobbes
Without a common authority, life is a condition of war, so people covenant with one another to obey a sovereign. To keep the peace, the sovereign’s powers must be neither divided nor limited, though subjects keep a right to defend themselves. Hobbes preferred monarchy, but only on mild practical grounds.
John Locke
Government rests on agreement, not force. People leave the state of nature by handing some of their rights to a government, whose job is to protect life, liberty, health and property and serve the public good. No monarch holds absolute power, and knowing what government is for shows when revolution is justified.
Drew on Thomas Hobbes
18th century
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A state is legitimate only if it is guided by the general will of its citizens as a whole. The people are sovereign and make the law, while a government only administers it; in obeying laws they have given themselves, citizens remain as free as they were in the state of nature.
Drew on Plato, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke
19th century
Karl Marx
In capitalist society the state serves the economic order: at its crudest, it is “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. Under communism it would be subordinate to society, run by elected officials paid a worker’s wage, perhaps with little or no organised coercion.
Sources
- Fabienne Peter, Political Legitimacy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy