Politics- The Master Art?

Alot can be said about politics. Cynics will say it’s a dirty business, or even that it’s the work of the devil, but people who believe that would probably think Aristotle is Satan himself. After all, Aristotle believes that politics is the master art. Can a person honestly say this though? It’s hard to confirm or deny such a statement. There have been many cases in our country that have shown this to be the case. Our government could turn around tomorrow and enact legislation that makes slavery legal again, or force everybody to wear pink clothing. Although there would be public outcries, it’s easy to see how politics does shape the world around us everyday. Others can argue that politics may not be quick enough to catch up to the world’s needs. Although slavery ended after the Civil War it took about 100 years more to grant blacks equal rights. I think that politics is a great vehicle for change, but it takes more than just a vehicle to arrive at a final destination.

Hobbes and The State of Nature

Hobbes’ state of nature does without a doubt paint a very bleak picture of mankind if it existed without some structure. Here’s my take:

In regards to his views on the equality of men and the scarcity of goods: I would agree with his views. Given the example of the fight for a banana, it doesn’t seem that any one person would be able to prevent all others from taking it. I also think that there are a great deal of things that are extremely scarce. We see it everyday in gas prices, or when we complain about food costing more.

I would only partially agree with his other statements about the state of nature being a state of war, and his ideas of self interest. There are very few animals in nature that only work by themselves. Most animals work together in groups to achieve goals, whether it be beavers building a dam or wolves hunting in packs. This isn’t to say that animals don’t act out of self interest at all, but that there is something else inside of them that enables them to see that they can achieve more things working together.

Even in pre-historic times, there were drawings on walls of caves and primative tools. It’s hard to believe that there was a government in place at this time, but yet, people were not so preoccupied hiding and defending their resources from one another that they were unable to create art or craft tools.

For these reasons, I don’t believe Hobbes is entirely correct, although, I would agree with some of his assumptions.

The Kantagorical Imperative

If I haven’t made it obvious before, Kant just couldn’t do right by me. Even if he rescued my entire family from a burning building, I’d still yell at him for writing the most confusing piece of work I’ve read since the Heart of Darkness. Today I plan on attacking his view of not cultivating talent.

 Kant’s view is that it’s a part of human nature to cultivate talents rather than to simply submit to pleasure. He arrives at this point by saying that although humans might not better themselves to better society, humans cultivate their talents in order to use them for their own personal gain. Whether that gain be economic, social, or just personal enjoyment doesn’t make a difference. An example of this we discussed in class would be somebody taking piano lessons as a child and being able to use this skill to gain money, impress others, or as an outlet of expression.

I would actually agree with Kant here. One reason being although for a while some people can go on without doing anything, but after awhile, I think it would just become boring. Besides that, in order to get anything, we’d have to use some sort of skills, which would imply that we had to cultivate them somewhat just to get to that point.

A few arguments a person could make however is if there was a human who was incapable of determining what his skills were. Or even if a person had so many talents, he was unsure of which ones to cultivate. Or finally, a person who had a talent that society would deem as immoral like a talent for stealing or killing.

You Kant Kill Yourself

Kant’s writings are very baffling to say the least. One such aspect is the idea of suicide.  Do people have a duty not to kill one’s self? To Kant the answer is no. In class we set this up in the terms of the categorical imperative and established the maxim: If suicide is the only way to satisfy the demands of self-love, kill yourself. I think this is not what Kant is truly saying. In my interpretation of the text, Kant says that if you are killing yourself in the name of self love when the troubles of life SEEM to outweigh the PROMISES of future happiness, it is wrong. I would agree, but I took a different road than Kant.

Kant says that self-love was a quality all human share and is intended to preserve life. Therefore Kant finds no logic in the fact that we would be killing ourselfs in the interest of self love. Instead he believes we would be in fact acting against it. This argument can lead to a myriad of cases (a terminally ill person who is suffering, or a person who knew for a fact that they would experience nothing but pain the rest of their life) in which this argument seems wrong.

If Kant used the categorical imperative on the maxim I interpreted it to be: If the troubles of life appear to outweigh the promise of future happiness, in the best interest of self love kill yourself. This changes the argument greatly. The argument changes into a statement like this: If life seems crappy, and nothing on the horizon looks good as well, then out of self love, kill yourself. I think this maxim could never be willed into universal law, because people have bad weeks, months, even years, but for the majority of people, things get better. If this maxim were willed into universal law, then nearly everybody would kill themself at some point, because there are very difficult times in everybody’s life. Based on this argument it seems that killing one’s self in the name of self love is wrong. I’m not sure if Kant would agree, but I would hope to think so.