The Story of Politics

169 Pages·2013·0.88 MB·English

by  Bruce Wright

The Western Story of Politics: A Companion to Reading the Classics of Western Political
Thought
Bruce E. Wright, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
This is a very preliminary first draft, produced for the convenience of students in my classes. It
is not to be used for any purpose outside of these classes. Not for quotation or citation.
Copyright claimed by Bruce E. Wright, January 13, 2007 It has been revised beginning in 2011.
The Chapters on the Celtic and Germanic barbarians are very much a work in progress and will
be undergoing substantial development and revision.
Table of Contents

Preface ii
Introduction 1
Part I: The Classical Story: Ancient Greece and Republican Rome 15
Chapter 1: The Classical Political Story Beginning with Plato 18
Chapter 2: Aristotle: The Political Good as the End 29
Chapter 3: Stoicism and Natural Law as a Basic Political Story: The Significance
of Cicero 42
Chapter 4: The Roman Conquest of Gaul and the Celtic Story
62
Part II: From Rome to Feudalism: Three Become One 112
Chapter 5 St. Augustine and the Story of Two Cities 115
Chapter 6: The Consolidation of Territorial Identity:
The ABarbarians@ Become Europe ((Incomplete as
of January 13, 2004)) 134
Appendix I The Colloquy of Two Sages 147
Appendix II: Gelasius on AThe Two Swords@ 154
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Preface
Traditionally within European and North American institutions it has been assumed
that there is some sense a single AWestern@ story of politics, even though it is recognized
that it has a number of versions, especially as it manifests itself in different time periods.
The study of AThe Western@ idea recognizes that there are, as is often pointed out in
contemporary thought, different stories as there are different Acultures,@ Atraditions@ or
even Acivilizations.@ Thus, in addition to the Western story there is an Asian story, an
African story, perhaps a separate AMiddle Eastern@ story@ and a ANative American story,@
among others. To deal with these would be, in the dominant view, to engage in the study
of different systems or, at best in a Acomparative analysis@ of those systems. Yet the idea
remains that there is a AWestern story@ that somehow begins in ancient Greece, is
transmitted to Rome and ultimately becomes a European and North American story. The
contemporary world system is largely the result of the "development" of the world as
whole that was promoted through the process of European and North Amerian political,
economic and cultural hegemony in this view. Political philosophy is largely the study of
this story and its many branches, twists and turns. From this perspective the present
AWestern@ world is the result of the working out of this story in the context of particular
historical phenomena. For many, this Western model is also the Amodern@ model and there
are even strong suggestions that if it is not yet a universal story it will become universal as
non-Westerners become Amodernized.@ The most politically popular of these views
suggests that somehow North America and England represent the furthest development of
the idea of Afreedom@ or Afree institutions@ that are associated with Ademocracy.@ On this
view people within the rest of the world can be expected to ultimately share in Athe
blessings of liberty and freedom.@ These ideas are seen as the result of the development of
“Western Civilization.”
Critics of this view of modernization point out that what is really at issue is the
story of domination that has been associated with the increasing hegemony of "the West."
A whole movement of thought, post-modernism, suggest that the fundmental ideas of
Western Europe are only one of many possible narratives of the world, expressed through
the voice of the politically and economically dominant groups. Through the development
of the means of economic production and communication characteristic of "post-
industrial" societies the world has become "globalized." No individual state, nation, or
community can remain outside the globalized system. While some celebrate these
developments and others develop fundamental criticisms of it there is little doubt that
independence from the globalized system is virtually impossible. And the dominant story
of politics in this system is that of some kind of "modernization." Critics point out that
there are, in fact, other voices than the dominant ones and that new social movements may
give voice to those who have had no voice in the past, including women, homo-sexuals
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and transgendered people (LGBT for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people),
members of racial, ethnic and religous minorities as well as communities appropriately
challenge the dominant view. But it remains that this call for action assumes that the
traditional western story has, in fact, dominated world developments. As a result of such
criticism there have been many serious critiques within political philosophy of the
dominant story. There is a whole field of feminist studies of political thought. Included
here is critique of the role of women in the work of the classical authors and the often
neglected work of women themselves as political philosophers as well as attempts to
directly give voice to women as political actors. There have also been many efforts to
investigate the political thought of "non-western" cultures, such as those of East Asia,
South Asia, the Arab world and others.
To a substantial degree this text is an example of the telling of the dominant
Western story in relation to a set of texts seen as Acanonical.@ These texts constitute Athe
canon@ of Western politics, just as a certain set of texts constitutes Athe canon@ of a
particular church. But this book is not merely a recounting, or even an internal criticism,
of this canon. It is based on the assumption that there is not really a single Western story.
Rather the canonical Western European and North American political story has roots in a
complex set of historical developments which have included the raising of the canonical
story itself above alternative stories. The dominant story is that of the victors in a long set
of political, social and economic struggles. AThe West@ is not simply a development of
classical Greek and Roman institutions and ideas. It is, as well, a result of the lives, and
thus the stories, of those who have been conquered and absorbed into the apparently
unitary Western story. There are alternative stories that must be considered if we are to
have a full understanding of contemporary realities in the West and in the world as a
whole. ATo the victors go the spoils@ and Ahistory is written by the winners@ are not mere
rhetorical phrases. They represent important lessons in attempting to understand
contemporary politics. The effort here is to reconstruct the stories of some of the “losers”
and to incorporate them into the general story of Western politics and political thought.
The text is divided into three parts into which the story of the West is usually
divided: ancient, medieval and modern. Each section begins with an elaboration of the
logic of the major canonical texts that make up the Western story. But in concluding each
section an alternative story is elaborated that puts into focus the stories of the vanquished
as well as of the victors. Of course this is an artificial construction of its own. Actually the
official story and official understanding of politics typically represents a sort of synthesis
of the ideas and the institutions of the dominant and subordinate peoples involved. Greek
and Roman ideas and institutions did not simply conquer the peoples of Western Europe,
even though in important respects Roman armies and political institutions appear to have
done so. In fact just as the Abarbarians@ were ARomanized@ in the development of Western
Europe, the Romans were Abarbarianized.@ Feudalism was neither merely a step back into
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ignorance and darkness, as the term ADark Ages@ has been used to suggest, nor a period of
stagnation which was ultimately transcended by the Renaissance (rebirth) of classical
thought. Rather as a set of institutions feudalism, like all other systems that we
characterize as singular phenomena, developed in a very dynamic manner. One of the
foundations for this dynamism was the interaction of those who had been known to the
Greeks and the Romans simply as Abarbarians@ with institutions and ideas that did have
their origin in ancient Greece and Rome. But the story of the “classical” developments,
the generally recognized one, is well known and the alternative story is largely submerged
in historical developments based on ultimately unequal structures of economic, social,
cultural and political power.
The dominant story has a more or less official representation in the received
Acanon.@ Other stories are largely absent, if not suppressed altogether, in literature dealing
with the Acanon@ known as Apolitical philosophy.@ At best they are seen as myth, folklore,
or simply Aliterature.@ 1 Recounting the canonical story requires serious intellectual
attention and skill focusing on a received set of sources upon which they can be focused.
On the other hand, the very nature of the stories which have been superseded are not
represented in a single set of texts. Indeed some of them must be reconstructed on the
basis of fragmentary evidence. In the case of the story of the Celtic “barbarians” there are
few, if any, clear texts to which to refer to reconstruct the story. Although the Celts were
literate, mostly using Greek and Latin alphabets, they viewed it as inappropriate to
memorialize what we would call Apolitical,@ Areligious,@ or Amoral@ matters in written form.
Their traditions were largely oral and thus not directly available to us in their original
forms. Even if there were writings of the type that we might call Apolitical philosophy@
among the Celts there are no remaining examples of such texts. As it is, a good deal of our
knowledge of these peoples comes from texts largely in the language of their conquerors
or those who assimilated into the newly dominant culture. Thus, for example, our
knowledge of Celtic religious practices and even Celtic or Germanic historical
development is based largely on texts written in Latin by Roman Catholic priests. There
are, in addition, coins with inscriptions and tablets with brief inscriptions as well but these
are, like pre-literate Greek forms of the same kind, merely invocations or the recording of
names, sometimes with little clearly identifiable purpose. Archeologists and linguists
continue to discover and attempt to decipher old inscriptions, sometimes using the Latin
and Greek alphabets and some Celtic language. There are constant advances in these areas
but there are no large-scale writings that could be considered equivalent to books. There
are what appear to be what we would call "religious", legal and commercial writings but
they typically involve fewer than one thousand words, often as few as ten or twenty. By
1. Thus students of political philosophy do not read works such as Beowulf or the legends of
King Arthur, much less the old Celtic stories dealing with characters such as Cuchalainn. These
matters are relegated to the study of Aliterature.@
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their nature these insciptioins are often damaged and/or altered and the languages in which
they appear to be written, though having some resemblance to contemporary or know
historical languages, are not well known.
There are other accounts of the Celtic and Germanic peoples but they were clearly
written by their conquerors. Indeed some of our most important knowledge of these
peoples comes from Julius Caesar=s account of the wars in Gaul through which the Celtic
population (Gallic, peoples of Gaul) of most of Western Europe became part of the Roman
Empire. In addition to these sources there are material remains of early civilizations that
are discovered as the result of archeological excavations. Of course these material remains
do not provide direct evidence of the story of those who left them. There are existing
stories, usually known as Afolklore@ or Amyth@ that presumes to tell us about the
development of the peoples who were ultimately subordinated. But they are only partially
reliable both because they were often recorded in writing only long after Awesternization@
had occurred and because as their fantastic character reveals (discussing dragons and other
monstrous beasts and suggesting that otherworldly creatures intervened in events), were
not necessarily intended as accurate accounts of events. They may, however, provide us
with some evidence for social, political, economic and religious practices by indirection.
As in the case of the early Old English manscript that inclues Beowulf, even though we
might not be inclined to believe in the beasts, creatures of "historical" groups of people
and their travels and conquest described in them, the accounts they contain of meals, dress
and customary attitudes can be used to help us reconstruct the story of those about whom
the stories are told.
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Introduction
Political Philosophy and Political Science
APolitical philosophy@ is considered one of the fundamental Asubfields@ of political
science. No other Asocial science@ so strongly retains a connection with the traditional
discipline of philosophy. This might be seen as a reflection of the relative immaturity of
political science as a social scientific enterprise. On this view social science develops as
explanation moves away from the subjectivist and normative tradition of philosophy and
towards the model of the physical and natural sciences. It is also a subfield of the academic
discipline of philosophy.
Within political science a simplistic understanding of explanation suggests that it
consists simply of a set of statements about the world as it actually exists. They are,
therefore, scientific explanations. Scientific explanation, on this model, consists of simply
describing the objects that exist in the world and the relationships that obtain among them.
True statements are those that actually conform to the world they describe. Theories that
consist of a set of such statements are Aobjective@ in nature. A major mode of developing
such theory within political science in the subfield of political philosophy is to attempt to
describe, in one way or another, the relationship between historical and social structures
and the ideas that constitute the canon. There are obviously other kinds of human
discourse than scientific ones but they are Asubjective,@ expressing the dispositions of some
human subject. In the language of an early twentieth century school of thinkers called
Alogical positivists@ they are Ameaningless@ because they refer neither to any analytically
true (true by definition), nor empirically verifiable, statements. The philosophical
tradition, given this account of explanation, consists of a combination of subjective and
objective claims mixed together in such a manner that they cannot produce genuine
knowledge characteristic of Ascientific@ knowledge. As knowledge develops, it moves
away from philosophy towards science. Thus, on this view, insofar as political science
retains an interest in political philosophy it is defective as a genuine science. We can
understand how the development of scientific knowledge that characterizes modern
thought is a movement away from subjective opinion to objective knowledge. The history
of modern times, especially in Western Europe and North America, on this account,
consists of a secularizing process through which human beings have left behind subjective
accounts of the world in favor of objective ones. On this account of the matter this
historical process led people in Western Europe from Asuperstition@ to knowledge with the
development of modern thought beginning sometime around 1500. Contemporary social
science in general, and political science in particular, have been slower to move away from
philosophy than have the natural sciences. On this view, insofar as they mature they will
come to more closely resemble natural and physical sciences.
A More Sophisticated Understanding of Science: Paradigms and Explanation
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The positivist view briefly describe above is inconsistent with recognizing as
legitimate knowledge anything other than the “scientific” accounts that originated in
Western Europe and North America and that mark the modern era. Yet a more

sophisticated account of knowledge calls this picture into serious question. The simple
view elaborated in the previous paragraph fails to take into account, among other things,
that knowledge makes sense in terms of what Thomas Kuhn called Aparadigms.@
Paradigms are overarching rules that provide the logical framework within which
explanation takes place within some discipline, some community of knowers. They must
be known and accepted by those who would participate in a particular disciplinary
community. These rules are a kind of language within which discourse can proceed.
Those who would violate the rules are not considered a part of a particular discipline; they
do not take part in a rational discussion of the issues defined by that discipline. Learning
the rules for explanation with respect to particular subject matters requires, in the first
place, understanding what the subject matter itself consists of. To Ado@ physics, chemistry
or biology, just as to Ado@ economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy or
political science, requires one to accept certain basic rules for discourse, the “paradigms”
of those fields. Here explanation is like much else in human life; understanding a
particular type of discourse is central to knowing what one is doing. Just as games require
the following of certain rules, so does participation in other kinds of social practices.
There is no overall human practice that defines every other. In this sense there is a
complex set of relationships between different kinds of activity. There is a complex set of
relationships, as well, between different kinds of explanation.
Maintaining an interest in political philosophy is a way in which Political Science
as a discipline has recognized the complex nature of explanation. While there has been
much made of an attempt to model political explanation on the simplistic view suggested
above, the interest in political philosophy continues. The history of what is known as
Apolitical philosophy@ shows us a number of alternative conceptions of what constitutes
politics. Classical works defined as political philosophy do not simply involve different
theories about the nature and relationship of political objects. If this were all they
amounted to, we should be able to decide, given our contemporary modes of social
scientific investigation, to what extent traditional students of politics have correctly
described the world. But this would seem to be a pointless exercise. The classical thinkers
confused empirical and normative, and objective and subjective, discourse so thoroughly
that we would spend our time more intelligently by making our own observations of the
political world rather than trying to straighten out the confusion of the classical thinkers.
The reason, however, to maintain an interest in classical works of political philosophy is
that they provide us primarily with different basic paradigms for making sense of politics.
They involve not only disagreements about how some political objects relate to others but
about what constitutes politics as such. They develop alternative Alanguage games@, to use
a term derived from the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, by which to make sense of
politics. They lay out alternative "narratives" within and by which to make sense of
2
politics. These are not merely different ways of describing the same objects, or even
similar suggestions for actions, they constitute alternative political paradigms.
Recognizing the historical complexity of political language helps us to understand how we
might construct our own political paradigms.
No Paradigm Neutral Discourse is Possible
There is no paradigm-neutral discourse. This is especially clear in politics. How
we define the world of politics determines in large measure what we will count as
appropriate political action. Thus the selection and refinement of political paradigms is
itself a political process. The language rules, paradigms, of politics are themselves
political; they define for us what is to count as political practice. If we are to develop a
coherent discipline of political science we must be attentive to alternative political
language games, different narratives through which politics is understood and practiced.
They are not merely different ways of describing the world of politics, they constitute
different ways of living politically. Works of political philosophy consist partially of
alternative suggestions for what will constitute a rational political language and thus a
rational political life. To speak intelligently of politics requires us to be clear about
alternative political paradigms. Indeed much of political discourse is itself a contest about
the appropriate way in which to understand what we do together and thus how it is
legitimate to act in relation to each other.
There are a number of "schools" of political theory or philosophy that recognize
this fundamental set of issues. These schools share the view that making sense of the
meaning of the canonical texts depends on some reconstruction of the conditions under
which they were written, including the paradigms of politics. 2 What follows, however, is
intended especially for those who may think of political science as a variety of science, not
of the philosophical and historical views of those included in the "schools" just mentioned.
Learning Paradigms
All discourse occurs within some paradigm, some particular structure of language,
a narrative. What we might call Anatural languages@ are learned by indirection. Children
who do not speak a language are not told that they will now learn English, for example.
They do so in the context of living among a community of English speakers. It is
important to see that the learning of specialized languages that we call Aknowledge@ occurs
in a similar manner. We don=t begin in some stance where we already know what will
constitute knowledge, some meta-knowledge, and proceed to knowing particular pieces of
knowledge. This is true in presumably Ascientific@ discourse as well. A person does not
become a physicist by first knowing how to obtain generalized knowledge and then
applying this knowledge to moving objects. She learns what it is to use the language of
2 Major schools of thought that include this mode of explanation are those related to the works of Quentin Skinnner
and J.G.A. Pocock. This are at least partially historical analysis that are often referred to within political science.
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physics by participating in the practice of physics. Those who are considered competent

users of a particular language do not typically learn the rules of the language directly,
rather they learn them through using that language under the guidance of competent
teachers. We learn to use particular paradigms by beginning to use them, not by having
them described to us in the context of some more general paradigmatic structure.
The term Aparadigm@ is adopted in English as a result of its Greek meaning of
Aexample,@ or Astandard example.@ It is as if teachers of a discipline point to a particular
example of explanation because they assume that students do not yet possess the language
through which they can understand the expression of the rules. Just as the master often
presents the koan Awhat is the sound of one hand clapping@ as a means to introduce a
student to the discipline of meditation involved in Zen Buddhism, the teacher of
elementary mechanics, indeed of much physical science as a whole, is likely to introduce
the story of Galileo=s experiment with dropping objects off a tall tower. Following this
historical example a teacher might produce an Aexperiment@ to show how the method
works. This experiment could consist of asking students to time the descent of objects of
different weights down an inclined plane. Students will discover, as did Galileo, that
objects fall at a rate that is not related to their relative weights, or mass. This presumably
introduces the student to the idea that observation in terms of movement of objects in time
and through space is a basic aspect of making sense of the world. Similarly, beginning
students are often told the surely apocryphal story of Newton=s insight upon being hit on
the head by a falling apple. The story is not simply that he thus Adiscovered@ gravity.
Surely the story doesn’t have as its purpose the claim that no one knew prior to this event
that apples fall from trees and hit people on the head. What occurred to Newton as he
observed the apple is that he could explain the motion of the moon around the earth on the
same logic as that which makes sense of falling apples. Thus the student is asked to
follow Newton, not by sitting under trees to see if apples fall, but in thinking about moving
objects in a very general way. Through such simple examples, students of empirical
science are introduced to ever more complex situations which are explained in terms of the
prevailing paradigm. It is how to think about issues in physics that is presumably
communicated to the student through the telling of stories such as these.
The case of Newton and the apple is instructive. It is not important whether this
event actually occurred; the telling of the story has its impact insofar as the student comes
to accept the basic notion that we can apply the same rules of motion to objects throughout
the universe. The point of these stories, as well as more advanced ones such as those
associated with Einstein, particulary involving travel at speeds approaching the speed of
light, is to provide the introductory student with a language structure through which
explanations may proceed. The point here is to emphasize that paradigms cannot simply
be introduced by direct explanation. A story, not a description of objects, is at the basis of
many paradigms. This highlights their metaphorical character.
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