SİYASAL DÜŞÜNCE

By 1500 the population in most areas of Europe was increasing after two centuries of decline or stagnation. The bonds of commerce within Europe tightened, and the “wheels of commerce” (in the phrase of the 20th-century French historian Fernand Braudel) spun ever faster.

Most historians locate in the 16th century the beginning, or at least the maturing, of Western capitalism. Capital assumed a major role not only in economic organization but also in political life and international relations. Culturally, new values—many of them associated with the Renaissance and Reformation—diffused through Europe and changed the ways in which people acted and the perspectives by which they viewed themselves and the world.

Nicola Machiavelli was born on May 3, 1469 in the city of Florence in Italy. During his lifetime, Italy suffered from an economic collapse due to its ever-growing political weakness, dissolution of feudal structures and disunity on capitalism, which was about to emerge. There was also an endless fight for power between the bourgeoisie and nobility in cities where the middle class had reached a certain level of power. Machiavelli’s city, Florence, was one of the most typical scenes of the fight for power between these classes

Machiavelli had two different but interrelated objectives. His personal objective was to return to his active duty in the state. His second objective arose from rejection of the past. According to Machiavelli, the Italian city states, including Florence, often had instability for that reason and they obviously tended to decline. As a result, they were dominated by external powers such as Spain, France or the Papacy.

Machiavelli often expressed that there is evil in man’s nature. However, this conceptualization of evil is not of religious but of earthly. According to Machiavelli, the instinct that lies at the bottom of human behavior is the instinct of ownership. Because the human greed does not have a limit, individual desires and interests constantly conflict.

As a religious faction, the reformation movement took place in the early 1500s in Europe. It emerged as a political, intellectual and religious reaction to the established religious tradition of Catholicism of the Medieval era and demanded a return to the basic principles of Christianity. As the movement, became popular and had a great deal of support from the public particularly in Germany during the 1520s, it was able to establish its own church.

Bodin’s preference for the best form of government is monarchy. Bodin bases his preference for monarchy on three basic reasons.

By stating that all-natural laws lead us to monarchy, he claims that monarchy is the most appropriate form of state to nature.

He expresses that the talented people in the country could come into prominence only in the monarchy.

He asserts that the fact that sovereignty that is absolute, indivisible and continuous, can only take place in the form of monarchy.

Thomas More, who was the most progressivist and the most fanatic thinker of the English Renaissance, was born in London on February 7, 1478, and was beheaded on July 6, 1535.

Locke’s political thought is based on a basic metaphysical law that explains the political power and the administrative law. His epistemology privileges reason and empirical experience. He claims that human mind is a tabula rasa [blank slate]. All individuals have potential dispositions and capacities. In this context, Locke is a follower of Hobbes: He claims that ideas emerge from individual experiences that influence senses and actions emerge from these rational ideas.

Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. His ancestors were Spanish Jews who had to migrate to Holland due to religious oppression in 14th century in Spain. Spinoza spent his entire life in Holland. He wrote on politics, metaphysics and ethics. He had correspondence with many prominent European philosophers. He earned his living by grinding lenses. At first glance, his political thoughts may seem to be a collage of the religious, scientific and political concepts of writers of the classical period, of the middle age and of his own period. He was excluded from the Jewish community due to his critical attitude towards holy books.

According to Machiavelli, the main means of The Prince is violence. A prince who wants to hold power should not have any other purpose or thought than war. Machiavelli distinguishes between the violence that is applied rightly and cruelties that are applied wrongly when a prince is coming to the power. However, this definition is not based entirely on a moral basis, and for him, it is an appropriate behavior for a prince to resort to violence intensely at a time in order to secure himself against threads. Once he defeats his enemies, a prince may leave aside ruling by means of violence and begin to take the most useful precautions for his subjects (Abramson, 2014, 191). In addition to this, the ruler should never stay away from the idea of war. He must struggle with this thought in peace more than in war. It can be in two forms: the first one is theoretical; and the other is practical.

Locke’s nature is defined by equality, freedom and rationality. Equality: Locke claims that each and every human individual is free, but he also sets some limits to this. Equality, according to him, is to have the equal rights for everyone to attain their own freedom, without being subject to any other’s will and authority. Freedom: Every individual has the right to make use of himself and his property in the way he wishes; however, he is not free to destroy himself or his property without a higher purpose than of its protection. The limits of freedom are determined by responsibilities derived from the natural law. Rationalism: Hobbes claims that equality and freedom direct us to rationalism. When human individuals are supposed to be rational, it means that they have the ability to make a contract.

In one of the axes of conflict created by the development of trade in the cities stood against the church. The church continued not to abandon its traditional habits and regarded interest unethical. On the other hand, the church tried hard to centralize economic and political power in its hands. The fact that the church tried to centralize and protect its status quo led to the questioning of the Catholic universalism represented by the Roman Church. This religious universality would be dissolved with Renaissance and Reformation. The technological development that laid the groundwork for this new social formation was that the printing technology had been renewed. At such a time, Martin Luther lit the fuse of the Reformation movement. On October 31, 1517, he posted The Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church of Wittenberg Palace. These theses had social and political demands as much as theological ones. These demands had three main consequences. 1. Catholic world was divided 2. The churches were brought under the control of the states. 3. The bourgeoisie used these these demands as a weapon against its opponents such as aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church

Jean Calvin claims that social order organized in accord with the true religion is composed of three elements:

1. The Governors, the source of duty is God. 2. Laws, as the products of natural justice imprinted in all minds by God. 3. The Governed, who are responsible to obey the governors as much as the laws of God

Here are three principles of sovereignty for Bodin as given below. 1. Sovereignty is continuous because beyond the changing governments, the society remains the same. The continuity of sovereignty results from the idea of continuity of political society. 2. The continuous power makes law for the subjects, changes the law, makes the new one. The sovereign governor is not subject to the law. 3. Sovereignty, above all, is the power to make laws for everyone generally, and specifically and to change laws.

Bodin’s preference for the best form of government is monarchy. Bodin bases his preference for monarchy on three basic reasons. 1. By stating that all-natural laws lead us to monarchy, he claims that monarchy is the most appropriate form of state to nature. 2. He expresses that the talented people in the country could come into prominence only in the monarchy. 3. He asserts that the fact that sovereignty that is absolute, indivisible and continuous, can only take place in the form of monarchy.

As in all parts of Europe, the problems arising from Protestant Reformation in the 16th century overshadowed all of the other considerations in England as well. The political demand of various churches concealed the serious economic disorders that emerged parallel to the rise of modern trade and the collapse of the old economy (Sabine, 1969: 114). Utopia, which was written under these conditions, is a satire. The origin of the word utopia, which was created by Thomas More, is Greek. More used the prefix “ou”meaning “not” in front of the word “topos” meaning “place” and created this term which means nowhere, no place, anywhere, or placeless. He called his book Utopia, which he published in Latin in 1516. Since that date, the term has been generally used for a place that is outside the known boundaries of geographical world and human experience world.

Locke sets some limits to property: The limit of needs: We must leave enough, and as good, to those who need it. The limit of spoilage and destruction: God does not give the world and its possessions to us to spoil or destruct them. These are supplied to meet the need of individuals. Individuals should not possess more than they need. The limit of labor: Ad individual can only possess what he contributed his labor for.

What is peculiar to Hume’s exploration of morals is his two ways of analyzing reasonable and true propositions. The former belongs to the relationship among ideas, and the latter to that between ideas and phenomena. Hume asserts that reason functions on the relationship among ideas and on those between ideas and phenomena. If reason has the ability to refer to morals, it has to be either one or the other, or the combination of both. Secondly, according to Hume, reason is (and has to be) the slave of passions. Moreover, he claims that a particular passion cannot be considered as rational or irrational. They might be based on correct or incorrect beliefs, or they may confirm or contradict with other passions (Monk, 2004: 166). Hume’s philosophical investigations define moral beliefs as individual experiences and emotions that emerge from the sympathies of the related parties.

Hobbes succeeds in making a stringent transition from organic metaphors to mechanical metaphors to describe politics. For him, the state is not a biological but mechanical body.