Politics
"The role of government should be to balance competition and cooperation for the long-term survival of life."
On my Philosophy 101 page, I wrote that politics is the study of concepts such as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever. Three central concerns of political philosophy have been the political economy by which property rights are defined and access to capital is regulated, the demands of justice in distribution and punishment, and the rules of truth and evidence that determine judgments in the law.
One of the most crucial ideas underpinning the theory of justice and the role of government is John Stuart Mill's harm principle. This was first defined in full in Mill's book On Liberty, which was published in 1859, but that built on earlier work from Utilitarian philosophers such as John Locke and Jeremy Bentham. Altogether, their ideas were very influential for the Bills of Rights and Constitutions in England, America, and France, which were then copied or imitated in liberal democracies around the world. The harm principle was supposed to lay out the dividing line between individual freedom on the one hand, and social harm on the other, but right from the start critics found this line indefensible. This is no surprise to evolutionary thinkers who see lines between individuals and populations as shifting all the time. But by 1999, a seminal paper by legal scholar Bernard Harcourt was published called “The Collapse of the Harm Principle” which detailed just how untenable this principle had become for deciding legal rulings. Essentially, political might had become right.
Given the conclusions that were reached in evolutionary ethics, however, we can now rebuild the harm principle by using an evolutionary perspective to define harm in alignment with our ethical definitions of good and bad. I co-authored a paper on this with my wife (a professor specialising in Green Criminology) and published it in Australia's top law journal:
Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice
This paper makes clear why the "sovereign individual" in liberal democracies is a fantasy that must be curtailed. And more importantly, it gives society a clear goal towards which it ought to be organised — the long-term survival and thriving of life. Classical regulations can be reformed to move societies towards this goal, but the work of Prosocial World also shows how Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning theories can be generalised to improve the efficacy of all groups at all levels in order to be aligned toward this goal. That would provide a truly evolutionary process to become wise managers of our future.
One of the most crucial ideas underpinning the theory of justice and the role of government is John Stuart Mill's harm principle. This was first defined in full in Mill's book On Liberty, which was published in 1859, but that built on earlier work from Utilitarian philosophers such as John Locke and Jeremy Bentham. Altogether, their ideas were very influential for the Bills of Rights and Constitutions in England, America, and France, which were then copied or imitated in liberal democracies around the world. The harm principle was supposed to lay out the dividing line between individual freedom on the one hand, and social harm on the other, but right from the start critics found this line indefensible. This is no surprise to evolutionary thinkers who see lines between individuals and populations as shifting all the time. But by 1999, a seminal paper by legal scholar Bernard Harcourt was published called “The Collapse of the Harm Principle” which detailed just how untenable this principle had become for deciding legal rulings. Essentially, political might had become right.
Given the conclusions that were reached in evolutionary ethics, however, we can now rebuild the harm principle by using an evolutionary perspective to define harm in alignment with our ethical definitions of good and bad. I co-authored a paper on this with my wife (a professor specialising in Green Criminology) and published it in Australia's top law journal:
Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice
This paper makes clear why the "sovereign individual" in liberal democracies is a fantasy that must be curtailed. And more importantly, it gives society a clear goal towards which it ought to be organised — the long-term survival and thriving of life. Classical regulations can be reformed to move societies towards this goal, but the work of Prosocial World also shows how Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning theories can be generalised to improve the efficacy of all groups at all levels in order to be aligned toward this goal. That would provide a truly evolutionary process to become wise managers of our future.
Further Reading
For more details on my evolutionary politics, here are some other essays I have written:
- To stop mass extinction, reform the outdated Victorian harm principle — a summary of our peer-reviewed article written for The Conversation (only my wife got credit for this publication since non-academics are excluded)
- Questions About My Harm Paper
- 'Drain the Swamp' is a Misunderstood Metaphor — an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner newspaper
- The Purpose of Government
- 2012 Endorsement from Evolutionary Philosophy
- The Middle of a Turnaround
- Sample Passage From Draining the Swamp
- Brexit — A Symptom of Poor Evolutionary Philosophy
- The Call of the Rewild — essay published in Humanist magazine about how to improve there survival of life
- The summary section on politics in What I Learned From 100 Philosophy Thought Experiments.
- Each individual thought experiment from that series that dealt with politics:
- #44 Till Death Us Do Part
- #82 The Freeloader
- #67 The Poppadom Paradox
- #61 Mozzarella Moon
- #15 Ordinary Heroism
- #10 The Veil of Ignorance
- #100 The Nest Café
- #55 Sustainable Development
- #87 Fair Inequality
- #92 Autogovernment
- #14 Bank Error in Your Favour
- #34 Don't Blame Me
- #97 Moral Luck
- #17 The Torture Option
- #36 Pre-emptive Justice
- #77 The Scapegoat
- #79 A Clockwork Orange
- #33 The Free-Speech Booth
- #29 Life Dependency
- #35 Last Resort
- #53 Double Trouble
- #5 The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten
- #57 Eating Tiddles
- #72 Free Percy
- #32 Free Simone
- #4 A Byte on the Side
- Political posts from my series on knowing thyself:
- Knowing Thyself Means Knowing Others Too
- How to Change a Culture
- Evolution to Guide Our Learning Revolution
- What Can Evolution Tell Us About the Economy?
- Why I Hate Politics
- 2 Thoughts on Justice
- Responding to Climate Deniers — In 2018, I wrote this short, medium, and long response to a local climate skeptic. This article rebuts many of the classic arguments from skeptics and provides useful data and resources on the topic.
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© 2012 Ed Gibney
