Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
I regard a final exam primarily as another means of teaching and learning. Preparing for it should not be boring and useless, it should yield illuminations. The exam is intended to give you an incentive to get on top of all the material in the course, see relationships, go deeper, get ideas about ethics and politics. There is some conflict between testing and teaching. Testing is secondary, as far as I am concerned. If you have done the tutorial papers and the draft essay and the final essay, and spend a reasonable time reviewing the course, there is no danger of failing.
Question 1 will ask you to discuss extracts, which will be printed in the exam paper, from the Readings books. The purpose of this question is to give you an incentive to become really familiar with the very text of the readings, and to think about the issues they raise. Preparing question 1 will work in with preparing the other two questions, which will be drawn from among the short paper topics for each week. Those topics were also designed to get you to look again at the week's reading and think about the issues raised. As you worked through week by week you had not yet read the later material, but now at the end of the course you will be able to bring to each topic a knowledge of what later writers have said about it.
In preparing the exam you should work on 4 weeks of readings, 2 from each volume. For each of these four weeks you should work on all, or most, of the short paper topics for that week. However, to do really well you need to be familiar with more than four week's readings. Question 1 asks you, among other things, to compare the author's thought on the points raised in the passage with the ideas of other writers and to add your own comments. This is an invitation to use all you have learned in the course. Most of the rest of this cassette will be about getting on top of the whole material in preparation for question 1.
Question 1 will say: "Discuss two of the following passages; indicate clearly which they are. Briefly explain the passage, and put it into the context of the author's thought, compare his thought on the points raised in the passage with the ideas of other writers and add your own comments." Briefly explain the passage -- clarify it if it means clarifying, but don't merely repeat its obvious meaning. Move on to discuss how the passage fits into the author's general argument. For example, open Readings, volume 2, p. 297, and read paragraph 32, lines 1-7. Suppose you were discussing this passage. How would you explain its place in the author's general argument? Spend a while reading around in Locke's Second Treatise to remind yourself of what the general argument is. Sketch out on paper what you would say about the place of this passage in the argument. (Pause.) So what is the point of Locke's book? Why did he write it, why did he publish it? And why is property in land relevant to the point of the book? I won't tell you my answers to these questions but here is a hint: Why did Locke want to establish that landed property exists not by compact but by Natural Law? Think some more about that. (Pause.)
Next, the question asks you to make comparisons with the ideas of other writers. The others can be anyone, but they may well include other writers read in this course. So what do the other writers say about property in land? Not much specifically about property in land, but quite a bit about property in general, how it is acquired and by what right. Skim through the Readings books, both volumes, and make a list of the pages where property is discussed. (Pause.) Now spend a while studying those passages and sketching out a comparison between all or (more realistically) some of them and Locke. (Pause.) Does anyone else make labour the source of property? Does anyone else say that property exists by Natural Law? The question invites you to add your own comments. What do you think about property in land? What do you think about the right of aboriginals to property in land? Would they have been entitled to exclude the first European settlers or charge them rent? Did they mix their labour with the land, and does it matter whether they did or not? Is ownership of land hereditary by Natural Law? Perhaps you don't think in terms of Natural Law vs. positive human law, but the essential question, I suppose, is whether property rights exist by the agreement of the community, or do they exist whether people agree or not. How much power does a government or the majority of members of a community have by right, i.e. how much change are they morally entitled to make, in property rights? Could they rightly abolish or confiscate property, or redistribute property, or impose new obligations on property owners, or impose confiscatory death duties? What do you think about these issues, and what are the points of contact between your thinking and Locke's? (Pause.) In your answer feel free to say whatever you think about any aspect of the matters raised by the passage. The more thought you pack into your discussion of the passage the better. Make your answer as interesting as possible. Draw on any further study and optional reading you have done. Don't just repeat what the passage says, put it into the context of the author's thinking and the thinking of others, including yours. On the other hand, don't treat the passage merely as a peg on which to hang a general essay on Locke or on property: keep an eye on the relevance of what you are saying to the details of the passage. Question 1 is meant to test your ability to write extempore on an particular passage; it would not show you can do this to prepare a general essay beforehand and hang it loosely on the passage.
For the purpose of making comparisons and providing context, it would be very useful to draw up a list of topics touched on or discussed in detail by two or more of our authors. Drawing up such a list would be a large project, but let's at least make a start. So on a sheet of paper make a heading, "List of Recurrent Topics". Make a list under that heading of the main things discussed in the Readings book. This will take some time. (Pause.) Most of our authors are concerned in one way or another with the question, Who should have power over whom and for what purpose? One answer was that the virtuous should rule, for the purpose of making the citizens virtuous; or in other language that the purpose is to make people's lives better and more worth living, and that the experts on life and living it well should rule. The experts will be philosophers or theologians or church leaders, or a scientific elite (or Public Service). Others have said, on the contrary, that even if the purpose of government is to make people live well, still it doesn't follow that an elite of experts should rule, either because ordinary people are expert enough (Protagoras' myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus), or because the experts may turn into tyrants ruling for their own advantage. And others again have said that the purpose of government is not to make people virtuous, but simply to keep them safe from one another and from other dangers while they pursue the good life, perhaps, but not under the power of the state (Marsilius). Exponents of this last view have sometimes said that the essence of government is coercion and that a coercive institution is not well fitted for teaching virtue. Others have approached the question from the other direction, not concerning themselves much with the powers and functions of governments but emphasising the Natural Rights (or as we say these days the "human rights") of individuals--whatever government is about, individuals should enjoy these rights. (Ockham is perhaps an early example of this approach.)
Spend a little while sketching out your own version of the different schools of thought about who should rule and for what purpose, and then search the Readings book for relevant passages. (Pause.)
I won't try to give you a complete list of relevant passages, but I will draw your attention to some you may have overlooked, including some optional readings:
Who should rule and for what purpose is one major topic, but there are many others. Go back to your sheet with the heading "List of Recurrent Topics" and see if you can add more headings or sub-headings--more may have occurred to you while you were looking at the passages I suggested. (Pause.) Here are a few suggestions. First, the essay topics--democracy, property, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, warfare, and sovereignty. (Sovereignty is in effect what the last essay question means. This topic involves a comparison between Marsilius and Ockham, drawing on the optional Ockham readings--vol. 2, p. 185, p. 211 ff.) Go through the Readings and make a list of the passages relevant to the essay questions. (Pause.) For example, on freedom of religion see Readings, pp. 138, 168, 188, 314, 321, and vol. 3 Supplementary Readings, p. 186.
Here are a few more topics for comparison. Hobbes, Locke, and Hume could be compared on their views on the State of Nature and the Law of Nature, and also on the question whether society can exist without government. For example, look at Hume in Readings, p. 354, Section VIII. Read the passage carefully, and then try to find a relevant passage in Hobbes. Hobbes does not think that society can exist without government. What did Locke think? See if you can find a passage in Locke. On the State of Nature, see Hume, Readings, p. 346 (half way down left), and p. 345 (half way down right), and notice that Hume defines it as an imaginary state preceding society. Is that what Locke meant by the State of Nature? What did Hobbes mean? On the Law of Nature, see Hume again, p. 355 (half way down right), "Men invented the three fundamental laws of nature", and on p. 345 he speaks of convention: this is reminiscent of the medieval idea of the Law of Nations. What did Locke, Hobbes, and Thomas Aquinas respectively mean by the Law of Nature? To some extent these differences between Hume and his predecessors are merely a matter of terminology. But what real differences were there between them over the basis and development of government? It would be useful to spend a while sorting this out. (Pause.)
On the rest of this cassette I will do three things: (1) offer more suggestions on preparation; (2) make a comment on the grading system; and finally (3) make some suggestions about courses that could follow on this one.
In the course outline I suggested that you should try to be familiar with the work of at least two authors from each of the two Readings volumes. Go to work on one author from each volume, and go back every now and then to your "List of Recurrent Topics" and add more points that have occurred to you as you work. After you've done the two authors, choose one more from each volume and work on them. (Pause.)
Now a comment on the grading system. Some of us have advocated for some years a switch from the "A-B-C-CQ" system to the one used by other New South Wales universities, "HD-D-Cr-P". In fact the decision was made years ago that Macquarie University would make that change; however it is waiting for the redesign of the student system program and that is taking a long time. So we are still in the old system. There are guidelines on grading that mean that most students in the University will get a C. "Credit" is a creditable grade but "C" sounds third-rate. The unfortunate effect of our grading system is to discourage most of our students. All I can say is that I'm sorry about that, but you shouldn't feel discouraged or put down if a "C" is what you get. Most students in this university do get a "C" (see Calendar for 1999, p. 160.
Finally some suggestions on follow-up courses. POL264 is the continuation of POL167. It starts with Hume's contemporary Adam Smith, goes on to J.S. Mill (again--this time looking mainly at his ideas on history and ethics), Marx, Weber, Darwin and Huxley, and other writers up to nearly the present (up to John Rawls, a recent American writer on justice). One of the connecting themes of the course is the philosophy of history, especially the question whether, or how, we can draw lessons or make predictions from history. Another question is whether modern biology is relevant to ethical and political theory--if the moral feelings Hume talks about are in us as a result of natural selection and "survival of the fittest", do they have any authority?
Other political theory courses you might look at include POL262, Theories of Democracy and their Critics. In Ancient History you might look at AHST272 The Classical Tradition of Thought (which includes Plato and Aristotle), and, in Philosophy, there is PHIL132 Philosophy Morality and Society. If you go through the Politics and Philosophy schedules you will find quite a few courses for which POL167 is a suitable preparation.
There are also many history courses you could take if you have developed an interest in European history. In this course I have tried to provide you with enough historical background to understand the context in which our authors wrote. You have read some Thucydides and gathered some general information about Greek history; we have touched on Hellenism and Christianity, the Christianisation of the Roman Empire, Islam, the medieval empire, the renaissance of the 12th century, the universities, conflicts of church and state, the great schism, the reformation, the English civil war, the conflict between the English monarchy and its parliamentary opponents, the early development of liberalism, the secularisation of European culture in the eighteenth century, and the beginnings of conflict between the working classes and employers in the nineteenth century. What you have learnt about these things in this course is very little, because we wanted to move on to the readings. If you browse through the descriptions of history courses in the Calendar you will find courses in which you can follow up some of the things we have touched on.
If you want simply to read more, follow up some of the suggestions for further reading at the end of each cassette. You could look at, indeed buy, Kilcullen, Sincerity and Truth: Essays on Arnauld, Bayle and Toleration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)--read Essay IV, "The Ethics of Belief" (on questions arising from scepticism, whether you should suspend judgment unless you have conclusive reasons for belief), or Essay II, "Bayle on the Rights of Conscience". Or you could read William of Ockham, Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1995)--and take a look at other volumes in the same series (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought); or the translations of Plato in the Penguin Classics series--I suggest you start with the Protagoras.
This is the end of this cassette and of the course. Farewell.
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