Discussion of my question ‘How is political authority possible?’ should have brought out that it is akin to the question: ‘How is political authority compatible with reason?’. The assumption has been that the acknowledgement of such authority must somehow be based on reason. And some of the difficulties we have encountered have suggested that this may not be the right question to ask. I want now to turn the question round: instead of asking for the reason of authority, let's ask: what is the authority of reason?

This is one important aspect of what is under discussion in Plato's Gorgias. So let's return briefly to that.2 The question the dialogue opens with concerns the nature of the skill Gorgias claims to teach. It is a technique of persuasion and Socrates is critical of the claims Gorgias makes on its behalf. In developing his criticisms he distinguishes Gorgias's rhetoric from a form of discourse based on a contrasting principle, a discourse which obviously Socrates's own practice is supposed to exemplify.

The difference is that Socratic dialogue is said to be informed by a genuine logos in a way rhetoric is not. Socrates aims at knowledge, not just belief, at truth and not just changing his interlocutor's mind. What interests me most here is that Socrates does not describe the difference in the way most of us probably expect him to. He does not say that Gorgias aims merely at persuasion, [and] Socrates at something else. He says that there are two sorts of persuasion that [are] practiced by Gorgias and Socrates respectively.

It seems to me that the dialogue as a whole can be read both as a discursive treatment and at the same time an exemplification of what the difference between these ‘sorts of persuasion’ consists in. The content and the form of the dialogue go hand in hand and reinforce each other.

From Wittgenstein's Culture and Value, page 17e:

Wittgenstein was using this political language as a metaphor for Ramsey's attitude to questions in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. But what he says applies marvellously to much work, both contemporary and earlier, in political philosophy proper.

The distinction drawn is very important to me in the context of the seminar; and I want to start by considering some of its ramifications. At the same time I want to sketch two issues which are pivotal to the problems I should like this seminar to concern itself with.

What, first, did Wittgenstein have in mind in relation to mathematics? I can only guess, but my guess would be he had in mind the attitude of most philosophers of mathematics: that their problems are internal to the practice of mathematicians. Now with regard to this: Questions [that] it's natural to think of as ‘philosophical’ certainly do arise in the context of fundamental work in mathematics (and other sciences). Cf. Einstein's problems about simultaneity in connection with the Special Theory of Relativity. More strongly, probably the most interesting questions do arise in this way.

An important question is: are these questions to be put aside as settled, when the position is reached that mathematical work can continue unimpeded? or is something else required? I think it's the latter attitude that Wittgenstein had in mind when he spoke of ‘real philosophical reflection’.

An anecdote of John Wisdom's will set my scene. ‘It is, I believe, [he writes] extremely difficult to breed lions. But there was at one time at the Dublin zoo a keeper by the name of Mr. Flood who bred many lions without losing one. Asked the secret of his success, Mr. Flood replied, “Understanding lions”. Asked in what consists the understanding of lions, he replied, “Every lion is different”. It is not to be thought that Mr. Flood, in seeking to understand an individual lion, did not bring to bear his great experience with other lions. Only he remained free to see each lion for itself.’

This story neatly illustrates an enduring central concern of philosophers: how to distinguish between sophistry and sound thinking. It shows too some of the difficulties, which surround this distinction, arising out of an obscurity about the way in which our experience of general patterns of behaviour, which may be formulated in the form of laws, is related to our understanding of particular individual cases. Let me spell this out a bit. If anyone wanted an enlightening comment on a particular lion, he would clearly be better advised to go to Mr. Flood than to, say, me. Unlike me, Mr. Flood has made an intensive study of the characteristics and behaviour of lions and is in a position to make many well-founded general observations about what lions are like and how they behave. In some sense, this is the foundation of his ability to talk sense about any particular lion. If I tried to do that, I should very quickly be reduced to uttering sophistries, simply because I don't have the general knowledge and experience to support what I say.

This Chapter explains and discusses the sources for all data used to create the indicators for the EQx Rankings. First, in Chapter 5.1, we offer an overview of all individual indicators and the respective weight they are given at both the Pillar and aggregate EQx level. Second, in Chapter 5.2, we provide descriptions of all 149 indicators used (what we measure), as well as the rationale that underpins their inclusion in the EQx (why we measure).

In this course I shall be concerned with central and familiar questions raised by philosophers of politics in the ‘classical lexicon’: e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau.

My aim will not be exegesis of these authors as such, though it will in fact prove desirable to do a certain amount of exegesis from a particular point of view. But the order of my argument will not be that of any particular author; I shall follow the logical order suggested to me by the questions I shall raise and the subsidiary problems that will come up in the treatment of these.

What questions are these? Here is a sample:

• What is a human society?

• How do human beings have to be related to each other if we are to be able to say of them that they belong to a human society?

• What is the relation between society and its members?

• What is the relation between the last-mentioned relation and the previous one?

• Is our concept of a human being independent of that of a human society? What is the relation between a human society and the various kinds of institutions which may exist within it?

• What is it for a man to be a participant in a social institution?

• What is the relation between the concept of participating in an institution and that of being a member of a human society?

• What is the difference between a human society and just human society?

• What is the role of the state in a human society?

• Is it just one institution amongst others or is its role quite special?

• Can there be a human society in the absence of the state?

• What is authority? Are there different forms of authority? If so, how is political authority related to other forms?

• Where does authority fit into our answers to the other questions I’ve raised?

I want now to return to the large question I started with: the difference, and the relation, between what someone may say in characterising the ‘agreements’ which underlie a particular historical regime, such as the Hannoverian Settlement, and the ‘agreements’ thought to underlie political authority as such. It was discussion of this question which led me into consideration of Locke's use of the notion of consent and Hobbes's of Covenant.2 I started by saying that Locke's aim: ‘to understand political power right and derive it from its original’ should not be thought of as simply a (much) more general inquiry of the same sort as an inquiry into the origins of the Hannoverian Settlement. I said the two inquiries differed in ‘grammar’ – or conceptually. The intervening discussion (of Locke on tacit consent and of Hobbes on Covenant) should have given some indication of my reasons for saying this. The kinds of consideration these two writers adduced, as well as the kinds of consideration I have adduced in discussing them, are totally different from what a historian could recognise as a contribution to his inquiry. But now – how are we to characterise this difference?

[I.A.] Locke treats tacit consent as something theoretically, conceptually, required by political authority, not as something accepted on the basis of empirical evidence. Indeed, he maintains it in the face of the empirical evidence – as Hume beautifully brings out in ‘Of the Original Contract’.

[I. B. Remember that even radically innovative states have a pre-existing political and intellectual background.] We need to call to mind that, even in cases where a new state has been founded, as it were from scratch – like the USA after the War of Independence – there was still a good deal of history behind it of both a very practical political sort (there had after all been a War of Independence!) and also of an intellectual sort.

Hume's puzzlement could be expressed in the form ‘How is political authority possible?’ How should the question be construed? As empirical (sociological) or conceptual/ grammatical (philosophical)?

It may seem anachronistic to impose these distinctions on philosophers who did not think in terms of them. But many have got into difficulties through not noticing them. This is particularly true of Hobbes (as we shall see later in more detail), but Hume himself raises both sorts of question without seeing any difference between them. And anyway confusion about the distinctions is as rampant now as ever. (‘Political science’/‘political philosophy’)

The (deliberately) Kantian tone of my formulation shows clearly that it is intended as a conceptual/philosophical/‘grammatical’ one. But it also points towards the reasons why such a conceptual investigation is needed and towards the parallel between this central question in political philosophy and philosophical questions from quite other areas. The suggestion clearly is that there is some internal difficulty in the notion of political authority; that it is a concept which, as it were, claims to be something that cannot possibly exist.

Consider a parallel with the concept of memory. This presents itself, as it were, as the concept of an awareness of something past. (I confine myself for my present very limited purposes to memory as recollection of past events.) But now, it is reasoned, I can only be aware of something which is present: a past event is, ex hypothesi, not present. One may even be inclined to say it has no real existence (Augustine).

Lecture 1

Two broadly different approaches possible to this investigation:

• 1. As an exploration of philosophical questions arising out of legal and judicial practice. Here, one might say, the philosophical issues spring from inside.

• 2. As an exploration of problems which arise when we contemplate law ‘from the outside’, as an institution or as a concept.

I don't want to suggest this is a cut-and-dried distinction, but, with that qualification, my approach will be the latter; from the direction of philosophy, rather than of the law. So I shall lay much emphasis on the relation between questions in philosophy of law and politics to issues which arise elsewhere in philosophy. Furthermore, questions about the relation between the concept (institution) of law and that of the state will be central throughout. ‘Issues which arise elsewhere in philosophy.’ There is one notion, which is the locus of many, many problems in different branches of philosophy, on which a great deal of my discussion is going to hinge: that of ‘a reason for acting’.3 Let me say a bit about this by way of preliminary.

Lecture 2

I said I wanted to approach the question ‘What is law?’ from the point of view of the question: In what sense does an appeal to the law provide one with a reason for acting? I said this is closely connected with the question: What is the nature of the law's authority. It's important to recognise that there's an enormous variety of different cases; that doing something because it's the law can't always be construed in the same way, and that many cases undoubtedly can be understood somewhat on the model sketched. And the model does bring out something important: the powerful apparatus of coercion that goes with a legal system, at least in modern, centrally organised societies.

Introduction

The idea that Jesus travelled to India during the ‘lost years’ of his life that are not described in the canonical Christian Gospels has long fascinated adherents of many religions. For the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, the idea that the Prophet Jesus travelled to Kashmir, where he lived a long life, and where his body is believed by many to be buried today, is an article of faith. For at least some Hindus and Buddhists, the idea that Jesus lived in India helps to explain the many correspondences between aspects of his teachings and the teachings of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. We shall see that a prominent Jain teacher of the modern period was also captivated by this idea. Finally, with regard to Christians, the idea is particularly exciting to those who seek an alternative understanding of Jesus, beyond the dogmas of mainstream Christian orthodoxy. This chapter proposes to analyse the ‘Jesus in India’ phenomenon from a variety of perspectives.

First, what is the historical basis for claiming that Jesus could have travelled to and spent time in India? Is this claim at all plausible in light of what is known today about the ancient world in the early first century of the Common Era? Addressing this question involves looking at such issues as trade routes and other connections that linked India to the ancient Mediterranean world, the extent of the Hellenistic cultural sphere, and so on. We shall see that it is certainly possible that Jesus could have visited India, though this, of course, does not prove that he actually did so.

Secondly, we shall also discuss evidence proposed for this claim since the nineteenth century by Nicolas Notovitch, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Swami Abhedananda, and others.

• I. The roots of the problem of legitimacy in the philosophy of mind.

• II. Consent as the source of political authority. Locke.

• III. Criticism of II.

• IV. Hume: ‘They consent because they perceive him to be by birth their lawful sovereign.’ Simone Weil.

Suggested Reading

John Locke

Second Treatise on Civil Government

David Hume

Political Essays:

John Plamenatz

Simone Weil

G. E. M. Anscombe

Lecture 1: The Roots of the Problem

Hume begins his essay ‘Of the First Principles of Government’ with a famous remark which will serve to introduce the problem I want to consider in these lectures.

This remark sounds superficially as though it introduced a kind of causal question: what is the mechanism by which a certain result is brought about? As one might ask; how is it possible for a man to lift a 10-ton weight, using a suitable combination of pulleys, when he would not be able to move it by his own strength otherwise? Hume probably did think he was asking a question of this sort, thinking of himself as he did, as applying Newtonian methods of inquiry and explanation to human affairs. And of course, questions of that sort can be asked here. But reflection on the question – even reflection on the course which Hume's own discussion takes after this introduction – will show that there are issues of a different sort involved here, issues which undoubtedly belong to philosophy, rather than to what are called the ‘behavioural sciences’.

Overview

Peter Winch (1926–1997) was a British philosopher known for his contributions to the philosophy of social science, Wittgenstein scholarship, ethics, political philosophy and the philosophy of religion. He was a lecturer in philosophy at Swansea University from 1951 until 1964. In 1964, he moved to Birkbeck College, University of London, before becoming Professor of Philosophy at King's College London in 1967. In 1985, Winch moved to the United States to become Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served as president of the Aristotelian Society from 1980 to 1981 and was serving his term as Past President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association at the time of his death in 1997.

This volume collects together, for the first time, Winch's unpublished work on political philosophy. We have drawn the majority of our source material from the Peter Winch Archives at King's College London, supplemented by material from students. Winch returned to topics in and around political philosophy throughout his career and left papers that vary widely in format, including unpublished talks, typescripts for seminars, lecture course outlines, handwritten notes for his own reference and a draft of a book outline. Since it is not possible to publish all of this material, we have selected a range of indicative texts which bring out the contours of Winch's thoughts on political philosophy, their development over time, and their most recent developments when he passed away.

Political philosophy was very much a work in progress for Winch (who would perhaps have agreed with the sentiment that philosophy is always a work in progress), and had he lived to bring these writings to publication we are in no doubt that much would have been changed, both in form and content. This is a ‘what-if’ question that must, alas, remain unanswered. Our hope in presenting this material is not to provide a definitive record of Winch's work on the topic, but only to help fill out this particular, and peculiarly neglected, dimension of his thought.