Study questions

Social and Political Philosophy II: PHIL 244
Lecturer: Sandy Berkovski

Bilkent University
Fall 2025

Contents

1  Introduction: St Paul

1. What is the source of political authority?
2. Can there be a legitimate disobedience of the (political) authority?
3. Why should we obey the political authority?
4. What is the main principle of Law?

2  Hobbes

I

1. According to Hobbes, what is the origin of all conceptions in a man's mind?
2. Why does Hobbes argue that colors and sounds are not in the bodies that cause them?
3. According to Hobbes, what is the main doctrine taught by the "philosophy-schools" regarding the cause of vision, hearing, and understanding

II

1. How does Hobbes define "imagination," and how does it relate to ßense"?
2. What does Hobbes mean by "decaying sense"?
3. According to Hobbes, what is the connection between "superstitious fear of spirits" and "civil obedience"?
4. Hobbes argues that the "religion of the Gentiles" and the belief in fairies and ghosts arose from what specific human ignorance?
5. What specific group of people does Hobbes accuse of using superstitious fear to "abuse the simple people" and keep "in credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water, and other such inventions"?
6. How does Hobbes suggest that universities (the "schools") handle these superstitious doctrines, and how should they handle them instead?

III

1. What is the role of prudence in the train of imaginations, and how does it relate to anticipating the future?
2. Can we conceive God? How?

IV

1. What are the two primary uses of speech, according to Hobbes?
2. How does Hobbes describe the relationship between speech, reason, and science? What role do "definitions" play in this process?
3. Hobbes identifies four abuses of speech. What are they?
4. What does Hobbes mean by "insignificant names"? Provide one example from the text.

VI

1. What are the two concepts of motion identified by Hobbes?
2. What is the notion of endeavor?
3. What is love?
4. What is pleasure?
5. What is the concept of good?
6. What is the concept of will? How is it related to deliberation?
7. What is happiness?

X

1. What is the concept of power?
2. What are the manifestations of power?

XI

1. What is the governing factor of human behaviour, according to Hobbes?
2. What do people obey others?
3. Can people love virtue? Why? How?
4. Why do people trust others?
5. Why do people embrace traditions?
6. What is the link between ignorance and social disturbances?

XII

1. What is the primary cause of mankind's inclination to believe in invisible powers and create their own religions?
2. How should we distinguish between the acknowledgment of one God and the creation of many gods by men?
3. What is the connection between the religion of the Gentiles and their politics?
4. What is the relationship between supernatural revelation and natural reason?
5. How did political leaders have historically use religion to maintain power and control over their subjects?

XIII

1. What is the meaning of equality in the state of nature?
2. How does diffidence cause conflict in the state of nature?
3. What are other sources of conflict?
4. What is the definition of war?
5. Why should war be avoided?
6. What does Hobbes mean to prove by showing that we do not normally trust each other?
7. Is there justice in the state of nature?
8. What is the main reason for preferring peace over war?

XIV

1. What is the difference between the law of nature and the right of nature?
2. Formulate the first law of nature. What is its justification?
3. How does the second law of nature follow from the first law of nature?
4. How is morality related to right of nature?
5. What kind of rights can never be given up? What is the significance of this fact?
6. What kind of a contract is covenant?
7. Are there valid covenants in the state of nature? Why?
8. Is there morality in the state of nature?

XV

1. Formulate the law of justice.
2. Is it rational to be just?
3. How does the distinction between injustice in manners and injustice in actions help to explain the obligations in foro interno and in foro externo?
4. How does the distinction between commutative and distributive justice help to explain the difference between justice and equity?
5. Formulate the law of gratitude. What is the difference between the duty of justice and the duty of gratitude?
6. Formulate and explain the law of compleasance.
7. What is the relation between morality and laws of nature?

XVII

1. What are the parties of the political covenant?
2. How does the picture on the frontispiece help to illustrate the political covenant?

XVIII

1. Name and explain any two rights of the sovereign.
2. Does Hobbes advocate political censorship?
3. How does Hobbes justify obedience to the sovereign even when the sovereign is a tyrant?

XX

1. What is the source of paternal authority?

XXI

1. What is the concept of freedom (liberty)?
2. What kind of freedom can the subjects enjoy in a political society?
3. Can the sovereign be unjust to his subjects? Discuss with reference to the David and Uriah story.
4. Can the subjects legitimately disobey the sovereign?
5. Do the subjects have the right to avoid military draft or desert the army?
6. Do the subjects have the right to pursue a rebellion against the sovereign?
7. What is the significance of the silence of the law?

XXIV

1. Should the Hobbesian citizen enjoy the protection of property rights?

XXV

1. What is the difference between counsel and command?

XXVI

1. What is a civil law?
2. What is the difference between counsel and command?
3. Why is the sovereign not subject to civil laws?
4. What is the relation between civil laws and laws of nature? Explain with the aid of an example.
5. What does Hobbes mean when he says that unwritten laws are laws of nature?
6. What is the significance of the claim that every law requires interpretation? What is the special difficulty in interpreting laws of nature?
7. What is the fundamental law of the political society?

XXVIII

1. Isolate different elements in Hobbes' definition of punishment.
2. What is the basis of legitimacy of the punishment inflicted on the citizens by the state?
3. How is punishment different from revenge?
4. How to determine the legitimate pain inflicted by punishment?
5. Can death penalty be a legitimate form of punishment?

XXIX

1. Name and explain any two reasons of the collapse of the political society.

XXX

1. What is the "office" and the "obligation" of the sovereign? Does this contradict the claim that the sovereign has no obligations to the citizens?
2. What is the ground of that office?
3. Why should citizens be educated in legal and political philosophy?
4. Can simple people be successfully educated in legal and political philosophy (or only the members of the intellectual elite)?
5. What kind of facts should citizens learn in the course of their political education?
6. Should the citizens' obedience be sincere?
7. Why should the sovereign rule with equity?
8. What is the difference between just laws and good laws?

XXXI

1. Who can become a subject in the kingdom of God?
2. How to become a subject in the kingdom of God?
3. What is the natural kingdom of God?
4. What are the sources of God's sovereignty?
5. What is the reason for worshipping God?
6. Who determines the forms of worship?

XXXII

1. Can prophecy defeat reason?
2. How can we know whether a particular man is a prophet?
3. What is the political consequence(s) of the cessation of miracles?

XXXIII

1. How does reason help us to interpret the Scriptures?

XXXV

1. What is the notion of the Kingdom of God in the Scriptures?
2. How does this notion help us explain the case of David and Uriah?

XLI

1. Is there a contradiction between the teachings of Jesus and the political duties of the citizens, say, Roman citizens? Why?

XLIII

1. Does the citizen's Christian faith have any effect on his political obligations? Why?

XLV

1. How does paganism interfere with the political obligations of the citizens?

XLVI

1. What are the sources of the "kingdom of darkness"? Name and discuss two or three such sources.

3  Mill, Utilitarianism

II

1. According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, what is the fundamental measure used to determine if an action is right or wrong?
2. How does Mill define "happiness" and "unhappiness" within the context of utilitarianism?
3. Mill refutes the common "ignorant blunder" that opposes utility to pleasure. What's this blunder?
4. In evaluating pleasures, what distinction, beyond mere quantity (amount), is recognized as compatible with the principle of utility?
5. What is the sole standard or test for determining which of two pleasures is superior in quality?
6. When individuals of higher faculties are seemingly less satisfied with their lot than those of lower capacities, what two concepts does Mill argue are being confused by those who object to the utilitarian standard?
7. What two main constituents (one passive, one active) does Mill identify as being often sufficient, either by itself, to constitute a satisfied life, thereby countering the argument that happiness is unattainable?
8. Mill notes that next to selfishness, what condition is the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory, because it cuts off sources of inexhaustible interest?
9. What specific Golden Rule is stated by Mill to embody the "ideal perfection of utilitarian morality"?
10. Utilitarianism acknowledges the nobility of self-sacrifice. According to the doctrine, for what only end is the resignation of individual happiness considered a contribution worthy of applause?
11. How does utilitarian morality regard a self-sacrifice that does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness?
12. In defining the morality of an action, Mill emphasizes the distinction between motive and intention. What does he state is irrelevant to the morality (rightness or wrongness) of the action, although highly relevant to the worth of the agent?
13. Why is a utilitarian agent, in the great majority of good actions, typically not required to calculate the effects of their conduct on the general happiness of the world?
14. How does Mill require the utilitarian agent to act when mediating between his or her own happiness and that of others?
15. In response to the objection that utilitarianism makes men cold and unsympathizing because they regard only the consequences of actions, how does Mill respond regarding the evaluation of actions versus the evaluation of persons?
16. When critics accuse utilitarianism of being a doctrine of "Expediency" that opposes "Principle," how does Mill clarify that true utilitarianism distinguishes between the two?
17. When arguing against the claim that there is not enough time to calculate consequences before every action, what does Mill state is the source of the secondary or subordinate moral principles that guide everyday conduct?
18. What comparison does Mill use to illustrate that acknowledging the ultimate principle of utility is not inconsistent with the admission of secondary moral rules?
19. What function does the first principle of utility serve when secondary moral principles come into conflict with one another, creating a case of conflicting obligations?
20. What status does Mill assign to the corollaries (secondary rules) derived from the principle of utility concerning their relationship to the progress of the human mind?
21. In the context of the moral rule concerning veracity (truthfulness), when does Mill admit that this sacred rule allows for possible exceptions?
22. Mill argues that the rigidity of moral laws must be tempered by latitude for accommodation to circumstances. Under every creed, what negative outcomes can enter through this opening made for exceptions?
23. What superior function utilitarianism provides in cases of conflicting obligation (e.g., when two secondary rules clash), which systems based on independent moral laws lack?
24. In the case of abstinences (=things people forbear to do from moral considerations), what must the intelligent utilitarian agent be consciously aware of as the underlying reason for the obligation?

V

1. What is identified as one of the strongest obstacles to the acceptance of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the ultimate criterion of right and wrong?
2. Mill argues that while the objective dictates of justice coincide with general expediency, the subjective feeling associated with Justice is far more imperative. Why is it essential to examine whether this subjective sentiment is sui generis (=primitive, in a class of its own) or derivative?
3. In surveying the common meanings of justice, what is the perfectly definite sense of the term related to respecting or violating legal rights?
4. What constitutes the clearest and most emphatic form in which the idea of injustice is conceived by the general mind regarding desert?
5. What specific obligation of justice is defined as being exclusively influenced by the relevant considerations for the case in hand, resisting the solicitation of irrelevant motives?
6. Mill argues that the idea of penal sanction enters into the notion of all wrong conduct. What, therefore, is the characteristic difference that marks off morality in general from the remaining provinces of Expediency and Worthiness?
7. Ethical writers divide moral duties into duties of perfect and imperfect obligation. How do philosophic jurists define duties of "perfect" obligation based on the concept of a correlative right?
8. What specific feature constitutes the difference between justice, which implies a right, and virtues like generosity or beneficence, which do not?
9. According to Mill, the sentiment of justice is composed of the natural feeling of retaliation or vengeance combined with an enlargement of sympathy and intelligent self-interest. What specific element is responsible for providing the morality of this sentiment?
10. When we call anything a person's "right", what claim are we asserting that the person has on society?
11. If someone asks why society ought to defend a person in the possession of their right, what ultimate reason does Mill provide?
12. The intense feeling of obligation attached to Justice is derived from its concern with the interest of "security". How does Mill argue that the difference in degree between this interest and ordinary expediency becomes a real difference in kind?
13. In addressing the question of conflicting conceptions of justice, what specific "fiction of a contract" was invented by men to legitimate the infliction of punishment?
14. What principle, strongly appealing to the primitive and spontaneous sentiment of justice, dictates the proper apportionment of punishment as "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"?
15. In a co-operative industrial association, conflicts arise regarding whether superior talent should merit greater pay. What two irreconcilable sides of justice do the disputants choose when arguing this point?
16. Regarding the distribution of taxation, which principle of justice-that protection of law and government is afforded to and equally required by all-is widely rejected because it conflicts strongly with feelings of humanity and social expediency?
17. Mill notes that those who base justice on simple introspection find the "internal oracle" ambiguous. How does utilitarianism resolve the difficulties that arise when secondary moral laws, claiming independent authority, come into conflict?
18. What is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice towards which all institutions should converge, which rests upon the meaning of the Greatest Happiness Principle?
19. According to Mill, the entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions by which customs or institutions that were once primary necessities have passed into the rank of what?
20. Justice is considered the "chief part, and incomparably the most sacred and binding part" of all morality. What makes the rules of justice so absolute in obligation compared to other rules for the guidance of life?

4  Mill, On Liberty

II

1. Does Mill accept the society's authority in regulating free speech?
2. Why can't the society limit the dissident opinion if it is convinced in its falsity?
3. What is the danger of consensus?
4. Does the society have a duty of protecting itself from false views?
5. What, according to Mill, is the way of forming true beliefs?
6. Does free discussion have an intrinsic value, according to Mill?
7. What claim should the examples of Socrates and Jesus illustrate?
8. What does the example of Marcus Aurelius illustrate?
9. How, according to Mill, can knowledge be achieved? What are the implications for the freedom of speech? (37)
10. Should freedom of speech be practised only among the elite? (38)
11. What is the condition of "partial truth"? (45)
12. What does the example of Rousseau illustrate? (46)
13. Why does Mill claim that conservatism and reformism are both necessary ingredients of political life? (47)
14. How does Mill argue that there can be no complete, infallible moral system? (48)
15. What are the principles of civility in public debates? (53)

IV

1. What are the two principal duties of people in a society? (73)
2. Is Mill's view guilty of indifference to others? (74)
3. Why should every person have authority in determining his conduct? (74)
4. What kind of acts are the proper objects of punishment? (76)
5. Are there duties to oneself, in addition to duties to others? (76-77)
6. Formulate the argument that every part of one's conduct may properly be regulated by others. (78)
7. How does Mill respond to this argument? (81)
8. Should certain practices like pork consumption be disallowed on the grounds that they offend sensibilities of others? (83)
9. Is taxation a just arrangement, according to Mill? (85-86)
10. Should we be tolerant of polygamy? (89-90)

5  Hume

1. How can moral judgement depend both on reason and sentiment?

6  Kant

1. What is the nature of freedom?
2. What is the relation between morality and freedom?

7  Nietzsche

1. What is the philosophical failure of the "English psychologists"?
2. How did the plebeian stock usurp the meaning of "good"?

8  Hegel

1. What is the notion of Spirit?
2. What is the role of Spirit in history?
3. What is the role of freedom in world history?
4. What are subjective causes of human action?
5. What is the point (justification) of misfortunes we observe in history?
6. What is the relation between goals (passions) of individual people and the goal of world history?
7. Who are the world-historical individuals?
8. What is the Cunning of Reason?
9. What is the source of people's dissatisfaction in political conditions?
10. What is the role of God in historical development?
11. What is the ethical life of the state?

9  Marx

1. Explain the concept of the alienation of labour. Give a couple of examples.
2. Why does Marx claim that man is only acting freely in fulfilling his animal instincts?
3. In what sense is man alienated from his species?
4. In what sense is man alienated from his fellow men?
5. What is the origin of the division of labour?
6. What are the contradictions created by the division of labour?
7. How does the division of labour lead to alienation?
8. What, historically, are the different forms of ownership?
9. How is Marx's conception of history different from Hegel's?
10. Why do communists propose abolition of private property?
11. Why do communists propose abolition of traditional family?
12. Why do communists propose abolition of national states?

10  Weber

History, sociology, and the state (32-58)

1. What is a common feature of political organizations?
2. What are three different ways of legitimating political authority?
3. What is a sense of political vocation?
4. What are the two prerequisites for the continuing maintenance of political rule?
5. What are the two different possible relations between the ruler and material resources?
6. What is Weber's definition of the modern state?
7. What is the class of `professional politicians'?
8. How is it distinct from the class of part-time politicians?
9. What are the economic conditions for a person to live 'for politics'?
10. How does a plutocrat live `from politics'? How is he different, in this regard, from a paid official?
11. How does the presence of professional bureaucracy alter the political debate in a state?
12. What are the emotional sanctions of modern bureaucracy?
13. What is the role of the division of labour in the emergence of bureaucracy?
14. How did the rulers gradually lose any specific expertise?
15. What influence did the parliamentary system have on the change of government structures?
16. What are the social origins of professional politicians that have emerged in the past?
17. Why have the lawyers become prominent in the political life of a democratic society?
18. What is the role of impartiality and responsibility in the political leader's activity?
19. What is the significance of the class of journalists in the democratic society?
20. How does Weber characterise the class of party officials?

Ethics and politics (76-92)

1. What are the three necessary qualities of a good politician?
2. What are the two deadly sins of a politician?
3. What is the point that the example of unfaithful husband is supposed to illustrate?
4. What are the dangers of immersion in the past?
5. What is the ethics of conviction?
6. How is the ethics of conviction different from the ethics of responsibility?
7. What are the possible parallels between the ethics of responsibility and utilitarianism?
8. Why does Weber describe politics as a pact with the devil?
9. Can the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility be harmonised?
10. Does Weber advocate Realpolitik as as a political ideology?

Charismatic leadership (Economy and Society)

1. According to Weber, what is charismatic leadership?
2. Can political success be the basis of charismatic authority? from legal-rational authority, according to Weber?
3. According to Weber, how does charismatic leadership arise?
4. How does charismatic authority relate to social and political change, according to Weber?
5. Weber argues that charismatic authority is not sustainable in the long term. What factors contribute to the decline of charismatic leadership?
6. How does Weber explain the relationship between charisma and routinization?
7. In Weber's theory, what is the role of followers in sustaining charismatic leadership?
8. How does Weber's theory of charismatic leadership contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of power and authority in society?