Intro. to Social and Political Philosophy-Penn State Spring 2017: Machiavelli in America

Lecture One: Preliminary

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

Lecture #1: Preliminary Remarks (1-17-17)

I have been asked to teach this introductory course in social and political philosophy. Please allow me to say that the race has been won; the game is set as in the the Two Towers of J.R.R. Tolkien, the eye is now fully awake and history has run its course.

We now stand at the opening--januarius---of a “new” year---but what is new I ask you? As Ecclesiastes so well stated: “There is no new thing under the sun!”

Our task is the same ---my goal is your goal and your goal is my goal---we are to begin learning and to begin understanding better the actual, concrete world(s) each of us dwells in.

So where to begin? We find ourselves here and now---Willard Hall room 370---this classroom, this university, this association, and this epoch! It is 2017 in the land of plenty! We shall gaze like perch’d birds high aloft over the centuries. And there I see Franklin as a young man standing on the wharf or on Market Street in Philadelphia. I also see Dostoevsky toiling into the late hours, madly intoxicated with philosophy in St. Petersburg at the time of the czars. Now, I see Socrates sitting on his deathbed a day or two before his mortal coil unwound, speaking with his student Crito concerning honor and purity. It is 399 years before the messiah was born in the tribe of Judah.

2500 years have past and here we stand! By the grace of God, in the words of Elton John, “I’m still standing...yeah, yeah, yeah.” I’m standing before this class on the third floor of Willard Hall---made famous by the “Willard Preacher---Gary!”

Now that we are present---notice how all of the present(s) line up and are present in this present. In this very day, at this very hour classes are beginning ---each teacher and each student is facing the present of this first day of class. Not only here in the Happy Valley, but also in Moscow and in San Fransisco! While we toil away at our academic work also note that the Gaza Strip yet bursts into flames and in Aleppo, children shriek and starve. Meanwhile Donald Trump prepares his government---will it be fair? I tell you this: for better or for worse. in any case, it will be!

This is the end of my prefatory remark. Now let us turn to the task at hand---our pedagogical effort to begin learning social and political philosophy in the year of our Lord 2017!

The university has once again invested me with the task of instructing and practicing philosophy with bright and eager young minds. I am once more humbled at the audacious prospect of envisioning mankind’s political activity in a survey of 2500 years.

The scope of this course---set your eyes with me---our task is the same----my goal is your goal---for we are about to begin to learn and to understand our actual, concrete standing in this real world as well as to envision a historical survey of the other concrete and actual worlds of social and political philosophy that have fallen in the dust. They have come to being, to stand there and to pass away again. We will employ the great thinkers like crutches, if possible to lift our sight from this day to the height of the gaze of the shoulders of giants: There stands Plato, and Dostoevsky! Aristotle, Ghandi, Rousseau and Marx. Perhaps from this height we might better grasp the breadth and height of our own stature---the measure of our own humanity.