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1/15/14
Hegel
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Social theory is based on scientific data/evidence; philosophy does not require evidence
Context
o Enlightenment (Hegel, Kang-German Idealism)
 German Idealism- all of reality & turning it into a dichotomy
 Split up metaphysics (beyond nature & nature)
 Kant Noumenal- beyond empiricism
 Phenomenal Reason comes first for an Enlightenment thinker (set beginning of 18 th century)
o Scientific Revolution
o Protestant Reformation
 Germany was the site where this started
o Anti-Enlightenment Thinkers
 Arthur Schobenhower (sp?)- teacher at the University of Berlin
 Hegel’s “nemesis”
 Part of a group influenced by Buddhist philosophy
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
o Left Hegelians- form of Hegel’s philosophy but reject the content
 Kept the dialectic
o Right Hegelians- kept content of Hegel’s philosophy but reject the form
o I
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The Idea of Freedom
 Matter vs
...
Independent Consciousness
 Subject/Object Divide
 “Master/Slave dialectic
o Hegel’s concept of history is teleological (something that is inevitable)
 Marx also has this
 Calvin also has this w/ the notion of predestination
 Free will is an illusion and everything is predetermined
 “The Idea”
 The whole of everything, the totality of reality realized
o Realized- exists in some form of thought; something intangible/flexible
 Always will change
o Actualized- phenomenal world; moving from idea to form; actual
matter; material
 The unfolding of history is the clash between spirit & matter
o The closer we come to the end of history,
 We will come to a point where “The Idea” is no longer
changeable; it becomes absolute
 No more dualism
 Society is perfect
 By idea, he means the will of God
o Freedom comes from logic & reason; get rid of emotion
o Schobenhower: getting rid of desire is the key to happiness; emotion is the only thing that is real
The dialectic
o Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis

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Thesis- Aufhebeh
Thesis & Antithesis combine to destroy each other/ cancel each other out
 Think Cold War mutually assured destruction
o A linear model of historical progression going towards an end goal—utopia
 Contradicts the idea that history always repeats itself
o Matter & spirit are contradictory
 Spirit in its pure form is pure reasonpure reason is freedom
Object/subject divide
o Independent & dependent consciousness
o The perceiver vs
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The dialectic for Marx

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o
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No spirit, no idea, no perfection
Not about an idea & its contradiction
Sees thesis & antithesis as coparcenary (2 people locked in deadly battle, but they depend on
each other)
 They need each other to exist
 Will combine & destroy each other
 Sees himself as doing science, not philosophy
 Philosophy requires only rational theory & then forcing those categories onto
the natural world
 Social theory requires science
o Marx sees himself as going to the world first, gathering data, & then
forcing his model to conform to the data
Exploitation: putting more into a system then you’re getting out
o Wages & profits are intimately connected
 Wages go up & profits go down
 Wages go down & profits go up
o Source of all value: labor
 i
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diamond underground is worthless
 The vast amounts of profit & wealth owned by corporate enterprise is generated by the
workers themselves
o Relationship of exploitation (?) leads to dehumanization of workers themselves
 Species-being: what does it mean to be human?
 Homo faber- “human to make something/to be engaged in some kind of labor/
human the laborer”
o Separation from that connection to the broader human self(?)
o 4 basic types of alienation (not created by Marx himself) [division of
labor]
 Alienation from self
 To make oneself fundamentally “other”; one’s self
no longer belongs to one
o Selling labor for someone else’s profits
 Names: what someone did was a fundamental part
of who someone was
 Alienation from fellows
 Economy is about collective endeavors
 Capitalism is an economic system based on
competition
 Adam Smith- major economist of the 18th century
o “Wealth of Nations”
o 1st to articulate the rational division of labor
w/in a productive unit
o Each personal only does 1 small step
(deskilling of labor; loss of knowledge)
o Mass production- Release the fetters on
productive endeavors/end of scarcity
 Marx thinks that surplus is
dangerous
o Invisible hand- thinks that the economy will
run itself
 Marx disagrees
 Competition enters into relationships between
people who would normally work together

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Alienation from Product
 Ownership over the product a laborer creates is lost
 No more connection to the finished product
 Alienation from nature
 I
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kids not being able to identify actual food but
they could identify the food products
 Natural products altered by human labor
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restrooms in nature preserves
Homo sapiens- “wise human”
1/27/14

Karl Marx 1818-1883
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Capital & Value
o Use-value: the utility of something; how much use you can get out of something; how long does
it take to extract all possible value out of a commodity (hammer example)
 The extraction of use-value is always destructive
 Translates value from 1 commodity to another
o Cumulative process; builds over time
 Value- relative to a time period/culture/within a society; highly porous/highly fluid/ very
susceptible to change
 Price- symbolically represents value, not a statement of value itself
o Exchange value- most relative; the value of any given commodity compared with the value of all
other commodities in the market place
 Price is a symbolic representation of exchange value (also relative); [bottle example]
 In changing social context; price changes but the use-value does not change
o All commodities are ultimately connected with other commodities in
an economy
 i
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if the power of a dollar falls, then values go up (even if the
price tag itself has not changed)
o Surplus value- (can be compared to profits) how much value has been put into a commodity
through labor, then exchanged on the open market, and the exchange fees add value to the
commodity
 All value comes from labor; surplus value=anything over the cost of labor + tools of
labor
o Commodities- (for Marx) everything is ultimately a commodity; everything has a use-value; items
that can be used as tools for the desires/needs of humans
 All commodities are ultimately created/recreated in terms of social products [dirt
example]
 For something to be a commodity, it has to be a social product
o Everything in nature is prior
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Wages are price
...
e
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e
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e
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Has to be a perceiver
o “Cogito ergo sum”- I think therefore I am
2
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e
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org
Karl Marx 1818-1883
I
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Material vs
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An overall increase in the material position of workers
1
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Decrease in social position of worker
1
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Assumes that b/c profits increase, wages increase

II
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IV
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Based on an understanding of bourgeoisie classes as feudal
lords
1
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e
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State of Nature/War
i
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Everyone vs
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weak
a
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Bonding together against the strong creates civilization
c
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Marx rejects this: The very notion of individuality comes from society itself; but the very
idea that an individual creating language & society in the middle of nothing is absurd
1
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An individual cannot exist before the idea of society exists
3
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Each new thesis contains its own antithesis—each revolution of the
means of production contains the seeds of its own destruction leading
to new revolutions
Political Economy
a
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Politics & economics are intimately connected
1
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i
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minimum wage laws, laws against loitering, laws against
panhandling have to work, don’t have a choice
ii
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At one point in time, currency was based on something material; now money
has value b/c we say some so; it now has value as social product itself b/c all
believe in it
a
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Capital is an amount of money used to invest in other things
i
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Private Property- the appropriation of nature (fundamentally economic)
i
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“Capital”-The very word itself is a reference to a feudal king
ii
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Labor creates ownershipit’s the proletariat who should own the products of
labor
iii
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Private property w/ the labor of others
2
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Maintain & consecrate property into smaller & smaller
handsincreases the static nature of class structures
iv
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V
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False Consciousness- the situation where members of the proletariat identify with
members of the bourgeoisie
1
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Class consciousness-realizing the connection with your situation & people in the same
situation
b
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All social systems necessarily contain the seeds of their own destruction
ii
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Not being able to purchase the very things a worker is creating
1
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Capital itself puts a limit on production
1
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Flooding the food market would cause the market to bottom out
c
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There will always be workers to take your place
ii
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In full employment, equals about 5% of the population, maintaining an emergency
labor force
1
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Powerful ideological threat
Capital Accumulation (in advanced capital; nascent capitalism is based on a money economy before
getting the accumulated labor moving to a large mass, the technological innovation from the industrial
revolution leading to advanced capital)
a
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The basic formula for capital gains among the bourgeoisie/consumption of the
proletariat
1
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Typically results in an increase in money
b
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Consumption on the part of the proletariat
1
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M’=M+ΔM
i
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Capital itself (or surplus labor) equals the Initial Investment plus the Change in
Initial Investment
d
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How advanced capital/labor ends up accruing
1
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Capital equals constant capital plus variable capital plus the investment
a
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Money is for consumption, capital is for investment
2/10/14

Last Bit of Marx
I
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In this case, any sacred object is a fetish
i
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i
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In buying a commodity (i
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a sports car) will suddenly make someone younger
c
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Capitalism- economic system
i
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Mercantilism- old economic theory in the Middle Ages; all wealth in the world is based on natural
resourcesall wealth is fixed, if you want to get wealth you need to leave places
c
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Communism- a political theory (closest to anarchy) where there is no strict form of government
& where eventually the work will be done by technology; enough food will be produced to feed
everyone; the government won’t be needed anymore
i
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Max Weber 1864-1920
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I
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Thinks that
people generally act rationally unless duped into acting a way by their ideology
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(social, tradition, rational, & emotion)
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Views culture as more important than
Marx viewed it
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Typesi
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e
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(The newest) Only develop in modernism
a
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Modern- comes out of the ____ in the 16th century & the
Enlightenment of the 18th century; birth of legal rational

c
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Traditional- traditionally thinking of patriarchy; specifically thinking of formal
organizations under feudalism that have a male leader
iii
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Authority is seen as being actually in that person
2
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Belief by followers gives the authority
3
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Religiously
i
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Military feats
i
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Charismatic authority is throughout military history
1
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Vlad the Impaler
c
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All authority comes from the followers, however following
the authority is seen as a duty of the followers
1
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Charismatic authority must constantly be proven
1
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Napoleon Bonopart
b
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Once the charismatic leader dies, the group typically breaks
up
1
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Routinized charisma- charismatic authority being
passed through generations in a traditional-rational
manner with a reference to the original charismatic
authority
a
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Can exist in either charismatic authority &
legal rational forms
4
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i
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Henry VII rejecting the Catholic church
5
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Charismatic justice- whimsical, no set clear-cut rules, no consistant
pronouncement for certain crimes, & “crimes” won’t even be the same each
time

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III
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V
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Mana- word talking about the power of a leader; reference to the amount of
power that someone imbued with charisma has
a
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Legitimation- if an authority is legitimated, then people believe in it;
Class- Weber argues that it’s only a 1 sided view if you break up a society only by classes; he argues that
it’s by class, status, & parties; simply given a model to determine class location based on access to
resources & _____
a
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Types of Social Action
i
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Communal- action based on shared collective identity (social/emotional)
(status groups are communities; classes are not)
2
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Weber argues that the rising of the proletariat that Marx calls for, requires for
communal action that doesn’t exist across classes
1
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Status- The emotion or respect that someone is afforded
i
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(Class is economic; status is respect)
Status (a way of stratifying privilege; privilege is granted)
a
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Usurpation of Status-Honor
i
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Forming a group to gain status—Weber questions this
2
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If you cloak yourself in the image of prestige gives the prestige
i
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Ethnicity & caste- develops out of status differentials socially concentrated, strict power
boundaries
i
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House of Power- “parties live in the House of Power”
i
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Parties very rarely are based purely on class identification
1
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Can appear to be irrational or reactionarydon’t have a clear &
collective message
i
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The contradictory messages we hear coming out of parties is
due to the diverse members
Domination Methods
a
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Rational Cultivation

ii
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II
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IV
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Discipline- the conformity of one’s thoughts & actions to an externalized set of rules
i
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Conforming to ideological interpretations to how the world should work
1
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In Legal-rational, the kind of discipline we have is rational
1
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e
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Overall move toward uniformity
a
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The rules that an individual is held to are based on context
3
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e
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b
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Duty of Ethics
Origins of Discipline
a
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Weber on Authority
i
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Ex
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Instability



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