Part 2 of this essay can be found here.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
Mary Wollstonecraft was without a doubt, a woman before her time. Mary Wollstonecraft was a female intellectual and crusader for women rights in the 18th century, a period when Europe severely scorned both. It wasn’t till the 20th century (and only after World War 2 at that) that her ideas would begin to have a major impact. Those ideas, having made their impact in the developed West in the 20th century, continue to have an impact in the 21st century in the developing world including Nigeria. Because of these developments, she is widely considered as the founder of the feminist movement.
The work she is best known for is titled Vindication of the Rights of Woman published in 1792. The text, to put it mildly was radical for its time. In the main, it argues for the education of women and for gender equality. The main reason it asked for the education of women was that education would end the subjugation and dependence of women on men. Vindication of the Rights of Woman truly swam against the currents of its time. It made the above arguments at a time when women had few legal rights, were excluded from public life, constrained by social norms and conventions from entering most careers, and given little education beyond what was needed for managing domestic affairs.
Mary Wollstonecraft would write another best-seller titled Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790. It sold out in three weeks. In it she lauded what history has come to regard as the Protestant ethic: the virtues of hard work, frugality, modesty and self-discipline. She also championed Enlightenment ideals like reason, progress and liberty.
Unfortunately, Mary Wollstonecraft would pass way at the awfully young age of 38 from the complications of childbirth. She had only just gotten married in the last year of her life. Her daughter would grow up to become Mary Shelley, the famous author who would pen the all-time horror classic Frankenstein, at the tender age of 18. It is sad that Mary Wollstonecraft didn’t live to see her daughter arguably achieve greater renown than herself.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
There is possibly no greater personification of the Enlightenment, that era in the 18th century celebrated for its achievements riding on the back of reason, than Immanuel Kant, having giving the movement its name. Like all Enlightenment philosophers, Immanuel Kant believed in, and was committed to freedom, open government and individual rights.
He believed that he should be free to use his reason to enlighten the public and openly criticize established powers but fell short of endorsing revolution, even in the face of tyrannical and oppressive government. In this last point he differed from John Locke, whom we met in part 2. Locke believed that subjects are released from their obligation to obey once the powers that be breach the social contract.
Kant believed that revolution was never justified under any circumstances because rebellion was destructive of the legal order. He however, also believed that no government was above moral law and therefore it must act in a manner consistent with moral law. He believed morality derived from reason, which he believed every rational person possessed thus making morality universally accessible and leaving no one with an excuse for not acting morally.
In terms of political arrangements, Kant favored a limited constitutional state where political power is regulated by laws consistent with morality and where the civil rights of persons are protected from the arbitrary exercise of power, including that of the ‘great unthinking mass’ of people. By this last statement, we understand Kant to be critical of direct, participatory democracy as practiced in ancient Greece, which he likened to despotism. He much more preferred a representative democracy as is commonly practiced today.
In an extraordinary feat of farsightedness, Kant proposed that all nations unite in a world federation committed to perpetual peace, an idea that was embodied with the creation of the United Nations (UN). His ideas and works in contemporary times also play a key role in the shaping of international law and multilateral agreements.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Thomas Paine is in many ways the antithesis to Immanuel Kant whom we discussed above. Where Kant would not condone revolution under any circumstances, Thomas Paine made his name on the back of two revolutions; the American revolution that led to its independence from Britain in 1776 and the French revolution that got underway in 1789.
Thomas Paine arrived in America from England in 1774 virtually unknown. He arrived with very strong ideas about the inherent corruption of the monarchy system and that America should break completely from Britain and found a new republic where the people are sovereign. Shortly after the revolution got underway, Paine penned a powerful pamphlet called Common Sense that turned him to an overnight sensation.
It is impossible to exaggerate the impact of Common Sense. It is reputed to have sold about 500,000 copies at a time when America’s population was 2.5 million. In it, he would push ideas with force and clarity, urging the American revolutionaries to strive for the universal principles of freedom, equality and democracy. His pamphlet on the French Revolution, The Rights of Man sold in even greater numbers than Common Sense.
At the core of both pamphlets is Paine’s belief that the only legitimate basis of sovereignty is the people, thus rendering monarchy and aristocracy to be illegitimate forms of government. He also believed in the principle of natural rights and considered it a yardstick against which to determine the legitimacy of any government.
Paine also believed in the civilizing influence of commerce. He believed in the power of well-regulated markets to harmonize competing interests, integrate society and promote human well-being.
Paine like Kant would also show himself to be impressively farsighted, in his case favoring a system of taxation to limit inequalities of wealth and to fund public welfare, social insurance, free public education for the poor and pensions for the elderly; ideas whose time would not come until the 20th century and continue to have a huge impact in the 21st, in increasing parts of the globe.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Friedrich Hegel was a philosopher of astonishing scope who aspired to explain everything from Newtonian mechanics to modern politics. It probably won’t be surprising then to know that his theory of politics was all-encompassing, embracing everything from the family, morality and custom to the market, law and government.
Given the all-encompassing nature of his theories, it is rather strange that he is remembered more for his philosophical method called the “dialectic”, than for any other the theories that this method produced. In fact, it would seem that the greatest effect of the dialectic was the effect it had on the young Karl Marx who considered himself a Hegelian in his youth. Marx would eventually make the dialectic to the school of thought that he eventually built that bears his name.
Having spent all this time on the dialectic, it behooves us to spend some time getting acquainted with it. Essentially, the dialectic involves the reconciliation at a higher level, of two ideas which at a lower level seem to be in conflict.
Despite the relative non-impact of Hegel’s theories, he did make important contributions to the theory of natural rights in the form of a critique. He criticized natural rights theorists for talking about individuals and their rights in the abstract, independent of their social context. The problem he saw with this was that moral ideals and legal rights that are not embedded in local customs and habits tend to be perceived as alien and have little or no bearing on actual behavior.
This does not mean however, that Hegel accepted tradition and custom for tradition and custom’s sake. He believed that we should seek what is rational in our traditions and customs, and that we may have to dispense with the parts of our traditions and customs that are not rational, particularly if they are constituting a stumbling block to future progress.
James Madison (1751-1836)
American founding father and later President, James Madison is recorded by history to be the ‘Father of American Constitution’. In preparation for his role of prime architect of that great document, he read about 197 books on ancient and modern federal republics, many of them by ancient Greek and Roman authors.
One book though, probably stands taller than the rest and that is Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu from which he borrowed the concept of the ‘Separation of Powers’ and enshrined it in the American constitution. Readers are no doubt familiar with this concept, where government is divided into the three branches of the executive, legislative and the judiciary, each with its own powers to check and balance the powers of the other branches. Thus any nation whose constitution is adapted from the American constitution and that includes the Nigerian constitution is ultimately being influenced by the ideas of James Madison.
Madison’s overriding aim in designing the constitution was to empower democratic majorities while safeguarding the rights of minorities. He achieved by carrying out the following measures:
- He divided society into many cross-cutting factions so that no stable majority could oppress a minority.
- He divided sovereignty between national and state governments.
- Utilizing the ‘Separation of Powers’ concept he divided governments at each level internally into branches to engender competition among politicians in order to prevent conspiracies against the people.
His work has not escaped criticism. For instance, it has been said that the dispersal of sovereignty leads to political gridlock. Dispersal of sovereignty has also been blamed for making the issue of accountability complex. It was also noted that Madison’s constitution made no provision for political parties.
This to modern eyes might seem very strange. Political parties are necessary for governing because without them there could be no stable cooperation among the branches of government and thus no capacity to govern. On the flip side, he existence of parties undermines the concept of Separation of Powers. Where one party controls two or more branches of government, checks and balances are inevitably weakened.
Madison wouldn’t let the attacks go unreplied. In response to his major critics, Madison along with Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury (Finance Minister) and John Jay, another Founding Father authored The Federalist Papers, which is widely considered to be the greatest political treatise to come out of America. The Federalist Papers is a collection of about 85 essays.
All 3 authors make use of the pen name Publius, an ancient Roman name, probably of some great political theorist. As a result, it isn’t officially known who wrote what but scholars generally believe Hamilton wrote the bulk of it – about 51 essays and supervised the publication. Madison is believed to have written 29 and John jay 5, but the most complex and profound essays are generally believed to be written by Madison.
Having already adapted the American constitution. Nigerian politicians may just find some pearls of wisdom in The Federalist Papers.
